| | Our president wisely avoided the UN conference against racism held the day before yesterday, though I am sure that he would have had much to contribute in that area. As far as I could tell, the conference deteriorated into a sham as a strong contingent of "diplomats" walked out during Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's, address. Obviously premeditated, they paraded themselves in front of him on their way out the door. Just before that, someone making a ruckus wearing a clown's wig was escorted out. Perhaps he was their leader.
Now Ahmadinejad was not lacking in negative diplomacy, and without deviating even a tiny bit from his political position he could have led into his speech differently. He could have started by defining "racism" as political bias against families of people and their beliefs. He could have denounced Christian abuses against Jewry in Russia under the Czar, and explained how that, combined with the atheistic revolution, forced an impoverished population of Jews to migrate from their homeland to Germany prior to WW II. He could have explained how a strong sense of family, coupled with the necessity for self preservation, contributed to Jewish prosperity in Germany, and how they eventually fell prey to the emerging science of propaganda in the mass media as the German population suffered under the Great Depression. Then he could have denounced the resulting deterioration the political process, and demonstrated how it generated the extreme abuses of the Holocaust that the conference was being held to avoid. Ahmadinejad knows all these things! Why didn't he explain them?
That would have surprised everybody, and his opponents would have been very hard pressed to walk out while he was speaking this way. Then and only then he could have introduced his position that historical travesties such as this can be misused to exploit public sympathy with the intent of gaining reverse political advantage. Then the door would have been opened to explain how the word "Jewish" in "right to exist as a Jewish state" racially and religiously excludes Gentiles from the political process, and then and only then he could have explained (his position) how deporting political opponents from Israel to refugee camps in surrounding countries defeats the democratic process that was supposed to protect them.
He could have turned the accusation against him of being a "Holocaust denier" upside down. The real "Holocaust deniers", he could have said, are ignorant of the history that led up to the Holocaust and are thus likely to repeat it, such as in the recent conflict in Gaza. The real "Holocoaust deniers", he could have said, refuse to address the forces that contribute to racism.
Yes, he could have said that, but didn't. Instead he opened his address by chanting literally gracious but openly polarizing "God words". Then he launched into blanket condemnation of Israel using "racism" more as an insult than a word that deserves explanation. Hatred is blind, and predictable. His opponents knew what was coming, and used it to score a diplomatic victory as they walked out. So I applaud our president for not participating with Ahmadinejad nor with his opponents at this conference, as he explained in his address to Summit of the Americas yesterday in Trinadad.
In the mean time, in a public address leading up to the Summit of the Americas, Hugo Chavez ranted that our president would be insensitive to the needs of smaller nations because "he doesn't read". It was one of the most patronizing, insulting and provocative remarks that I have ever heard in a public address. Now at the summit, Chavez handed our president a book. "Thank you", said our honorable president, "I'm a reader". This morning I heard Dick Cheney criticize Obama for the "weakness" that shaking Chevez' hand and receiving the book displayed to the world. No, Mr. Cheney (how thankful I am that you are gone), THAT was a political victory - on a major scale. |
| | Posted 4/21/2009 11:36 AM - 29 Views - 4 eProps - 3 comments
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