Juan Cole: Farewell Ahmadinejad, Only the Neocons Will Miss Him

[eridani]

http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/290-139/18756-farewell-ahmadinejad-only-the-neocons-will-miss-him

Both American rightwing and Jewish-nationalist hawks who want the US to go to war with the Islamic Republic of Iran nearly wet their pants in delight at having the quirky yet somehow menacing figure of Ahmadinejad with which to frighten the public into the war they yearn for. When I pointed out to them that Ahmadinejad did not control the Iranian army or intelligence and that therefore nothing he said mattered very much, they ignored that point. Now that Iran has a new and more presentable president, Hasan Rouhani, the hawks are saying with no trace of shame that the president doesn't matter for security issues, and these matters are in the hands of the Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei. I.e., in case Rouhani turns out to be personable and pragmatic, the hawks want to be able to dismiss him as powerless, even though they spent the last 8 years stridently shouting at us that Ahmadinejad was in charge.

So here are the reasons to be glad to see Ahmadinejad gone--

I will never again have to hear some uninformed pundit or politician drone on about how Ahmadinejad threatened to wipe Israel off the face of the map, which he did not. This stupid debate was only possible because the journalists in Washington and New York apparently do not trust me (I'm looking at you, Ethan Bronner) to know the difference between a transitive and intransitive verb or accurately to translate Persian into English. The late Christopher Hitchens even managed to convince himself that he knew Persian better than I. It is a profound mark of contemporary America's anti-intellectualism that a professor of Middle Eastern history with numerous refereed works to his name on Iran and Shiite Islam at prominent academic presses should be assumed not to know the grammar every Iranian schoolchild does. This whole 'wiped off the face of the map' mania among Western journalists was just war propaganda, in which they seem unashamed to join, and which causes them to vilify anyone who stands in their way

[geek tragedy]

1. Having Juan Cole's ego bruised is about the least compelling reason to wish Imanutjob adieu. nt