ELAASAR: Ahmadinejad, the ugly face of Demagoguery, For Immediate Release, 10-07-07

Ahmadinejad: the Ugly Face of Demagoguery

By Aladdin Elaasar — Seeing Iranian President Ahmadinejad’s face on TV brings a lot of bad memories to many people in the Middle East. He is bad news to the Iranians, Arabs, Muslims and the whole Middle East. Why? Well, for starters, we do not need another hyper-nationalist dictator pointing fingers at the West, America and the favorite old target of his alikes; the State of Israel, to deflect the public’s attention from nagging domestic issues like unemployment, poverty oppression and corruption. Conspiracy theories of the outside enemy have become the favorite rhetoric of dictators for a long time. They work like magic with the masses.

Remember Nasser of Egypt, Gaddafi, Castro, Saddam Hussein and Hitler. They used the same emotionally-charge rhetoric and marshaled their masses, gained absolute power, clashed with their neighbors, wasted the resources of their countries, and instead of building up their countries and taking care of their people, they led their countries to destruction and devastation for generations.

It is always the same sad story. Saddam went on the same route. Instead of turning Iraq into a lush oasis of peace and prosperity, he singlehandedly brought that country to destruction due to his rash and oppressive politics. It seems that the Iranian President is taking Iran on a similar course. Although, the two neighboring countries, Iraq and Iran, are endowed with some of the biggest oil reserves, water, fertile land and an educated population; resources that can turn any barren desert into a paradise, but due to the stubbornness and arrogance of both Saddam and Khomeini, the two countries fought each other for 10 years destabilizing the whole region.

The two countries, under the Ba’athist in Baghdad and the Mullahs in Tehran, wasted hundreds of billions of dollars on weapons and other tools of death and destruction, and caused the death of almost a million Arabs and Muslims from both countries! As if that was not enough, the Iranian President has been trumpeting the need for Iran to be a nuclear power! Why would Iran need nuclear energy to begin with, while it is one the major producers of oil in the world? Shouldn’t Iran better spend these billions to be wasted on the nuclear project on development in Iran itself? Didn’t the superpowers waste trillions of dollars on nuclear weapons that they are trying to dismantle now! Or is it just a matter of a chauvinistic  national pride, showing off some muscles and bullying its Arab and Muslim neighbors in the region, and gain more popular support? Isn’t it a part of the same arrogant supremacist rhetoric to make the Iranian people feel good about themselves and better than other people in the region; the same formula that all fascist and dictatorial regimes resort to?

To garner more populace support at home and gain absolute power, dictators always like to point the fingers at the outside enemies of the motherland. To do so, the theocracy in Iran allied themselves with mercenaries to do their dirty work and proxy wars on their behalf, like Hassan Nasserallah of Hezbollah, Mutadha al-Sadr, Hamas, and even the brutal Ba’athist in Damascus. Iran’s politics in the region has been simply playing the role of the spoiler: either I get what I want, or nobody will be at peace. Iran’s money and moles have been the spoilers in the Palestinian territories, Lebanon and Iraq. The unholy, manipulative and hypocritical politics of the Mullahs can change course in a split second once they get what they want on the negotiating table.

My advice to Ahmadinejad: please stop talking in the name of Arabs and Muslims- you are giving them a bad name and actually hurting them more than you can imagine. Fix your house first before trying to fix somebody else’s. Iran has one of the highest rates in unemployment, drug use, prostitution, poverty and many other problems. Save the money that you are squandering on thugs and merchants of death and spend it on your own people. Start cleaning your house of the corrupt clergy and give your people their freedom back. And above all, try to be a good neighbor for once. Isn’t that what Islam calls for?

(Aladdin Elaasar is author of “Silent Victims: The Plight of Arab & Muslim Americans in Post 9/11 America” on the web at www.authorhouse.com. Email Aladdin at omaraladin@aol.com. Copyright Arab Writers Group, www.ArabWritersGroup.com.)