In light of President Bush's opposition to a resolution that would
acknowledge the Armenian genocide, the question must be considered
as to whether he is a madman who cannot be trusted with nuclear
weapons.
Should Armenian allies adopt a preemptive approach and bomb
strategic North American sites?
U.S. press reports of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
denying the Nazi genocide have been a flashpoint of the popular
perception here that he is either insane or a beast. In either
case, he is someone who must be attacked before he can obtain
nuclear weapons.
When Ahmadinejad is asked these days whether the Nazi holocaust
occurred, he says historians need to conduct more research. It is
an answer that bears an uncanny resemblance to that of U.S.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice when asked about the Armenian
holocaust.
In this clip, when Rep.
Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) asks Rice if there is any doubt in her mind
that the murder of 1.5 million Armenians between 1915 and 1923
constitutes a genocide, she says, "I think that the historical
circumstances require a very detailed and sober look from
historians, and what we've encouraged the Turks and the Armenians
to do is to have joint historical commissions that can look at
this, to have efforts to examine their past, and in examining
their past to get over their past."
This is akin to saying the Jews and Germans should get together
and study this question of atrocities, and then for them both to
get over it. "Lots of people are coming to terms with their
history," Rice adds.
She goes on to say that she doesn't think the United States
weighing in would help the process of reconciliation between
Turkey and Armenia. Well, there's an answer Ahmadinejad might wish
to consider next time a goofy "60 Minutes" guy asks him for his
Holocaust position: "I don't think me giving an answer would help
the Jewish healing process."
Why is there such a runaway-mad perception in the United States
that Ahmadinejad is a runaway madman? It's because Vice President
Dick Cheney and others in the Administration want to attack Iran,
and they are flailing around for a casus belli.
The propaganda campaign against Ahmadinejad is working on two
layers, like the trompe l'oeil of an improbable masterpiece. In
the background we see hues of a kook with violent intent. Logic
fades as we're beguiled by the colors; we forget that there are
probably plenty of leaders around the world whose views would
affront us, and that we normally don't bomb for beliefs. In the
foreground are strokes outlining purported actions. These are
things he hasn't just thought but done, such as the supplying of
weapons that are killing our boys and girls in uniform. There's
blood on his hands! We're already at war with him! The painting
becomes vivid, and all sense is lost, as are recollections of the
original crime of invading and occupying a sovereign nation.
In simple terms, the propaganda war seeks to prove two things:
This is a bad person, and this is a person who has done bad
things. One attacks a mode of thought, the other a mode of action.
On the mode-of-thought level, Ahmadinejad is portrayed as guilty
of two things: he wants to wipe Israel off the map, and he denies
that the Holocaust occurred. Ahmadinejad's defenders dispute both,
and they point to issues of context and translation. On the
mode-of-action level, he is charged with supporting "terrorism" in
Iraq with money and weapons.
It is hard to watch all the documentaries showing how we were
duped five years ago and think that it could ever happen again,
let alone so soon afterward. The pretext for invading Iraq was
seen as a flimsy lie by nearly everyone in the world except the
ideologically tiny island of people living in the United States.
The propaganda washed like a tsunami over the minds of everyone on
that island. And don't blame the hoi polloi. Journalists and
"intellectuals" were the first to be swept away.
Now the Administration is seeking to disprove that infamous Texas
slogan: "You can fool me, but you can't get fooled again."
Already the "intellectuals" have been suckered. Columbia
University President Lee Bollinger called Ahmadinejad a "petty and
cruel dictator" to his face and suggested he was "astonishingly
ignorant." This from a man astonishingly ignorant of the fact that
Iran's unelected commander-in-chief, the Supreme Leader Ali
Khamenei, holds more power than its elected president,
Ahmadinejad.
In Iraq, it was the supposed existence of weapons that might or
might not be used against the United States that caused our
leaders and citizens to support an invasion. A mighty thin veil
for naked aggression. Now we're sifting through Ahmadinejad's
speeches for attitudes that might predispose him to act in a
certain way if he obtains weapons in a few years and is re-elected
in 2009 though he's not even the commander-in-chief? How thin can
the veil get?
What about Turkey's denial of the Armenian holocaust? Do we even
know who the leader of Turkey is, let alone if his eyes are too
close together? No, no. We need Turkey right now to keep our
occupation well-fed, as Defense Secretary Robert Gates reminded us
yesterday. We can talk history another day.
But just like the Jews protesting Ahmadinejad's speech at Columbia
University last month, the Armenians see the relevance of
discussing history now. And if Bush and his crew continue to deny
their genocide, they could take a page from Cheney's playbook and
say that here is a lunatic country that must be stopped. It is a
holocaust-denying nation that is considerably further along in its
development of nuclear weapons than even Iran and more than anyone
else has demonstrated a willingness to use them.
Could the friends of Armenia paint this into a picture that makes
bombing the United States seem like the only sane solution? Nah,
the only ones who would buy a painting like that are living all
alone on a little island.
Brendan Cooney is an anthropologist living in New York City. He
can be reached at: itmighthavehappened@yahoo.com
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