A
pub I used to patronize in London for its unusually large clientele of
celebrity villains also had a lone psychotic Hungarian plasterer, whose
presence I found even more dangerously riveting than that of the cream of East
End felonry, which included such luminaries as the psychopathic Kray brothers
(one always carried a hammer in a special pocket because guns were for
"nancy boys"), Johnny Binden (who had a thriving career playing
himself in movies and could hang 10 beer mugs on his erect penis), Chas (Razor)
Hanford and Jimmy (Fingers) McGissie, who removed the fingers of those who annoyed
him using bolt cutters, and kept thousands of blackened digits in the steel
trunk that doubled as the base of his coffee table.
These were dangerous people. You didn't bump into them without apologizing
profusely. You avoided eye contact. You made sure you were never overheard
talking about them. They were hair-trigger cases when drunk, and would slit a
throat or crack open a skull at the slightest suspicion of a dis.
When the Hungarian started disparaging them out loud, daring them to take
him on but scoffing that they were too cowardly to try, I felt certain his life
would end shortly. But no one touched him. They ignored him. So he kept doing
it, and became a local legend.
I once summoned the courage to ask Johnny Binden why he hadn't made the man
into an umbrella stand for his taunts. " 'Eza
nutter, inni?" saith the Enhanced One. " 'E
don't fucken care wot 'appens t'him, see? Ya don' fucken fight someone who
don't care if 'e lives or dies. Wossa point?"
That pub often struck me as the world in miniature, and today Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad is playing the Hungarian.
By pursuing nuclear capability, by threatening
Scary? Crazy? Before you
start penning encomia to the Post and Maclean's editorial boards, please note
that the previous paragraph was written about U.S. President George W. Bush,
although it could apply equally to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
To see
The chilling fact that they are the ones we have handed the keys to life or
genocide ought to drive us toward facts alone for all assessments. Partisan
politics have no role in the endgame.
There has so far been a tendency to dismiss Mr. Ahmadinejad as insane or
just someone grandstanding on the world's stage for a home audience -- as if
either of these facile opinions explains or solves anything. The key issue is
to decide whether his extreme devotion to Islam is genuine or just a garment
worn for popular approval. The latter would make him a political player, and
the former makes him a theocrat. You can negotiate with one, but the other is
intractable -- he's doing God's will, and man, of course, is more moral than
God.
Terms such as "crazy" and "scary" are also ways of
saying "I don't understand," which is no way to enter a complex
negotiation. It is viewed across the East as a weakness; it is also what is
intended by that venerable military maxim: Never underestimate your enemy.
No one is required to like Mr. Ahmadinejad. But we need to understand him,
because from understanding comes respect. And if we are to sort the rhetoric
from the rectitude, respect is a sine qua non.
We'll also have to stop pretending we've done nothing to offend denizens of
the area. The Chinese and Russians did some terrible things in the past, and
have admitted them, but
This may play well to the domestic audience, but it is preposterous in any
of the countries involved. Try telling relatives of the 3,000 Panamanian
civilians slaughtered during the Noriega "regime change" that there
were few casualties. And try telling someone born in Iran around 1956 that
Iranian democracy was not murdered in its crib by an Anglo-American coup d'état
to keep Iranians from nationalizing their own oil.
Mr. Ahmadinejad was born on
Mr. Ahmadinejad also would have been exposed to the creation of
An aging professor of jurisprudence, he was pushed out of the classroom and
into history when it was suggested that Americans accused of a crime in
He refused to back down, and soon was forced into exile. While away from
To live through momentous times and to see the hand of God in action leaves
its mark on a person. But the future President's true life-altering epiphany
was not
During that war, as German political scientist Matthias Küntzel recalls in
the current issue of The New Republic, the Ayatollah imported 500,000 tiny
plastic keys from
In an attempt to compensate, the Ayatollah decided to send Iranian children,
some as young as 12, to the front lines. There they marched in formation toward
the enemy, clearing a path through the intervening minefields with their
bodies. Before every heroic mission, one of the Taiwanese keys was hung around
each child's neck -- to open the gates of paradise for them.
The children were part of the Basiji, a mass movement the Ayatollah had
created in 1979. The sacrifice of the Basiji was irredeemably hideous,
repellent. But even today for Iranians there is no shame entailed in the
gruesome memory; indeed, there is a growing sense of pride. Furthermore, since
the war ended in 1988 (when both sides in effect lost), the radical Basiji has
burgeoned in numbers and in influence. Last year, it provided the political
base that propelled Mr. Ahmadinejad to the presidency.
Why does he have such a special relationship with this somewhat sinister
faction? Because during the war with
The fact that Mr. Ahmadinejad ascended to the presidency on the shoulders of
the Basiji is itself evidence that after almost 30 years, the Iranian
revolution has entered a new and disturbing phase. The generation of Iranians
whose views on life were forged by the atrocities of the Iran-Iraq war has made
a sudden and successful move on power, utilizing a far more ferociously
ideological approach to politics than that deployed by its predecessors.
The revolution's children are now its leaders, and at such times revolutions
have often entered a phase of unexpected and savage terror that pales in
comparison with anything before it, and giving the impression that someone has
unlocked the gates to hell.
And this is the culture that nurtured Mr. Ahmadinejad's view of the world
and life. Several people have insisted that he played a role in the 1979
takeover of the U.S. embassy, although his presidential website says he was
"on active service as a Basij volunteer up to the end of the holy defence
[the Iraq war] and served as a combat engineer in different spheres of
duty."
After the war, having evidently improved his cachet dramatically, he served
as the governor of
Then, after being appointed mayor of
This role cemented his reputation -- and popularity -- as a hard-liner
pledged to rolling back the liberal reforms of
then-president Mohammed Khatami.
He positioned himself as the leader of a "second revolution" to
eradicate corruption and Western influences from Iranian society. So when he
ran for president last year, the Basiji embraced him, effectively serving as
his campaign workers.
A past immersed in such a cult of self-destruction would be chillingly
ominous in any country. In the context of the Iranian nuclear program, however,
this obsession with martyrdom is deeply worrying. Basiji followers are no
longer sent into the desert; now, they go into the laboratory. Basij students
are encouraged to enroll in technical and scientific disciplines. According to
a spokesman for the Revolutionary Guard, the aim is to use the "technical
factor" in order to augment "national security."
During his swearing-in ceremony last year, Mr. Ahmadinejad did something very
revealing, something only one other Iranian president has ever done: He kissed
the hand of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the country's supreme religious ruler. More
than just loyalty, the act demonstrated his firm conviction that he serves the
faith, not the people.
The bottom line is that we must expect monstrosities from the current
Iranian regime. What began in the early 1980s with the clearing of minefields
by human detonators has led to extremists working as chemists in a
uranium-enrichment facility.
So, with Mr. Ahmadinejad, the traditional
Left to solve its own problems,
So, let's listen to Johnny Binden and not pick a fight with the Hungarian. Wossa point?