Denial Ain’t Just a River In Egypt
Published by marco on
There have been a flood of political cartoons covering the conference on the Holocaust taking place in Iran in the last couple of days. They almost all depict president Ahmadinejad of Iran as Hitler or a Nazi of some kind. To be fair to the normally right-leaning caricaturists of America, there have also been a hell of a lot of them depicting Bush as divorced from reality and incredibly political in all of his decisions. This reaction is somewhat expected, as Bush’s rating dips down toward the 20s, the sharks have started circling and piling on the easy target.
Here’s a sample of the Iran cartoons:
One of the Iran cartoons shows Ahmadinejad getting a call from James Baker because the Iraq Study Group recommended we actually talk to Iran in order to figure out how to get out of the Iraq mess. Get it? It’s funny because Mahmoud’s a crazy nitwit who doesn’t believe in the Holocaust; what could Bush possibly gain by trying to deal diplomatically with a religious zealot like that? Where would they possibly find common ground?
The allegation that one can’t deal with Iran is, of course, an oversimplification, as the executive in Iran (Crazy Mahmoud) is relatively powerless when compared to that of the Islamic Council and their “Supreme Leader”. Any negotiations would have to be with them, leaving Mahmoud to hold his conferences debating history on which none of the attendees are qualified or well-read. Using Ahmadinejad’s outspoken foolishness to justify ignoring sound advice to consult neighbors of a country we have, in just 3.5 short years, irredeemably broken, is just stupid. It’s a gut reaction that conflates two unrelated concepts, helping the uninformed feel better about not working toward a solution in Iraq: how can we when there are so many other asshats out there?
Don’t forget, we’ve got our very own crazy nitwit who doesn’t believe in reality either. It’s a safe bet that Ahmadinejad’s denial of—or, more accurately, dubiousness about the extent of—the Holocaust has killed a lot fewer people than any one of George Bush’s numerous problems with reality.