Barack and Mahmoud: Two Peas in a Pod

Barackmadinejad

Were Barack Obama and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad separated at birth? That was my first thought when conceiving this piece, but realizing that they were born nearly five years apart, that would render the theory invalid. However, considering the myriad relatives of Obama that have popped up around the globe since his nomination for president, there is still reason to believe that the two could be brothers, if only ideologically.

While Ahmadinejad is president of the Islamist State of Iran, run in actuality by the "spiritual" leader in the Ayatollah, Obama has been working extra hours in the expansion of Iran's boundaries or, at the very least, an expansion of sister states nearby. (In the Islamist world, I suppose the term "sister states" would, by necessity, be changed to "brother states". Theological misogyny, and all that jazz).

Since his inauguration, Barack Hussein Obama has been campaigning for the rise of Islam in the Middle East and the decline of Western influence. His speech in Cairo in 2009 was an open admission that America had been "arrogant" in the past and must now atone for its insolence, while his foreign policy has been to relegate our dearest friend and ally in the region -- Israel -- to the ash heap.

It is no mistake that the one man who has been instrumental in the relative peace that has lasted for the past 30 years in the Middle East, Hosni Mubarak, was treated as any of Obama's aides who didn't toe his line. Mubarak and these aides all bear the same tread marks on their torsos as a result of Obama's bus, which they were unceremoniously tossed beneath when they proved an impediment to his agenda. Thus began the so-called "Arab Spring".

Oh, the glee here at home, in our doe-eyed media, as the prospect of a "democratic uprising" began to unfold in Egypt. Why, those poor, oppressed people are finally going to experience freedom once Mubarak is gone! The problem is, no one was complaining about oppression in Egypt for much of those 30 years as they were already free to move about the country and enjoy a somewhat secular lifestyle. Nevertheless, Obama had made his pronouncement: "Mubarak must go!"

OK, so maybe it was a foreign policy blunder on the nubile Obama's part, one that might be excusable, I suppose. After all, Jimmy Carter inadvertently got Anwar Sadat killed, which ushered in the era of Mubarak, so what's one more mistake by an American president? Considering what is poised to fill the void in Egypt this time around, it's a big mistake.

*Special aside: Consider the current angst over the foreign policy experience of a candidate like Herman Cain, who actually loves America and freedom.

Not long before the "Arab Spring", however, there was another uprising in the Middle East, this time by a decidedly more pro-Western contingent; the people of Iran. In June of 2009, Iran held its presidential elections. In the aftermath, the people felt that they had been duped and began protesting the outcome, for which they were promptly and brutally suppressed. The Obama administration's reaction was initially one of condemnation combined with support for the people of Iran, but quickly and "masterfully" withdrew for fear of appearing to "meddle" in Iran's internal affairs.

So while the Iranian people were being crushed by a brutal regime, Obama turned his back on them. I still maintain that -- especially now in retrospect -- it was because Iran was already a solidly Islamist State and needed no prodding from this version of Washington, D.C. There was much work to be done, and much "regional organizing" to accomplish.

With Egypt now creeping closer to Shar'ia law under the rule of the Muslim Brotherhood, Obama doubled down on the unrest in Libya. As he proved with Mubarak, countries such as Egypt and now Libya were fertile grounds for "meddling" and, in the case of Libya, even military intervention. Perceptions of Western meddling were no longer a concern. The march to the Caliphate had begun.

I can't even imagine Jimmy Carter -- a man who bears virtually no resemblance to anyone I admire -- saying that the Muslim call to prayer "is the most beautiful sound I ever heard", as Barack Hussein Obama did. Never could I believe that an American president would express such contempt for the Bible while quoting liberally from the Qur'an. Yet here we stand today with an alleged "leader" who leads nothing at home aside from rapid decline,  but guides the advance of Islam abroad, all but ignoring the country already most firmly ensconced in its tenets.

Indistinguishable

Barack and Mahmoud...two peas in the same religious pod. As Coptics get run out of Egypt by the thousands and Christian churches burn, Obama and our giddy media gleefully anticipate the coming elections in that formerly all Coptic country and mention not the burning churches. The "party" likely to gain the most legislative seats in the new Egyptian government is the Muslim Brotherhood.

Sad that such a country, once a peaceful yet strategically critical one in the region, will now fall to the enemies of liberty and peace. Egypt once was all Coptic for two hundred years, from the 4th to the 6th centuries under Roman rule. It wasn't until the 7th century -- and the birth of Islam -- that that all changed.

Perhaps that is yet another similarity between Mahmoud and Barack Hussein; they both cling to 7th century ideology and the rule of Islam.

Of course, this is just a theory.

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What If Islam Used Stick Figures?

Iran's Plans

In Colorado, an 11-year-old boy with attention deficit disorder (ADD) was hauled away from his home at night by police. He was arrested, cuffed, photographed and fingerprinted, booked and charged with a third degree misdemeanor, interfering with staff and students at an educational facility. The police wouldn't even let the boy's mother accompany him to the station.

What "Tim" (his family preferred to remain anonymous) did was to draw a stick figure of himself holding a gun pointed at four other stick figures with the words, "teacher must die". It sounds like a very disturbing incident, but Tim was merely following the advice of his therapist, who told his young patient that the drawings would release anxiety in lieu of disrupting the class.

Tim sketched the drawing, felt better after having done so, and was throwing the drawing away when the teacher spotted it. The school evaluated the boy, determined he posed no threat and ultimately returned him to class. Later that night, the police showed up and took him away. The family, of course, is weighing  its further responses.

After Columbine and subsequent tragedies, I understand the need for caution, but at what point do the citizens become alarmed by the prospect of being arrested for thoughts, or worse, perceived threats? Growing up in the sixties, I can't count the number of times I shouted to enemies, and friends with whom I was momentarily angry, "you're dead!" Obviously, it was an empty threat back then, one designed to let the object of my ire know that there would be a fight.

Today we live in a society where formerly tolerated speech is viewed as a crime, a serious threat no matter how innocuously intended. Yet on the world stage, we dismiss more direct rhetoric as meaningless. Case in point: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his repeated and boisterous threats to rid the world of the Jews.

Despite arguments by scholars over the translations of a speech Ahmadinejad delivered in 2005, in which it's been reported that the Iranian leader called for Israel to be "wiped off the map", it remains clear that the intent is to remove the Israelis from existence. (The ridiculous claim by defenders of Iran is that there are no Persian words meaning "wiped off the map").

Seeking to qualify the remarks, Arash Norouzi, who translated the Persian to English, claims that the speech merely intended that "this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time". And to add further ludicrousness to this madness is Iran's Foreign Minister, Manouchehr Mottaki,  who said at a news conference in February of 2006, "How is it possible to remove a country from the map? He is talking about the regime. We do not recognize legally this regime."

Whew! So the Iranians really don't want to wipe Israel off the map, they just want to eradicate the Jews. What a relief. A professor of Political Science at St. Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia also dispelled the notion that Ahmadinejad uttered the phrase, "wipe Israel off the map". Shiraz Dossa put the fears to bed by assuring us, "There is a huge chasm between the correct and the incorrect translations. The notion that Iran can 'wipe out' U.S.-backed, nuclear-armed Israel is ludicrous".

OK, but that was five years ago. Since Ahmadinejad has been working feverishly since then to acquire nuclear weapons, one must wonder the odds today of such a confrontation with Israel.

I'm more curious about what may have happened if Professor Dossa had had Ahmadinejad in his class, and caught him with a stick figure drawing of the annihilation of the Jews?

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