Comments on: Takeaway Lesson Of The Day

By: skunky

skunky — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 03:14:58 +0000

Pejman, O great cheerleader of land wars in Asia! Have you ever been right about anything?

By: kcom

kcom — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 21:32:50 +0000

Ahh, “haters” and “warmongers”. More tired, cliched, leftist claptrap. If that's the depth of your argument, it's no surprise that you're not getting much respect from those who actually care about (and have people to care about) on the ground in Iran.

By: Pejman_Yousefzadeh

Pejman_Yousefzadeh — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 08:00:36 +0000

It's amusing that Mark lectures me on the need to read properly, or on the need for honesty, when in fact, my post makes clear that whether through incompetence or through dishonesty of his own, he failed to read Makhmalbaf's comments correctly. As is clear in the Foreign Policy interview–which Mark didn't read properly and failed to report properly–Makhmalbaf's comments were dedicated to criticizing Obama for his comparison of Mousavi and Ahmadinejad.

Equally amusing–and contemptible–is Mark's ridiculous last paragraph. He cites a lone statement by Daniel Pipes to the effect that Pipes wanted Ahmadinejad to win since Pipes believes there is no difference between Ahmadinejad and Mousavi (much as Obama asserts by way of comparison, by the way!), and as usual, paints with a broad brush and says that my “friends on the right” all wanted Ahmadinejad to win. I'm sure that Mark knows his broad-brush statement is a lie. And given the fact that my family comes from Iran and experienced hardships at the hands of the Islamic regime, I don't need him to ignorantly sermonize to me on what side I need to take regarding the struggle in Iran. If I wanted advice, I'd go to a smarter Iran hand than Mark Kleiman has turned out to be.

By: MarkARKleiman

MarkARKleiman — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 07:15:34 +0000

And Pejman Yousefzadeh needs to learn to read, period. Or perhaps his problem isn't with literacy, but with ordinary honesty. In any case, whether ignorantly or deliberately, he mis-reports what I wrote.

I'm under no illusions about Mousavi. My point wasn't about Mousavi. My point was that players in Iranian politics, trying to appeal to the Iranian public, liken their candidate to Obama and the dictatorship to Bush. There's a term for having a President who is admired rather than loathed by freedom-loving people around the globe. It's "soft power."

There's no way to determine how much Obama's Cairo speech, which rebuked Ahmadi-nejad's Holocaust denialism while expressing respect for both Islam and Iran, contributed to the political situation which may now bring the Iranian dictatorship down. But it's no surprise that Pejman's friends on the right were openly rooting for A-n to win the elections. Iran is not the only country whose lunatic haters and warmongers took a big hit this week.