Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Little Mahmoud's Inferiority Complex

James Lewis at The American Thinker analyzes Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a maniac Nancy Pelosi thinks she can have a dialogue with (by the way, am I the only one totally sick of the word dialogue, as if it's the great panacea for all the world's ills?).
Like Adolf Hitler, Ahmadi-nejad loves a big show. The news photo shows him in front of an Iranian flag with painted inside an atomic energy symbol. Not a comfortable symbol for Iranian patriots --- imagine seeing the US flag flying inside of an atomic energy symbol. It's beyond bizarre by any civilized standards, just like the infamous "uranium dancers" of a couple of years ago, performing their fancy-dress folk dances bearing shiny bars of metallic uranium. This is the stuff the same of dark comedy often seen in North Korean mass spectacles.

According to Ahmadi-nejad, today's celebration is supposed to show "the greatness of the Iranian nation," and its "scientific progress." But uranium enrichment was demonstrated by Enrico Fermi around 1934, so "the greatness of Iranian scientific progress" is 70 some years behind the times. Tehran's scientists and engineers know that, of course.

So who is Ahmadi-nejad trying to impress?

It's a puzzle. The serious players in the world probably have a reasonable idea of real Iranian nuclear technology. They are not going to be affected by all the pant-hooting hullaballoo. His internal enemies are not going to be affected either, except maybe getting scared of being evaporated in a nuclear Armageddon ad majorem dei gloriam --- for the greater glory of Allah. That's not their style. They want nukes, but they think it's idiotic to make a big public fuss about it.

So what's the answer? My guess is that, like the pant-hooting chimp, Ahmadi-nejad is trying to control his own anxiety. Here's a man who preaches over and over again that he wants to conquer the world for Allah --- if necessary, by martyring himself and the people of Iran in a nuclear exchange with Israel and America. But his whole life experience is of cultural inferiority. The mullahs are reactionary throw-backs living in the 21st century, and live with an incredible of cognitive dissonance. They know their actual level of incapability. How do you cope? Well, you can only try to bluff and steal their toys.
Read the whole thing. Good stuff.

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