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As Ugly as It Gets

(New York Times) Thomas L. Friedman - When I first saw the May 17 picture of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, joining his Brazilian counterpart, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, and the Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, with raised arms - after their signing of a putative deal to defuse the crisis over Iran's nuclear weapons program - all I could think of was: Is there anything uglier than watching democrats sell out other democrats to a Holocaust-denying, vote-stealing Iranian thug just to tweak the U.S. and show that they, too, can play at the big power table? "Lula and Erdogan's visit to Iran came just days after Iran executed five political prisoners who were tortured into confessions. They warmly embraced Ahmadinejad as their brother, but didn't mention a word about human rights. There seems to be a mistaken assumption that the Palestinians are the only people that seek justice in the Middle East, and if you just invoke their cause you can coddle the likes of Ahmadinejad," observed Karim Sadjadpour of the Carnegie Endowment. What this deal really does is what Iran wanted it to do: weaken the global coalition to pressure Iran to open its nuclear facilities to UN inspectors, and, as a special bonus, legitimize Ahmadinejad on the anniversary of his crushing the Iranian democracy movement.
2010-05-26 08:37:09
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