Pepper Posted August 15, 2015 Share Posted August 15, 2015 : Opinion: When Obama adopts the mullahs’ style Those who are sucked into big adversarial situations in history always run a number of risks. However, the biggest risk, I believe, is to have an evil adversary and end up looking, behaving and even thinking like them. If that happens to anyone, they could be sure that even if they win many battles, they would end up losing the war. In contrast, one might be lucky enough to end up resembling an adversary that is better than oneself. All that came back to my mind when reading the speech that US President Barack Obama gave in Washington the other day in defense of his “nuke deal” with the Islamic Republic. The first thing that struck me was how his discourse echoed that of the mullahs. He started by building a metaphysical heaven-and-hell duality about a very this-worldly issue. He warned that the choice was between accepting his deal (Heaven) and war (Hell). The beauty of life, however, lies in the fact that it is full of endless possibilities, including doing nothing when doing anything else could cause more harm. Next, he imitated the mullahs by practicing “taqiyah” (dissimulation). He diligently avoided delving into the details of a convoluted “deal” every part of which is designed to deceive. He also hid the fact that his much advertised “deal” has not been officially accepted by the Iranian state. Finally, another mullah concept, used by Obama, is that of “End of Discussion” (fasl al-khitab) once the big cheese has spoken. That may work in the Khomeinist dictatorship; it is not worthy of a mature democracy like the United States. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pepper Posted August 15, 2015 Author Share Posted August 15, 2015 This is worth a careful read. Interesting perspective on the Iran "nuke deal". From http://www.aawsat.net/about-us Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Valin Posted August 15, 2015 Share Posted August 15, 2015 This is worth a careful read. Interesting perspective on the Iran "nuke deal". From http://www.aawsat.net/about-us Been reading Asharq Al-Awsat for a very long time now (Shortly After That Day in 2001. Always good get get as many points of input as possible. It should be noted that for better or worse (likely somewhere in between) they are owned by our "Good Friends" the family Saud. Thing is, one of the things I have driven home to me in since 9/11/01 is in his part of the world there are very few white hats, and things a mostly shades of gray. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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