FEATURE
Letters to Ahmadinejad |
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| The Iranian president meets his new pen pals | |
 by Edward Schwarzschild, January 22, 2007 |
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From this Series
- Letters to Ahmadinejad
- "The World is Unthinkable"
- "Your Nation is Held Hostage by Palestinian Arabs"
- "I Was Baking Honey Buns When Your Letter Came"
- "We Ought to Bomb Your Nuclear Facilities to Dust"
- "Your Hate for Everything I am Brings Darkness to My World"
- "Remember to Keep the 'Fun' in Fundamentalism!"
- "The Nazis, Too, Imagined a Perfect Human"
In late November, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad penned an open letter to the "Noble American People." This week, noble American people respond. Below, author Edward Schwarzschild introduces the Iranian president to Jewcy's "Letters to Ahmadinejad" feature.
Greetings, President Ahmadinejad, and may peace be upon us all.
My name is Ed Schwarzschild, and I was once a president, too. More than thirty years ago, when I was in the sixth grade, I was elected student president of Rowland Elementary School (now closed, alas) in the northeastern suburbs of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Two years later, at Elkins Park Middle School, I was elected vice president of my class. Then, four years after that, at Cheltenham High School, I was elected secretary of the senior class. At that point, the downward trajectory of my career as an elected official seemed undeniable and I left politics altogether.
Still, over the years, I have done my best to stay informed. I read, I think, I vote. I am, more often than not, disappointed and angered by the policies and actions of the world’s so-called leaders, including, recently and especially, the policies and actions carried out by you and President Bush.
You probably aren’t expecting letters from the eclectic mix of writers and thinkers who have
Bad Pen Pal: President Bush, with First Lady Laura contributed to this project of replying to you. Allow me briefly to describe what a few of my fellow “noble Americans” and I have attempted here. Not long ago, you addressed a letter to President Bush and another to “the American People.” President Bush has made it clear that he has no intention of answering your letters. It’s regrettable that he’s failed to reply, though hardly surprising given that he has failed in so many other ways before and since the disputed election of 2000.
These days, I make my living as a writer and an English professor, and because of that (and maybe also because I’m old-fashioned and naïve), I believe that personal letters should be answered. Even difficult, infuriating, deliberately misleading letters like yours. I can’t compel President Bush to write you a letter. I can’t compel President Bush to do anything. Few people can. But I figured that since I am, by the will of my great grandparents and the accident of my birth, an American, I could reply to you myself. And since you addressed “the American people” and not just one American, I encouraged several other citizens of these United States to reply with me.
I understand President Bush’s desire to dismiss your letter out-of-hand; it doesn’t take much imagination to spin out possible reasons for his epistolary silence. Perhaps he can’t confront the truth of your assertions about the destructive, dehumanizing effects of this country’s actions at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and elsewhere. You’re surely right to claim that “such behavior… offends global public opinion, exacerbates resentment, and thereby spreads terrorism, and tarnishes the U.S. image and its credibility among nations.”
You are also correct, it seems to me, when you point out that the “U.S. administration’s illegal and immoral behavior is not even confined to outside its borders.” Obviously, the simplest thing for President Bush to do is to ignore, downplay, and/or disavow evidence of his own hypocrisy. I’m no psychologist, but this pattern of behavior might be called denial. And you, of course, know a great deal about denial.
I won’t discuss your hate-mongering campaign against the historical fact of the Holocaust. Instead, I’ll point out, as I’m sure you’re aware, that Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, and the B
Sign of a Healthy Democracy?: Camp X-Ray is subject of fierce public debateush administration’s “war on terror” are the subject of intense national debate, a debate which led in our most recent election to the large-scale defeat of those who support President Bush’s agenda. Can you say the same about the level of debate within your own country?
Perhaps you can. As several of my fellow letter-writers point out, your administration recently suffered a resounding defeat of its own—apparently, your policies and actions are at least as unpopular with noble Iranians as Bush’s policies and actions are with noble Americans. It’s clearly true, as you say, that Iranians and Americans “have common concerns, face similar challenges, and are pained by the sufferings and afflictions in the world.” Some of us have begun to realize that many of these “sufferings and afflictions” result from our poor choice of “leaders”.
I confess that when I first conceived of this project, I imagined sending you advice derived from my own long-ago experience as an elementary school student leader. After many conversations and several drafts, though, I decided that my response needed to be more serious-minded. Still, I’m struck by your and President Bush’s co-dependent behavior, which seems so childish in only the worst sense of the word.
Name-calling? Lying? Refusing to share? Longing for the largest, most expensive toy? The silent treatment? I find myself tempted to scold you both with the words my parents often said to me when I misbehaved, even when I was a popularly elected president: Grow up!
In any case, this handful of noble Americans is writing to you in the hope that an open, honest, and mature correspondence is somehow possible. Your letter elicited a full spectrum of replies. In the days to come, you’ll have the opportunity to read letters from men and women who are young and old; gay and straight; conservative and liberal; and Jewish, Christian, and Muslim. We were born and raised in many different parts of this country, east coast, west coast, and in-between. We are mothers, fathers, husbands, wives, sons, and daughters, building careers as poets, novelists, professors, and speechwriters. And, as you’ll see, we deploy a wide range of rhetorical strategies, including mockery and scorn, but also analysis and criticism.
So, we’ll wait to hear back from you. In the meantime, we remain relatively noble Americans, hoping for better understanding among all people everywhere, and peace throughout this troubled world.
Sincerely,
Ed Schwarzschild
P.S. Please feel free to add a link to this site at your flashy new blog!
Next: Experimental poet Don Byrd pines for Dr. Strangelove
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Edward Schwarzschild is the author of the novel Responsible Men (2005) and the story collection The Family Diamond (2007). He has a website: www.edwardschwarzschild.com |
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Anonymous
but it seems like these writers are falling into the same trap as the leaders they're trying to admonish, i.e. increase you own popularity through knocking others down. This exercise may be entertaining, and I believe that is the point, but it are you claiming as well that it is actually helpful? I'm afriad it is not.
Anonymous
I can’t imagine anyone seriously thinking that Bush and Ahmadinejad are actually going to read these letters. But that would be a lousy measure of the forum’s effectiveness. Schwarzschild’s letter – and the forum that he and Jewcy have put together – is helpful in that it asks us how we would and should respond to the global crisis that both men seem hell-bent on creating.
I found the idea that Bush and Ahmadinejad have a co-dependent relationsip fascinating. It makes me wonder how many other destructive leaders in the world today ultimately owe their power to George Bush. A sober thought -- in 2004, Americans did not just elect Bush and his cronies, they elected his opponents around the globe – but probably an accurate one.
I look forward to seeing this timely forum unfold.
Melissa
White Supremacists and Neo Nazis read Jewcy to learn the "enemy" strategy, maybe Ahmadinejad will too. Also, he may want to mend ties with the Jews because I hear when he gets ousted, he's planning to get plastic surgery and run for governor of Louisiana as a FORMER mass genocide denier.
Anonymous
What a fool. Your ignorance is surpassed only by your arrogance.
Anonymous
I guess the sophisticated tact to take is to presume Ahmadinejad is not a unadulterated monster and that includes glossing over all of his murderous ramblings and intentions.
So now that we can pretend he's not who he is, maybe we can also pretend he cares a whit about what we think.
Anonymous
"sophisticated TACK to take...", no? because "sophisticated tact" is just redundant.
Anonymous
Dear President Ahmadinejad,
I'm sorry, I have not been able to make time to read your letter.
Since I rarely have the time to listen to all of the speeches of my own country's
president, let alone watch the two or three channels of 24-hour broadcast from the national legislature or the published minutes of the state legislature, the county commishioners, the school board, the town council... you can see that I am
very far behind in my correspondence.
I hear on NPR that you are interested in developing nuclear weapons. My advice would be to skip it. From my little knowledge of history, the only use of nuclear weapons so far has been widely misunderstood and castigated. Everyone else who has built one has been afraid to use it. So at minimum it is a waste of time and money. I also heard that you deny that you really want a nuclear weapon. That puzzles me, since having one is only useful if everyone knows you've got it. And working on one is only effective if everyone knows about it. Fortunately, NPR knows.
Well, good luck with your next elections. I hear that bombastic anti-semitism is still a good campaign tactic over there. We have similar issues over here. But it's a lot easier to make a good bombastic speech than it is to keep the garbage men from going on strike, if you know what I mean.
Sincerely,
Chris
p.s. I started reading "Reading Lolita in Tehran" but my daughter wanted it back before I could finish it.
arlington sasy
I think the West demonized the Iranian president through the biased mass media. The man is clearly pragmatic and seeks to fulfill his people's hopes.
Anonymous
So, is there not a better approach to governance? Nouveau Riche University
frankenjew20817
Good idea. It's a positive that the majority of Iranians and Americans are on very similar wavelengths on issues of shared concern. It's also a sad truth that their fates are tied to the will of their lunatic leaders, in both countries.
Michelle Omama
This morning the Washington Post
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/01/AR200807010
3008.html?nav=hcmodule>
broke the news that Barack Obama got a sub-market interest rate when he
took out a mortgage to buy his Chicago mansion in 2005:
The freshman Democratic senator received a discount. He locked in an
interest rate of 5.625 percent on the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage,
below the average for such loans at the time in Chicago. The loan
was unusually large, known in banker lingo as a "super super jumbo."
Obama paid no origination fee or discount points, as some consumers
do to reduce their interest rates.
Compared with the average terms offered at the time in Chicago,
Obama's rate could have saved him more than $300 per month.
Obama's loan came from Northern Trust, whose employees have also donated
$71,000 to Obama's campaign. This is, of course, the same home purchase
in which Obama was assisted by his fundraiser, convicted felon Tony
Rezko, who bought the adjacent lot for the seller's full asking price,
while Obama paid $300,000 less than the asking price to the same seller
for the house.
It has come to light that several Democratic Senators availed themselves
of sub-market mortgages under circumstances that are more or less
suspicious. Obama is in that rather tawdry category.
What is most striking to me, though, is not that Obama shaved a fraction
of a point off his mortgage by being a politically powerful customer. It
is, rather, the rapidity with which Obama was able to turn his ascension
to the Senate into material wealth. The Post describes the Obamas'
mansion, purchased just a few months after Obama became a Senator:
The couple wanted to step up from their $415,000 condo. They chose a
house with six bedrooms, four fireplaces, a four-car garage and 5
1/2 baths, including a double steam shower and a marble powder room.
It had a wine cellar, a music room, a library, a solarium, beveled
glass doors and a granite-floored kitchen.
How were the Obamas able to afford this on a Senator's $162,000 salary?
They weren't, of course. But in January 2005, the same month in which
Obama assumed his Senate seat, Random House "agreed to reissue an Obama
memoir, for which it originally paid $40,000, as part of a $2.27 million
deal that included two future nonfiction books and a children's book."
How does an author who has never sold many books get a multi-million
dollar book deal? By being an up-and-coming Democratic Senator.
Then there is Michelle Obama, whose salary doubled to over $300,000 when
her husband was elected to the Senate. It was the Random House book
deal, together with Michelle's newly-discovered value to her employer,
that paid for the Obamas' Chicago mansion.
You can draw your own conclusions from all of this. It strikes me that
Barack Obama is a very old-fashioned politician. He is a powerful man,
and he expects the world to kiss his ring and shower him with money and
other good things. This is a Chicago tradition, I guess, and it's not
hard to understand.
What's a bit harder to make sense of is Michelle Obama's attitude. She
says that America is a "downright mean country." Is this an insight that
she had while sitting in her double steam shower? Or perhaps while
fetching a prime vintage from her wine cellar, or musing in her
solarium, or applying makeup in her marble powder room, or treading the
granite floor in her kitchen? It's hard to say. Maybe it's just another
instance of liberal guilt. But since Barack is as nakedly on the make as
any politician in modern American history, the Obamas should perhaps
drop the pose.