If Only This Was Sent...

[Annie]

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=Njc0MjdjMzAzNzRjMGU4NDk3NGM3NDIzNDZlMjY0YWE=

Monday, May 22, 2006

Letter to Ahmadinejad [Michael Ledeen]

I just got this from a former Reagan-administration official, and of the genre it's by far the best I've seen. Ah, the good old days, when our leaders had a sense of humor and didn't mind making fun of our enemies...

Dear President Ahmadinejad,

Please forgive this tardy response to your letter of early May. We did not reply at first because we doubted the letter’s authenticity. We suspected that someone was trying to play a trick on you. The discourse, you must admit, is unusual for a communication between heads of state. However, now that you have openly admitted that the letter is yours, I will respond.

Thank you for your invitation to accept Islam. As you know, I am a Christian. Throughout your letter you accuse me of being a bad Christian, which leaves me puzzled as to why you think I might make a good Muslim. However, before you proselytize outside your own country, you might want to address the condition of the Islamic faith in Iran.

I am genuinely sorry to hear that so many Iranians, especially the young, have lost their faith because of their profound disillusionment with theocratic clerical rule. Apparently, there is no way for them to distinguish between their religion and your rule. That is understandable since you claim there is none, that your authority comes directly from God and you are ruling in his name. It is no wonder you disdain “liberalism and Western style democracy.” Under it, you would be answerable not only to God, but to the Iranian people, to whom God gave certain “unalienable Rights” that you and the mullahs have chosen to ignore. How ironic that, in the name of God, you deny your people’s God-given rights.

When young Iranians survey the way in which the clerical regime has enriched itself and impoverished the country, and enforced its rule with such harshness, what are they to think of this “God” who rules over them in this way? As a result, they abandon their religion and, unfortunately, many turn to drugs.

Your answer to the abuses under which the Iranian people live is nuclear “power.” Since your country is so richly endowed in oil and natural gas reserves, this is a strange answer. In fact, you so often denounce “lies” in your letter, I am surprised you would engage in such a whopper yourself. No country has conducted a 20-year clandestine program to develop nuclear power for peaceful domestic uses. The reason is that it is perfectly legal to do so in the open. In fact, we would support your nuclear power program, if that is what it was. However, as everyone outside of Cuba, Syria and Belarus knows, you are developing nuclear weapons.

You know that we know you are doing this. In fact, you deliberately exacerbate the free world’s worries with your continued exhortations about wiping Israel off the map. I understand that your policy of confrontation helps you to consolidate your domestic power and that is why you generate so much tension. The more likely you can make it seem that Iran will be attacked from the West, the more Iranians will rally around you. You provoke us. We respond. You get stronger. Since the Iranian people will soon realize we have no intention of attacking them, they will soon weary of this artificial hysteria and begin to wonder why your government fails to provide even the most basic necessities.

We also understand the real reason you want nuclear weapons. Of course, you have the dream of being the regional hegemon, and the prospect of your having nuclear weapons already terrifies your neighbors. But you also want them for the same reason as North Korea. Once you possess nuclear weapons, you believe you will be immune, as is North Korea, from external pressure for domestic political reform. You can tell the world to take a hike and to leave you in peace to oppress your own people. This is why Iranians who wish to see a return to genuine democratic, constitutional order despair at the thought of your succeeding. They know they will be finished, that no one will then dare speak up on their behalf.

So this is not really about nuclear weapons; it is about the rights of the Iranian people – your desire to take them away, and our desire to see them respected. We don’t worry about Great Britain, or France, or now India, having nuclear weapons, because they are democracies; they are founded on the “unalienable Rights” of their peoples. People who are free to exercise those rights seldom seek to take them from others. We, and the rest of the world, are worried because of the nature of your regime, because you deny you own people its rights. Therefore, we take you seriously when you say you will take rights from others – most especially their unalienable right to life – by “wiping them off the map,” and we see you seeking to obtain the means to do this.

We do not think the Iranian people are going to let you get away with this. They see their religion prostituted to power and their great culture traduced by fanatic ideologues. We are on their side.

Thanks for writing.


Sincerely,

George W. Bush



P.S. I attach a copy of the Declaration of Independence.

 

[Adam's Apple]

Wouldn't you like to read the response that was sent? Somehow I have a sneaking suspicion that it was not nearly as good as Ledeen's proposed response.

 

[Bullypulpit]

Dear President Bush,


As we all know, you claim to be a Christian. Your actions throughout your political career have led many to doubt those claims. From mocking a death-row inmate on "Larry King Live", to executing the mentally retarded, to your stated belief that, despite evidence to the contrary the system of capital punishment is error free. And let's not forget launching an unjust war of aggression. Awfully un-Christian of you.

I am genuinely sorry to hear that so many Americans, especially the young, have lost their faith because of their profound disillusionment with hypocritical rhetoric. Apparently, there is no way for them to distinguish between their religion and your claims of faith. That is understandable since you claim God guides you and you are acting in his name. It is no wonder you disdain “liberalism and democracy.” Under it, you would be answerable not only to God, but to the American people, to whom their Creator gave certain “unalienable Rights” that you and the televangelists have chosen to ignore. How ironic that, in the name of God, you deny your people’s God-given rights.

When young Americans survey the way in which the hypocritical regime has enriched itself and impoverished the country, and enforced its rule with such harshness, what are they to think of this “God” who rules over them in this way? As a result, they abandon their religion and, unfortunately, many turn to drugs.

Your answer to the abuses under which the American people live is unchecked presidential “power.” Since your country is so richly endowed with a heritage of freedom, democracy, and the rule of law, your disdain for this heritage is nothing short of astonishing. And your statement that the Constiution is "...Nothing but a god-damned piece of paper" is utterly shocking.

You know that we know you are doing this. In fact, you deliberately exacerbate the free world’s worries with your continued exhortations about war on terror. I understand that your policy of confrontation helps you to consolidate your domestic power and that is why you generate so much tension. The more likely you can make it seem that America will be attacked from by terrorists, the more some of the more fearful and sheepish Americans will rally around you. You bang the drum of attack and terror. You get stronger. Soon the American people will soon realize you have no intention of protecting them, they will soon weary of this artificial hysteria and begin to wonder why your government fails to provide even the most basic necessities.

Many also understand the real reason you want such unbridled power. Of course, many in your party have the dream of being a world hegemon, and the prospect of your having uncheked executive power already worries many Americans. But you also want them for the same reason as other despots throughout history. Once you possess unchecked power, you believe you will be immune, as as did Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, and many others, from external pressure for domestic political reform. You can tell the world to take a hike and to leave you in peace to oppress your own people. This is why Americans who wish to see a return to genuine democratic, constitutional order despair at the thought of your succeeding. They know they will be finished, that no one will then dare speak up on their behalf.

So this is not really about unlimited executive power; it is about the rights of the American people – your desire to take them away, and our desire to see them respected. We don't worry about Great Britain, or France, or India, having such unchecked power, because they are democracies; they are founded on the “unalienable Rights” of their peoples. People who are free to exercise those rights seldom seek to take them from others. We, and the rest of the world, are worried because of the nature of your regime, because you deny you own people its rights. Therefore, we take you seriously when you say you will take rights from others, as evidenced by your domestic spying program, your secret prisons, your use of extreme rendition, your suspension of habeas corpus.

I, and many other Americans, do not think the American people are going to let you get away with this. They see their religion prostituted to power and their great culture traduced by fanatic ideologues. We are on their side.


Sincerely,

Moderate America



P.S. I attach a copy of the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution.

 

[Jimmyeatworld]

Dear Bullypulshit,

Blow it out your ass.

Sincerely,
Laura Bush

P.S. The President has asked me to return your copies of the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution. He requests you read them without adding any of your own words. They are not historical versions of Wikipedia.

 

[fuzzykitten99]

Dear Bullypulshit,

Blow it out your ass.

Sincerely,
Laura Bush

P.S. The President has asked me to return your copies of the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution. He requests you read them without adding any of your own words. They are not historical versions of Wikipedia.

:rotflmao:
:rotflmao:
:rotflmao:

 

[Bullypulpit]

Dear Bullypulshit,

Blow it out your ass.

Sincerely,
Laura Bush

P.S. The President has asked me to return your copies of the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution. He requests you read them without adding any of your own words. They are not historical versions of Wikipedia.

That's the best you can do? Peurile insults that pass for argument...? The moral and intellectual banckruptcy of the Bush Administration and its supporters are why America is going to hell in a handbasket.

 

[Stephanie]

That's the best you can do? Peurile insults that pass for argument...? The moral and intellectual banckruptcy of the Bush Administration and its supporters are why America is going to hell in a handbasket.

Oh
Clinton took us into the moral and intellectual bankruptcy.
Now we're trying to dig ourselves out of it..

 

[fuzzykitten99]

That's the best you can do? Peurile insults that pass for argument...? The moral and intellectual banckruptcy of the Bush Administration and its supporters are why America is going to hell in a handbasket.

Hell huh? i thought you liberals were atheists, so hell can't exist for you.

 

[jillian]

Hell huh? i thought you liberals were atheists, so hell can't exist for you.

You can tell yourself that liberals are athiests. Doesn't make it so.

Religious Left Seeks Center of Political Debate
Conferees Call For Stronger Voice
By Alan Cooperman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 10, 2004; Page A02


More than 350 political liberals of many faiths gathered in Washington yesterday to begin what some pollsters say is a quixotic task: restoring the voice of the religious left in the nation's political debate.

Progressive religious voices, which historically have fueled so much social change in this country, seem to have been washed out of the public dialogue in recent years," said John D. Podesta, a Roman Catholic who was White House chief of staff under President Bill Clinton. Podesta now heads the Center for American Progress, the Democratic think tank that organized the conference to highlight the "proud past" and "promising future" of the religious left.

Speakers celebrated the role of religious liberals in the civil rights movement, protests against the Vietnam War, the nuclear freeze campaign and sanctions against South Africa's former apartheid system. They called for a stronger, more clearly religious voice against the Bush administration's foreign policy and for environmental stewardship, universal health insurance, and efforts to fight poverty at home and abroad.

Yet even as the conference at times took on the enthusiasm of a pep rally, there were sobering reflections on why the religious left lost its prominence after the 1970s and how hard it may be to regain it. At the core of those concerns was a simple set of statistics, reinforced by numerous polls: People who say they are frequent churchgoers vote Republican by a ratio of about 2 to 1.

"All the surveys show that if you ask about either church attendance or attitudes -- how important is religion to you in your daily life? -- you get the same thing: the more religious, the more conservative," Gallup pollster Frank Newport said in an interview. "I certainly remember the days when being religious meant fighting for civil rights and social justice, and it's not that those people aren't still out there. But religious liberals are a small minority today."

Some liberals dispute that conclusion.

"Church attendance is not the only indicator of living out your faith," said the Rev. Brenda Bartella Peterson, executive director of the Clergy Leadership Network, a group devoted to "leadership change" in Washington. "The vast majority of people of faith in this country are center to left, politically. But if you only measure religious commitment by butts in the pews, that's what you get."

Conference attendees also blamed the media, saying news reports tend to play up the simple dichotomy between the secular left and the religious right rather than citing the full range of religious views.

"It really bothers me that whenever the media and others talk about people of faith, they talk only about the religious right and don't seem to realize there are people like me, who grew up Baptist and believe in God and have strong religious values, but who want different policy outcomes," said Melody Barnes, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and a former chief counsel to Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.).

But some of the Roman Catholics, Protestants, Jews and Muslims at the conference also said they have felt excluded or even disdained by the secular left. The Rev. James A. Forbes Jr., senior minister at the Riverside Church in New York City, told the audience in his keynote address that "we have got to find a way not to be embarrassed" to speak about religion with secular progressives.

And there was no lack of hand-wringing among the conferees about what the religious left has done wrong.

"Part of it is our fault. We should take back the Bible, take back the theological principles and not just cede them to the religious right," said the Rev. Susan B. Thistlethwaite, a minister in the United Church of Christ and president of the Chicago Theological Seminary. "It's not good enough to talk in vague terms about values. We can do better than that. We can make the theological arguments."

Historian Taylor Branch said that in the 1970s, the abortion issue split the progressive religious alliance that had formed in the civil rights movement. Since then, the left has done no better than the right in "moving beyond polemics," he said.

"Not many people who call themselves pro-choice actually want to celebrate abortion, and not many of those who call themselves pro-life want to put women in jail for having abortions," he said. "It's more of a show than a debate, with polarizing options that aren't real. Both sides profess that they love children, but you don't really have the two sides doing very much to cooperate to reduce the number of neglected and abandoned and unwanted children, or to care for them."

The Rev. Charles Henderson, a Presbyterian Church (USA) minister who publishes the interfaith quarterly CrossCurrents, said that from the 1950s through the 1970s, the mainline Protestant denominations took for granted that their values would infuse television and the public schools. Evangelicals, who felt shut out of establishment institutions, created their own schools and broadcast outlets. "Then you wake up one day in 1984 and the Christian right is dominant, and you wonder why," he said.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A29653-2004Jun9.html

 

[jillian]

Oh
Clinton took us into the moral and intellectual bankruptcy.
Now we're trying to dig ourselves out of it..

Funny. I can't think of any question owhich begins: "WWJD" which would be answered by "drop bunker busters". But that's "moral" I suppose.

 

[Stephanie]

Funny. I can't think of any question owhich begins: "WWJD" which would be answered by "drop bunker busters". But that's "moral" I suppose.

:huh:

 

[Redhots]

Funny. I can't think of any question owhich begins: "WWJD" which would be answered by "drop bunker busters". But that's "moral" I suppose.

You must've missed the episode of South Park where Jesus goes to Iraq to save Santa.

 

[Jimmyeatworld]

That's the best you can do?

That's the best your crap deserves.

 

[Jimmyeatworld]

Funny. I can't think of any question owhich begins: "WWJD" which would be answered by "drop bunker busters". But that's "moral" I suppose.

Funny. I can't think of one that's answered with "Get Monica a towel."

 

[CSM]

You can tell yourself that liberals are athiests. Doesn't make it so.



http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A29653-2004Jun9.html

Oh well, if there's 350 of em we might as well give em what they want! If there were 350 million of em we would have to call them "morons" and "the tyrannical majority".

 

[Bullypulpit]

Oh
Clinton took us into the moral and intellectual bankruptcy.
Now we're trying to dig ourselves out of it..

Lying about consensual sex in the Oval Office IS NOT the moral equivalent of lying about the rational for war...of lying about spying on US citizens...

If you're not angry about this Administration's moral bankruptcy, perhaps your own moral compass needs a bit of re-calibration.

 

[Bullypulpit]

That's the best your crap deserves.

Unable to debate the issues...you withdraw into dumb silence.

 

[jillian]

Oh well, if there's 350 of em we might as well give em what they want! If there were 350 million of em we would have to call them "morons" and "the tyrannical majority".

And all the people like me who are a bit left of center and aren't athiests? We don't count.

The far right doesn't have a monopoly on belief.

 

[BaronVonBigmeat]

We don’t worry about Great Britain, or France, or now India, having nuclear weapons, because they are democracies; they are founded on the “unalienable Rights” of their peoples.

Or Pakistan, a Muslim country with nukes which isn't democratic but we snuggle up to them anyway.

Your answer to the abuses under which the Iranian people live is nuclear “power.” Since your country is so richly endowed in oil and natural gas reserves, this is a strange answer.

No, it's a perfectly logical answer, when gas and oil are selling at record highs. Then remember that the energy consumption of China and India is just getting started. Oil needs to be used in cars, as there are few viable substitutes...but for electrical power generation, there are alternatives, nuclear being #1. Every gallon saved by a nuke plant is extra oil money in their pockets. That's also why there are so many renewed calls for nuclear power in america.

 

[Stephanie]

Lying about consensual sex in the Oval Office IS NOT the moral equivalent of lying about the rational for war...of lying about spying on US citizens...

If you're not angry about this Administration's moral bankruptcy, perhaps your own moral compass needs a bit of re-calibration.

So you must be calling the Clinton administration a liar also..
He used the exact same intelligence to bomb Iraq back in the 90's...



And your also saying 50% of the people in the United States have no moral compass, because their not buying into this spying on America thing that the liberal media, who are in kahoots with the Democrats, want us to believe.

Yet of course we know, you sir, know all and have the higher moral compass above everybody else...

I evaluate the things that I see as important and I go from there. I guess I'm just too stupid though, because people like you, tell me so....