Nothing is true, all things are permitted
-dubiously attributed to Hassan bin Sabbah - but who knows?
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"There's nothing known as absolute," said Iranian president Ahmadinejad. That's an uncharacteristic statement for a religious man, but quite characteristic for someone trying to eat his words without swallowing them. It all depends on what "thing" means and what knowledge means and what absolute means you see -- and if you're adept at that sort of rebarbate rhetoric you're adept at saying you didn't have sex with that woman or that Hitler didn't kill all those Jews or that there are no homosexuals in Iran without leaving enough of a handle for anyone to call you to account for the apparent ambiguity.
Insinuating that the Jury is still out on something as massively documented as the Nazi genocide by talking about the rights of "Scholars" is a ploy all too reminiscent of Bush's assertion that the jury was still out on the equally massively documented subject of evolution. Neither jury exists. There is really no Debate concerning geology or cosmology or any number of things that people want to deny by insinuating one. There is not much of a debate about who hired the hijackers in 2001 and one has to suspect the motives for insinuating that perhaps it was the same "Columbian drug lords" who slashed Mrs. Simpson to pieces. I won't argue the inherent uncertainty in all things, nor would Doctor Heisenberg, but I will suggest that some things are close enough. There are Homosexuals in Iran and I think the pictures of teenagers swinging from ropes are real.
Perhaps though, the undoubtedly embarrassed president was forced to offer something more like a debate than the snarky "it never happened" crap that's been attributed to him elsewhere.
"Granted this happened, what does it have to do with the Palestinian people?"That's a debate and a stunning opening for further debate that may never have happened during a long distance propaganda battle.
Does the Ahmadinajad shuffle indicate that the man regrets his statements and is trying to wriggle around them while not antagonizing the supporters who were just fine with holocaust denial? I'd like to think so and I'm sure that like any politician, he has to please people he doesn't agree with. I would also like to think that he's being forthcoming when he says Iran doesn't need a nuclear weapon and thinks Israel should not be attacked militarily. But as he says: nothing is absolute and of all those things not absolute, trust is near the top of the list. There is in fact a debate about Iranian nuclear progress and its aims and there are contradictory assertions about its policy toward Israel and toward the US occupation of Iraq. That's a debate where all parties have a credibility problem and where we all desperately want and need to know the answers.
Unfortunately I doubt there will be any step toward dialog taken by our horseless cowboy but one can hope that nothing blows up until we - and perhaps they have another administration.
