Soccer Dad: Sympathy for ahmadinejad

September 16, 2005

Sympathy for ahmadinejad

Glenn Kessler's article in the Washington Post today, "Iran's Leader Critical In First U.S. Visit" starts off:

Newly elected Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, making his first trip to the United States, introduced himself to the U.S. media Thursday morning, displaying a dash of defiance at U.S. charges over Iran's nuclear program and a warning that the era of big-power dominance in international relations has ended.

That's nice. The United States grants him a visa and then the media provides him with an amplifier that his opponents and enemies wouldn't have in Iran.
There were 2 points in the article that bugged me. One trivial; one not.
The trivial one:

He said he was puzzled by how the storm received its name. "The letter K," offered CBS News's Mike Wallace, launching a discussion of the idiosyncratic American practice of personifying some of the nation's most destructive natural disasters.

But aren't typhoons named? Yes they are.

Nations around the western Pacific began using an entirely new system for naming typhoons in 2000. Each of the 14 nations that typhoons affect submitted a list of names for a total of 141 names. The names include animals, flowers, astrological signs and a few personal names.

(Here's a list of all the current names.) But the western Pacific nations also (sometimes) "personify" their storms. It's not just an American idiosyncrisy.
But here's the more troubling aspect of the article:

He compared the delivery of aid to victims in the Gulf Coast unfavorably with the response to natural disasters in the Islamic republic.

How soon we forget. Does anyone recall the Bam Earthquake?
Mark Kilmer does:

After the Bam earthquake of December, 2003, the United Nations, Russia, Britain, Germany, Spain, and the United States (FEMA) had to show up to help the Iranians.

And Kilmer, quoting from the Guardian, points out not only that Iran got help, well the state of things in Iran ensured that many people died unnecessarily:

Two days before Christmas, California was struck by an earthquake similar in magnitude to the one that hit Iran yesterday, but only three people died, thanks largely to safer construction methods.

Bam, in contrast, was a disaster waiting to happen. Efforts to bring industrial development to what was a backward agricultural area caused a population boom and a shortage of housing, which local builders tried to meet with cheap, jerry-built homes, or by adding extra floors to existing houses.

[ . . . ]
Despite the lack of safety precautions, the Iranian authorities are well-accustomed to dealing with the aftermath of earthquakes.

Their response yesterday was swift, though hampered by the loss of telephone contact with the city.

This may bring relief to the survivors, but the more serious problem is a lack of sustained efforts to prevent future tragedies.

�They may create a policy after a disaster, but it�s never implemented,� Prof Aboutorabi said. �Six months after a disaster they forget it - it just happens again.�

Iran also refused help from Israel, lest anyone's life be saved by filthy Zionist pigs.

Why didn't Kessler mention the Bam earthquake and cast some doubt on the credibility of the man making the charge? Or was it so important to cast President Bush in a bad light that he chose to give Ahmadinejad a free pass.
(I was going to write about Bam; I found Mark Kilmer's blog through the Washington Post/Technorati joint effort.)
Technorati tags: Iran, Katrina.