Ahmadinejad's Columbia Speech - Some Comments

I hope that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's speech at Columbia University yesterday will energize the antiwar movement in the United States to vigorously and effectively oppose war with Iraq and to understand that the question of Palestinian self-determination is inextricably linked to all the conflicts the U.S. is involved in the Middle East.



What follows is my reaction to some of the issues raised in Ahmadinejad's speech and in the question and answer session that followed:



Iran's Nuclear Technology: The International Atomic Energy Agency has consistently certified that Iran is complying with international guidelines for the peaceful use of atomic energy. Iran's uranium enrichment process is limited to 5% enrichment - well below the level needed for developing weapons. Iran fully complies with requests for international inspections and has maintained transparency about its program.



Ahmadinejad recognizes that Iran's oil is a nonrenewable resource and Iran's oil based economy is not sustainable in the long run unless Iran uses its oil revenues to make the transition to economic and industrial self sufficiency. Iran is developing nuclear power because Iran's supply of oil will inevitably become depleted.



The U.S. and the E.U. and to some extent Russia want to keep an international monopoly on high level technology. The issue over Iran's development of nuclear power is about its right to self determination and self sufficiency. The U.S. and the Europeans want to keep Iran dependent on Western technology and they see Iran's nuclear program as a threat to their interests.



Nuclear Weapons: Ahmadinejad has consistently said that Iran does not want nuclear weapons. Ayatollah Khamenei, the supreme leader of the Iranian revolution, has issued a fatwah stating that nuclear weapons violate Islamic law.



Ahmadinejad stated that the Iranian revolution is based on a belief that nuclear weapons are not decisive or even relevant in military struggles against popular movements, such as Hamas, Hezbollah, the Iranian revolution or the Iraqi resistance. This is counter-intuitive to many Americans because we are conditioned to believe that nuclear weapons are the crown jewel of our military technology which we are told guarantees us security and supremacy over any other military power. However, as America learned in Vietnam and we are learning again in Afghanistan and Iraq, nuclear weapons and advanced technologies can be defeated when used by an invader against a resistance movement that has popular support.







Palestine and Israel: Ahmadinejad said he does not hate Jews and Iran does not intend to attack Israel. He believes that for 60 years the Palestinian people have been held in captivity under inhuman conditions that violate international law and common decency.



Ahmadinejad believes that the solution of the Palestinian problem is for all the people of Palestine, including Muslims, Jews, Christians and others, to participate in a referendum to determine one government for one state to encompass the entire territory of Palestine, including Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. Ahmadinejad said that Jews living in Palestine as well as the 4 million Palestinian refugees should participate in the referendum.



Ahmadinejad said that when the Iranian revolution came to power in 1979 the revolutionary government sought good relations with every country in the world except two: the apartheid regime in South Africa and the equally racist Zionist regime in Israel. Iran currently has good relations with the new government of South Africa and looks forward to recognizing a Palestinian government that represents all the people of Palestine, including Muslims, Jews, Christians and Druze.



The Holocaust: Ahmadinejad does not deny that millions of Jews perished in the Nazi Holocaust. However he maintains that (1) it is wrong for some European countries to imprison or punish people as criminals for their beliefs about the Holocaust; (2) the Holocaust has been exploited by Zionists as a justification for oppressing and dispossessing the Palestinians and (3) we should never close the door on further research and reinterpretation of historical events.



I believe that Ahmadinejad is correct on all three points. History is interpretive and understanding of historical events are constantly being revised and the Nazi Holocaust should be no exception. Especially when the Nazi Holocaust is used as a justification for the oppression of Palestinians.



If Ahmadinejad was more familiar with American history he could have commented on the continuing revision of our understanding of historical events, such as the Civil War and Reconstruction or the wars against the American Indians. Ironically, in the nineteenth century Columbia Professors William Dunning and John Burgess were instrumental in developing the racist interpretation of the American Civil War and Reconstruction that was prevalent in American academia and education until the 1960's. The Dunning-Burgess school essentially taught that slavery was a benign system, the slaves were docile and contented and emancipation was a fraud perpetrated on the slaves by unscrupulous carpetbagger profiteers from the North. They actually taught that Black people were better under slavery than as free citizens during Reconstruction. Dunning and Burgess taught that Reconstruction failed because Black people were not capable of voting or being citizens in a civilized society. They supported the Jim Crow system of segregation and portrayed the Ku Klux Klan sympathetically. Believe it or not, this was the prevalent historical interpretation taught in American colleges and elementary and secondary schools until the 1960's.



Scholars like W.E.B. DuBois and Carter Woodson who criticized the Dunning-Burgess consensus were ostracized and their publications and teachings generally confined to the historically Black colleges and the Communist and Socialist intelligentsia. In was not until the 1960's when the emergence of the civil rights and Black Liberation movements created an opening for re-examining the prevalent view of slavery, the American Civil War and Reconstruction. Today, the Dunning-Burgess interpretation is largely discredited, due in large part to the research and criticism carried on by Dubois, John Hope Franklin, James Allen, W.Z. Foster, Eric and Philip Foner and other Black and white leftist scholars who were marginalized and some of whom were persecuted during the McCarthy era.



American history has gone through similar revisions concerning the motivations of Americans in the Revolutionary War, the Mexican War, the Spanish-American War, and the wars with the Native Americans. World War II and the Nazi Holocaust are relatively recent events that are inextricably linked to the creation of a Zionist State on Palestinian land. It is absolutely appropriate for scholars to revisit, question and reinterpret historical events and paradigms. Moreover, ongoing research into the Nazi Holocaust is still going on as scholars seek documentation for reparations cases. So it is hypocritical to say the scholars with other points of view should be prohibited from or punished for questioning prior paradigms.



Terrorism: Ahmadinejad said that Iran has been a victim of American supported terrorism for 28 years ever since Iran overthrew the American backed Shah in 1979.

Ahmadinejad did not directly comment on Iran's support for Hamas and Hezbollah, but these are legitimate resistance movements that have popular support among the Palestinian and Lebanese people and which are resisting the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza as well as Israeli aggression against Lebanon.



Ahmadinejad expressed sympathy for the families of the victims of the 9/11 attack and said that it is important for Americans to come to understand that the root causes for the terrorist attacks against the United States, are the U.S. government's attempts to control other countries and its support for Israel's oppression of the Palestinian people.





Women's Rights: Ahmadinejad said that Iran has women cabinet ministers, parliament members, scientists, engineers and professionals. Iranian women are encouraged to attend college and are a majority of the electorate.



Gay Rights: Ahmadinejad denied that there was homosexuality in Iran and apparently is not sensitive to the rights of gay people since he doesn't even recognize their existence. However, in the early days of the Cuban and Chinese revolutions those countries also took reactionary positions on gay rights. Even in the United States in the 1970's most Maoist groups claimed that homosexuality was bourgeois decadence and attempted to either ban gay members from their groups or demand that gay members suppress their behavior. Obviously, Ahmadinejad has much to learn about the rights of gay people, but he is not alone, nor is his case necessarily hopeless.



Summary: The Iranian Revolution and its leaders are not above criticism or reproach. However, Ahmadinejad's speech exposes the lies and propaganda being spread by conservatives and Zionists to justify an American or Israeli attack on Iran. His visit to America is potentially an important event for the development of a movement opposing war with Iran and opposing American imperialism and Zionism generally.



The anti-imperialist movement also needs to understand that self-determination for the Palestinian people is a fundamental requirement for settling the conflict between U.S. imperialism and Zionism with the people of the Middle East.

Ronald B. McGuire
September 25, 2007