Ahmadinejad - The Missed Opportunity
Posted: September 28th, 2007 at 2:51 pm
Sam Smith
The childish, petulant, hypocritically self-righteous and jingoistic
attacks on Iran’s president by politicians and members of the media
provides a useful insight into why America is such a hated place in the
world these days.
The reality of the world is that there are places where the Holocaust is
denied, women are badly mistreated and gays abused and then there are
other places that have been responsible for the deaths of over a million
Iraqi civilians and have caused much of the global ecological damage
that threaten the lives of millions of other humans.
The rational approach to ameliorating the damage done by both such
places does not rest on the unilateral assessment of blame, unilateral
admission of guilt or on military action that increases the number of
victims. It depends rather on incremental acceptance of new ways agreed
upon because they work well for all parties. As Benjamin Franklin said
of happiness, peace does not depend on great strokes of good fortune but
on the little felicities of every day.
Because the American elite, from the president of Columbia University to
the Columbia Broadcasting System commentator, is so absorbed in a
fantasy of its own perfection, it is constitutionally unable - save in
rare moments - to step down from a self constructed altar and make the
successive small adjustments necessary for peace, progress and
cooperation.
Thus, if they had not been so obsessively narcissistic, those attacking
Ahmadinejad might have noticed that the Iranian president was opening a
door for discussion, negotiation and perhaps even resolution. Would it
work? We don’t know, but we know for certain that not taking the
opportunity will not do a single thing for women or gays in Iraq nor
bring Ahmadinejad any closer to understanding the history of Nazism.
Instead we could easily find ourselves in an even more disastrous war in
part because we don’t talk to people who don’t understand the Holocaust.
In fact, if one examines Ahmadinejad’s statements, he has shifted his
position on some of these issues. Not that words are inherently
important. We have wasted years as American and Israeli officials
insisted they would not talk to country X until it “recognizes the right
of Israel to exist.” In fact, the miscreants long recognized that right;
they just don’t want to do with their lips.
Nearly 20 years ago, game theorist Robert Axelrod conducted an
experiment to figure out the best way to evolve cooperation. Using other
game theorists around the world, the result that came out on top was a
system of tit for tat: you do something and we’ll do something
comparable (whether good or bad). And Axelrod noted: “Words not backed
by actions are so cheap as to be meaningless. The players can
communicate with each other only through the sequence of their own
behavior.”
Where words are important, however, is when they suggest a shift in
actions is possible. Ahmadinejad’s statements suggest just such a shift
and we have reacted to them in precisely the wrong way.
