“Another false idol”
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad wants to avoid having 9-11 turned into “another false idol like the Holocaust”. He’s all for “examining what really happened in this incident”:
9/11 has led to many significant changes. It was used as a pretext to occupy Afghanistan and Iraq. It was the reason for the killing of hundreds of thousands of people. It is only natural for us to respond in an appropriate manner. I wanted to visit there last year, but there was no time for that. So I decided to visit there this year to pay my respect to the casualties and convey my sympathy to the families.
I also wanted to raise several questions and express my views. I wanted to say that in my opinion, this incident is the result of the mismanagement of the world, and the result of the inhuman management of the world. Why did such an incident take place? We need to get to the root causes. We don’t want them to turn this incident, in 20 years’ time, into another false idol like the Holocaust, which they would use as a pretext to kill peoples, and prevent anybody from opening this [Pandora’s] box and examining what really happened in this incident. They might turn 9/11 into something sacred, and whoever does not accept it would be considered an infidel, whereas whoever accepts it would have to accept all the ensuing crimes.
In any event, we must express our views. I believe that this way, we would have formed cordial relations with the American people, and could have opened this issue up for discussion. Well, this is exactly what they want to prevent…
This preventing of “discussion” seems to be a recurring theme of Mr. Ahmadinejad, who appears to see conspiracies all around him, preventing the various important truths of the world from getting out. There are some sound reasons for thinking that Mr. Ahmadinejad and some of the clerisy around him may be less susceptible to the traditional rules of deterrence than was seen in the Cold War.