Juan Cole Compares Palin to Ahmadinejad

Juan Cole compares former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Salon.

Both are known for saying things that produce a classic Scooby-Doo double take in their audiences. Both appeal to a sort of wounded nationalism, speaking of the sacrifice of dedicated troops for an often feckless public, and identifying themselves with the common soldier. They are vigilant against foreign designs on their countries and insist on energy and other independence. But above all, both are populists who claim to represent the little people against wily and unscrupulous elites, and against pampered upper-middle-class yuppies pretending to be the voice of democracy. Together, they tell us something about dangerous competing populisms in an age of globalization.

Both leaders see press criticisms as coordinated attempts to discredit them not from the media's duty to examine a political figure's policies or public statements, but from an elite conspiracy. In her farewell address about a week ago, Palin fell into a Shakespearean soliloquy directed at the media, saying, "Democracy depends on you, and that is why, that's why our troops are willing to die for you. So, how 'bout in honor of the American soldier, ya quit makin' things up." Palin did not say what exactly she thought the media was making up about the American soldier. On June 16, in his first news conference after his officially announced victory in Iran's June 12 presidential election, Ahmadinejad complained, "During these elections, our nation was faced with a widespread psychological war and propaganda by some of mass media which have not learned from the past." The people, he boasted, followed not the media but the path of "the martyrs [in war] ..."

The larger theme here is the folly of taking a simplistic, with-us-or-against-us, fundamentalist approach to dealing with foreign policy. Our taking a belligerant reactionary stance in response to similar rhetoric from foreign leaders is a recipe for needless and dangerous escalation.

--Ballard Burgher