Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

Mad logic in Iran

Melanie Phillips:

The full text of Ahmadinejad’s speech, translated by the invaluable MEMRI, is worth reading. Here we can see starkly laid out the demented inferiority complex and paranoia of the jihadi, the mad inversion of cause and effect and the centrality of Israel to this apocalyptic vision -- and the centrality of the Palestinians in bringing about the goals of the jihad:

We are in the process of an historical war between the World of Arrogance [i.e. the West] and the Islamic world, and this war has been going on for hundreds of years. In this historical war, the situation at the fronts has changed many times. During some periods, the Muslims were the victors and were very active, and looked forward, and the World of Arrogance was in retreat. Unfortunately, in the past 300 years, the Islamic world has been in retreat vis-à-vis the World of Arrogance...

During the period of the last 100 years, the [walls of the] world of Islam were destroyed and the World of Arrogance turned the regime occupying Jerusalem into a bridge for its dominance over the Islamic world...

This occupying country [i.e. Israel ] is in fact a front of the World of Arrogance in the heart of the Islamic world. They have in fact built a bastion [ Israel ] from which they can expand their rule to the entire Islamic world... This means that the current war in Palestine is the front line of the Islamic world against the World of Arrogance, and will determine the fate of Palestine for centuries to come.

Today the Palestinian nation stands against the hegemonic system as the representative of the Islamic Ummah [nation]. Thanks to God, since the Palestinian people adopted the Islamic war and the Islamic goals, and since their struggle has become Islamic in its attitude and orientation, we have been witnessing the progress and success of the Palestinian people.

The Iranian president sees his country as part of an epic fight between the world of Islam and the rest of us. Because the world of Islam has lost out to the west since the Enlightenment, this is portrayed as an assault by the west upon the Islamic world. The failure of that world is thus presented as a defeat by a west that set out to destroy it. The idea that Islam was actually the last thing on the west’s mind while it just got on with inventing capitalism, while the Islamic world lost out simply because of its own inherent weaknesses, is not even considered. The west is a priori an aggressor. So it follows that Israel, which is composed of Jews who

came to this country from far away to plunder it

is the west’s beachhead in its diabolical intention to destroy the Islamic world. Of course, the fact that the Jews did not come from ‘far away’ but were a nation in Israel long before Islam was even invented, and retained an unbroken link with and residency in that country through waves of successive invasions and colonisations — notably by the aggressive Islamic world — is utterly denied. The fact that Israel palpably has only ever wanted its own self to exist and has never had aggressive designs on any other country is also denied. Instead, the mad logic of fanatical victim complex means that Israel must be destroyed, and the jihadi tells himself that the destruction of the west in turn is likewise an act of self-defence.

...

Well, 300 years ago the US did not exist, so it could not have been our fault that the Islamic world blundered into defeat. As long as they keep blaming the "other" rather than taking responsibility for their own circumstances they will always wind up with the same result, defeat. Like Osama the "grieviances" are older than any current policy differences, so we should quit wasting our time and energy debating them and get about the business of defeating these enemies.