re: #86 sattv4u2

:::looks around:::

Where are our liberal/ progessive Lizards to tell us Cole is wrong ,, that Palin doesn’t compare to Ahmedinajad,,,
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that she’s actually WORSE

I’m not going to go that far, because I don’t think it’s true. And no, I don’t really think that Palin deserves to be put on the same plane as Ahmadinejad. But I do see overall point that Cole is trying to make, which is that hard-right pols such as Ahmadinejad can draw strength from their political equivalents in America.

Bush’s “axis of evil” rhetoric made it easy for Ahmadinejad to gin up public support for his anti-U.S. rhetoric, and claim that the Iranians were victims of “U.S. imperialism” or the “great satan” or whatever other bullshit he spewed. From what we saw of Palin’s foreign policy planks, she was from the same “you’re with us or against us” cowboy diplomacy mold. The kind of rhetoric that would help strengthen politicians who spew anti-American sentiment like Ahmadinejad.

Just look at what happened once we dialed down the rhetoric, and attempted to reach out directly to the Iranian people. Ahmadinejad’s anger looked childish and stupid, and he was forced to initiate a coup to seize power. Not saying you can directly attribute all of that to our change in foreign policy, but it certainly didn’t hurt.