It is an analogy pure and simple:a 'similarity between like features of two things, on which a comparison may be based.'
But there *is* no similarity here -- or, rather, the similarity is a false one. Forbidding Ahmadinejad from Ground Zero is like forbidding Stalin from Pearl Harbor -- it only makes sense if you believe that Tojo and Stalin / Ahmadinejad and bin Laden are one and the same!
You just didn't grasp what I was trying to compare in your rush to judgment. It's not "only an analogy" if I'm putting the pawns into specific places--it is equally an analogy if I'm comparing the feelings and reactions to the WTC bombing to the REACTION to Pearl Harbor.
Ah, I see. So you were actually commenting on the way the American public has been manipulated into conflating A and b-L, and therefore experience the same emotional reaction from either of them visiting Ground Zero?
But I will meet you half way and agree that there is a merging of the bad guys and a simplification of who is at fault. It's very hard to pick out who is and who isn't al Qaida.
But it wouldn't be, if you'd just bother getting a tiny bit educated on the people you're actually up against. *That's* my problem with you here.
Are you saying that Ahmadinejad was sincere? That no one who isn't a brainwashed American could doubt that he is genuinely sorry for what happened? That he loves our country and wants to be pals? If so, you are being perverse and contradictory. He is identified with the amorphous 'enemy' not only because he is a brown guy with a Koran but because he is a mouthy brown guy and that is where his statements would seem to put him. And no, I can't read his statements in Farsi either--but I think you catch my drift.
Oh, he certainly doesn't love your country -- quite the contrary. But I do have a feeling he bears little ill will towards you as a people. I'm sure he'd welcome you with open arms if you decided to convert to Shi'ite Islam.
Yes I can. And so can you. I hope you caught your own unconscious assumption in the example above.
How could I, if it's unconscious?
You want to hold America accountable for the ills of the world and that's fine, but there are many players in the game of war, profiteering and world oppression. The country is composed of individuals, it's huge, it has no cohesive single ethnic base anymore, and the reins of power are not that easy to grab. I understand that you want to goad people into examining their responsibility to themselves and the rest of the world, but you seem to think we have super powers denied other humans. That we have to be smarter, cleaner and better because we're the flavor-of-the-month civilization wise. I think history shows the opposite is true.
Not exactly, but I would like it if you managed to get halfway to the level of awareness of the external world that most other civilized countries have attained. As in, being able to place your damn country on a map. (OK, only one out of five Americans polled can't do that, but still.)
Point being -- I believe that most (almost all) of the lethal damage America has inflicted on the world is due to simple ignorance rather than malice. What drives me up the wall is that *still* -- six years into the "Global War on Terror" -- so very few of you, general public, media, and leadership included, are the least bit interested in educating yourself. That's not just dumb, it's derelict.
And believe me, there you *are* behind the rest of the world, badly.
Just like Pearl Harbor? No argument, that's how propaganda machines are fueled. Does your country not have one? If so, you're very fortunate.
Last I counted, my country has fought twenty-seven wars and lost every single one. We have no shortage of Pearl Harbors. (I recall reading a newspaper article about a village where everyone is descended from the same guy -- every other male had gone off to war and not come back, so they took him from house to house to sire children to repopulate the place. He had stayed back because he was missing one leg.)
You know, the whole visit puzzles me. I don't like to think in terms of conspiracies, Bohemian Groves and New World Orders, but I really don't see how anything positive for anybody on "our side" was served by this.
That's because it wasn't. As stated, it was a win-win play for Ahmadinejad. The best you could've done is limit the damage (I think -- although it's quite possible that someone could've come up with a really clever riposte.)
But, to hammer again at my original point -- you didn't. You danced to his tune to the very last note. That did not do anyone on your side any good -- nor my side either. It's only his side that profited.