Andy Borgmann's Blog

If you asked me who is the one person you would like to meet that is still alive I would answer Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (yes I had to copy and paste that name from a Google search). Now half of you would say, who the heck is that, and the other half would probably be appalled. For those that don't know, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is the President of Iran.

Now, before I get any further. I want to say that the preceding does not condone or excuse any of the comments Ahmadinejad has made in the past (especially in relation to Israel). I do not love Hitler. Nor do I want the Jews wiped off the face of the earth. But I digress.

What fascinates me about this man is that he doesn't seem like your average Middle East nutball (reference Osama Bin Laden). I don't see him touting around automatic weapons, and in the good majority of his photos he is smiling, dressed in fairly western cloths, and if you didn't know him under the context of being the President of Iran, wouldn't he seem pretty sane?

This past week, Ahmadinejad sat down with Wallace on 60 Minutes. I not only watched that interview, but I also watched the interview, in its entirety, with no edits on C-SPAN. Now this guy definitely seems to be a good manipulator (and I am not necessarily saying that is a bad thing). When Wallace asked him a question he obviously didn't want to answer, he just talked for 10 minutes about something else and by the time he got done, we all forgot what the question was.

But here's my point. Twice this week I heard reference to Iran and the Anti-Christ (or Great Satan). Once, was the re-quoting of Ahmadinejad himself when he referred to America as the Great Satan, and the other time was when (I am ashamed to say) someone on my radio show actually accused Ahmadinejad of being the Anti-Christ. But in my mind, neither of these terms do anyone any good. I don't understand why we can't just sit down and talk to one another like adults. I have said this before, and now I am putting it in writing. If I were elected President the first thing I would do is travel to the three countries that "supposedly hate us the most," with a relatively small entourage, with little security, on their turf, and at least attempt to talk this out. Sure, it might fail. Sure, they might reject my plane entering their airspace. Sure, I might find out the guy really is a nutball like everyone thinks and the situation is nonnegotiable. Sure, I might even get killed in the process. But at least then I will never have to meet the real Great Satan because I will have lived a life that valued all human life enough to put aside the past, put aside stereotypes, and met my responsibility to talk out issues in the hope of saving millions of lives. In my mind, the only great Satan in our presence today is stupid diplomacy.