The Financial Times reported over the weekend that the Islamic nation would help the U.S. stabilize Iraq if Washington presents a timetable for a withdrawal of its troops. The story was picked up by China's news agency Xinhua, Reuters India, Polish news site Onet.pl, and the New Zealand Herald, among others, but leading American news agencies preferred to focus on another, of course, more inflammatory story involving Iran: the country's parliament recently voted to label the CIA and U.S. Army "terrorist" groups.
Even supposedly left-leaning papers The New York Times and the Washington Post had no mention of the remarks made by Ali Larijani, head of the Supreme National Security Council, who said, "If they [the Americans] have a clear definition of a timetable we'll help them materialize it. If the US is persisting with its mistakes, it shouldn't ask for help from us." So much for the "liberal bias" in American's newspapers. Sure, Larijani is playing politics and made some aggressive threats against Israel and other U.S. foreign "adventures" in his interview with the Financial Times, but the message in his remarks offers some complexity to what is, of course, an enormously complex situation and an enormously complex country.
It's shocking to believe that the American media could make the same mistake twice, falling in lockstep with the Bush administration's propaganda about the war and demonizing President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad -- who, it's not hard to see, is essentially a political weak boaster and blunderer on the order of our own U.S. president, no better or worse than a half-dozen other demagogues in power. But that's exactly what is happening. Ahmadinejad's U.S. visit was savaged by the press, taken as an opportunity to further turn him into America's next "Hitler" figure, rather than try to engage in the serious political issues of the Middle East. That's partially Ahmadinejad's own fault, of course, for making controversial statements about the Holocaust and homosexuals, rather than trying to cultivate meaningful dialogue. But one might expect more from our own supposedly free presses.