The Iranian Political Class Vs. The United States Political Class - Which One Is Funnier?

Many times I have thanked my lucky stars that I write about the ineffectiveness, inefficiency, and general insanity of the American political class since they are always providing fresh material via their ridiculous quotes and usually inane actions. I think that the one foreign political class that could give ours a run for their money are the leaders of Iran. Recall that shortly after the deadly earthquake that hit Haiti that a leading cleric in the Iranian political class declared that the earthquake was caused by lax moral standards of western women. Priceless.

This week Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is in New York City for events at the United Nations. In an interview with the Associated Press, the President asserted that the "future belongs to Iran." Before we analyze the probability of this statement, consider the following reality (most of the following statistics come from United Nations documents and the CIA World Fact Book):

• The latest economic data from Iran shows that unemployment has climbed to around 15% in the Iranian economy, substantially above most other world economies.
• With such a high unemployment rate, a brain drain of well educated Iranians is underway where highly trained professional leave the country to find appropriate work elsewhere.
• The annual Iranian GDP is about $827 billion or about 6% the size of the United States economy.
• Annual inflation within the Iranians economy is down to about 13% from a recent high in the mid-20% range.
• The Iranian population is about one fifth the size of the United States population.
• The infant mortality rate in Iran is about six times higher than the infant mortality rate in the United States.
• According to United Nations research, Iran has the highest adult drug addiction rate of any country in the world and with 60% of the Afghanistan drug harvest passing through Iran that situation is unlikely any time soon.
• 80% of the country's wealth comes from the oil industry.

If the future does indeed belong to Iran, they are going to be coming from way back in the pack. Loss of brain power, much smaller population, unhealthier population, much smaller economy based almost solely on one industry, drug plagued citizenry, etc. Not exactly a position of strength. If Ahmadinejad's statement of the future belonging to Iran was all that was going on, then we could all get a good laugh.

However, the situation is much more dangerous than that. Consider some other quotes from Ahmadinejad:

• "We have never sought to dominate others or to violate the rights of any other country." Compare this statement to previous comments from him where he called for the destruction and end of Israel. Was he lying then or is he lying now?
• Government opponents "have their activities that are ongoing and they also express their views publicly. They have several parties, as well as several newspapers, and many newspapers and publications. And so there are really no restrictions of such nature." He neglected to mention that most of those newspapers have been closed down, many of the opposition's leaders have been imprisoned and put on trial, and those that gather in opposition to the government are subjected to arrest and violence. Does he really think he runs a democracy or is he lying again despite the obvious disconnect from his words and the actions of his government.
• "The United States' administrations must recognize that Iran is a big power. Having said that, we consider ourselves to be a human force and a cultural power and hence a friend of other nations." Honestly, what cultural contribution has Iran made to the world lately? What is a human force, given that they do not live in a human and freedom friendly nation? Does he really believe that Iran is a major power or is he lying to cover up the fact that Iran is just another secondary country in the world from just about any measure of economic, cultural, freedom and health care perspective.

Given both his overt lying and the tremendous misconception of how powerful Iran is today and is likely to be tomorrow, can we really believe him when he says that Iran's nuclear effort is not for the development of a nuclear weapon, it is only for peaceful purposes? Probably not. This is a gentleman that is so far removed from reality that it will be very difficult to reason with a maniac that sees the world completely different than the rest of the world.

The shame of the situation is that we did not need to get to this place where a two bit country is likely to soon to put the rest of the world on the nuclear edge. If we and the rest of the world had heeded the energy crisis from the 1970s and actually embarked on real programs to make us energy efficient and independent, we would not have gotten into this jam. We were telegraphed a peek into the future back then, a future where unstable and unreliable governments would have way too much say into the world's affairs.

If we had actually read the telegraph, countries like Iran with their sole dependence on the oil industry would be much poorer and much less powerful than the are today. They would have less power over their own populations and less power to promise the extinction of other countries. Unfortunately, thirty five years or so after the energy crisis, the American political class still does not have anything close to a coherent energy strategy for the United States. Consider how much money has been wasted that could have been devoted to the objective of energy independence:

• The last estimate that I have seen regarding the cost of our Iraq invasion is over $700 billion.
• A NOVA documentary a few years ago showed how a stand alone American home of average size in California could be converted to solar technology to be energy neutral at a cost of about $60,000.
• If you divide the cost of the Iraq invasion by the cost of a typical solar conversion you see that rather than wasted taxpayer money in the deserts of Iraq, we could have converted about almost 12 million U.S. homes to solar power.
• According to Census department statistics, you can estimate that the United States currently has about 74 million stand alone homes in the country.
• Thus, just the amount of money we wasted on the Iraq occupation could have retrofitted about 16% of the those stand alone homes to energy independence.
• You can easily hypothesize that even more U.S. homes could have been solarized if you assume that the government paid for only part of the retrofit with the homeowners paid for the rest and that the cost probably would have been less as more and more homes were retrofitted.

That is why two steps from "Love My Country, Loathe My Government" are so important to implement so that the political class eventually stops leading the country into these types of problems:

• Step 23 lays out a plan for developing energy independence, a plan that 35 years worth of politicians could not come up with.
• Step 39 would impose term limits on those currently serving in Congress. If you have not solved the energy problem so far after thirty five years or so, there is little doubt that embedded set of politicians in Washington will ever get around to having a coherent policy. Thus, lets get them out of office via term limits and get some smart people in office that will fix this issue.

Iran's political class has the potential to be much funnier than our political class. Unfortunately, it is not funny when you consider how much wealth we have allowed them to accumulate and how unstable and out of touch with reality their political class is.

Our new book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at www.loathemygovernment.com. It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Also visit the following sites for freedom:

http://www.cato.org/
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://www.realpolichick.blogspot.com/
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/