CAIRO: It s one of those moments of clarity that show the huge gap between how the United States and the West see the world and how Muslims in the Middle East perceive it. The letter that Iran s hardline president sent to U.S. President George W. Bush this week opens a window onto the underlying rage and powerlessness many Muslims feel toward America, going some way toward showing why the United States still struggles to win hearts and minds in this troubled region. That is not irrelevant but a vital issue if the United States wants to blunt Islamic extremism. Bush has put money and high-profile aides into that public diplomacy effort. Yet many Americans find it incomprehensible that the Muslim world views their country as a bully. In short, the West and the Muslim world are talking past each other in classic fashion. Perhaps it is a clash of civilizations, as some believe. Or, perhaps there are still small openings for understanding. Either way, the truth about a hard-liner, as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad showed so clearly, is that he will say outright what others only think. And then he will go further into the truly dangerous ground where no compromise is possible. Take democracy, for example. In his letter, Ahmadinejad expresses some of the same views that Bush himself holds, that people yearn for freedom and justice, that history shows repressive and cruel governments do not survive. But he doesn t see America or democracy as the hope. Instead, he sees religion, and by extension hardline Islamic theocracies like his own, as the hope. It s as if he and Bush diagnose the same problem but come up with radically different solutions. Or consider the U.S.-led Iraq invasion and the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal. Ahmadinejad, whose country fought a long war with Saddam Hussein, says it s good that Saddam was toppled. But he says America was wrong to invade, because it did so for the wrong reasons. And he remains bitter about the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, as do many Muslims, despite U.S. efforts at redress. Or even consider his anger over long-ago U.S. interference: Ahmadinejad can t resist mentioning a lengthy list of Iranian grievances against the United States, going back to a 1953 coup organized by the CIA that overthrew a democratically elected Iranian leader and put in power the hated shah. That may seem irrelevant to most Americans today. But for average Iranians, it s still powerful evidence the United States cannot be trusted. On issues like these, many ordinary Americans and Iranians could probably find a grain of common understanding if they talked face-to-face. Many Americans were dismayed by Abu Ghraib and dislike the idea their government would support coups. Many Iranians dislike their country s religious hard-liners and crave economic growth and freedom. But the two governments can t bridge the gap, in part because of mistrust, in part because there are true policy differences, in part because a hard-liner now runs Iran. Thus, while Ahmadinejad s letter reflects widespread Muslim thought on issues such as Palestinian rights and Abu Ghraib, he goes well beyond that. On other issues, common ground, for good reason, is next to impossible. Ahmadinejad does not mention his country s nuclear program, except to say that Iran should have the right to make scientific progress. He ignores valid Western fears that Iran s leaders have lied about the program in the past and are trying for a weapon. On the nuclear issue, many ordinary Iranians support their president. Ahmadinejad also hints that there was a U.S. government-led conspiracy behind the Sept. 11 attacks, and that the Holocaust that killed 6 million Jews never happened. Most educated Muslims, whether in Arab lands or Iran, don t truly put credence in or act on such conspiracy theories. But such ideas do hold sway among extremists. If he is one of them, as he appears to be, if he believes the Holocaust never happened and won t budge on the nuclear issue, it s going to be nearly impossible for anybody in the West ever really to talk with Iran s president. AP
