The Great Imam Ted Kennedy?

Cliff May on The Corner linked to this eye-opening video broadcast from Iran. Incredible footage of Muslims calling out: "Death to Israel" and "Death to America". (note: the video to the right is a bit of satire.)

The thing that is truly shocking is that their arguments against America/Israel are those arguments touted by the left against the war on terror.

Here's what the Imam Khamenei, "leader of the Islamic revolution" had to say to the gathered zealots:

Today, the fleets of arrogance are, once again, using new methods of deceit, in order to perpetuate and strengthen their control over the Islamic world. Their slogans of spreading democracy and human rights is one of these methods of deceit. The Great Satan, who embodies evil and violence against humanity, raises the banner of defending of human rights, and summons the peoples of the Middle East to democracy.

So Satan is working through the spread of democracy which embodies evil and violence? "Evil and violence" seem to be more closely linked to Islamic desciptors... I could be wrong.

These statements also seem very close to the left's infatuation with "America's unprecedented global dominance," a catch phrase popularized by Chomsky but invoked by Ikenberry, Barber, and others in the past years. I summarized this motif on American Thinker last year.

Earlier in the event, one speaker declares:

We, the pilgrims who have come to the house of God, strongly condemn the aggressive measures of "the global arrogance," led by the idol and center of evil, the criminal America. We condemn it for its aggression, war-mongering, its murder, plundering, torture, espionage, its abductions and its secret jails. We strongly condemn it.

Now compare that to Al Gore's infamous Faustian quote:

Dominance is not really a strategic policy or political philosophy at all. It is a seductive illusion that tempts the powerful to satiate their hunger for more power still by striking a Faustian bargain. And as always happens – sooner or later – to those who shake hands with the devil, they find out too late that what they have given up in the bargain is their soul.

Notice also the savvy political play by the speaker to bring up "torture" and "secret jails". You almost expect to see it on the front page of the Washington Post.

And then get this gem from the Imam's letter which could have been written by Ted Kennedy:

The American and British governments, which permit the torture of suspects, and the spilling of their blood in the streets, and the tapping of citizens' phone calls without a court order, do not have the right to claim they are defending civil rights.

Read the whole transcript yourself.