Posted on 10/01/2007 8:33:39 AM PDT by SJackson
There is a suicidal mania that tends to grip the American media and academia from time to time, and it has happened again with the American visit of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the poster boy for state sponsors of terrorism.
It's bad enough that Ahmadinejad was among friends when he addressed the United Nations General Assembly in late September, but when major American newspapers, several American TV networks, including CBS's 60 Minutes, the National Press Club, and a major Ivy League university give a significant propaganda victory to a man who is arguably the most dangerous man alive, there's a problem. Yet, that's precisely what Columbia University and the others did by providing a public forum for the views of the Iranian President.
On the other hand, former Harvard University President Lawrence Summers, who was scheduled to speak at the University of California at Davis recently, was uninvited, having been deemed too controversial by faculty members. We are left to wonder whether there is something seriously wrong with credible American institutions that seem so removed from the real threats that confront our world.
Ahmadinejad was involved in the taking of American hostages at our embassy in Tehran in 1979, has repeatedly threatened America, provided the munitions that kill US troops in Iraq, has denied the Holocaust, has advocated the destruction of a member state of the UN (Israel), has suppressed civil society and particularly women's rights in his own country, has imprisoned journalists and scholars (including one of Columbia's own alumni, Dr. Kian Tajbakhsh), is the president of the world's leading sponsor of international terrorism, and, with each passing day, comes closer to the development of an Islamic bomb that he states unequivocally will be used against Israel and as a shield to further his stated goal of establishing a global Caliphate under Shari'a.
To add insult to injury, he was introduced by no less than the president of Columbia, Lee Bollinger who, despite his efforts to confront the boy president, only played into his hand, as subsequent press reports in Iran confirm. Iranian citizens did not hear the criticism of Ahmadinejad by Bollinger; rather, all they heard and read was of his "unmitigated triumph" at a major American university. What the naive folks at Columbia didn't count on was the propaganda machine in Iran and elsewhere to spin the appearance to their own advantage.
Equally irresponsible were the comments of John Coatsworth, Interim Dean of Columbia's School of International Public Affairs, who claimed students needed "opportunities to hear, challenge and learn from controversial speakers of different views." Why is it essential to their learning experience to listen to men such as this? What could possibly be learned from such people? As Don Feder (a former writer for the Boston Herald) stated so well: "What can Columbia's students learn from Ahmadinejad - how to hate Jews, how to pretend the Holocaust didn't happen, how to plot nuclear genocide, how to murder Americans, how to threaten to kill those who 'insult' Islam?"
As World War III wages outside the ivory towers of our Ivy League colleges, Columbia's concept of "resisting" Islamic Hitlers like Ahmadinejad is to debate them and give them a national forum. Did Columbia invite the late Augusto Pinochet to speak on campus, when he was president of Chile? From caves in Afghanistan and cells in Baghdad, to training camps in Gaza and missile batteries in Syria, the terrorists and their state sponsors can take comfort in Columbia's act of academic naivety.
Ahmadinejad scored quite a coup at Columbia and the university board of directors knows it. The decision to hide the university's name and logo from the podium behind which Ahmadinejad lectured speaks volumes. If the Iranian president ever thought his enemies were fools, he surely knows it now. I can only imagine how our major newspapers, TV networks and universities would jump at the chance to invite Josef Goebbels to lunch and to offer him a national podium from which to "debate" his theories on racial superiority with an American audience.
It should go without saying that the appropriate response that should have been made when the Iranian ambassador called Columbia to set up the lecture would have been to say "no." But perhaps that would have been too much to ask from one of today's Ivy League university presidents. If we really wanted to do something constructive, then how about charging Ahmadinejad with violating the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide and the UN Charter because of his calls for the destruction of the State of Israel? Or maybe he should have been served with a subpoena as a material witness in the billion-dollar lawsuit brought against the Islamic Republic of Iran by former US diplomats held hostage in Tehran from 1979-1981. I wonder how receptive Ahmedinejad would have been to a US senator or congressman being allowed to speak at Tehran University to deliver America's message of freedom and self-determination? (Sure, there are no homosexuals in Iran, Mr. President. That's because you've executed them all.)
I am profoundly disturbed by the notion that Ahmadinejad could visit an American campus to enjoy the benefits and comfort of liberal society, knowing the entire time that a controversial speaker in his nation would surely be publicly hanged. By allowing this man a podium at some of the most distinguished institutions in this country, they have created the appearance of real dialogue, real debate - of Ahmadinejad answering challenges. The effect of this is to legitimize the notion that Holocaust denial (for example) is now a subject of legitimate and reasonable debate. Why not give Iran's president a chance to be educated and transformed, they ask. Perhaps we'd be interested in debating his theories about bringing on nuclear Armageddon so as to pave the way for the coming of the 12th Imam - the core belief behind his jihad against us. In fact, why don't we all just sit down with the Bin-Ladens of the world and debate our problems like rational, normal people?
Perhaps because their vision of the future is a universe apart from ours. So, why waste everyone's time by turning our respectable institutions into propaganda instruments for our enemies? It's beyond treason. It's gross stupidity.
Columbia University and our major TV networks have honored the dishonorable by opening the public forum to his voice. By doing so, they have insulted our country and disgraced the memory of those who have died as a result of his jihad against us. Their prattle about free speech, in this case, is more than "a tale told by an idiot." It may be full of sound and fury, but it does signify something. It signifies that those who provide a podium to our enemies are fools who cannot be excused from the dishonor they have brought to their institutions and to their fellow citizens by the fact that they don't know what they're doing. There is academic freedom. And then there's academic lunacy. Our thanks to these institutions for so carefully differentiating the two for us.
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well said
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
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Further... they disgrace the memory of ANYONE who has died for our country. Their warped, narcissistic concept of 'freedom' will only lead to a yoke and collar.
BTTT
And why is it that Columbia's "elite" students cannot learn these things without a diplomatic visit and photo op? We all sure knew about them long before he got to NYC.
Pure nonsense. What is the author thinking?
They counted on it to work out exactly the way that it did work out.
They really are not idiots, they just know that most Americans are.
Outstanding article by Mark Silverberg (whose name I can’t recall seeing previously). Please post more material by him when you can.
The great and fatal conceit of all liberals is their cherished belief that tyranny is created by outside forces (in short, we created them), and that by conversing with tyrannies we can talk them into sanity. Obviously the libs just get played for fools by the tyrants, but that proves another fatal flaw of libs...they never learn their lesson. That is why they’re libs.
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