Ahmadinejad got what he wanted at Colombia
September 25, 2007 by Alexander
From China Confidential
The dreadful decision by Columbia University president Lee Bollinger to invite Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to address the Ivy League school is certain to do more harm than good, despite Bollinger’s dramatic denunciation of the Iranian leader.
In an apparent effort to mitigate the damage likely to result from providing a prestigious, internationally televised forum for the head of the world’s leading state-sponsor of terrorism, Bollinger called Ahmadinejad “a petty and cruel tyrant” and described his denial of the Holocaust as “ridiculous.” He also noted Columbia’s ties to Israel through alumni who have emigrated there and academic cooperation, and asked Ahmadinejad, who has threatened to destroy the Jewish state, if he also intends to annihilate Columbia.
But Bollinger’s seemingly well-intentioned introduction of Iran’s president could backfire, as shown by the rousing applause he received when he said that in Iran it is not customary to insult an invited guest with offensive comments aimed at “vaccinating” an audience against his views. This will play well in Iran and across the Middle East and also resonate among appeasement advocates and in Left-liberal circles generally throughout the United States and Europe. Liberal media pundits are also likely to be influenced; within hours of the Iranian president’s speech, the MSNBC cable TV network’s Chris Matthews was expressing criticism of Bollinger and sympathy for Ahmadinejad, reminding his viewers of alleged US crimes against Iran, including installing the (pro-US) Shah in a CIA-assisted coup more than five decades ago.
Bollinger’s remarks will also be crticized by diplomats around the world: a head of state, no matter how awful, is a national representative; an insult to a head of state is traditionally taken as an insult to his country. Better to have not invited the Iranian president in the first place, professional diplomats will say. (We say: there is no need for damage control when one debates a person who operates within a civilized society’s accepted zone of discourse. The fact that Bollinger felt the need to do what he did shows how stupid and unnecessary the event was and how fundamentally flawed his thinking is. A zealous civil libertarian, Bollinger is committed to a cockeyed concept of tolerance that not only includes domestic Nazis and other hate-mongers but also, as evidenced by today’s media circus, enemy leaders.)
Instead of undermining Ahmadinejad by allowing him a venue in which to reveal his fanaticism and ignorance, the event is more likely to undermine US foreign policy. Ahmadinejad was legitimized and humanized by his appearance, which could also be interpreted in a conspiracy-obsessed region as having been secretly organized by an anti-war faction within the Bush administration assumed to be headed by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. The federal government could have limited Ahmadinejad’s movements to the United Nations and the vicinity of his nearby Manhattan hotel pursuant to the UN headquarters agreement. There was no obligation on the part of the government to permit the leader of a nuclear rogue nation that is arming and aiding America’s enemies in Iraq to travel uptown to the Columbia campus.
Post Script: Matthews made much of Ahmadinejad’s apparent acknowledgement that the Holocaust happened. In the commentator’s view, this so-called new development proved that Bollinger was right to have invited the Iranian president but wrong to have denounced him before letting him speak. Nonsense. Ahmadinejad’s remarks reflect a somewhat more sophisticated Iranian line on the Holocaust–actually similar to the Al Qaeda postion–which is that Nazi Germany’s slaughter of European Jewry was exaggerated and exploited–and actually assisted–by the Zionist movement in order to establish Israel. Islamist Iran, as China Confidential has reported, has forged an alliance with foreign neo-Nazis, including professional Holocaust deniers. As sponsored guests of the regime–which also harbors Al Qaeda operatives–the neo-Nazis are frequent visitors to Tehran.
Iran’s Fars News agency has proceeded with its propaganda from this event:
“The Columbia’s dean actions proved there is dictatorship governing the US. There is no freedom and democracy in America” [source - Farsi]
