Ahmadinejad's facade of sympathy

Amir Taheri:

Why is Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of the Islamic Republic of Iran, seeking such a full program of photo opportunities during this week’s visit to the Big Apple? Many see this as the start of his campaign for re-election.

This explains even his failed hope to secure a visit to Ground Zero, where he was to lay a wreath with the world’s TV cameras pointed at him.

Ahmadinejad wanted to soften his image, for he knows that his rabid anti-Americanism has antagonized Iranians - a majority of whom are well disposed toward the United States. (In the days after the 9/11 attacks, Iran was the only country in the Middle East where tens of thousands of people poured into the streets for spontaneous candle-lit vigils in sympathy with the American people.)

New York City’s authorities were quite right to reject Ahmadinejad’s application to enter Ground Zero, though it is odd that they cited only safety and security concerns. A much better reason for rejecting Ahmadinejad’s cynical demand would have been his extenstive record of vitriolic hatred for the American people.

In a September 2003 speech at the Tehran Municipal Council, for example, he claimed that the 9/11 attacks had been prompted by “the anger of Islam against Great Arrogance” - a codeword for the United States. In the same speech, however, he claimed that the attacks had been “fabricated” by the Americans themselves to justify “military aggression against Muslim lands.”

In October 2005, having become president, he called for a global jihad aimed at destroying the United States. “Is it possible for us to witness a world without America and Zionism?” he asked. “You should know that this slogan, this goal, can certainly be achieved.”

Shortly after his election, Ahmadinejad hosted an international conference on “A World Without America,” attended by anti-Americans from 30-plus nations (including the United States itself). A special poster designed for the gathering shows the planet as an hourglass - with the United States and Israel falling and crashing into a void.

Ahmadinejad has also revived an old slogan of the Khomeinist movement that had fallen into disuse in the ’90s: “Death to America!” Every meeting he addresses in Iran starts and ends with this cry - chanted by professional demonstrators working for the regime.

His theological guru, Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi, even claims that the slogan must be regarded as an integral part of Muslims’ five daily prayers. It is chanted at the start and at the end of every Friday prayer gathering organized in the presence of thousands of Khomeinists on the campus of Tehran University.

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Perhaps the first question that the President of Columbia should pose to Ahmadinejad is what he means by the phrase "Death to America." If he means it literally, then that should be the end of the conversation, I think. That is, unless Columbia's president and its students agree with him. If they do we need to have a discussion over the meaning of the word treason.

The Belmont Club discusses Columbia's willingness to host tyrants.

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Here's John Coatsworth, dean of the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia, (video after Read More) defending the decision to invite the Mahmoud Ahmadinejad by declaring he would invite Hitler to speak if the Fuhrer were visiting at the "League of Nations" in New York and were willing to answer questions. Note to Coatsworth: Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill envisioned the United Nations in 1942 as an alliance to fight tyranny -- specifically Adolph Hitler. Had Hitler been been in New York to speak in 1942 they would have hanged him. But then, neither Roosevelt nor Churchill "wanted to understand Hitler". They wanted to defeat him.

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Check the link for the video. One of the delusions of liberals is that they can resolve all the worlds problems with a conversation and exchange of ideas. They are really quite intolerant of those who disagree with them on this point as demonstrated by a recent editorial in a student newspaper at Colorado State consisting of two word the first of which was an obscenity directed at the President o the US.