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Ahmadinejad speaks at Columbia

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It's tempting, after reading the reports about the Iranian President's caustic welcome at Columbia University today and the comments of many public figures, to conclude that moral clarity still exists in this country.

However, it's important to remember that the mere fact that this man is still considered capable of being persuaded by reasoned debate shows just how confused our culture really is. Ahmadinejad is just as guilty as any member of Hamas, Hezbollah, or the Iraqi insurgency that he finances and deserves to be approached in exactly the same way.

The fact that he is still alive should only be the result of a calculated decision that killing him is not in our immediate self interest. At the very least, he should not, under any circumstances, be allowed on American soil.

Contrary to the understanding and dialouge that his visit was designed to create and disregarding the opportunity for political hacks to score points with America's heartland it presented, what his visit really accomplished was yet another demonstration to the Islamic world of just how much of a "paper tiger" America really is.

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*** Mod's note: Merged into existing thread ***

Iran's president, Ahmadinejad, spoke at Columbia. The crowd cheered Columbia's Bollinger when he spoke of Ahmadinejad as a "petty and cruel dictator" with a "fanatical mindset" and expressed his "revulsion for all he stood for". Of course, this type of rhetoric does not worry Ahmadinejad, who wears his taunting smile, as if sneering at the way his victims entertain him, and who simply paints this as opinion a.k.a. non-objective.

Ahmadinejad also drew applause, for things like painting Bollinger's introduction of him as biased, and for saying that the U.S. ought not to have nukes. If the Iranian was sizing up his enemy's populace, yesterday's talk must have reassured him.

With some skillful editing, Iranian TV should be able to turn the event into great propaganda. Surely Bollinger is intelligent enough to know that. Surely he also knows that the dictator would use the arguments of the multiculturalists and the nationalists against the U.S., and deny any wrongdoing. Bollinger's little tirade does not impress me. I just read it as his way to puff up his chest to his American friends. In my book, when Bollinger opend his mouth, he was damned if he did, damned if he didn't. His only moral choice would have been not to host the event at all. Bollinger and those students who cheered the dictator were squashing the hopes and spirits of any Iranians who still want freedom.

Here's a short article from Iran's news agency.

Edited by softwareNerd
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Iran's president, Ahmadinejad, spoke at Columbia. The crowd cheered Columbia's Bollinger when he spoke of Ahmadinejad as a "petty and cruel dictator" with a "fanatical mindset" and expressed his "revulsion for all he stood for". Of course, this type of rhetoric does not worry Ahmadinejad, who wears his taunting smile, as if sneering at the way his victims entertain him, and who simply paints this as opinion a.k.a. non-objective.

I have only watched the first quarter of the event so far, but Ahmadinjehad did not sound honest at all. I cannot imagine inviting someone to speak in your domain and then insult them by calling them "petty and cruel" with a "fanatical mindset." If you don't like them so much, why are you letting them speak at your college in the first place?

I am assuming here, of course, that Columbia invited the president to speak. I am not sure with the details to be honest. Was the president invited?

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Dictators like Ahmadinejad and Chavez must get quite a chuckle out of our willingness to let them come here and rub our noses in the dirt. This is just another in a long list of reasons to get out of the UN and to kick the UN the hell out of NYC.

As for Bollinger, I didn't like him when he was the affirmative-action-obsessed president of the University of Michigan, and now I like him even less. His claim that free speech was the impetus for giving a stage to this blood thirsty dictator is laughable. I'll believe Lee when he invites the KKK to speak on Columbia's campus.

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Seven chancellors and presidents of Iranian universities and research centers, in a letter addressed to their counterpart in the US Colombia University, denounced Lee Bollinger's insulting words against the Iranian nation and president and invited him to provide responses for 10 questions of the Iranian academicians and intellectuals.
Here is the text of their letter to Bollinger.
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Dictators like Ahmadinejad and Chavez must get quite a chuckle out of our willingness to let them come here and rub our noses in the dirt. This is just another in a long list of reasons to get out of the UN and to kick the UN the hell out of NYC.

You know that would only reaffirm to the world that we don't care about them, want to conquer everyone and yada yada yada...

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I cannot imagine inviting someone to speak in your domain and then insult them by calling them "petty and cruel" with a "fanatical mindset." If you don't like them so much, why are you letting them speak at your college in the first place?

It's a matter of Mr. Bollinger channeling Peter Keating. That is, to try to be all things to all men. His introduction came as a result of the uproar and protests against Columbia's decicion to allow the Iranian thug to speak there.

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It's a matter of Mr. Bollinger channeling Peter Keating. That is, to try to be all things to all men. His introduction came as a result of the uproar and protests against Columbia's decicion to allow the Iranian thug to speak there.

That's the best explanation I've seen yet for what he said. When he said it, I was stunned and have been trying to make sense of it, but I think you may have nailed it.

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You know that would only reaffirm to the world that we don't care about them, want to conquer everyone and yada yada yada...

And so the alternative is to continue to belong to an organization that routinely kicks us in the teeth while doing nothing substantive to control the bad behavior of nations like Iran and Syria. I think I'd prefer to offend those who mistakenly think that we want to conquer them.

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And so the alternative is to continue to belong to an organization that routinely kicks us in the teeth while doing nothing substantive to control the bad behavior of nations like Iran and Syria. I think I'd prefer to offend those who mistakenly think that we want to conquer them.

The real alternative would be to set up an United Free Nations, excluding all dictatorships, thugocracies and other such vermin. It would be a very small organization at first, of course. Right now I'd settle for expelling the worst offenders. But either would require the kind of courage in one's convictions that is sorely lacking from every politician in every free, or semi-free, nation.

The closest we can come right now is the informal, rather ad-hoc alliance between America, Great Britain and Australia. Israel should be an integral member. Her abscence speaks volumes about our leaders' priorities.

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It's a good idea, but not likely to happen.

Iranian university professors are firing back at Bollinger:

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?con...;articleId=6888

I wonder if they were "encouraged" to do so by the Iranian government?

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