It takes an Ivy League college to make Ahmadinejad look good

By GERRY WARNER
Cranbrook Daily Townsman
Sept. 28, 2007
How can I put this gently?
It's not easy to say something good about Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but one thing about him can be said for sure. He sure knows how to bring out the worst in us. By "us" I mean Westerners in the geo-political sense although in the situation I'm about to refer to I'm talking mainly about Americans as well as Canadians who hold the same views.
To begin, the firebrand Iranian President was invited to address the United Nations over howls of outrage by the usual suspects in the U.S. --jingoistic neo-cons, the Christian right and the dwindling few who still support the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Obviously they forgot Ahmadinejad was invited to the UN, not the U.S. because the UN building in New York sits on international soil, not American. So butt out Uncle Sam!
As far as the legitimacy of Ahmadinejad addressing the UN goes, he is the president of Iran. The last time I checked, Iran was a nation and a member of the UN so Ahmadinejad has as much right to speak to the UN as George Bush, Stephen Harper or the leader of any other UN member state. And when he did speak, he talked about putting Iran's nuclear program under the control of the International Atomic Energy Agency. Not exactly the talk of a man demonized in the Western press as a terrorist.
Then there's the matter of Ahmadinejad's appearance at Columbia University.He was invited to speak to students at the prestigious Ivy League college by Columbia President Lee Bollinger no less. Now I don't know how you were raised, but the way I was raised when you invite a guest into your house, your office or your place of worship, you treat them with a certain degree of civility and respect if not civilized politeness. But, to put it mildly, Ahmadinejad received none of this. Students demonstrating against him was understandable. That's what students do and there were even some that were demonstrating in favour of Ahmadinejad's right to speak. But Bollinger, the very man that issued the invitation, launched into a vitriolic attack on Ahmadinejad while introducing him to the already hostile crowd. How tacky can you get? How arrogant! How American! This, after all was taking place at a university, an institution that supposedly values free speech more than anything else. As centres of higher learning, universities are supposed to broaden the mind, promote tolerance and examine all pointsof view no matter how repugnant some of them may be.Perhaps these academic virtues got somehow overlooked at Columbia where politics and prejudice appear to be the order of the day. Perhaps it's just this generation of students, who appear to be much more docile than students of generations past such as the 60's when all ideologies and all beliefs were held up to critical thought. After all, Ahmadinejad is alleged to be a holocaust-denier who wants to wipe Israel from the map. Well, I would think irrational and abhorrent beliefs like these wouldn't be very hard to refute, especially at one of the top Ivy League universities in the US. But instead of demolishing Ahmadinejad's fanatical views with logic and reason the way educated people are supposed to, the student lynch mob demonstrated against his right to speak led by their president who called him a "petty and cruel dictator" while introducing him to the angry crowd. Not a proud day for academia.
And they even foolishly gave Ahmadinejad the opportunity to get in a few good licks of his own when he chided the audience by saying the American government, through taping the phone lines of private citizens, was creating"an insecure psychological atmosphere in order to justify their warmongering acts in different parts of the world."
Some truth in that.
But the real tragedy of Ahmadinejad's visit to the U.S. was the opportunity that was squandered. As these words are written, the Bush regime and Iran are sleepwalking towards each other in what could be yet another Middle Eastern war. Actually most of the sleepwalking is being done by the U.S. Bush openly talks about the possibility of war with Iran and there are unverified reports that the U.S. has already launched covert operations on Iranian soil in isolated parts of the mountainous country. The level of rhetoric out of Washington is much like the leadup to the Iraq war and the tragic quagmire that's become. Is there anyone out there that seriously thinks we need another war in the Middle East?
Perhaps if the Ahmadinejad visit was used as an opportunity to reach out to Iran instead of pillorying the country's leader before he could even open his mouth there would be a chance that war could be averted. However that would require the U.S. to abandon its quest to be the world's sole superpower with one foot planted squarely in North America and the other in the pool of oil known as the Middle East.
I wouldn't bet too much on that.

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