Iran's President Tarred and Feathered by Columbia's Bollinger
By Michael Bresciani (09/25/07)
Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was allowed to speak at Columbia
University on Monday, September 24, 2007 in a precedent setting event that
President George Bush later said "spoke volumes" about freedom of speech
in America.
Protestors outside the hall where Iran’s president made his speech
outnumbered any supporters of the speech that were present and most said
they felt betrayed that he was even allowed on campus. The crowd was
highly agitated and the drama was exacerbated by the remarks of lawmakers,
educators and others that felt the President of Iran should as some said
“be arrested” rather than be allowed to speak.
The ire of the protestors outside the hall was no less caustic or
vituperative than the message of Columbia’s President Lee Bollinger. He
was applauded often as he railed against Iran’s president for his denial
of the holocaust, threats to Israel and the development of nuclear
materials that can be used to make weapons of mass destruction.
Bollinger was highly criticized for allowing the dictator to speak at
Columbia but in an impassioned, deliberate and highly articulate manner
Bollinger lambasted Ahmadinejad and at one point said he had all the ear
markings of a “petty dictator” The heat inside the hall was as intense for
Iran’s president as it was outside where the protestors gathered in a
brooding state of collective disgust.
Weighing in against President Ahmadinejad were Presidential candidates
Rudolph Giuliani, Sen. Barack Obama, California’s Duncan Hunter (R), and
former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney (R) who said "Instead of
inviting him to speak at the United Nations and Columbia University, I
believe he should be indicted under the Genocide Convention," according to
CBS News, September 24, 2007 The same sentiment was voiced by New York
State Assemblyman Dov Hikind according to The Sydney Morning Herald,
September 25, 2007.
Comments, mostly negative are pouring in from every quarter of the country
and bloggers on the left and the right have little refinement in their
responses. From Ezra Klein’s, Tomorrow’s Media Today Sept 24, 2007 one
piece entitled “Fearful Nation” says, “I genuinely don't understand the
quaking fear over Ahmadinejad's interview at Columbia. When did America
become so weak, so insecure, that we mistrust our capacity to converse
with potentially hostile world leaders? Do we really believe the president
of Columbia is so doltish as to be outsmarted by a former traffic engineer
from Tehran? Do we really see no utility in publicly grilling prominent
liars in such a way that their denials lose credibility? What do we have
to lose from a foreign leader, even a hostile one, somberly laying a
wreath at the site of a tragedy? When did we become so afraid? And for all
the conservative talk that a loss in Iraq will diminish our reputation for
strength and thus harm our security, how must it look when some three-foot
tall Iranian firebrand keeps trying to dialogue with us and we keep
dodging his calls?
Noted Arab Christian activist and founder of the American Congress for
Truth, Brigitte Gabriel said in regards to Ahmadinejad’s visit and his
plan to lay a wreath at Ground Zero, “This man should not be allowed to
leave his hotel room other than to go to the U.N. and deliver his speech,"
she states. "We are not able to stop that because it is under U.N.
sanctions, but we have the right to prevent him from going anywhere else
on our soil, considering this man wants to destroy our country and wants
to destroy the state of Israel,” One News Now September 24, 2007.
There is not room enough in anyone’s article to list all those offended by
Columbia’s decision to yield her lyceum facilities and podium. Suffice it
to say that thousands from the Upper West Side of Manhattan to the
everyday patriot who trucks to the job and may have a son, brother, or
father in Iraq, the president of Iran arrived at Columbia with blood on
his hands. His part in supplying insurgents with ordinance and materials
to kill and wound American servicemen is beyond dispute.
Two things may have been accomplished by the visit of Iran’s President
although they are strained and altogether temporary at best. The first is
that it created a momentary dissolving of the lines between democrats and
republicans, liberals and conservatives and dozens of other opposing
factions in America. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad did not get close to the red
carpet and by all accounts the majority of Americans have collectively
pulled up the old straw welcome matt as well.
The second outcome may be that America came as close as a nation can get
to fulfilling the meaning of the words spoken by Christ in the gospel of
Matthew. “But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse
you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully
use you, and persecute you; That ye may be the children of your Father
which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the
good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.” Mt 5: 44-45
Love may not be what America feels for Iran’s President but the
cordiality, the freedom of expression and the fairness of the American
spirit is still alive and well on this historical day in the Upper West
Side of America’s most well known victim of terrorism, New York City.
Maybe it is the greatest city in the world tonight but not because David
Letterman’s announcer says so.
It is great because New York showed great restraint, civility and repose
and behaved itself as a truly American Metropolis.
Rev Bresciani
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