Maureen Dowd on the frosty reception of Ahmedinejad.
Ahmedinejad and the Iranian fundamentalists who are in power are much less of a threat than the Soviet Union. But you can't tell that from the hysteria, the scaremongering, and the crackpot Republican conspiracy theories that are being thrown at him these days. As Dowd correctly observes, the kind of reception that he got allowed him to make himself into a martyr back home.
Let's be honest here -- the man is a nut case and a holocaust denier. But through time immemorial, hosts have always followed a universal rule that one must be hospitable to ones' guests, no matter if they are an enemy. The way that we treated him was an embarrasment to ourselves as a nation -- as though we needed any more the way Bush has been damaging our standing in the world abroad.
And we have helped him every step of the way -- Bush could not have propped him up if he had planned it out. He allowed people from the Supreme Council for the Revolution in Iraq, an Iranian-founded group, to run the country. He allowed Iran to emerge as a regional power. He drove the Iranian people into the arms of Ahmedinejad through his crackpot conspiracy theory about Iran, Iraq, and North Korea being the Axis of Evil. By refusing to engage the moderates who wanted to talk to us, he allowed the hard-liners like Ahmedinejad to say that diplomacy was useless and that Iran needed a strong man like him to stand up to the Americans.
And compare how we treated the leader of Iran today with how we treated the leaders of the Soviet Union when Ronald Reagan was in power:
The Daily News headline, “The Evil Has Landed,” was one of the milder imprecations. Consider this reasoned analysis from Greg Gutfeld of Fox News: “So the foul-smelling fruitbat Ahmadinejad spoke at that crack house known as Columbia University today.”
The heavy-handed, small-minded reaction that played into the hands of the slippery “I’m a dinner jacket” is not excused by Iran wishing the U.S. and Israel gone.
The Soviet Union’s stated policy for 70 years was the total eradication of American capitalism and democracy — backed up during the cold war with actual nuclear weapons. But while challenging the policies and ideology of the Evil Empire, Ronald Reagan understood he had to engage Mikhail Gorbachev, not ignore or insult him.
So, not only did the Bush administration and their compliant lapdogs in the media make a mockery of universal rules regarding hospitality to guests, they made a mockery of the Judeo-Christian values which they supposedly professed by ignoring Biblical directives against showing hospitality to strangers and made a mockery of the Reagan Legacy that they professed to follow. All of the pandering of the Republican presidential candidates towards the Reagan Legacy does not cover up the fact that Bush made a complete mockery of his memory by his treatment of the Iranian leader. And not only that, Bush made a mockery of his own father's legacy as his father considered himself a statesman. Bush's father would have gone out of his way to show hospitality towards Ahmedinejad.
But to show how drastically Bush has failed as a leader, his own minions can't keep their stories straight. Petraeus, his chief propagandist in what we charitably call the country of Iraq, claimed that Iran was sending a whole pipeline of arms to the Shiites militias. But Prime Minister Maliki said that was not the case and that it had been almost completely eradicated. So, who is right, Mr. President? The Prime Minister of Iran, or General Petraeus? Given that Bush and Maliki are at each other's throats over the continued civil violence and Blackwater, I would not be surprised if, in exchange for the bird that Bush gave the UN and the world, that Maliki gave Bush the bird right back. I'll have more on that tomorrow.
And given how Bush has a way of humiliating people in public, it is hardly surprising that minions like Lee Bollinger did the same by humiliating Ahmedinejad when he went to give a speech to the students at the University of Columbia. The Jewish protests against the Iranian leader for his holocaust denial were completely called for. But for a university president to embarrass him the way he did was totally unprofessional. Bollinger is supposed to be representing his university, not his own personal feelings about Ahmedinejad. His humiliation of the Iranian leader said more about his selfish behavior and reflected much more on his institution than it did about Ahmedinejad.
We should not follow the lead of Bush and his ilk. Instead, we should follow the lead of people like Barack Obama, who would meet with all of the leaders that we have serious differences with, like Ronald Reagan did with Mikhail Gorbachev or Jimmy Carter and Richard Nixon did with Lenoid Brezhnev. And people like Bollinger deserve to be disciplined or fired, not placed in positions of trust and responsibility at major institutions of learning.
Mahmoud "Man In A Dinner Jacket" Ahmedinejad should be sending Dubya a
fruit basket. Our Chimp In Chief has done more for the political stability
of the mullahs in Iran than anyone else could ever have done.
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