I admit I was pretty incensed about Ahmadinejad and his request to visit the 9/11 ground zero site. To me that was only slightly less tacky then letting in Ladin do the same thing. 

Ahmadinejad raises some disturbing questions.  He supports the terrorists in Iraq with weapons and such, and he is clearly and directly responsible for the death of American Soldiers.  He is suspected of being involved in the hostage crisis in the 70’s, but even if that is just a pipe dream, he is still clearly an apparently evil force. And this is the guy who denies the holocaust and wants to bomb Israel into the next world.  And he is even trying to build the bomb to do it.

And as the leader of his country, he is here to address the UN, which like it or not we have to allow.

So along the way he gets an invite to Columbia University to speak.  And everyone went berk over it.

I can understand why, the decision to invite him was surely not a happy one, even at a liberal haven like Columbia.  Students and Alumni alike are livid.  And honestly I was expecting Columbia to make this into a softball game.  Ahmadinejad tends to align with some progressives and liberals in some of his anti Bush, anti War and anti American ravings.

But, while he did strike a few happy chords in his speech, he also raised more then a little ire. 

It started off harshly as the University President introduced him with a 20 minute slam lecture.  He attacked him for the more unpalatable elements of his policies, the treatment of women, the oppression of gays, the denial of the holocaust and a few others, even going as far as to call him a petty and cruel dictator.

Ironically, that last bit was really a misstep, as anyone who knows the power structure in Iran knows that Ahmadinejad is not the true power, he is the second man, and the mouthpiece of the Khamenei.

But that criticism aside, the intro was a departure from what I cynically expected to be a love fest.  The question has been percolating around the conservatives as to why Bollinger was so rough on him.

Was this a change in heart?  Was this his intention all along?  Some suggest he realized he had opened a nasty can of worms and decided to make the best of it.  His supporters at Columbia of course regard him as a champion and hero.  Others note that alumni had begun a harsh denouncement, and he was placating them.  One camp went as far as to note all the threats made to his federal funding, and to assert that this was a way to make gravy out of fat.

I can’t say, and for the moment I am suppressing my more cynical aspects, because I think in the long run, it does not matter.  I think that in this case the damage that Ahmadinejad did was too himself.

By taking such a public forum and making such absurd statements as “there are no Gays in Iran” he has shown, again, his real lunacy.  He did not gain any political points here.  Yes, the crowd gave him some applause and got their jollies out of some of his ravings, but more people were able to see this guy for what he really is.

If anything, all he did today was make the case against him a little stronger.

So I won’t waste any more time moaning about how wrong it was for him to come.  It was unavoidable and in some ways necessary.  The evil in people like this is best defeated by exposing it.  Columbia, whatever their true motivation was, did the world a favor by continuing to expose him for what he is.

Sure, it is a sad thing when the liberal Universities bring in such extreme personalities while they boo off the stage more rational ones, but that will not change by my unhappiness.

Progressive Universities are a fact of nature.

But in their zeal sometimes they do the right thing, even if they do it for the wrong reasons.

Trackposted to Outside the Beltway, Blog @ MoreWhat.com, Perri Nelson’s Website, Rosemary’s Thoughts, The Random Yak, DeMediacratic Nation, Big Dog’s Weblog, Adam’s Blog, Right Truth, Shadowscope, Stuck On Stupid, The Amboy Times, Conservative Cat, Diary of the Mad Pigeon, The Magical Rose Garden, Right Celebrity, Faultline USA, third world county, DragonLady’s World, The Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns, The World According to Carl, Blue Star Chronicles, Pirate’s Cove, The Pink Flamingo, High Desert Wanderer, Right Voices, Gone Hollywood, and The Yankee Sailor, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

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