The legitimization of Ahmadinejad
Yesterday, I was moved by the reaction of my coworkers, who all seemed riveted to news reports of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's visit to New York, to wonder aloud if perhaps we might find some silver lining in the disgraceful invitation by Columbia University for the Iranian theocrat to speak in a "distinguished lecture series".
Unlike many liberals, who can't contemplate the possibility that they're wrong, I regularly like to test my thinking and the logic of my ideology by playing Devil's Advocate. So I asked, "Could Americans be getting a good look at the evil this man represents? Could this help resolve some quarters of the American continent to confront Iran more directly?"
Seventy years before this week’s invitation to Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Columbia rolled out the red carpet for a senior official of Adolf Hitler’s regime, according to research by Prof. Stephen Norwood of the University of Oklahoma, who is completing a book on the academic community’s response to Hitler in the 1930s....Well, there goes that idea.In 1936, the Columbia administration announced it would send a delegate to Nazi Germany to take part in the 550th anniversary celebration of the University of Heidelberg. This, despite the fact that Heidelberg already had been purged of Jewish faculty members, instituted a Nazi curriculum, and hosted a burning of books by Jewish authors. Prof. Arthur Remy, who served as Columbia’s delegate to the Heidelberg event, later remarked that the reception at which chief book-burner Josef Goebbels presided was “very enjoyable.”...
Eventually, in the late 1930s, Butler would change his position and speak out against the Nazis. Unfortunately, it was too late to undo the damage he already had done by helping to legitimize the Hitler regime....
According to Israel’s ambassador, inviting Ahmadinejad to speak is the equivalent of “inviting Hitler to [speak] in the 1930s,” because “appeasing fanatics and granting them legitimacy leads to genocide and war.” Will some future Columbia president one day look back at the invitation to Ahmadinejad and say the same thing?
Comments
Yes, it was a mistake to put this evil man on that platform. As I type this he is at the United Nations speaking, and doing his best to make it seem the United States of America is the problem for the world to settle, not his regime. Israel has walked out, the United States has only one delegate at its table.
If Columbia University had given him that forum after this UN speech they would have been armed with his words today to hold against him, that would have been better, but not enough. He isn't saying anything today he hasn't said before, and they didn't adequately hold his feet to the fire for his previous statements either.
Monday at Columbia University followed by today's speech should be enough to convince any reasonable person that this insincere man can not be talked out of his evil ambitions. He wishes to fool the world with his words while he builds his ability to harm.
He should never have been allowed on American soil.
Posted by: Richard![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.theblackrepublican.net/nav-commenters.gif)
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September 25, 2007 05:16 PM
Wow, comparisons to Adolf Hitler. How creative.
I'm hardly left-wing, but this exercise of all America's enemies being labeled demonic fascists and likened to Hitler grows tiring - especially since the Republicans are just as apt for drawing parallels as the current Iranian regime (who are by no means idyllic either).
Posted by: Konrad | September 29, 2007 12:15 AM
Konrad, in this case the analogy fits, don't let your fatigue at having heard the comparison be so many times ill-used confuse you; this man is truly a bad actor. Just as Hitler was in his time.
This isn't a case of John Kerry inappropriately recalling Genghis Khan, or Dick Durbin fraudulently accusing our soldiers of running modern day Gulags. This is a real situation, with a real actor wanting to do real bad things. In our time he is the about the worst of the worst, just as Hitler was in his time. In that sense, when the officials at Columbia University, or when the Israeli ambassador compare giving platform to this man to the hypothetical situation had Hitler been invited to the same stage seventy odd years ago it is a valid comparison.
Your last statement is puzzling:
I am not sure what it is you are trying to say, your sentence doesn't make any sense to me. Surely you don't believe there is some comparison to made which equates the Iranian regime as lead by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the American Republican party? Please tell me that you are not that tiresome?
Posted by: Richard | September 30, 2007 12:05 PM