Ahmadinejad's response:
I think the text read by the dear gentleman here, more than addressing me, was an insult to information and the knowledge of the audience here, present here. In a university environment we must allow people to speak their mind, to allow everyone to talk so that the truth is eventually revealed by all.Oh, isn't that nice? He believes in the marketplace of ideas when he's over here and he's been given a big stage.
And why did Bollinger call him a petty dictator? He's running a country with 67 million people.
ADDED: Giuliani on Hannity's show:
HANNITY: “While Bollinger in his introduction said his views were ridiculous, the Holocaust is not an issue in dispute, that his arguments were absurd.”
GIULIANI: “But then he turned the podium over to him.”
HANNITY: “Well then he turned the podium over to him and I’ll tell you what was more frightening to me, immediately thereafter, here was Ahmadinejad basically saying he found the introduction insulting but more importantly I want you to listen to the students’ reactions and clapping for Ahmadinejad in the background. … Does that student reaction frighten you as much as it does me?”
GIULIANI: “Well here’s—this is really to my point, Sean. It frightens me because I don’t know what kind of reaction Ahmadinejad has to that, which means he comes away from this thinking, hey there’s a strong level of support for me in the United States of America, maybe I can push these people a little further, maybe I can take advantage of them a little bit more. That’s why I say in spite of the fact that the president of Columbia introduced him with an insult, he turned the podium over to him and he comes away from it. Ahmadinejad comes away from it saying, ‘Sure there are people there that don’t like me and opposed me and booed me, but hey, there were an awful lot of people there that applauded for me too. So I have some support there.’ And who knows what that results in when you’re dealing—look we have to come to the conclusion that Ahmadinejad is an irrational man. You don’t say the things he says if you’re working on, kind of a rational script. The denial of the Holocaust, the threat of—against Israel, the ways in which he gives five different versions of every single answer. This is a man who’s living in this fantasy world of jihad and world domination by Islamic extremism.”
HANNITY: “And providing the weaponry to kill American troops.”
GIULIANI: “And providing weaponry right now, right as we’re speaking possibly taking the lives of American troops. And we hand him a podium at Columbia University. And have no idea of what impact that can have on him? And the idea that it’s in the name of free speech, well that isn’t correct. Not everybody gets to speak at Columbia. …”
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«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 217 of 217“We are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it.”
Thomas Jefferson to William Roscoe, 1820. ME 15:303
Iran couldn't launch any missile a 500 feet before they would be razed by either Israel or the US with Destroyers parked off their coast.
Then again, a nuke tucked away in an oil tanker provides plausible deniability to the regime. Take out any east coast port and you'd have a depression era economy with a few hundred thousand dead to boot. Mahmoud and the mullahs could just claim that AQ must have gotten some old Soviet nuke and rehabbed it.
Considering we now demand 110% proof of anything before action its not far fetched to think they'd try it.
Back in the 60s, they wore Mao caps and spoke of revolution. They bombed buildings and caused riots (even in enclaves like Madison). Their heroes were communists, leaders whose death toll in the 20th century exceeded 100 million of their own citizens, liquidated, murdered, disappeared.
Now they cheer the islamic militants while wearing Che t-shirts, and laugh with the bearded man from Iran, who himself held Americans hostages. He pledges to wipe Israel off the map, and sends money, weapons, and troops to kill our soldiers in Iraq. Yet they invite him to speak, with only a mild rebuke for an anti-gay remark. Otherwise, another totalitarian dictator is their hero.
Why no one use the word "traitors" to describe such behavior is unclear.
ahhh Pogo...who is the dreaded "they" to whom you refer?
Three guesses.
I don't know names, but I've come across this before. I think this country executed 8 people for sodomy. The death penalty for Sodomy wasn't abolished in this country until 1869
oh for chrissakes. 1869!?
I am beginning to think dtl is a performance artist of some sort. Not possible he can be serious when he rants on and on in utter indignation... and then posts this.
Three guesses.
I would guess Americans. Not ones that I agree with necessarily, but Americans nevertheless.
This is such a messy country.
Messy, yes. Quite curious how a belief system that spawned the murder of 100 million can still be held by Americans without guilt or shame or a sense of irony. Worse, those selfsame true believers now invite a murderer to their campus, a man who has had gays stoned and dissidents hanged, the same campus that refuses entrance to the US military that protects their sorry asses from nutjobs like this.
So "Americans", in the very loose sense that they live here, and enjoy its bounties and defense, but contribute nothing to it, and side with its enemies whenver possible.
By that broad (and useless) definition, "Americans".
ahhh Pogo...who is the dreaded "they" to whom you refer?
My guess is that he is referring to the DailyKos and other hard-left types who were recently seen at the "anti-war" demonstration in Washington D.C.
I don't think they constitute a large (nor significant) cohort within our political culture.
The beautiful mess that comprises Americans is a very great strength of this country. If you cannot see that pogo (and apparently you can't, as you say they contribute nothing), then I'm sorry.
Some ideas are simply not strengths, here or anywhere.
Advocating genocide, for example.
Advocating the ovethrow of the US, for another.
Nor do I believe that you think that the KKK, John Birchers, noosehangers, or pull-behind-the-pickup gay-haters are an essential or even useful part of the beautiful mess that comprises Americans, or that they are a very great strength.
Some idiotic ideas need to be named as such, mocked, ridiculed, and shunned.
which is why it is so important for others to not make unsubstantiated assertions about the rationality of those "crazy mullahs" and then propose solutions assuming that irrationality. They aren't crazy.
You can be irrational without being crazy. Look at Stalin, for example, or Hitler. Neither man was clinically insane, but neither man was rational either.
Obviously the mullahs aren't necessarily in need of a straitjacket and a padded cell, but there is no denying that they regularly undertake irrational actions. For example, there is no rational reason for them to support Hezbollah -- but they do.
One other thing, I.R. -- it is inappropriate to say that I am making "unsubstantiated" claims of irrationality on the part of the mullahs when I have in fact offered examples of irrational behavior on their part.
What remains unsubstantiated is the claim that the mullahs are rational actors who aren't really serious about destroying Israel.
For example, there is no rational reason for them to support Hezbollah -- but they do.
There are many reasons, all of them perfectly rational, for the Iranian Mullahs to support Hezbollah. Aside from fielding a proxy army to harass Israel and the United States, Hezbellah allows Iran to exercise political influence in both Lebanon and Syria, furthering its ambitions to increase its power in the region.
Persia has for centuries, even millenia, waxed and waned as a power in the Arab middle east. Its support of Hezbollah (and other proxies such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad), are part of an ancient pattern of behavior that countless generations of Persian rulers have effectuated in the region.
I'm surprised that you consider it "irrational" for Iran to field a proxy army deep in the heart of its ancient antagonists in the Arab world. I think, on the contrary, that it would be deeply irrational for them not to promulgate such a policy.
There are many reasons, all of them perfectly rational, for the Iranian Mullahs to support Hezbollah. Aside from fielding a proxy army to harass Israel and the United States
How on Earth does fielding a proxy army to harass two nuclear powers (one of them a superpower) who would leave Iran alone if it WASN'T fielding that proxy army qualify as a "rational reason"? That's like saying wearing a tinfoil hat is rational because otherwise the mind-control rays hurt your brain. Iran's funding of Hezbollah and other terrorist organizatoins hurts Iran immensely. It only provides a benefit if you assume that harming Israel is beneficial.
Hezbellah allows Iran to exercise political influence in both Lebanon and Syria, furthering its ambitions to increase its power in the region.
Sorry, but no. That argument is a reason for Iran to fund Lebanese and Syrian organizations aimed at influencing those states, but the primary aim of Hezbollah is the destruction of Israel -- a state there is no rational reason for the Iranians to want destroyed. There are plenty of political groups and movements within Syrian and Lebannon that Iran could get a lot more mileage out of, if its goal was to control those states and expand its regional power.
I'm surprised that you consider it "irrational" for Iran to field a proxy army deep in the heart of its ancient antagonists in the Arab world.
Oh, please. France and Germany are also ancient antagonists. So would it be (a) rational or (b) irrational for Germany to openly fund terrorist attacks on its nuclear-armed neighbor today, and in doing so make itself an international pariah?
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