A US welcome mat for Ahmadinejad by Jeff Jacoby
Please read it all….
MAHMOUD AHMADINEJAD’S visit to the United States last week was everything he could have hoped for.
At the United Nations, the Iranian president delivered a speech laced with undiluted anti-Semitism, denouncing “people called Zionists” who dominate the world’s “financial and monetary centers” and control “the political decision-making centers” in the West through “deceitful, complex, and furtive” means. His remarks were greeted not with jeers or stony silence, but with lusty applause from the delegates and a hug from the president of the General Assembly.
Then CNN provided the hatemongering head of state with another soapbox - an interview with Larry King, who warmly shook the Iranian president’s hand and tossed him a series of fatuous softballs: “Where in the US would you like to travel? Would you like to meet Sarah Palin, since you’re both former mayors? You don’t wish the Jewish people any harm, do you?”
On Thursday, Ahmadinejad was the guest of honor at a dinner and “dialogue” hosted by several left-wing Christian organizations, including the American Friends Service Committee, the Mennonite Central Committee, and the World Council of Churches. The US Commission on International Religious Freedom had urged the organizers not to honor someone who “has manipulated such dialogues repeatedly into a platform for spreading hatred,” and warned to no avail that lionizing Ahmadinejad would only “burnish the Iranian leader’s legitimacy.” The dinner went ahead as scheduled, amid pious invocations of “engagement” and “discussion.” Intoned Mark Graham of the American Friends Service Committee: “You can’t just engage with people with whom you agree on all issues. That leads to a very myopic view of the world.”
But the high point of Ahmadinejad’s week must have been Friday night, after his return to Iran. That was when John McCain and Barack Obama met in Mississippi for their first debate, and Obama reiterated once again his determination to meet Ahmadinejad “without preconditions” […]