Out of the Mouths of Idiots

“We thank God that our enemies are idiots.”

Those are the words of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and he has a point: Columbia University, despite its supposedly being an institution of "higher" learning, has demonstrated the truth of Ahmadinejad's words by having extending him an invitation to speak, and then allowing him to do so. This idiocy - if I may be so frank - was further demonstrated when Columbia's Dean of the School of International and Public Affairs, John Coatsworth, defended the university's invite to Ahmadinejad by saying "If Hitler was in the United States and wanted a platform from which to speak, he would have plenty of platforms at which to speak in the US....we would certainly invite him."

The Columbia Spectator wrote a self-congratulatory editorial on September 20, in which it was said "A university has an obligation to provide its students opportunities to deepen their knowledge and understanding of world events. Columbia has done as much through its invitation of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and should be commended for a decision that will earn it few favors in the public eye." Here is the knowledge that, I'm sure, the writers of that editorial were thinking Columbia students would gain by letting the world's foremost state-sponsor of Islamist terrorism speak on campus: “Anybody who recognizes Israel will burn in the fire of the Islamic nation's fury.”

Wow. That's...enlightening, isn't it? Such statements show how reasonable a man the current president of Iran is. Considering that just last week, the Iranian government promised it would issue a "response" to Zionism's supporters at the end of Ramadan in October, maybe we'll get a preview of this response from whatever "wise" words the man Jay Leno has referred to as "Mahmoud I'm-a-nut-job" shares with the delusional student body and faculty of Columbia University.

What "understanding", besides Ahmadinejad being a brilliant advocate of the idea that “The Zionist regime is a decaying and crumbling tree that will fall with a storm,” can American university students possibly come to about the troubles afflicting the Middle East today? In Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's own words, "He who sows the wind will reap a hurricane and this will be a very strong storm in the whole Middle East region, which will strike painfully…” Yikes. This is a man whose idea of a Middle East at peace is a Mideast under Iranian control following the deaths of seven million Israelis.

And not only was President I'm-A-Nut-Job of Iran planning on speaking to Columbia during his visit to the Great Satan's Most Jewish of Cities, New York. No, the man who once addressed the United Nations' General Assembly and said afterward, "On the last day when I was speaking before the assembly, one of our group told me that when I started to say 'In the name of God the almighty and merciful,' he saw a light around me, and I was placed inside this aura. I felt it myself," is to speak before that assembly once more.

He expanded on the event more: "I felt the atmosphere suddenly change, and for those 27 or 28 minutes, the leaders of the world did not blink. When I say they didn't bat an eyelid, I'm not exaggerating because I was looking at them. And they were rapt. It seemed as if a hand was holding them there and had opened their eyes to receive the message from the Islamic republic."

Personally, I think the guy was high on hashish when this happened, but that's just me. You can see some crazy shit when you're high.

Anyway, Columbia University wants to give those who claim they are not being heard a place to air their thoughts, but how could Columbia feel I'm-A-Nut-Job's voice wasn't being heard when the man has an official "Council for Spreading Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Thoughts" in Tehran behind him? Not only that, the man has the ear of the Third World, he has captured the hearts of left-wing media, he's adored by opponents of democracy, and one of his Best Friends Forever is Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, a man who knows how to make his positions known...and then some.

If only I had a "Council for Spreading Jeremy Slavin's Thoughts." Maybe that would earn me a Columbia University speaking engagement. No, wait, maybe I need to fund Islamic terrorist groups first, deny the Holocaust, and call for the complete destruction of not just a government, but an entire democratic, multi-racial country and all of its people on the basis of their faith - and then stick to my statements. Maybe I need to give speeches to the General Assembly of the U.N. (Useless Nuisance), later claim I was surrounded by an aura at the time, and later order naval ships to kidnap British sailors in international waters. Maybe that's what I need to be taken seriously.

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This part, this part I'm writing after actually having seen Ahmadinejad's speech at Columbia University, and his answers to questions posed by students and faculty afterward.

My thoughts as written above stand, though allow me to add that Columbia University president Lee Bollinger's scathing comments about President Ahmadinejad, spoken aloud in front of the man himself, that I'm-A-Nut-Job called insults, are to be commended - maybe he's earned back for his university some respect it might've lost prior to the event.

As for Ahmadinejad, his rhetorical acrobatics around directly answering the question "Do you and your government support the destruction of Israel as a Jewish state," could, if transformed into corporeal form, win the Islamic Republic of Iran a gold medal in Beijing next summer. If only Evasiveness was an Olympic sport...

Echoing sentiments I read in the Jerusalem Post over the weekend, let me say this: Maybe letting the President of Iran speak at an American university isn't so bad after all. When you let a crazy man who seeks nuclear weapons denounce you in public, you, who are thought of as being overly paranoid when talking about the danger he poses, you look a whole lot saner when you take action to defend yourself from his efforts, especially when those efforts are clearly designed to threaten you and your friends.

Truly, as I quoted above (in a different context), may it be said also by America, Israel and the rest of the free world about the likes of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, “We thank God that our enemies are idiots.” Were Ahmadinejad's opinions kept secret, it would make the positions of Washington and Jerusalem (and Paris, among others) that much more difficult to defend than it, sadly, already is.

Maybe, then, we should be grateful. However, it would be not to Columbia University, but to Allah, the compassionate, the merciful, that we would owe our thanks, for allowing this man who likes to hear himself speak, who has organized a "Council for Spreading Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Thoughts", to say what he has to say in such a way that it makes it easier for the more perceptive among us to see through I'm-A-Nut-Job's bullshit and, God-willing, do what needs to be done about him and his sad regime.

I just hope we - or rather, chiefly the delusional and utopian among us - abandon the idiocy on our side, before Ahmadinejad's idiocy transforms into an unmistakable determination, in the name of the Islamic revolution, to plant mushroom clouds in the skies of the Middle East, Europe, or the United States of America. If we let it come to that, we ourselves will share the blame for the destruction of our cities, our loved ones, and the institutions and principles we hold dear.