Ahmadinejad Review

One of my pet peeves with MSM is its lack of follow-up -- stories are published with a distinct POV and then after the event occurs nothing is ever written again to amend or review the original article in light of following events. While I'm certainly not a reporter, nor a news outlet, I'll follow-up Monday's post about Ahmadinejad 's visit to Columbia University and backtrack a bit on my commentary on Lee Bollinger. I have to hand it Bollinger, he showed some spine by berating Iran's lunatic president. I have no issue with rudeness on this front, and bad form etc. -- as some observers mentioned on Tuesday. That's picayune nonsense.

Bollinger created a tough spot for himself (showing poor judgment with the invitation in the first place). By coming out swinging he showed himself to not be a total intellectual-wimp. He didn't do the diplomatic thing and heap praise on his unworthy speaker. For that, I applaud him. One of the unintended consequences of the event was that Ahmadinejad showed himself to be completely disconnected from reality -- something that should wake up Americans about the nature of our enemies.

How can a supposed world leader stand on a stage, in front of thousands of people, and the world media, and say that his country doesn't have homosexuals? How can we take seriously someone who claims that the Holocaust requires more scientific study to ascertain the veracity of its occurrence? This man is obviously not in touch with rational thought and yet people in certain quarters want us to negotiate with him. What do we think will come of this negotiation? The Iranians will not deal with us in good faith, in fact their definition of good faith probably bears no resemblance to ours so therefore no negotiation is possible.

Bret Stephens had a great piece, Columbia's Conceit, in yesterday's WSJ that said our ideas may be better than those of our enemies, but that won't prevent us from having to defend ourselves from them as they try to kill us. Ahmadinejad's visit proved, as if we needed more proof, what a nutter he is. Based on his performance we need to be prepared to deal with him in a way that may not appeal to rational, Western, liberal, open-minded types. That, however, is reality.

USS Harry S. Truman

Great piece by Bret Stephens of The Wall Street Journal about the USS Harry S. Truman. It's the people and the openness of our society that make our military so wonderful, and he captures that eloquently in his final paragraph (we actually let Chinese naval officers tour our carrier? Are you kidding? America is an amazing place.).

No doubt the Chinese will one day figure out the mechanics of landing planes at sea--and of catapulting them off the deck. I wonder if they'll ever get the human element right. The men and women of the Truman are here as a matter of their own free will in order to defend our collective right to live freely. That's more than a matter of mechanics. It's a matter of spirit: the true source of the Truman's awesome power, and of its beauty, too.