[Dean's World] Dean: How To Treat A Bad Man

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Posted by Dean:
How To Treat A Bad Man
http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1190718224.shtml


   Quoted:

     At Columbia, university President Lee Bollinger pulled no punches.
     He called him a "petty and cruel dictator" and said his Holocaust
     denials suggested he was either "brazenly provocative or
     astonishingly uneducated."

     "I feel the weight of the modern civilized world yearning to
     express the revulsion at what you stand for," Bollinger said to
     loud applause.

   I heard him saying these things on the radio, and the anger and
   outrage in his voice was apparent.

   Although on one point, one which can't be emphasized enough, President
   Bollinger is wrong: Ahmadinejad is not a dictator. He's not a
   legitimately elected President either, but that's not the point,
   because he's not a dictator. [1]Supreme Leader Khamenei is the
   dictator. He holds absolute authority over the military and security
   forces, including the unilateral right to declare war and the right to
   approve or reject any legislation.

   Ahmadinejad's position as "President" is almost entirely symbolic, and
   over matters military he has no control to speak of.

   Anyway, to continue:

     "In Iran we don't have homosexuals like in your country," Iranian
     President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said at Columbia University on Monday
     in response to a question about the recent execution of two gay men
     there.

     "In Iran we do not have this phenomenon," he continued. "I do not
     know who has told you we have it."

     Loud laughs and boos broke from the audience of about 700 people,
     mostly students at the Ivy League school whose garb included "Stop
     Ahmadinejad's Evil" T-shirts.

   The President of Columbia made a great point too:

     "It's extremely important to know who the leaders are of countries
     that are your adversaries. To watch them to see how they think, to
     see how they reason or do not reason. To see whether they're
     fanatical, or to see whether they are sly," he told ABC's Good
     Morning America.

   The College Republicans and College Democrats both helped supply many
   of the questions, which weren't "tough" so much as frickin' merciless.
   The man was hectored by Bollinger and heckled, booed, and laughed at
   by the audience.

   I honestly think Columbia did itself proud, and proved the critics
   wrong.

References

   1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khameni