[Dean's World] Dean: Hoisting Yourself With Your Own Petard

[notify at powerblogs.com]

Posted by Dean:
Hoisting Yourself With Your Own Petard
http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1190824573.shtml


   Bret Stephens does something amazing: [1]shoots his own argument down
   without even realizing it.

   In the article, he says that the Columbia University of the 1930s,
   prior to World War II, would certainly never have allowed a madman
   like Adolph Hitler to come and give a speech and be grilled by faculty
   and students.... but then acknowledges, twice, that Columbia did in
   fact do exactly that with Hitler's frickin' Ambassador, who prattled a
   bunch of nonsense about his country's peaceful intentions.

   What, pray tell, is the difference? Especially, as has already been
   established, Ahmadinejad is not his country's dictator, is in fact a
   figurehead representing a dictator in much the same fashion that one
   of Hitler's ambassadors would be? (Once again, the "President" of Iraq
   holds no military power of substance and only limited political power;
   the [2]Supreme Leader of Iran holds all the important power, including
   all military, security, and media control power. Indeed, there's
   something ironic here, since "Fuhrer" is German for "leader." So it
   would be perfectly reasonable to translate "Supreme Leader of Iran" as
   "Supreme Fuhrer of Iran" or whatever German for "Supreme Leader of
   Iran" would be.

   So, Ahmadinejad is not a dictator--someone else already has that job.
   He isn't the one setting Iran's military policies either--that's the
   [DEL: Fuhrer's :DEL] Supreme Leader's doing. So what is the difference
   between hosting Adolph Hitler's representative and hosting Ali
   Khamenei's puppet-president? None that I can see.

   Mr. Stephens can't have it both ways. Either Columbia was wrong in the
   1930s, or they were right this week.

References

   1. http://opinionjournal.com/columnists/bstephens/?id=110010648
   2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supreme_Leader_of_Iran