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 The
Enemy Within:
Who is Ahmadinejad Addressing? Columbia students
or the World?
In a controversial decision that is rocking
the nation, Columbia University has opened its doors to
the President of Iran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a declared enemy
of the United States, and to a nation that is a state sponsor
of terrorism. In doing so, the university is giving him
a forum to present his message to its faculty and student
body.
Just the fact that our soldiers are being
killed by Islamist terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan who
receive weapons and munitions from Iran should be enough
to deny him this invitation.
Words Will Echo Worldwide
However, there is an even more important
reason to oppose his speech. Ahmadinejad’s words will
not be confined to the halls of Columbia University. They
will echo worldwide.
The world media will take it upon themselves
to broadcast his message. The well-oiled propaganda machine
of the Iranian regime will likewise make use of this opportunity
to show the world that Iran’s President was able to
speak at a famous American university. Inside Iran itself,
the event will be used efficaciously to demoralize and silence
the democratic reaction against the regime.
Such media posturing is certainly why Ahmadinejad
asked to go to Ground Zero and lay a wreath of flowers as
a clever and efficacious public opinion ploy aimed, above
all, at the world at large.
Academic Freedom?
Columbia University President Lee C. Bollinger
tried to justify the invitation in the name of academic
freedom and freedom of speech. He cast the event strictly
as an internal affair of the university.
However, the Iranian leader’s speech
cannot be seen as a mere academic affair. It has international
repercussion affecting public opinion in the U.S. and the
world.
Moreover, Columbia University is not an
isolated island. It is not an independent nation of its
own. Rather, it is a revered American institution, and,
as such, must take the nation’s interests into account.
A Nation at War
We are a nation at war, and this war is
more than just the armed conflict in which our troops are
giving every proof of heroism and bravery. This is also
a psychological and Cultural War in which propaganda and
psychological warfare play the more important role.
Labelling the propaganda of our nation’s
enemy as “freedom of expression” is to stretch
the concept of this freedom too far. It evinces a tendency
to invest freedom of expression with an absolute privilege
to the detriment of the nation’s common good.
Such an attitude is highlighted by the
declaration of Dr. John Coatsworth, Dean of Columbia’s
School of International and Public Affairs, who said the
university would not hesitate to invite Adolph Hitler, were
he to accept a debate. Such a statement suggests that the
university does not feel any obligation to our nation at
war, but is somehow disconnected and removed from the military
and psychological warfare unleashed against us.
Indeed, it is very doubtful that any American
university would have provided Hitler with a forum during
the Second World War.
* * *
The American Society for the Defense of
Tradition, Family and Property (TFP) protests against the
sophistic criteria behind the decision of one of our most
famous universities by which it is made to play the pawn
in the psywar being waged against America by a declared
enemy.
Our love for America, sense of honor, and
the sacrifice and heroism of our soldiers fighting in Iraq
and Afghanistan demand nothing less than this categorial
rejection and protest.
The American Society for the Defense of
Tradition, Family, and Property—TFP
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