The notion that the United States has ever been able to control world events by itself is, of course, nonsense.   Even moderate success at such efforts requires alliances.  Unfortunately, there is little chance the leadership we have elected will forge any kind of useful alliances.  Our current leaders seek only to fasten their grip on power.  They would rather borrow from future generations and build up petty political patronage empires.  Their tool of choice is the “modern” welfare state.  So it is that the most powerful nation in the world is quickly squandering its wealth and influence.

Currently, Iran is the threat that most concerns us.  Thus, an editorial in the Washington Times speaks of bombs.

Massoud Ali-Mohammadi, an important Iranian nuclear scientist, was killed yesterday by a bomb planted outside his home. Iran has accused Israel and the United States of assassinating Mr. Ali-Mohammadi in an attempt to disrupt Tehran’s nuclear program. If true, such short-of-war methods could be seen as a means of preventing a larger conflict or paving the way for more deadly operations.

The Obama administration’s diplomatic outreach effort is dead, too. The mullahs met President Obama’s outstretched hand with an extended middle finger. Iran announced in November that it planned to construct 10 new uranium enrichment facilities, a development former International Atomic Energy Agency chief Hans Blix called “puzzling” because “even big countries don’t have ten enrichment plants.” Last month, top-secret technical notes from Iran’s nuclear program were leaked that detailed research on a neutron initiator, the triggering mechanism for an atomic bomb.  (continued here)

But nothing is simple.  So the Wall Street Journal provides a somewhat less alarmist perspective.

“The reports about his assassination are suspicious,” said a university colleague in a telephone interview. “In the current circumstances in Iran, anything is possible. We are afraid this might be the start of retaliation against professors who criticize the government,”

Prof. Mohammadi’s membership in Iran’s broadly defined nuclear-science brain trust also raised questions about whether the attack was related to the country’s controversial nuclear program. Iran says it is pursuing a peaceful nuclear program, but Western officials allege it is seeking weapons.

Last year, the U.S. imposed a year-end deadline for progress in talks over Tehran’s nuclear ambitions. Washington has threatened fresh economic sanctions.

State media identified Mr. Mohammadi as a nuclear physicist. But he was best known for his work in mathematical physics and theoretical, high-energy physics, according to one colleague, who was also a former student.

That could lump his work into the broad category of nuclear science, but colleagues said it had little to do with practical, nuclear technology. A spokesman for Iran’s atomic agency, Ali Shirzadian, told the Associated Press that the professor had no link with the agency responsible for Iran’s nuclear program.  (from here) 

Therefore, the loss of this scientist will have no practical effect on Iran’s nuclear arms program, and we are left to wonder.    What are we dealing with?   The Christian Science Monitor offers this suggestion.

“It usually takes a long time before they [the Iranian government] make any comment but in this particular case one official after another… came out with the same line, that he was a nuclear physicist and was assassinated by Iran’s enemies,” Iranian analyst Sadegh Saba told the BBC.

Relatives and colleagues of the scientist say they are scared that the government has begun an assassination campaign intended to intimidate their opposition into silence.

“First it was Mousavi’s nephew, now Ali-Mohammadi,” said one Tehran-based academic who asked for anonymity. “They’re showing that they will stop at nothing. ”  (from here)

Perhaps we are dealing with the kind of men who will stop at nothing.  Such will unleash the dogs of war.

So what can we do?  The cost of freedom is more than just eternal vigilance.  We must get involved and do some hard work.  Don’t think so?  Need motivation?  May I suggest this post, FAMILY FOUNDATION DAY AT THE CAPITOL, at the Prince William-Manassas Family Alliance?  The excerpt from Alexis De Tocqueville‘s Democracy in America is quite timely.

Columbia President Lee Bollinger opened the program with a blistering introduction in which he lambasted Ahmadinejad for calling for the annihilation of Israel, denying the Holocaust and supporting the execution of children, and told the leader of Iran that he resembled “a petty and cruel dictator.”

Bollinger levied repeated criticisms against Ahmadinejad, calling on him to answer a series of challenges about his leadership, blasting his views about the “myth” of the Holocaust as being “absurd,” and saying that he doubted he “will have the intellectual courage to answer these questions.”

“You are either brazenly provocative or astonishingly uneducated,” Bollinger told Ahmadinejad about the leader’s Holocaust denial. “Will you cease this outrage?”

In other words, Bolinger decided to attack the man his institution had invited as a guest.

News media reaction seemed surprisingly mixed. Most think Ahmadinejad made a fool of himself (here and here are examples). Nonetheless, some predictability remained. Time Magazine’s Joe Klein found a way to attack both Ahmadinejad and neoconservatives (here).

Of course, Ahmadinejad is no simpleton. He knows precisely how to exploit one of the few powers he does possess, the power to offend. He gains status in Iran and in the Islamic world by sticking his thumb in the giant’s eye. His Holocaust denial is a flagrant ploy — the easiest way to get a rise out of the Jewish community and, inevitably, U.S. politicians. Clearly, he benefits from his falsely inflated prominence. But who else does?

Well, at the top of the list are our old friends the neoconservatives, the folks who provided the intellectual rationale for Bush’s war in Iraq, many of whom are now itching for a war with Iran. Norman Podhoretz, the neocon paterfamilias, has written a trifle called World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism and loves to posit Ahmadinejad and Osama bin Laden—a far more dangerous character—as the heirs to Hitler and Stalin. “They follow the path of fascism, Nazism and totalitarianism,” he writes. This is incendiary foolishness.

Even those who have experienced Iran’s hostility disagreed about what to make of the show (here and here).

“It wasn’t a set up, but it looks like that,” said Dorf.

Though Dorf said he would not have invited Ahmadinejad, he thought his presence raised consciousness in the US about exactly what the sins of Ahmadinejad were.

“In that sense, it served a useful function here,” said Dorf. “But we were not effective at persuading Iran or the world of the case against him by inviting him and then dumping on him.”

Normally, being asked to speak at a university is a great honor. While Ahmadinejad may have expected hostile questions, I seriously doubt he expected the treatment he got. Bollinger apparently provided this treatment to recover from some bad publicity. What the university president did, however, was to compound his error.

Ahmadinejad never should have been invited. He has done nothing that merits being so honored. Nonetheless, Ahmadinejad also should not have been set up and treated so roughly. When the university invited Ahmadinejad, they obligated themselves to treat him as a guest. Since when is it appropriate to insult a guest? While some naively consider this hub-bub a victory for the USA, my expectation is that Ahmadinejad will have little trouble spinning the story to his advantage in the Middle East.

Even our laughter will be spun. Iranians will not appreciate the fact the filthy heathens think their views on homosexuality are funny and backward. No nation likes to have their leader mocked by foreigners.

It is one thing for the Iranian president to put his own foot in his mouth. We can laugh, and the fault is his own. It is another thing entirely when we invite the Iranian president to speak as a guest and then mock him and subject him to ridicule. When we laugh at him then, often for things he has said in his own country, we do ourselves no favors. We merely prove we do not even understand the fundamental courtesy of treating a guest with proper respect.

Many Muslims hate us. What is more significant, however, is that most reject our ways. Here we saw an example. Much of the Islamic world considers homosexuality evil. They equate their intolerance of homosexuality with not allowing it to exist, with stamping it out.

Given that homosexuals must keep their preferences secret, Ahmadinejad’s statement about the rarity of homosexuals in Iran will likely strike most of his countrymen as quite reasonable. In fact when we laugh at their president for his “unsophisticated” views on this subject, our laughter will serve as proof to many Muslims our own corruption. These people do not see our views as superior. They see as us as so consumed by Satan’s sophistries we cannot see our sins. Treating a guest with so little hospitality merely serves to justify and strengthen this impression.

Here, Bolinger defends his treatment of Ahmadinejad.

Other Views

Extreme Mortman (here) and Reason & Revelation (here) point to a WaPo report.

Mosquito Blog analyzes the speech (here).

Reason & Revelation provides some analysis (here).

badrose responds to the speech with sarcasm (here).

Cathouse Chat lauds Bolinger and provides a video and transcript (here).