On reading the blog account of the big to-do at Columbia today, it occurs to me that Ahmadinejad must have found Bollinger’s “sharp challenges” much as Francis Urquhart described Prime Minister’s Question Time: “very frightening–like being mugged by a guinea pig.”

Consider this “challenge”:

Why do you support well-documented terrorist organizations that continue to strike at peace and democracy in the Middle East, destroying lives and the civil society of the region?

You could almost imagine Ahmadinejad replying, “I thank the honourable gentleman for his concern for peace and democracy, which my government has always shared.  We have always worked to bring peace and democracy to the rest of the world, because we love all of the nations of the world.  Naturally, we abhor terrorism and I refer the honourable gentleman to my previous answer.”

In his speech, Ahmadinejad did actually say, “we love all nations.”  That’s a nice thing to say.  It isn’t true (no one on earth, except perhaps for saints, loves all nations), and it is just so much boilerplate.  Someone probably said to him, “They think that you hate the rest of the world, so ‘prove’ them wrong and say that you love the world.  That’ll show ’em!” 

The point is that posing such questions to a demagogue simply lends meaning and importance to whatever the demagogue says in response.  It sets him up to blather on about whatever he would like to say.  If he ignores the questions, nothing has been proved that we did not already know, and if he answers them he will invariably spin them to his advantage.  Demagogues often have a good knack for turning a phrase and playing to a crowd–that’s how they got to be demagogues.  Forest Whittaker’s portrayal of Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland comes to mind as a good image of how a despot can turn on the charm and have the foreigners laughing while his henchmen are busily eliminating dissenters.  This would hardly be the first time that a nationalist leader or religious fanatic adopts a moderate, soothing tone when speaking to a foreign audience, while saving the polemics for the folks back home.  People who ought to know better, and who see through such tricks when they are being played by our own politicians, are then taken in by this and they say, “He seems like a reasonable fellow to me!  What was all the fuss about?”

The pose that Ahmadinejad strikes on the subject of the Holocaust is typical.  He pretends that Holocaust studies are somehow today moribund and need to be “opened up” to “alternative” perspectives.  In this, he uses the reality of a certain political dogmatism surrounding the history of the Holocaust to push an entirely different idea: in the name of opening up debate and furthering research, he would like the “alternative” of denialism to be accepted as a legitimate line of inquiry.  This is the sort of line that Armenian genocide-deniers take: there are different perspectives that need to be respected, the past is complex, who can really say what happened, awful things happen in wartime, etc.  To this they add the hilarious complaint that the push to have the genocide recognised is political (always considered a dirty word in these sorts of arguments), since, of course, deniers of the Armenian genocide could not have any agenda or political interests of their own.   

Diasporan Armenians in particular are understandably very passionate about having the genocide recognised, and they mobilise politically to this end, which then leads to Ankara’s apologists outrageously casting themselves as the defenders of free and open historical inquiry (when it is the apologists who are carrying water for a government that supports the active suppression of open historical inquiry inside Turkey and are actively supporting political efforts to halt formal recognition of the genocide in the House) against “political pressure.”  This objection against the use of “political pressure” to have a genocide recognised is a good example of morally bankrupt cleverness, but it can be an attractive view, which is why propagandists and deniers use it. 

It is unfortunately a reminder that genocide recognition often depends on whether it serves the interests of great powers and ideologues to recognise it.  The Armenian and Ukrainian genocides, for example, have not been very useful in this way, and so their status as genocides and their significance remain disputed and contested by those who have some stake in denialism.  Recognition of these genocides is seen as a preoccupation of an ethnic community and not a more important matter of moral and historical truth.  Ninety years ago, it would have been considered an unquestionable reality in America that there had been a genocide of the Armenians (though they did not have the word at the time), but today for all together too many Americans it has become a “complicated” question about which there are many different perspectives.  This change is not the result of an evolution towards more sophisticated and serious treatment of the history of the Ottoman empire, but a clear example of how power interests can corrupt historical understanding.         

Returning to Ahmadinejad, he reportedly said at the conclusion of his appearance:

If the U.S. government recognizes the rights of the Iranian people, respects all nations and extends a hand of friendship to all Iranians, they will see that Iranians will be among their best friends.

The dangerous thing about Ahmadinejad’s visit is that he will occasionally says things that are true when they seem useful to him, thus tarring those true observations through association with him.  The above statement is just such a true statement, and it is one likely to be ridiculed by the usual suspects because it came out of his mouth.  Indeed, it is frustrating to realise that if the U.S. government had recognized “the rights of the Iranian people” in 1953 and for 26 years after that Iran would very likely not now have someone like Ahmadinejad as its President.  Our two countries would almost certainly not be headed towards confrontation.  If the U.S. government respected “all nations,” the “crisis” with Iran would not exist because there would be no question of foreign powers dictating to any sovereign state how it might manage its internal affairs.  If Washington did pursue rapprochement with Iran, which, as my Scene colleague Matt Frost correctly notes, this visit has made even more unlikely, it is very likely that the U.S. and Iran could develop good, mutually beneficial relations.  Ahmadinejad’s visit to Columbia has helped set back the possibility of such rapprochement by associating the idea of opening any kind of dialogue with the Iranians with his views, which makes rapprochement even more remote than before.  That in turn aids the most hard-line elements in the Iranian regime, thus ensuring that the very repression and misrule that provoked Bollinger’s “sharp challenges” will continue and will probably get worse by strengthening Ahmadinejad’s faction at home by giving him such a forum and raising his profile internationally.

Part of it is that he just looks cuddly.  Possibly cuddly enough to turn me straight.  I think he kind of looks like Kermit the Frog.  Sort of.  With smaller eyes. ~Sally Kohn, reminding us why sane people laugh at the Kossacks

Ambinder notes:

In private, Obama likens himself to Reagan, according to some of his friends. He believes that the very act of Americans choosing to elect him would amount to the biggest foreign policy advance of the past 20 years, would immediately change the way, say, a young boy in Lahore views this country, would crush the propaganda gains of radical Islam since the end of the first Gulf War, would heal the scar that serves as a reminder of America’s original sin (slavery), would directly engage the mass Muslim world in a way that no one who voted for oil or empire could, and … you get the idea.

Now that you’ve finished groaning and smashing your head against a wall now that another presidential candidate has started with the Reagan comparisons, I will continue. 

So a young boy in Lahore will have his views changed about America by the election of Obama, will he?  As Ross suggests, this is a strange thing for someone who has advocated taking military action inside Pakistan without its government’s permission to say.  At the present time, most Pakistanis see America as the major threat to their country.  Given Obama’s past remarks about Pakistan and foreign policy generally, the young boy in Lahore will probably go from fearing and loathing America to actively preparing for the impending assault.  It seems to me that the “propaganda gains” of radical Islam are to be found in their exploiting of U.S. occupation of Muslim countries.  Obama’s election would not “crush” these.  Whatever his later policies might do to weaken those claims, his election would obviously not change them in the least. 

Given how some in the Near East portrayed Secretary Rice after her truly awful “birth pangs of a new Middle East” remark, it occurs to me that a President Obama may have more difficulty in changing how people across the world see America.  This seems to be the case, since he quite happily endorsed deeply unpopular moves by the U.S. and our allies, including the Lebanon war of last year.  On 22 August 2006 (when the war was in its closing phase), he said:

I don’t think there is any nation that would not have reacted the way Israel did after two soldiers had been snatched. I support Israel’s response to take some action in protecting themselves.

What did he have to say about the results of “some action”?  The ruined infrastructure, the hundreds of thousands of refugees, the 1,000 dead civilians?  One looks in vain for any remarks that might be seen as critical of the methods used in the Lebanon war or the indiscriminate nature of the bombing.  However, there is this:

During the fighting between Israel and Lebanon earlier this year, Mr. Obama co-sponsored a resolution endorsing Israel’s right to self-defense and condemning Hamas and Hezbollah.

And this:

There was absolutely nothing in Obama’s speech that deviated from the hardline consensus underpinning US policy in the region. Echoing the sort of exaggeration and alarmism that got the United States into the Iraq war, he called Iran “one of the greatest threats to the United States, to Israel, and world peace.”

I’d be interested to see how he “directly engages with the Muslim world” after unequivocally supporting a bombing campaign that met with widespread condemnation from Muslims around the world.  Obama would like to tell a story about how his election will change the image of America in the world.  Because his election would be a milestone in domestic politics, I think there are a great many people here who automatically assume that the rest of the world would see his election in this same way.  These Americans might find, if he were somehow elected, that other nations would see through his hope and unity rhetoric to the substance of his worryingly over-ambitious foreign policy views.  It is, of course, a certain kind of meddling foreign policy that has harmed our national reputation, and the real test for Obama’s “change” candidacy is whether he has given any indication that he departs significantly from it.  It seems to me that he doesn’t, and that will mean that any superficial good feeling that might follow his election would be sunk in a sea of disappointment and bitterness when people around the world discover that he is not very different from the alternatives.  If the next President wants to repair America’s reputation, he will have to start changing what the U.S. government does in her name.  Putting a different face on what is basically more of the same will not make a dent.

Via Ross, I see that Mark Steyn makes the right points about Fred “Our Casualty Numbers Are Bigger Than Yours” Thompson:

It‘s unbecoming for a serious nation to get into a pissing match about whose pile of war dead is higher.

And:

It should not be necessary in “supporting our troops” to denigrate everybody’s else. 

And:

That’s President Reagan addressing “the boys of Pointe du Hoc” at Normandy in 1984. I know everyone wants Fred to be the new Ron, but I miss the old one’s generosity of spirit. 

And:

But Senator Thompson’s line is a gross sentimentalization.

That all sounds right to me.

If Bush is like the Prophet Jonah (no, don’t laugh just yet), does that mean that his fellow “shipmates” will toss him overboard and he will be consumed by the political equivalent of a whale, only to be delivered after repenting of his past errors?  I can think of worse comparisons that the President’s supporters might make, but not many.

Via Jim Lobe

Bagehot would not have been at home in early 21st-century America. Today we prefer our writers soft, exculpatory, self-righteous but nevertheless wrapped in the rhetoric of non-judgmentalism. ~Roger Kimball

With all respect to Mr. Kimball, whose larger point about Columbia is well taken, it seems to me that the medium of blogging in particular often involves nothing but extremely judgemental, polemical writing.  Whether or not this counts as properly “manly” is for others to judge, but soft, simpering nebbishes are not exactly the first things that would come to mind when I think of 21st century political discourse.  There are certainly advocates for ever-greater bipartisanship and more simpering appeals to unity, but they tend to be met with the scorn of political bloggers.

On the matter of Ahmadinejad’s invitation to speak at Columbia, I find myself agreeing with Mr. Kimball and others.  I suppose I can understand to some extent why someone might have thought this might be a good idea.  Strangely, whoever this someone was, he did not think about all the other reasons why it would be an extremely bad idea. 

There was probably a strong sense that this would be an opportunity to poke various Persophobic loonies in the eye, as if to say, “Not all Americans want to drop tactical nukes on Iran.  Norman Podhoretz and his ilk do not speak for all of us.  Some of us favour ‘dialogue’.”  Be that as it may, the invitation was dreadful, but above all it was a very stupid thing to do.  If you wanted to reconfirm every anti-academic prejudice on the American right, it is hard to think of how you might better accomplish it than bringing in Ahmadinejad under the banner of free speech and academic freedom.  (If MoveOn.org could have found some way to co-sponsor the event, it might have been even more obnoxious and offensive.)  For more than a few on the right, it’s a three-for-one deal: a chance to bash academia for being “anti-American” (which they take as a given anyway), while also bashing defenders of free speech and academic freedom for also being complicit in subversive and all-around idiotic ideas (which they also take as more or less a given).  At this rate, why not invite Hugo Chavez to give a commencement address or give Castro an honourary degree for his “humanitarian” contributions to the people of Angola?  Just because they and their governments are not threats to us does not make them and their views acceptable.  Ahmadinejad may talk whatever rubbish he likes in his country, but no one is obliged to “engage” it and no one should be interested in associating with him when he comes here.   Like MoveOn’s self-defeating antics, Columbia’s invitation reminds the dissenting conservative of the crucial lack of discernment that seems built-in with all too many people on the left.        

There is probably an instinct among quite a few academics to rally against these criticisms of Columbia.  After all, supine conformity to the foreign policy priorities of the government is only too common these days (see Congress, the media), and the academy is not properly an extension of the government that it should be required to toe some line on policy.  The thing worth noting, of course, is that “engaging” Ahmadinejad by inviting him to Columbia misses the essence of the policy debate surrounding Iran.  Focusing on Ahmadinejad, either as an invited guest or a target of hatred, personalises U.S.-Iranian relations in the same misguided way that Washington routinely does with foreign governments.  Ahmadinejad does not represent most Iranians, and he does not represent much of the Iranian political elite.  It is precisely because he really is marginal that his obsessions are irrelevant to the policy debate.  Treating him as a serious figure, either as someone to be “sharply challenged” or targeted for harsh criticism, is to play the game on his terms and give him a level of credibility that he could never obtain on his own. 

Manifestly, the man’s views are very often ridiculous, and he is a ranting demagogue, an Iranian Huey Long with less common sense.  He is, however, a shrewd political operator who knows how play the angles.  To give him a forum is to play into his hands and to treat him as the world leader that he would like to pretend to be.  It flatters his ego, builds up his reputation around the world and strengthens his hand at home.  It makes the task of those who oppose anti-Iranian warmongers at home harder, it helps stoke the fires of Persophobia and it is in itself a colossal blunder on every level.  It is quite one thing to argue that Ahmadinejad is a preposterous demagogue whose rantings pose no threat to anyone but his unfortunate listeners and quite another to pretend that Ahmadinejad is just another citizen in the republic of letters and a participant in free-flowing intellectual debate to whom we issue “sharp challenges,” such as: “Dear boy, wouldn’t you reconsider your slightly troubling claims about the Holocaust?” 

The problem with inviting Ahmadinejad is revealed by a simple test: would anyone in an academic institution be willing to vouch for a speaker with similar views if he did not come from a country currently being vilified by our government, or if he were a white European?  When Columbia and other universities extend invitations to far, far more reasonable and decent foreign politicians–a Joerg Haider or Filip DeWinter, for instance–then I will begin to believe their claims about a desire for open and active debate.  Until then, I will hold the view that such “free speech” and “academic freedom” mean speech and views of which some established consensus already approves.

If Obama et al. wanted to help convince Pakistanis that the United States government means their country harm, well, mission accomplished:

The Pew Research Center found seven in 10 Pakistanis worried that the U.S. would attack their country; 64 percent said the U.S. was more of a threat than India [bold mine-DL], with whom Pakistan has fought three wars and continues to detest.

That figure equals the percentage of Turks who see the U.S. as the greatest threat to their country.  So Washington has managed to give the impression in the last several years to our two largest, overwhelmingly Muslim allied states that we are their greatest enemies.  It sounds as if it’s about time to be awarding Karen Hughes her Medal of Freedom. 

It’s almost enough to make you wish that there was some seasoned State Department veteran as ambassador to Pakistan to work to control the damage.  Maybe someone named Ryan Crocker.  Unfortunately, he’s in Iraq trying to make the best out of an impossible situation–a perfect symbol of the extent of the distraction from more important goals that Iraq has become.

“I’ll make sure that our future is defined not by the letters ACLU, but by the letters USA.” ~Mitt Romney

It reminds me of one of the sparkling gems from his announcement speech:

That is the path that has been taken by much of Europe. It is called the welfare state.  It has led to high unemployment and anemic job growth. It is not the path to prosperity and leadership. 

“Empty suit” doesn’t begin to describe this candidate.

But if they’ve dropped the vampiric word, they haven’t dropped the vampiric implication. The new book suggests that the lobby for the Jewish state—unlike the lobby for, say, ethanol—is not just another successful interest group but somehow illegitimate because of its success, and that its influence on American policy has become so powerful and malign that no one dares challenge it (except, well, them, and a good number of Jews). ~Ron Rosenbaum

I don’t know why anyone should bother to answer this, except that the repetition of falsehoods long enough practiced has a way of making those falsehoods seem to be self-evident truth.  The authors state in no uncertain terms that “the lobby” is not illegitimate and its activities are not improper.  They say the following on p.13:

The Israel lobby is not a cabal or a conspiracy or anything of the sort.  It is engaged in good old-fashioned interest group politics, which is as American as apple pie.  Pro-Israel groups in the United States are engaged in the same enterprise as other interest groups like the National Rifle Association (NRA), and the AARP, or professional associations like the American Petroleum Institute, all of which also work hard to influence congressional legislation and presidential politics, and which, for the most part, operate in the open.  With a few exceptions, to be discussed in subsequent chapters, the lobby’s actions are thoroughly American and legitimate.

So the new book flatly rejects what Mr. Rosenbaum says that it suggests.  Preoccupied as he is with questions of moral imagination, he has apparently let his imagination get the better of him. 

He then goes on to quote Eliot Cohen’s scurrilous attack on the authors and then pretends to be agnostic about whether or not the quote from Cohen is true.  It’s an old Ciceronian-style trick: “I will not speak today about the gentleman’s lurid crimes and disgusting debauchery, as I am unsure whether they ever happened…”  Cohen was reiterating the lie that the authors accuse pro-Israel activists of being equivalent to foreign agents, and with amazing boldness claimed that Mearsheimer and Walt are the ones demonising policy differences in an article entitled, “Yes, It’s Anti-Semitic.”  Indeed, there is no demonisation going on in the book, and for a “polemic” (as Rosenbaum calls it) it is amazingly free of invective.  It is staid, at times a bit dry.  If they were trying to write a “polemic,” they have been unsuccessful.   

No, the polemic is Mr. Rosenbaum’s.  Mr. Rosenbaum is annoyed because he thinks they quoted him out of context and put his quote in a passage that could give readers a very misleading impression of what he’s talking about.  He is troubled that someone would impute views to him that he does not hold!  Why, the nerve!  He has noted that the authors have pledged to correct the error, which is more than can be said for the legions of critics who routinely, happily impute views to the authors that they do not and that they categorically reject.  Mr. Rosenbaum is one those of critics falsely imputing views to others when he writes:

Wisse’s book doesn’t treat the idea of Jews having power as something necessarily threatening.

But Mearsheimer and Walt do not treat the “idea of Jews having power” as something “necessarily threatening.”  They don’t find it at all threatening.  They are quite at ease with “the idea.”  “Jews having power” isn’t the issue, and Mr. Rosenbaum must know that it isn’t, and he must know they don’t object to this idea.  They see pro-Israel interest groups wielding influence in ways that they deem harmful to U.S. strategic interests, much as an environmentalist might see lobbyists for developers as advocates for policies harmful to nature.  I might object to Ankara’s influence in Washington without thereby having a problem with “Turks having power.”  This line of argument is ridiculous.  Opponents criticise this or that lobby because it advances what they see as the wrong kinds of policies.  That’s it.