Xerxes? Who’s Xerxes?

Ahmadinejad’s visit to Columbia seemsto be workingtohis advantage back home and in our own press to some extent.  Bollinger’s introduction has been the focus of much of the criticism, which has apparently helped to create sympathy for Ahmadinejad.  It would have been better had the exchange never took place if the only “acceptable” way Bollinger could approach the encounter was as a hectoring critic.

Here’s an amusing item from the Time article/Ahmadinejad press release:

He notes that Americans don’t understand Iranian history, saying that the movie 300 — with which he seems intimately familiar — was a “complete distortion of Iranian history.” Iran, he says, has never invaded anyone in its history.

For modern Iran, this is certainly true.  If the Achaemenids count as being part of the same Iran (and they did call their country Iran), then this would be another one of Ahmadinejad’s “creative” history lessons.