September 23, 2007
Ahmadinejad to speak at Columbia University: is this a good idea?
My answer may surprise you.
In case you haven’t heard: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has dismissed the Holocaust a myth, and openly called for the destruction of Israel, will speak at Columbia University this week.
Ahmadinejad’s appearance is of course controversial. As the President of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ahmadinejad heads a government that is responsible for untold human misery. Worse yet, Iran is actively trying to export its hateful ideology abroad, especially to Shiite-dominated regions of the Middle East. Hence the storm of protest from conservative organizations and American Jewish groups. (A group called Freedom’s Watch took out a full page protest ad in the New York Times that cataloged the many crimes of the Islamic Republic of Iran.)
I understand the objections. Nevertheless, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s trip to the U.S. will likely be remembered as a positive development in the long run.
Forty years ago, the Soviet Union was guilty of all the same crimes that Iran now perpetrates: domestic human rights violations, the support of terrorism around the world, and the global propagation of a destructive ideology. But this rap sheet did not stop Eisenhower, Nixon, and Kennedy from interacting with the USSR’s leader at the time, Nikita Khrushchev. Nor was the Soviet premier barred from the United States. Both Nixon and Kennedy debated Khrushchev in various venues, in the U.S. as well as abroad. (Recall Nixon’s famous “kitchen debates” with Khrushchev when he was still Eisenhower’s vice president. Kennedy exchanged ideas with Khrushchev at the Vienna summit of 1961. ) And all of the Cold War presidents----Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Reagan---maintained a dialog with their Soviet counterparts.
Perhaps it would not be too much of a stretch to say that state-sponsored Islam is to the early twenty-first century what international Communism was to most of the previous century. Our history of dealing with the Communists taught us that engagement works---within the context of a strong defensive, and, where appropriate, offensive foreign policy. Kennedy struck the first significant arms limitation agreement deal with Khrushchev even as U.S. and Soviet proxies were cranking up the war in South Vietnam----and within months of Cuban Missile Crisis.
At the height of the Cold War, someone remarked of the Russians that “people who are smart enough to figure out how to split the atom will eventually realize the folly of Communism.” Likewise, the Middle East is the home of the world’s oldest civilizations, and its people are by no means mentally defective. The Arabs discovered algebra---a mathematical skill that had previously been beyond the grasp of Western Europe. The historic achievements of Persian civilization are also significant. The Persian king Cyrus the Great was a hero of the Old Testament.
But flawed ideologies bring flawed societies. Most of the people of the Middle East have been hornswoggled for about 1,400 years now by a virulent theocratic doctrine. Given time, they will figure out the error of their ways; and the right form of Western engagement may speed the process. (Let’s just hope that they don’t destroy civilization in the meantime, though.)
When Mahmoud Ahmadinejad speaks at Columbia University, he will have to field questions that do not come from an Islamic viewpoint. He will have to defend Iran’s repressive state system against Western ideals of freedom and individualism. This can only serve to hasten the day when freedom comes to the Islamic Republic of Iran--- as it eventually did to the formerly Marxist world.
