From Fred Thompson's official website []:
[McLean, VA - Senator Fred Thompson issued the following statement today regarding Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's appearance this afternoon at Columbia University:
"Columbia University gave a public forum today to a tyrant to spread his lies and deceit. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made a mockery of free speech by standing in front of an auditorium of academicians and students and denying the existence of the Holocaust and his deadly intentions toward Israel."
"I find it ironic that Iran's president accepted an invitation to speak at Columbia University, since students who dissent on Iranian campuses are not met with debate, they are met by a gun and imprisonment. A few months ago, eight college students were imprisoned in Iran's notorious Evin Prison for publishing articles and cartoons critical of Iran's government in a student-run newspaper. The Evin facility has been described as Iran's 'most feared prison' and is known to stone women to death. We need to do our best to empower freedom-loving people throughout Iran." ]
Fred Thompson seems to have a Reagan-like ability to put the situation, no matter what it is, in its proper perspective. I would think that even those students who applauded Ahmadinejad yesterday at Columbia University would have second thoughts about their cheer-leading behavior after reading Fred's quote. But I wouldn't count on too many of them reading it, since they're so cloistered in their own liberal "utopia" where dissenting opinion is smothered and the speakers treated abhorrently.
These kids aren't stupid. They simply lack life experience. A man like Ahmadinejad can show up and spin a yarn cloaking his evil, and the students eat it up because they feel betrayed by those whose role it was to protect us. This, even though it wasn't long ago that Yasser Arafat expressed desires for peace to OUR ears while steadfastly calling for the death of Israel to the ears of his own people. And we know how that turned out. This time it may turn out with a nuclear attack on the United States and/or Israel. What a shame that recent history is lost on young, angry, naive children.
The President of Columbia University should've known this before inviting such a creature to speak on campus, giving the "stinky yak" both international credibility as well as an overconfidence from hearing cheers from those students, in spite of Bollinger's supurb introduction speech. I wonder what Ahmadinejad must have thought upon hearing so much support from those kids... and how will it affect his policy toward us in the future?
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UPDATE: Sept 29, 2007----- Ahmadinejad returns home to a hero's welcome.
Young and naive, yes. But you forgot SPOILED,... not to mention intentionally misled by Marxist haters of America.
ReplyDeleteColumbia has always been a place where commies and dictators are revered and adored.
ReplyDeleteBut this current generation has no credibility in my book. They can't even move out of their parents' house and make it on their own. How do we take them seriously?
Students today are not taught how to think for themselves. When we went to school we brought our homespun values with us---professors considered them to be prejudices and told us to keep an "open mind."
ReplyDeleteBut now that today's kids arrive at school with America hating liberal attitudes, open minds are frowned upon as they might allow conservative notions to enter.