Fear Factor

After all the fuss and fury over the president of Iran coming to New York and the chest-thumping of the right wing, including some bluster Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA) (who coincidentally is running for president) about cutting off funding to Columbia University for having the temerity to exercise free speech, it turns out that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran is just another scruffy little pipsqueak with obnoxious and distorted opinions of history, and his sly smile lets the world know that he's getting exactly the reception and the reaction that he wanted.

What I have trouble getting past is that all this hue and cry does is prove that in spite of our tough talk about wiping out terrorism, "bring 'em on," and the Nuke Iran lobby making noise in the administration, we're really afraid of him to the point that some were willing to deny him the right to speak and answer questions. We've really lost something when we're that fearful of someone else's point of view, no matter how disgusting it may be. The best thing we can do to prove he's a petty and cruel dictator is let him talk.

It doesn't mean we don't take Iran seriously as a nation whose leadership is hostile to America. But all this hot air about denying him a visa and raising such a stink about the visit to Ground Zero -- which I'm convinced was a trial balloon floated for the express purpose of getting Bill O'Reilly's head to explode -- does is reinforce the image of the hypocritical paper tiger their propaganda says we are.