The New York Post had an article by Arthur Herman describing the profound disconnect between the world of ideas and actions or as TIA author Robert Tracinski writes:
"...who regard the realm of ideas as a kind of mental game detached for any concrete meaning—rather than a real-world struggle with life-and-death consequences."
The message we should all get from Hitler is that HE SAID WHAT HE WAS GOING TO DO AND HE DID IT. The West did not believe him and we paid the price in blood and treasure. Will we do a repeat of the appeasement of 60 years ago? If Mr. Bollinger is any signpost it would seem - yes.
New York Post: 25September2007 by Arthur Herman
"Abject, squalid, shameless" is how Winston Churchill described the resolution passed by Oxford University's prestigious Debating Union in 1933 - the year Adolf Hitler came to power
And Columbia's event, like the 1933 Oxford resolution, sent (to quote Churchill again) a "very disquieting and disgusting message" to friends and enemies alike.
President Bollinger argues that a university is above all a forum for hearing conflicting views and opinions - as if Ahmadinejad were some controversial social theorist, not the leader of the world's leading sponsor of terrorism. In other words, this is a matter of "free speech."
Yet the real issue is not about words but actions - actions with consequences in an ongoing conflict in which American soldiers are being killed and Iranian dissidents are being beaten and tortured every day. And what Bollinger's actions (as opposed to his words) reveal is that Columbia somehow considers itself neutral ground in the War on Terror.
The left in this country concluded long ago that this is not a war between Islamic extremist fascism and Western civilization, but a fight between Islamic "militants" and President Bush. The events of 9/11 never changed the left/liberal view that the real menace to world peace is the Bush administration and what Sen. J. William Fulbright used to call "the arrogance of American power" - much as British leftists in the early '30s assumed that the real cause of war wasn't men like Hitler or Mussolini, but capitalism and arms merchants.
One of the signs outside yesterday's events summed this view up nicely: "We refuse to choose between Islamic fundamentalism and American imperialism."
In short, too many men and women at Columbia (and on other U.S. campuses) see the War on Terror as something that they are free to judge and criticize as if it doesn't involve them.
Just as President Bush has the right to make his case, so the reasoning goes (yet when was the last time an administration official was given a major public forum at Columbia?), fairness demands that Ahmadinejad have the same right.
The left assumes this neutral posture puts them in the middle and keeps them safe. In fact, it leaves them nowhere.
Because what is actually at stake is whether these United States can stand together to condemn the head of a state that sponsors terrorism around the world and is killing American soldiers in Iraq, to send a signal to the people of Iran (and of Iraq) that we will stand firm against a corrupt and murderous Islamo-fascist regime.
Adolf Hitler got the clear message of the 1933 Oxford Union debate: We will not oppose you. Regardless of Bollinger's "tough questions" yesterday, Ahmadinejad the Iranian president is bound to use his speech to a hall of "open-minded" Americans as a major public-relations victory - and to see it as a clear sign that his enemy is divided at its heart.
As Churchill said, "There is no place for compromise in war. That invaluable process only means that soldiers are shot because their leaders in council and camp are unable to resolve."
He added, "In war the clouds never blow over; they gather unceasingly and fall in thunderbolts." It was the falling thunderbolts of Nazi bombs that finally convinced the appeasers of the '30s that they had been wrong. New York City has already gone through its Blitz. What more will it take before Bollinger and his cohorts admit their squalid mistake?
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