President Obama may have star quality, charisma and a rockin’ beach body, but there’s one person he’s failed to impress during his first month in office: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
During an interview with the Arab-language TV station ‘- and occasional Hamas missile launch site ‘- Al Arabiya, Obama attempted to reach out to the roguish Iranian president.
‘[If] countries like
But Ahmadinejad has since rebuffed Obama’s offer ‘- and he’s now demanding that the
Ahmadinejad also insists that Obama put an ‘end to the
Other Iranian leaders have also rejected Obama’s recent overture.
‘This request means western ideology has become passive, that capitalist thought and the system of domination have failed,’ Gholam Hossein Elham told the Mehr news agency.
In fact, much of Obama’s Al Arabiya interview reflected the same anti-American undertones used by our enemies in the Middle East.
‘
‘[The] same respect and partnership that
I wonder if Obama would dare say that to one of the millions of American soldiers who risked their lives to liberate Muslims in
Obama’s harsh analysis of
By denigrating the
Along the same line, apologizing or engaging in unconditional talks with Iran ‘- especially while it continues to ignore UN resolutions and sanctions ‘- will undermine our foreign policy and make us look weak in the eyes of the Muslim world.
‘We live in a neighborhood in which sometimes dialogue ‘- in
a situation where you have brought sanctions, and you then shift to dialogue ‘- is liable to be interpreted as weakness,’ Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni said on Israel Radio last year.
The Carter Administration is a prime example of this foreign policy blunder. Carter met unconditionally with throngs of brutal dictators: Castro, Torrijos, Kim Jong Il and Mugabe, just to name a few. The tyrants laughed at Carter’s naivety behind his back ‘- but still managed to dupe billions in
Carter’s passivity led to the capture of 52
Contrast that with President George W. Bush, whose policies got rid of Saddam Hussein and helped free 50 million Iraqis from tyrannical rule. Never again will Iraqi prisoners be beaten, humiliated and tortured in Saddam’s prisons and thrown into mass graves. The future for
The same cannot be said for the oppressive regime in
I don’t know what the letter will say, but its message will be clear: If you want to be taken seriously, terrorism works.
Alana Goodman is a Collegian columnist. She can be reached at [email protected]