COLUMN: 09-26-2007

The verbal assault inflicted upon the President of Iran by the President of Columbia University as he introduced him was justifiable, but unfortunately, it was filled with propaganda and half-truths which decreased the credibility of the entire exchange. Iran is clearly a dictatorship, but calling the Iranian President a dictator belies the fact that he was in fact elected in an election far freer and fairer than anything in the neighborhood. Most American allies in the region only have useless symbolic elections, if any, and claiming Iraqi and Afghani elections as free and fair ignores the extremely violent situation under which the elections were held, which made participation impossible for a large segment of the population. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad also only holds a very limited amount of power and the true dictator in Iran is the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. He controls the military and internal security forces and ultimately holds the final say over all government matters. Furthermore, Columbia University Lee Bollinger kept associating the Iranian President's personal extremist views with the entire nation of Iran, which is an improper position to take, unless we also want the entire world to associate the Bush administration's extremist views on preemptive war and executive power with our entire nation. We need our national discussion to be based on truth and justice and not try to refute propaganda with propaganda of our own.