An Iran Freeper Hate Fest

Let’s start with the notion that former Iranian president Mohammad Khatami is right to a point, OK?

Now before anyone goes nuts out there and asks me if I’ve forgotten the role that Iran has played in state-sponsored terrorism and its role in arming Hezbollah, let me point out to you that I definitely have not.

But when Khatami says that American policies have "only increased, and will only increase, extremism in our region,” how is he wrong?

How is it wrong to point out that al Qaeda and their sympathizers filled the void in Iraq created by Saddam Hussein’s downfall because of our poor-to-non-existent postwar planning (or is it so obvious at this point that it doesn’t need to be mentioned)?

How is it wrong to point out that, as long as our people remain in that country as human targets, we give the terrorists an enemy and exacerbate the process of securing that country and forming a government that they should be doing themselves?

But oh no, we can’t have common sense actually prevail, can we? You see, it would take away an enemy for the freepers, which we cannot do. They must be in a state of perpetual combat with someone or something, or else they will be rendered even more irrelevant than they already are.

And with that setup out of the way, I now bring you what is quite possibly the most hateful, sickening freeper attack I have ever read – I know it would have to be really bad to rise to the top of such a foul list, but trust me…it is.

This is the product of Jack Kelly of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and it appeared in the Bucks County Courier Times last Sunday (at least the paper ran this next to a column dated 9/3 from Gene Lyons dealing with much of the same topic, only from the reality-based community instead…the C/T actually showed more editorial balance last Sunday than the Inquirer, sad to say).

The State Department has granted a visa to Mohammad Khatami, the former president of Iran, to visit the United States.

Mr. Khatami is coming this week chiefly to attend meetings at the United Nations. He also will speak at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard; at a function sponsored by the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Arlington, Va., and at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. And he will meet with former president Jimmy Carter.

Mr. Khatami requested the meeting with Mr. Carter. Perhaps to say "thank you."

I suggest that you put your hip waders on about now. It will get deep in a hurry.

For those with short historical memories, when the Ayatollah Khomeini began making trouble for the autocratic, but pro-American, shah of Iran, Mr. Carter essentially pushed the shah from the Peacock Throne.

If Kelly wants to blame Carter for allowing the Shah to fall from power, not anticipating the rise of militant, radical Islam, then I guess that’s a fair shot. However, as noted in this Wikipedia article, we, along with Great Britain, installed the Shah in 1953 over Dr. Mohammad Mossadegh, who was democratically elected (of course, you can forget about Kelly ever pointing that out), and the Shah’s serial abuses hastened his own demise. What I’m saying is that, if we’d left well enough alone in 1953, our current mess may never have materialized at all.

Mr. Khomeini repaid Mr. Carter by authorizing the seizure of the U.S. embassy in Tehran, where Islamic radicals (among them Iran's current president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad) held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days.

Typically sneaky for Kelly to imply some imaginary quid pro quo gone bad between Carter and Khomeni.

After a rescue attempt went awry, Ayatollah Khomeini reportedly sneered: "Neither does Carter have the guts for military action, nor does anyone listen to him."

I don’t have any attribution for that quote, and Kelly of course fails to provide any also (I’ll admit though that, given the context, that could have been said).

The hostages were released on the day Ronald Reagan was inaugurated.

Oh yeah, funny thing about that – I’ve checked around a bit and I came up with this article that pieces together a lot of information that paints a big, ugly picture of Ronnie Reagan and his pals, along with the Israelis, paying off Iran to get the hostages at the same time that the Carter Administration was negotiating for their release also (and yes, I know there were some inglorious moments, including the ill-fated helicopter rescue attempt as Kelly just mentioned).

There’s a word for that kind of activity from our illustrious movie-star president. It’s called treason.

Ayatollah Khomeini recognized Mr. Reagan was made of sterner stuff than the man who flinched from the attack of a "killer rabbit."

Don’t worry – this isn’t the worst thing Kelly says (and by the way, if you want to read about how this turned into the “Al Gore said he invented the Internet” freeper rumor of its time, click here).

Thanks to James Buchanan, Pennsylvania's unfortunate contribution to the presidency, Jimmy Carter can claim not to have been the worst president in U.S. history.

But he is unquestionably the worst ex-president, snuggling up to every tyrant who will allow his buttocks to be smooched.

I read that and I could not believe that any newspaper purporting to serve something like the public interest would allow that to be printed. I can assure you that I would have written something in response, but I have something “in the queue” to the newspaper already.

Kelly is right about one thing, though; James Buchanan was a bad president. But when it comes to “bad presidents,” that discussion begins and ends with Dubya.

Before Jimmy Carter, no former president had ever criticized an incumbent president before a foreign audience. But Mr. Carter rarely misses an opportunity to run down his country.

How professional and representative of journalism Kelly is for not even bothering to attribute this. It is to laugh.

"Less an elder statesman than a soft cushion who bears the impress of whoever sits on him, the 39th president is the last person Khatami should meet," declared the journalist Oliver Kamm in The Times of London on Thursday.

Another kissass reference – unbelievable (and to read more about Kelly’s fellow ultra-right nut case from “across the pond” Oliver Kamm, click here).

Those like Mr. Carter who delude themselves that more appeasement can prevent a confrontation with Iran describe Mr. Khatami as a "moderate." Intelligent people make distinctions. But they also know when those distinctions are important, and when they are not.

Don’t you just love the sanctimonious generalizations masquerading as informed commentary? As I’ve pointed out before, if I’d written crap like this in journalism school, I would have ended up working as a men’s room attendant at the Greyhound bus terminal.

As Islamofascists go, Mr. Khatami is more like Gregor Strasser than Heinrich Himmler or Reinhard Heydrich. But the important thing about Strasser, Himmler and Heydrich is that they were all Nazis.

I don’t know about you, but I’m about ready to “wave the white flag” at this point (and I’m sure Kelly got a “gold star” from Karl Rove and Frank Luntz for working the term “islamofascist” into the story, which carries approximately the same weight as “death tax” and “partial-birth abortion”).

As president, Mr. Khatami was an enthusiastic backer of Iran's nuclear weapons program and its sponsorship of terror, and among those howling for the destruction of Israel.

“Howling,” Jack? So Khatami isn’t even a person at this point? He’s something like an animal, I suppose?

And by the way, outside of third-person references repeating what Kelly just said (without the “howling” reference), I can find absolutely nothing to substantiate the claim that Khatami has called for the destruction of Israel (AhMADinejad, of course, is quite another story).

Mr. Khatami's visit comes a few days after his successor formally defied the U.N. Security Council resolution calling upon Iran to halt its nuclear weapons program, and as Iran, by rearming Hezbollah, stepped up its defiance of the U.N. Security Council cease-fire resolution in Lebanon.

This proves that Kelly doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Iran can’t rearm Hezbollah because the Israelis are currently blockading Lebanon, despite the call from Secretary General Kofi Annan to stop, though the Israelis fear that once the blockade is lifted, Iran and Syria will rearm Hezbollah for real, and unfortunately that may be right (Lebanon has to stop Hezbollah from rearming, and the Israelis have to back off and let Lebanon take the lead – easy for me to point out from my current location, I’ll admit).

Many conservatives fear granting the visa to Mr. Khatami indicates President Bush's approach to Iran is more like Mr. Carter's than Mr. Reagan's. Of 13 experts consulted for a symposium on National Review Online last week, only one didn't think granting the visa was a terrible idea.

What? One of those robots actually dissented? Send this person back to the factory immediately!

"Mohammad Khatami is one of the chief propagandists of the Islamic fascist regime," said Sen. Rick Santorum, who, for a politician, has been saying some remarkably forceful and clear-headed things about the war on terror lately. "I am opposed to granting a visa to such a man so that he can travel around the United States and mislead the American people."

Guess it takes one to know one, doesn’t it Little Ricky (it's all about "the base," isn't it)?

"Giving Khatami prestigious platforms all over America is a dumb move, and it will enormously discourage the Iranian people," said Michael Ledeen, an Iran expert who works for the American Enterprise Institute. "For those who believed Bush was serious about regime change, this is a numbing blow."

And you guys were all so correct about Iraq, weren’t you? We would be “greeted as liberators,” right? Idiots (and if he belongs to the American Enterprise Institute, then the only thing Ledeen is an “expert” at is fluffing Dubya).

The one participant in NRO's symposium who didn't think granting the visa was a bad idea was Iranian exile Amir Taheri. Mr. Taheri also didn't mind that Jimmy Carter was having a meeting with Mr. Khatami.

"By begging to meet the head of one of the most repressive regimes in the world, Carter would simply show which side he is on," Mr. Taheri said. "Having refused to meet Iranian dissidents, and rejected repeated calls for statements of support of Iranian trade unionists, student leaders, persecuted minorities and political prisoners, Carter is precisely the person who should hang around with people like Khatami."

Again, there’s no evidence of any of this – no dates, times, places, etc. (and “begging to meet”…I told you it would get thick). It’s up to yours truly I suppose to investigate the veracity of all of this, but guess what? I’m not going to do that. I’m not the author of this column (thank God), and it’s not my ultimate responsibility. I’ll take issue with points of contention, but I’m not going to do the journalistic legwork that Kelly should have done.

This is what passes for informed commentary among our “mainstream” news outlets, ladies and gentlemen.

What country am I living in again?