Ahmadinejad Playing Americans Like a Violin

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may have tipped his hand unwittingly during his interview on 60 Minutes last night. Because he manifested a classic case of projection when he ascribed to President George W. Bush the intent to use the threat of attack as psychological warfare against his people. One wonders, after all, what his repeated vows to wipe Israel off the map are all about…

Moreover, it is obvious that the intent of Ahmadinejad’s mission to New York this week is to play psychological games with the American people by, inter alia, making specious arguments about there being more freedom of speech in Iran than there is in the US; and by insisting that the weapons Iran is sending to insurgents in Iraq, as well as the nuclear program it’s developing at home, are all for purely peaceful purposes.

Of course, I appreciate how infuriating it is that he says all of these things with a preternatural Cheshire-Cat grin on his face. Indeed, one gets the impression he expects that grin to disarm audiences into forgetting that he has not only denied Hitler’s Holocaust. This, even as he appears determined to perpetrate one of his own.

But, given how patently contrived his mission is, I am stupefied that so many seem threatened and emotionally tortured by it:

This madman, this little Hitler…Ahmadinejad should be arrested, not invited to speak…I call on all New Yorkers to make the life of Ahmadinejad as he is in New York miserable, miserable….

[ Dov Hikind NY Assemblyman]

Alas, with all due respect to his indignant protesters and would-be jailers, Ahmadinejad’s playing them like a Stradivarius. Indeed, the shame is not his wanting to speak at Columbia or visit Ground Zero. Instead, it’s that so many people are allowing him to pull their emotional strings by the crazy, and sometimes fiendishly clever, things he says.

Nevertheless, for the record, Ahmadinejad should be allowed to speak and engage in debate at Columbia University (or at any other venue in the US). Never mind his hackneyed rhetoric and the fact that getting a straight answer from him will be like drawing blood from a stone – as he demonstrated on 60 Minutes.

On the other hand, iPINIONS says he shouldn’t be allowed to visit Ground Zero, given his transparent intent to merely piss on this hallowed ground by “airing differences…and explaining to the American people the root causes of [the 9/11] attacks.

Meanwhile, if you think New Yorkers are beside themselves over this visit, just imagine how seething with envy Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez must be over all of the notoriety Ahmadinejad is getting….