By
Kenneth R.
Timmerman
FrontPageMagazine.com |
September 8, 2006
The U.S. visit of former
Iranian president, mullah Mohammad Khatami, has all the makings of a
full-blown scandal – except for one: it lacks the righteous
indignation of the chattering classes.
This may be the second greatest Sin of Omission the American media
and our elected representatives have committed since 9/11. (The first
was their resolute refusal to hold the Clinton administration
accountable for its failure to stop Osama Bin Laden when it was still
possible to do so in the 1990s).
Here is a man who as president of the Islamic regime in Tehran:
-
¬Ý¬Ý¬Ý¬Ý¬Ý¬Ýrefused
specific, written requests from the President of the United States
(Bill Clinton) to hand over the ring-leaders of the June 1996
terrorist attack that killed 19 U.S. servicemen in Dhahran, Saudi
Arabia;
-
¬Ý¬Ý¬Ý¬Ý¬Ý¬Ýstood
shoulder to shoulder with top terrorist leaders in Tehran, including
Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah and Hamas leader Sheikh
Ahmad Yassin, and pledged his country’s financial and military
support to them;
-
¬Ý¬Ý¬Ý¬Ý¬Ý¬Ýstood
by and did nothing as Iranian dissidents were murdered by his own
government; as reformist newspapers were closed; as Tehran University
students were thrown off balconies to their deaths by regime security
agents; as young women were stoned to death for allegedly having
sexual relations with married men; as Canadian-Iranian photograph
Zahra Kazemi was brutally bludgeoned to death by Iranian government
intelligence officers; as Iranian government helicopter gunships
sprayed bullets on Kurdish demonstrators in the town of Sanandaj in
July 2005; as Iranian Jews were imprisoned in Shiraz on trumped up
charges of espionage and as other Jews disappeared on the borders of
Iran, trying to flee the country.
In addition to this “moderate’s” abysmal record on
human rights and individual freedoms, as recorded by the State
Department in its annual human rights and religious freedom reports,
Khatami also presided over a dramatic arms build-up by Iran, that
included the development of long-range ballistic missiles capable of
reaching Israel and the construction in secret of a vast underground
uranium enrichment plant in Natanz.
These are but a few of Khatami’s crimes. A much longer list can
be found here.
Republican Senators George Allen, Sam Brownback, and Rick Santorum
have sent letters to Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, protesting
her decision to allow Khatami to make a propaganda tour of the United
States.
In the House, only Democratic Rep. Brad Sherman of California and
Republican Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen raised their voices (and their
pens) in similar fashion against the decision to allow Khatami into
the United States, an act that is both unfathomably disgraceful and
strategically incoherent.
Mainstream television networks have given little coverage to the
Khatami visit, and none to his crimes. Only Pat Robertson, in the
Tuesday edition of the 700 Club, thought to interview former Iranian
political prisoners Amir Abbas Fakravar and Roya Tooloui, both of
whom were tortured viciously under Khatami’s rule.
Fakravar told Christian Broadcasting Network reporter Erick
Stakelbeck about his time in Khatami’s jail, when he was
subjected to “white torture,” where everything around him
was white - even the food he was served. When he was eventually
released from the white prison, he had to go live in a forest for
several weeks to regain his sanity, Faklravar said.
Alone among 535 members of Congress, U.S. Senator Sam Brownback and
Rep. Brad Sherman will join Fakravar, Roya Touloui and other victims
of Iranian government torture this morning at the National Press
Club. For this, Brownback and Sherman deserve the gratitude of all
freedom-loving Americans.
So does Massachussetts governor Mitt Romney, who issued
an order¬Ýon
Tuesday to all state agencies to decline support, if asked, for
Khatami’s September 10 visit to the Boston area, where he is
scheduled to speak at Harvard University.
“State taxpayers should not be providing special treatment to
an individual who supports violent jihad and the destruction of
Israel,” Romney said.
This evening, September 7, Iranian-Americans will gather in front of
the National Cathedral in Washington, DC, where the left-wing
Episcopal bishop of Washington, DC, John Bryson Chane, is hosting
Khatami in a festival of shame.
Perhaps Bishop Chane, an advocate of ordaining gay bishops in the
Episcopal church, could ask mullah Khatami if Islam expresses similar
tolerance toward sexual “diversity”?
Since we all know the answer, perhaps Bishop Chane can tell us why,
in that case, he felt it was right and good to invite Khatami as an
honored guest to the National Cathedral?
In a letter he sent to Chane deputy John Peterson at the National
Cathedral on September 1, Rev. Keith Roderick noted that “the
Anglican Church in Iran was decimated during [Khatami’s]
presidency.”
Roderick has worked for many years with ethnic and religious
minorities in the Near East and is the only Episcopal Canon to
Persecuted Christians.
“During the last year of his presidency,” Rev. Roderick
wrote, “legislation was introduced into the Iranian parliament
to adopt a strict Islamic dress code, which not only reversed the
progress of individual expression, but also was designed to segregate
Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians by assigning colors that they must
wear, reminiscent to the yellow stars Jews were forced to wear under
the Nazi regime in Germany.”
For their invitation to Khatami, Bishop Chane and Rev. Peterson
deserve a permanent place in the Hall of Shame.
Condoleeza Rice and her top Mideast advisor, Undersecretary of State
Nicholas Burns, also deserve a dishonorable mention for having
granted the G-4
diplomatic visa¬Ýto
Khatami to begin with.
“They did this under the radar,” said Pooya Dayanim,
president of the Iranian Jewish Public Affairs committee in Los
Angeles.
Dayanim and other activists tell me that Khatami and his State
Department handlers were so effective in setting up Khatami’s
two-week speaking tour that regime opponents were virtually taken by
surprise when the State Departement announced that it was granting
Khatami a visa just two days before Khatami arrived in the U.S..
“It was particularly demoralizing to see the bureau of
Diplomatic Security provide bodyguards” throughout Khatami’s
trip, Dayanim said. “The impression this gives is that Khatami
was sent here to negotiate, and that the administration was ready to
negotiate because they were losing the war in Iraq. This
interpretation might be wrong but this what the Iranians believe.”
President Bush gave a rousing defense of his administration’s
war against the Islamo-fascists on
Tuesday before the
Military Officers Association. The Washington Times called it “one
of the best speeches of his presidency.”
This latest Bush speech is a must read for all Americans. In it, the
president quotes extensively from captured al Qaeda documents “that
the terrorists have never meant for us to see,” as well as from
published statements.
“We know what the terrorists intend to do because they've told
us -- and we need to take their words seriously,” Bush said. “The
terrorists who attacked us on September the 11th, 2001, are men
without conscience -- but they're not madmen. They kill in the name
of a clear and focused ideology, a set of beliefs that are evil, but
not insane&. It is foolish to think that you can negotiate with
them.”
The President spoke of both Sunni and Shia terrorists, and had no
kind words for the Iranian regime.
“This Shia strain of Islamic radicalism is just as dangerous,
and just as hostile to America, and just as determined to establish
its brand of hegemony across the broader Middle East” as Bin
Laden’s Sunni-dominated al Qaeda organization, Bush said.
“And the Shia extremists have achieved something that al Qaeda
has so far failed to do: In 1979, they took control of a major power,
the nation of Iran, subjugating its proud people to a regime of
tyranny, and using that nation's resources to fund the spread of
terror and pursue their radical agenda.”
Despite all this, Bush then pulled an about-face, and evoked the
recent U.S.-backed offer to negotiate with Iran over its nuclear
program – precisely what he just said the United States must
not do with terrorists.
“So far, Iran's leaders have rejected this offer,” the
president said. “It's time for Iran's leader to make a
different choice. And we've made our choice. We'll continue to work
closely with our allies to find a diplomatic solution.”
The president’s unmistakeable capitulation to the State
Department, which clearly opposes his view of taking the war to the
terrorists, not negotiating with them, is inexplicable.
This inability, or unwillingness, to confront the bureaucracy that
pretends to act in his name may be the greatest – and most
deadly - sin of omission of this president.
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