Hoisting Yourself With Your Own Petard
Dean
Bret Stephens does something amazing: shoots his own argument down without even realizing it.
In the article, he says that the Columbia University of the 1930s, prior to World War II, would certainly never have allowed a madman like Adolph Hitler to come and give a speech and be grilled by faculty and students.... but then acknowledges, twice, that Columbia did in fact do exactly that with Hitler's frickin' ambassador, who prattled a bunch of nonsense about his country's peaceful intentions.
What, pray tell, is the difference? Especially, as has already been established (see "How to Treat A Bad Man" below) Ahmadinejad is not his country's dictator, is in fact a figurehead representing a dictator in much the same fashion that one of Hitler's ambassadors would be? Once again, the "President" of Iran holds no military power of substance and only limited political power; the man known as the Supreme Leader of Iran holds all the important power, including all military, security, and media control. If Iran were ever to, say, throw a nuclear bomb at Israel, it would be Ali Khamenei giving that order, not the pathetic Ahmadinejad.
Indeed, there's something ironic here, since "Fuhrer" is German for "leader." So it would be perfectly reasonable to translate "Supreme Leader" as "Supreme Fuhrer" or whatever German for "supreme" would be (Uber Fuhrer, perhaps?).
So, Ahmadinejad is not a dictator--someone else already has that job. He isn't the one setting Iran's military policies--that's the Fuhrer'sSupreme Leader's doing. So what is the difference between hosting Adolph Hitler's representative, and hosting Ali Khamenei's puppet-president? None that I can see.
Mr. Stephens can't have it both ways. Either Columbia was wrong in the 1930s, or they were right this week.
Related Posts (on one page):
- Hoisting Yourself With Your Own Petard
- How To Treat A Bad Man
- Columbia falls short
- Columbia Justifies Itself
Err, Iran?
Despite what the intellectual classes of every age and ideology have believed, some men and regimes simply will not be reasoned with. Why invite them to your country to talk to you if this is the case? Best case, nobody gains. Worst case, you confuse yourself.
I have to give Bollinger some respect for calling out Ahmadinejad. But it would have been better to just flat turn him down. Same with Hitler's lapdog in the 30's.
Whether Ahmadinejad is actually responsible or simply a puppet is irrelevant. The people at Columbia clearly believe he's responsible and as such are to be themselves condemned for giving him a platform to speak in the U.S.
I also believe the comparison with Hans Luther and Adolf Hitler is inappropriate. The Hitler we know today, the villian, wasn't known to be as such come 1933. Need you be reminded that Time Magazine named him "Man of the Year" in 1938 for turning Germany, an economic black hole, around?
So, I think Dean is wrong for giving Columbia a pass when it comes to Ahmadinejad because Columbia certianly viewed him a villian and I think Bret Stephens is wrong because the world didn't know of the Hitler of World War 2 in 1933.
Bret Stephens is of course claiming that Iran is like Germany in 1939 (not 1933) which was the year that John Coatsworth was talking about. Now, Stephens may be wrong in this analogy, but you do not address that.
In any event, saying that Hans Luthor is like Ahmadinejad is probably a slur to the former.
Wasn't it? It's first edition, published in 1925, only saw 500 copies printed - and that was in German. It wasn't published in English until October 1933 in the U.K. It wasn't published in the U.S. until 1934
So, it's very, very likely no one in America knew much, if anything, about the book when Hans Luther visited in 1933.
If I'm not mistaken, the first English language editions of Mein Kampf were also heavily edited. A full translation wasn't available in the States until the late 30's, just in time for the war. (There was a famous copyright dispute over the translation rights.)
And it wasn't until even later that people accepted that Hitler was crazy enough to really mean all that stuff he wrote. Some people still don't acknowledge it, including Ahmadinejad and his masters.
Of course we all lose our tempers now and then. Dean freely admits to being imperfect in this regard, which is why regulars to this establishment will generally be cut more slack than people who we don't know very well.
Still: behave like an adult, or go find somewhere else to play. Thanks.