What Ahmadinejad really said….

The media is congratulating itself for “exposing” Ahmadinejad with its constant focus on it’s “we have no gays in Iran” statement. Ha, ha, ha! Isn’t the man an idiot! Look, America, he thinks there are no gays in Iran!

Ahmadinejad is right, of course, when it comes to Iran. But he’s not right because he’s a silly little fool who doesn’t see what’s in front of him. He’s right because the Iranian government executes its gays — making it even worse than the Soviet Union, which “merely” sent them to Gulags and brutal “psychiatric” units.

What’s really important about the media’s coverage, though, is that all of it is besides the point. Whether it exposes Ahmadinejad as a laughable ignoramus or a murderous tyrant, it still misses what really happened during his speeches before the UN and at Columbia: he is an Islamic fanatic who is telling us that our culture is woefully corrupt and that his burgeoning nuclear weapon program is the way to purify our culture by destroying it, which in turn will pave the way for the glorious dawning of an Islamic takeover.

One person who totally gets this is Caroline Glick. In a wide-ranging article, she explains the text of his speech, explains how willfully world political leaders misunderstand it, and exposes how the Islamists are using the world’s antipathy to Israel as the wedge in their ongoing battle against the West itself. After detailing the Islamist’s explicit statement of their goals (statements we ignore at our peril) and the strides they have already made towards their goals, Glick says this:

THE POINT in all of this couldn’t be clearer. And Ahmadinejad made it at every opportunity. The Free World today finds itself embroiled in an ideological war for its very survival. Our enemies – whether Shi’ite or Sunni – are followers of a totalitarian ideology based on Islam which tells them that Allah wishes to rule the world through them. Israel is a central front in this war. Given the weakness of Western support for the Jews, jihadists see attacking Israel as a strategic tool for eroding the West’s ideological defenses and shoring up their supporters throughout the world.

The thing of it is that aside from blind narcissism, there is a reason that the West ignores the dangers facing it. The Western media ignored Ahmadinejad’s message, just as it has insistently ignored the messages of bin Laden and Fatah throughout the years, because Westerners have a hard time believing that anyone would want to abide by the Islamic world view which denies mankind’s desire for freedom.

But no matter how ugly an ideology is, in the absence of real competition it gains adherents and power. The only way to ensure that jihadists’ demonic views are defeated is by stridently defending and upholding the fundamental principles on which the Free World is based. And the West hasn’t even begun to take up this challenge.

As a result, it has handed its enemies two victories already. It has demoralized its potential allies in the Islamic world, and it has failed to rally its own people to defend themselves.

In spite of what the West would like to believe, Ahmadinejad and his allies from Ramallah to Waziristan, from Gaza to Kandahar to Baghdad, are not negotiating. They are fighting. Rather than ignore them or seek to find nonexistent common ground, we must defeat them – first and foremost on the battleground of ideas.

Right now, not only should we be afraid, by very afraid, of Iran, we should be even more afraid of our own leaders, who empower what should be an economically and intellectually disabled movement every time they negotiate with it and fail to send out an equally strong message supporting our own culture and world view.
Hat tip:  Paragraph Farmer