Article published September 02, 2006
Snuggling up to tyrants
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. And he will meet with former president Jimmy Carter.
Mr. Khatami requested the meeting with Mr. Carter. Perhaps to say "thank you."
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.
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.
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."The hostages were released on the day Ronald Reagan was inaugurated. Ayatollah Khomeini recognized Mr. Reagan was made of sterner stuff than the man who flinched from the attack of a "killer rabbit."
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.
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.
"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 British journalist Oliver Kamm in the Times Thursday.
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.
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. 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.
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.
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.
"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."
"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."
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."
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