PrintSeptember 21, 2007
Nightmare at Ground Zero
I just woke up from one of the worst nightmares I've ever had. You're not going to believe this but I dreamed that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was in New York City for one of his semi-annual harangues to the General Assembly of the UN and decided to take a side trip to Ground Zero. Why he wanted to do this was never made clear in the dream. Maybe he wanted to dance a jig or lay a wreath honoring those martyrs to Islam he's so fond of praising after they blow up a bunch of babies in a crowded market or die while launching missiles aimed at innocents in Israel.
Yes, I know it sounds ridiculous and would never even be contemplated in a million years 
but let me finish. It gets better. In my dream, would you believe the New York authorities actually negotiated this little scenario, tried to see if it could be carried off? That's right. The police and Port Authority were seriously looking at the idea of accommodating this Holocaust-denying, terrorist enabling scumbag.
but let me finish. It gets better. In my dream, would you believe the New York authorities actually negotiated this little scenario, tried to see if it could be carried off? That's right. The police and Port Authority were seriously looking at the idea of accommodating this Holocaust-denying, terrorist enabling scumbag.As it turns out, someone must have whispered in the ear of Police Commissioner Ray Kelly that such a visit might invite a negative reaction from New Yorkers and would cause all sorts of unsightly demonstrations and protests. This just can't be allowed under any circumstances. It doesn't play well on TV and there's always a helluva mess to clean up afterwards. Besides, the Police Department can't afford the overtime paid to all those cops who would have to guard the life of a man who leads "Death to America" chants at most of his public appearances and speeches.
So in my dream, the Commish turned the Iranian President down, saying Ground Zero was closed to the public because of the construction that's going on. You would think that this would have been the end of it. But the former Mayor of Tehran, former senior Commander in the Qods Force of the Revolutionary Guards (who almost certainly participated in the assassination of an Iranian dissident in Vienna a few years ago), and former "student" kidnapper of American diplomats was not to be deterred.
He decided to go anyway. And being a foreign dignitary, he was entitled to the protection of none other than the United States Secret Service -- a dedicated group of selfless and courageous professionals who would be expected to take a bullet for this supporter of Hamas, Hezb'allah, and several other groups who make it their business to murder innocents.
Irony piled upon irony as Ahmadinejad's entourage approached Ground Zero. New Yorkers lined the streets watching in stunned silence as the Iranian President's car moved through lower Manhattan. The look on their faces reminded one of the old newsreel pictures of devastated Parisians who watched helplessly as the German Wehrmacht rolled down the Champs d'Elysees in 1940. Their shock and sadness at the turn of events was total. Their devastation, complete.
As his little caravan approached the site of the worst terrorist attack in world history the scene changed abruptly. Several thousand people had gathered to protect the site from being abased by a man who has said recently that he believes that the United States government was responsible for what happened that awful day when the towers fell and not his murderous co-religionists whose announced reason was to martyr themselves for his God.
Hundreds of people were lying in the street blocking the caravan from making further progress, their bodies meshed together forming a solid block of unmovable flesh. Thousands more were screaming obscenities and shaking their fist in his direction, expressing the rage felt by most Americans that this leader of a government that is currently training and supplying terrorists in Iraq who target American soldiers should have been allowed to get so close to one of our nation's most sacred sites.
Of course, this wasn't really a nightmare because we just experienced the possibility of this scenario playing out next Monday in real life. The chances of the dream becoming reality have become slim indeed due to what Ahmadinejad told CBS News 60 Minutes a few hours ago; that if the New York authorities can't arrange security, he won't go.
But in that interview with CBS, an even greater nightmare is revealed. The President of Iran, the leader of one of the most important nations in the Middle East and a world/historical figure -- a beacon in the third world of resistance to western powers -- didn't have a clue that his proposed trip to Ground Zero would cause such resentment among the American people.
Here is the disturbing exchange between CBS News correspondent Scott Pelley and the Iranian President:
PELLEY: Sir, what were you thinking? The World Trade Center site is the most sensitive place in the American heart, and you must have known that visiting there would be insulting to many, many Americans.AHMADINEJAD: Why should it be insulting?PELLEY: But the American people, sir, believe that your country is a terrorist nation, exporting terrorism in the world. You must have known that visiting the World Trade Center site would infuriate many Americans.AHMADINEJAD: Well, I'm amazed. How can you speak for the whole of the American nation?PELLEY: Well, the American nation-AHMADINEJAD: You are representing a media and you're a reporter. The American nation is made up of 300 million people. There are different points of view over there.
This is not the tone deafness of an ignorant man. This is the leader of a nation that is striving to build a nuclear weapon and has made it crystal clear it intends to confront the United States in the Middle East and drive us out while "wiping Israel off the map."
This is a man who is totally unaware of what goes on outside of Iran, a man whose worldview is so warped by fanaticism, religion, and his own messianic self image that the concept that he could be anything except universally loved and admired is foreign to him. I have no doubt he was sincere in believing that his offer to lay a wreath at Ground Zero was a gesture of goodwill. But the towering conceit that allowed him to believe in the impossibility that his gesture would be greeted with anything except outrage shows Ahmadinejad to be an extraordinarily dangerous man.
We are constantly told by Iranian apologists in this country that Ahmadinejad and his boss, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei are rational actors and that even if they achieve their goal of building a nuclear weapon, we have nothing to fear because of the certainty that they do not wish to commit national suicide and either launch a nuclear weapon at America or give one to terrorists so that they can do their dirty work for them. This is the MAD doctrine - Mutually Assured Destruction - that kept the world from exploding during the cold war.
But even if Ahmadinejad and Khamenei are "rational" in the sense that they are clinically sane, how in God's name can you not look at the above statements by the Iranian President and not wonder if his warped, sheltered, and intensely narrow view of the world from Tehran hasn't blinded him to how the world perceives his rhetoric and actions?
This is a man born to miscalculate America. He isn't ignorant but rather oblivious -- a far more dangerous state of mind when one considers that by the fact that he is unable to grasp certain realities about America and her people, he is more than likely to assume reactions by us to his provocations to be something totally different from what they truly are.
Would he, for instance, believe that exploding a nuclear weapon on American soil might not cause us to retaliate? It is not likely, but reading the above responses to his proposed visit to Ground Zero causes one to hesitate in saying that there is no chance he could be so obtuse. His reality is so skewed that anything is possible.
And that might be an even bigger nightmare than anything he and the New York authorities could have dreamed up at Ground Zero.
Rick Moran is associate editor of American Thinker and proprietor of the website Rightwing Nuthouse.
