Iranian president to speak at Columbia University in New York?

if you don't talk to the guy who kicked your ass, then he'll keep doing it the next time. you have no choice but to use diplomacy to weasel your way out. they are as afraid as we are. they don't know what to expect next either. all they know is what we know, they we are headed down a path for nuclear war. iran will keep sending advanced IEDs with the backing of chinese and russians. the russians love u.s. money the chinese love u.s. trade, but both are funding iran, syria, al quada, because they don't want the u.s. too close. iran funds hizb allah and helps them with nuclear weapons. many believe russia and china have secretly armed iran with mobile nukes that escape u.s. satellites. so there it is. keep being stubborn and get your teeth kicked in like the u.s. army is experiencing, or deal with the enemy. the u.s. has settled many conflicts over the centuries thru diplomacy, and we have no choice but to talk to iran, else it's nuclear war. if the u.s. nukes teheran, iranian support cells will unleash nukes on israel and u.s. bases in turkey. then what is next is anyones guess. will there be anyone left in israel ? or teheran ? or damascus ? who can tell.

The point being that people who support violence shouldn't be rewarded with a platform. They should be in the back of the line on being heard at a university.

I know this probably isn't how the world works.

In the world today, people in places like Tibet won't go off and kill other people, so they will be less likely be given a welcoming platform so their voice can be heard. They will get some lip service and the fact that their country has been taken over will be quickly dismissed as an world issue.

if there is no compromise then there won;t be any peace. they call us the same names that you have been calling them here.

I give up. I guess I cannot express what I am trying saying well enough for you to understand.

Maybe the world would work better with your Ari Gold, "Hug it out, bitch" solution, but I don't think it is too realistic.

I think the problem is that the other side sees us just as evil as we see them. They see our president as the one who supports violence.

If neither side ever gives the other a venue to be heard or to talk then violence persists.

Not saying that talking ends all problems, but it is silly stop open debate and public and private negotiations. Only this way can we hope to come to a more friendly relationship.

Wars today are as much about perception and image as they are about manpower and guns. When a single person can create such a vast amount of destruction, I would think about winning the war of ideas as well as the war of guns.

I understand what you are trying to say, and I agree. The other poster keeps talking about diplomacy, but a speaking engagement at NYU does not equate with diplomatic dialogue with the US. Violent ideas are one thing, violent actions are another.

"It's too convenient for war mongers to call people terrorists and then let someone else fight them. Too many so-called Chickenhawks yap and yap about terrorists and blood and bullets but won't personally join the Army. At my job we have our share of those big mouths."

First of all the whole liberal argument saying you shouldn't go to war unless you'd take up arms yourself, is a cheap stupid argument.

Second of all we are dealing with the scum of this earth. Militant islam is not an ideology that of whose differences can be worked out over discussion. They and their religion say that those who are not muslim are fit to be treated as infidels, those who try to leave the religion should be killled, and women should be treated as slaves. It hurts to see that so much of the discussion about iraq and the middle east is over trying to establish a democracy, when in reality the most important thing is to try to infuse secularist ideologies. the prime minister of iraq(being a shia) deliberately insulted all the sunni in iraq by hanging saddam at the eclipse of a religious holiday. This is a man that is part of a militant shia group, and is supported by bush, and i think is one of the reasons why we cannot get the politics in iraq to work. It seems as though we are fighting extremists from the outside, but supporting more moderate versions of them from the inside. It's my opinion that the single greatest thing we could do for the middle east is to infuse a skeptical secularist ideology into their society, so people don't take their faith so seriously. How this could be done? i have no clue.

The US military does not have any gay people in it. Just like in Iran.

Columbia University does not have any straight people in it, just like the movie Grease.

The solution is not to rid the world of religion. I take my religion quite seriously, and as I have done so more and more, I have become much more pacifist, much more critical of capitalism, much more concerned about the energy crisis (and its ramifications on the earth and all peoples), and less swayed by tactics of fear mongering. In fact, I am in a profession of peacemaking. So often peacemaking flows from the greatest place of insecurity inisde of a person, the same place that drives someone to pre-emptive war. When peacemaking becomes a frantic, desperate plea to avoid annihilation by instilling fear in order to reform politics, then the world is not a better place. Why live if you will be paralyzed by the same fear that Bush wants you to buy into hook, line, and sinker? Let peace flow from a peace that resides within you, for peace is not just about guns or bombs, or even just about nations, peace is interpersonal and is a a way of being in the world.

Also, the divide with the much of the middle east is our assumption that the whole world subscribes to Enlightenment ideals. Such is not the case. Forcing democracy on a nation that in not swayed by Enlightenment ideals will only result in backlash as a genuine dialogue is not being exchanged. It is in fact a violent exchange in which one party imposes its own will on the other. An exchange of ideas so at the least we can better understand those whom we are verbally violent toward in trying to label them as extremists or whatever perjorative you want, will only facilitate our eventual destruction. Peace is not something that happens once all of the "bad guys" are dead. You will always be able to find more bad guys. And besides, the ending of military action (which won't happen anyway) is not what yields peace. We are going to have to see that the middle east hates us because of our violence of economics and how we exploit the rest of the world for our lives of excess, allowing others to starve. That is just one reason why we, too, can be seen as the bad guys.

People think that you either have to agree with everything that America does or else you're for the enemy. Sometimes to reconcile and bring about peace, which we all claim to be striving for, you have to admit how you have wronged others. September 11 could have been a time for us to do that. They should not have done what they did, but they did so because they wanted us to finally listen to them. They want us to stop exploiting people all over the world and to stop spreading a system that commodifies people as goods and that is run by fostering greater greed and self-interest which never actually leaves a person satisified. Really, less than 2% of Americans think that they have enough money. So they go down a path that never yields fulfillment or inner peace. Such is quite destructive to the being of a person, to the quality of life, to the being able to acknowledge on more than a cognitive level that one day you will die. These conflicts give us a chance to look at the mirror and seek a better way of life for us and for the rest of the world, together. Yet everyone wants to label peacemaking as naive, but only so because even we, tend toward radical ideologies and want the world to be the way we want it.

The ASUN is now in controll of this thread along with the SOCON.

I couldn't sleep last night after watching everything on the news about Ahmadinejad. I'm not American but I'm scared. Watching the tone of the newscast my fear is that it will cause outrage in the Middle east, it will cause more attacks on US soil and validate more war. A bad cycle that will never end.

"They want us to stop exploiting people all over the world and to stop spreading a system that commodifies people as goods and that is run by fostering greater greed and self-interest which never actually leaves a person satisified."

money DOES buy happinness. for example, money buys a waverunner. Have you ever seen a sad person on a waverunner? Try to frown while you're on one. Just try it. And conversely have you ever seen a homeless person skip? because they don't do they. checkmate.

The secret to happiness is: GANJA!!!

Yes, I have worked and even spent some time living with homeless people. Nonetheless, you are confusing simple pleasure seeking with fulfillment and satisfaction. Also, I am not proposing for all to be homeless either. I propose that under our system no amount of money is sufficient. However, in a system that operates under different forces, a middle ground is encouraged as an absence of money is oppressive and excessive wealth in itself is not the meaning of life. Even those who live by this mantra claim the opposite on their deathbed.

Stalin Lives wrote:

Why the big suprise. Columbia like most liberal elitest schools loves anyone that speaks of the ills of America.

Yes Columbia will use the quise of free exchange of ideas, open debate etc.. Schools like these are the same schools that have barred the military from setting up ROTC programs.

So bann the people who fight and die to protect American citizens. Invite the leader of a country that is now aiding and in many cases actually killing Americans.

For any true liberal this makes perfect sense.

Death to America, and Israel to.

I think it's sad that so many people like you are afraid of free speech, of having this guy come to columbia to give a vastly different point of view, are probably the same people who know nothing about iran and how their whole system works in the first place.

And what, exactly, is wrong with barring the military from setting up ROTC indoctrination programs at one of our country's premier institutions? It is not that they do not appreciate the idea of standing up for ideals, just the opposite! That's exactly what they are doing - standing up for the ideal of pacifism, of nonviolence.

You see the army through the blinders of patriotism, as people who can do no wrong solely because they wave our flag and carry guns in foreign countries. Look at from the eyes of the people in the countries we invade. Spout your militaristic propaganda to the estimated HUNDREDS of thousands of INNOCENT IRAQI LIVES lost thus far. Tell it to the Vietnamese and Korean women we raped, the Vietnamese and Korean children we slaughtered. Tell it to the hundreds of thousands of citizens of the peaceful and artistic city of Dresden, Germany, which we firebombed after the European theatre in World War II was basically closed. And tell it to the unsuspecting Japanese citizens, men, women, and children alike, of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, annihilated by atomic bombs.

I respect very much the fact that a young American man or woman is willing to risk their life to preserve our great country. I do not respect, nor do I condone, unneccessary bloodshed, violence, war, and slaughter - such as has been done to our troops, and such as our troops have done to innocent people in wars over the past century or so.

Your naive rhetoric, incredible generalizations, and ignorant outlook only contribute to the general apathy towards the suffering and death in the world today. Instead of complaining about how liberals don't support the troops just because they want the troops to come back, how about you take a look at real injustice in the world: darfur, chechnya, bosnia, other regions of africa, and numerous other pockets across the world.

read on the road, or the dharma bums. compare jack kerouac to one of the many ceo's that have commited suicide in the past few years.

material happiness does not = true happiness

I disagree with you.

"material happiness does not = true happiness"

this statement should end with just kidding.