I was off today and as luck would have it I had the joy of watching
Iranian President Ahmadinejad address a group at Columbia University,
just a few blocks from Ground Zero. I won't get into what he said or
whether or not he should have been invited to speak at all. The
question I will address is why wasn't this man arrested and charged
with taking hostages at the American embassy in Iran in 1979 for over
300 days? I can understand if he was addressing the UN he would be on
international grounds and probably afforded the courtesy of diplomatic
immunity. But he set foot on what was clearly American soil. More than
a handful of the people taken hostage in 1979 have identified him as
undoubtedly being one of their captors 28 years ago. There are
thousands and thousands of people in American prisons convicted on far
less evidence and certainly thousands more arrested and charged on
even less. I was 11 years old when that event took place but I
remember the outrage, anger, and horror I felt like it was yesterday.
What irritates me even more is that not one of the questions posed to
this monster addressed this event but instead focused on things he has
said and done since being president of Iran. Yet our own president and
politicians are constantly called on the carpet to answer for things
done decades ago, most of which weren't even illegal just possibly
contradictory to their current political positions or embarrassing to
them now. Why would we afford a terrorist more courtesy than we give
our own commander in chief let alone our own citizens rotting in jail
or prison? It really does seem that we have lost all our backbone as a
nation. I find myself shaking my head sadly at what we have become on
an almost daily basis.
