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Lee Bollinger’s Case for War Against Iran

By Brian Faughnan
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Samantha Sault has an excellent round up of the reaction to Mahmoud Ahmadinehad’s appearance at Columbia, and Lee Bollinger’s introduction of him. But watching Bollinger’s comments make me wonder how the Columbia president can be anything other than a strong proponent of forceful and aggressive action against the Iranian regime. Heck–he makes the case for war with Iran more forcefully than Norman Podhoretz: Funding terrorism

According to reports by the Council on Foreign Relations, it’s well documented that Iran is a state sponsor of terror that funds such violent group as the Lebanese Hezbollah, which Iran helped organize in the 1980s, the Palestinian Hamas, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. While your predecessor government was instrumental in providing the US with intelligence and base support in its 2001 campaign against the Taliban in Afghanistan, your government is now undermining American troops in Iraq by funding, arming, and providing safe transit to insurgent leaders like Muqtada al-Sadr and his forces. There are a number of reports that also link your government with Syria’s efforts to destabalize the fledgling Lebanese government through violence and political assassination. My question is this: Why do you support well-documented terrorist organizations that continue to strike at peace and democracy in the Middle East, destroying lives and civil society in the region?

Waging a proxy war against U.S. forces in Iraq

In a briefing before the National Press Club earlier this month, General David Petraeus reported that arms supplies from Iran, including 240mm rockets and explosively formed projectiles, are contributing to “a sophistication of attacks that would by no means be possible without Iranian support.” A number of Columbia graduates and current students are among the brave members of our military who are serving or have served in Iraq and Afghanistan. They, like other Americans with sons, daughters, fathers, husbands and wives serving in combat, rightly see your government as the enemy. Can you tell them and us why Iran is fighting a proxy war in Iraq by arming Shi’a militia targeting and killing U.S. troops?

Iran’s nuclear program and international sanctions

…Why does your country continue to refuse to adhere to international standards for nuclear weapons verification in defiance of agreements that you have made with the UN nuclear agency? And why have you chosen to make the people of your country vulnerable to the effects of international economic sanctions and threaten to engulf the world with nuclear annihilation?…

In the interest of brevity, I refrained from lifting Bollinger’s comments about human rights violations, persecution of women and homosexuals, promises to destroy Israel, and others. Some people would argue that those would be reasons to go to war against Iran, but the financing of terrorists, attacks on Americans, and pursuit of weapons of mass destruction are more clear cut. The question is: does Lee Bollinger really believe all this? If he does, it’s hard to imagine how he could head a university that doesn’t even allow the ROTC to operate on campus. Indeed, this sounds like the rhetoric of a ‘neocon warmonger.’ Surely any institution headed by someone who holds these views would be a bastion for conservatives and militarists. How has Bollinger managed to hide his outrage for so long? We’ll know more about Bollinger’s views in the days and months ahead. Perhaps he’ll become a crusader for regime change in Iran, and allow his students and faculty to see this side of him more often. We can only hope. It would be a welcome change to have an ally in the war on terror heading up an Ivy League School.

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