Ahmadinejad's U.S. visit was a missed opportunity for us

I am still disturbed at how Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, president of Iran, was treated at Columbia University last week. It seems that he was invited there to be insulted. Is that how we treat a guest, no matter who that is? Joan Chittister's latest article at the National Catholic Reporter Conversation Cafe deals with this. I urge you to go here and read it. I will post a little of her article below:

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, president of Iran, part of President George Bush's "Evil Empire" came to town last week. The question is who knows and who cares and who knows enough to care anything rational about it anyway? Good questions.

According to the latest Pew Research Center Survey on Religion and Public Life, 58 percent of the more than 3,000 respondents said they knew little or nothing about Islamic practices, but 70 percent of non Muslims said they did know that Islam was very different from their own religious beliefs. (Los Angeles Times, Wed., Sept 26, 2007) At the same time, the numbers of U.S. citizens whose attitudes toward Muslims are unfavorable are rising. What's even more disconcerting is that few Americans even know a Muslim personally. Those who do, the survey found, were more likely to be positive about Islam than those who did not.

Joan Chittister goes on to describe this more fully, also explaining the way decisions are made in Iran. Then she reminds us of past U.S. history (and hospitality):

Then, maybe we ought to look at our own past history and present use of "freedom of speech." This is a country that greeted Nikita Khrushchev in 1960 with a 21-gun salute at Andrews Air Force Base in Washington, drove him and President Eisenhower by presidential cavalcade 13 miles through Washington to his residence, treated him to conversations with a host of the highest officials in the country, toured him through Manhattan, San Francisco and Los Angeles and ended his stay with a visit to Camp David. This is the country that met its counterparts with courtesy and, after almost 30 years, finally talked and listened its way, one Soviet leader at a time, to the end of the Cold War.

That was freedom of speech. For us and for them.

We need to stop a moment and ask, "You have to question what we really mean by "freedom of speech." And for whom?"