The Khatami Conundrum

Bob Newman

A former president of the world’s leading and most dangerous terrorist state, Mohammad Khatami, has been allowed by our government to not only visit the United States, but even deliver an anti-America speech at none other than the National Cathedral.

This is the man who approved of the smuggling of advanced demolitions from Iran into Iraq via Iran’s deadly Revolutionary Guard. Those weapons have killed scores of American military personnel and the process is continuing to this very day under Khatami’s replacement, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, one of the earliest members of the Revolutionary Guard and one of the supervisory terrorists who took dozens of Americans hostage in Iran in 1979 and held them for 444 days. Why the Bush administration approved Khatami’s visa and casually looked the other way as this fiend roamed our soil is perhaps the administration’s worst and callous error in judgment.

Liberals who can’t comprehend the nature of the war on terror or who refuse to understand that nature, are assets to terrorists around the world because they degrade the foundation of our national security, a crucial part of which is America’s will, as a people, to survive. Al Qaeda, Hezbollah and other international and transnational terrorist organizations feed on the ambivalence and pacifism demonstrated daily in this country.

Incredibly, American liberals see Khatami’s visit as being a means of increasing favorable opinion for America among the European Union and Islamic states. In reality, this move not only failed to accomplish that goal, but no doubt caused great belly laughs to erupt from Khatami, Admadinejad, Assad, bin Laden and their ilk, who recognize the folly of our decision. They see the move as a form of pure appeasement and a lack of national will to win the war on terror at all costs. These people know that most Americans have no inkling of the danger appeasement presents and have no idea who Neville Chamberlain was and what his disastrous attempt at appeasement did.

Khatami should have been killed on sight when he landed. Liberals will be shocked at this opinion. They no doubt think that Ronald Reagan was out of line for ordering American military forces to kill Moammar Ghadafi upon learning it was Ghadafi who ordered the bombing of the La Belle Disco in Berlin (1986), killing two American servicemen, and whose agents destroyed Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland (1988).

Would Ghadafi have been allowed to address an audience in the National Cathedral in 1989?

No. He would have been killed or captured upon arrival in America.

Likewise, would Kim Il-sung have been allowed into the United States in 1954? We never declared war on his country. Would Mullah Muhammad Omar of the Taliban have been allowed into the United States in 2002? We never declared war on his country.

Like Ghadafi, Khatami has plenty of American blood on his hands and should have been taken out in graphic fashion upon the setting of his sandals on our territory. He was sent here as an official emissary of the terrorist government of Iran and his very close friend and accomplice, Ahmadinejad.

Furthermore, Iran’s Iraqi golden boy in the insurgency is Muqtada al Sadr, leader of the so-called al Mahdi Army, which has killed untold numbers of American servicemen in Iraq. Al Sadr is deep in bed with Iran’s terrorist regime and travels to Iran on a regular basis to receive guidance, support and orders. During his tenure as president, Khatami warmly embraced, encouraged and supported al Sadr’s attacks on American forces.

And the puerile argument made by liberals that claims killing Khatami would be illegal because we have not declared war on Iran logically means that every enemy of America our military has killed since the end of World War 2 were in fact murdered rather than legitimately killed in an act of war. Therefore, all the North Koreans, Chinese, North Vietnamese, Lebanese, Iraqis, Somalis, Afghans, Grenadans, Panamanians, Nicaraguans and so on, who died as a direct result of U.S. military action, were victims of murder. Military actions directed against a foe need not be legally supported by a formal declaration of war. This is a fact recognized by international law and agreements. Had we killed him, Khatami’s death would have been an act of war and a defensive act at that. The Bush administration has of late even been lamenting in public Iran’s direct involvement in the Iraqi insurgency. Bush did not have Khatami killed because doing so would be geopolitically untenable for his administration. Khatami and his masters in the Iranian government were perfectly aware of this when they sent him to us.

Given all this, Khatami would have been a legitimate target.

And when the United States government fails to recognize this fact, we become a nation in grim peril, indeed.

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Bob Newman, a decorated, retired US Marine, is host of the “Gunny Bob Show” on Newsradio 850 KOA in Denver, and host of “Anger-Management Hour” on 630 KHOW, also in Denver. A ground-combat veteran, he is the director of international security & counterterrorism services for The GeoScope Group and is the military science & terrorism columnist for The Denver Daily News. He can be reached at bobnewman@clearchannel.com.

bobnewman@clearchannel.com