It's A Wonder She Could Find Her Fork

Trudy Rubin, foreign affairs columnist with the Philadelphia Enquirer, accepted the invitation offered on cream colored stock with flowing calligraphy. Yes, she would sit down at the same table as Mah - I'm in the - moud - for dinner patter Ahmadinejad (rhymes with "They're so easy to dupe, which makes me glad"). Not only that, she apparently commited to not upchucking all over the table ('lit by chandeliers, and set with plates of oriental salads and vases of roses') while trying to consume food in his presence.

Rubin is no Bollinger, her column clearly shows. Her insults are tepid and barely heart-felt:

This is a man of overweening self-confidence who believes his own rhetoric. He badly misunderstands the American system, but is certain that he gets it. He prefaces every meeting with a long religious prologue calling for justice, peace and friendship, yet his words increase tensions.

"Increase tensions?" Like something you can take a Bayer for?

Rubin did not leave the dinner overwhelmed by the fact that she had just spent three hours with a very dangerous and irrational man in mad pursuit of nuclear weapons so he can carry out his recurring threats against Israel. No, instead:

The overwhelming sense I had from the dinner was of opportunities being squandered to improve U.S.-Iranian relations.

Rubin hasn't grasped the fact that U.S.-Iranian relations can't improve as long as the East Coast liberal media elite can sit down and extend civility to a man who is doing all he can to kill our troops in Iraq. But her entire column, which purportedly covered the entire dinner conversation, came and went with but one scant reference to Iraq -- and that was more of her "overwhelming sense," not her "overwhelming disgust:"

One was left with the impression that there is slim chance on Iran's side for actions to reduce tensions, including cooperation on Afghanistan or Iraq.

Again, the tepidness. She is merely left with an impression; how Leftist. Never wanting to appear to not be inclusive, never wanting to judge the morality of others, she is merely left with an impression, as if a flaming hot brand of anti-Semitic, anti-American hatred was pushed up against her skin, and left only a faint impression. What would it take to actually make her feel something strongly?

Oh, I know the answer. Looking at a photo of Bush. The cover of her anti-Bush tome makes that clear.

Finally, she concludes:

Frustrating he is, because his rhetoric inflames tensions and gives ammo to politicians who want military action. But Hitler he is not.

I wish you could have heard the tired, repulsed sigh that just came out of me as I pasted that into my post. He's frustrating because his rhetoric inflames tensions? Not because he kills our soldiers, strips freedoms from his people, quashes opposition, executes homosexuals and wants to wipe Israel off the face of the earth?

He's frustrating because his rhetoric makes military action more likely? Not his actions? This woman lives on a parallel planet where reality is what is talked about so insightfully among the intellectuals, not our planet where blood gets spilled, dissidents get tortured, and fanatics try to push entire nations either off the planet if they're Jewish or back a few centuries if they're Islamic.

The only reason she excuses Ahmadinejad from being Hitler is because, she says, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has the real power, not the imp in the bad suit. So, then, would Heinrich Himmler be perfectly acceptable as "not a Hitler" to Rubin?

After all this, we are left with the most interest element of all regarding My Dinner With Mahmoud: Someone put together and carefully vetted this invitation list. Someone worked diligently to make sure that no one would be invited who would leap across the table and wring the little @#$%!'s neck.

That someone, I'll bet you a dollar to a donut, is an American working for a lobbying firm in Washington DC who is perfectly content to aid and abet the enemy -- not just the enemy of America, but the enemy of freedom, free speech, political discussions and religious rights.

I think I'd actually be more inclined to wring that @#$%!'s neck than Ahmadinejad's.

Hat-tip: RCP