Listen up: Devil’s in the details

Iranian President Ahmadinejad’s visit to the United States has created quite a stir. Some folks resent the open forum that he had while here. For the life of me, I’ll never understand why people want to remain ignorant of a world leader’s thoughts.

Remember Neville Chamberlain? Sure you do. He was the prime minister of Great Britain when Hitler rose to power in Germany. How about Edouard Daladier? A little tougher, but, yeah, the prime minister of France. Here’s an easy one: Franklin Delano Roosevelt?

So what’s the difference between these leaders? And it’s not just the fact that only one of them was still in charge when Hitler’s army finally learned to back up. While that’s true, it’s not what I’m looking for.

You know that Hitler wrote a book called “Mein Kampf,” which means “My Struggle.” It contained the ramblings of a persecuted, paranoid sociopath and detailed, among other things, Hitler’s “final solution” to the Jewish “problem” in Europe.

Coincidentally, Hitler’s Final Solution is one of the reasons so many folks want to silence President Ahmadinejad. Ahmadinejad has publicly denied that Final Solution stuff ever happened.

Anyway, this book – which Hitler wrote while sitting in a jail cell – called for extermination of the Jews. As Hitler rose to power, members of his Nazi party used the book as a guide of sorts for Germany’s recovery in the aftermath of World War I.

Chamberlain and Daladier, both preoccupied by their own domestic war recovery programs, didn’t keep a very close eye on Hitler. And while they both read the book, they read the copy that Germany supplied to them.

All reference to “the final solution” was removed from their translations.

According to Frank Freidel’s biography, “Franklin D. Roosevelt: A Rendezvous with Destiny,” the difference between Chamberlain, Daladier, and Roosevelt was that Roosevelt – classically trained and proficient in several languages – read “Mein Kampf” in its original German. He didn’t read the edited version. Consequently, Roosevelt knew all too well what Hitler had planned. And though constrained by politics and public opinion at home, Roosevelt’s unique understanding gave him a sense of urgency when Hitler began invading Europe. Roosevelt pushed programs to supply Britain because he knew he had to help Britain fight back.

Now denying Hitler is not the same as being Hitler, but nonetheless, I salute Columbia University for hosting Ahmadinejad’s visit. I personally welcomed the opportunity to hear him speak and to listen to a translator provided by one of our most rigorous universities, not a translator from the media or the government. No professional spin doctors got their hands on his words before we got to hear them.

What a refreshing splash of liberty and free speech in a country where our freedoms are withering.

I thought Ahmadinejad really had his rhetoric under control. He dropped the wildly salacious stuff, like denying the Holocaust. And he refrained from attacking the United States.

In fact, I thought I might doze off at one point. Then Ahmadinejad made the entire audience at Columbia – and me standing in the kitchen – burst into hysterics.

See, President Ahmadinejad claimed that Iran has no homosexuals. My gosh, how the crowd came to life. They laughed. They booed. They guffawed. They sniggered.

The laughter was stunning. In fact I think I heard just about everyone laughing – except maybe the United States military. I can’t be sure, but I doubt they saw the humor. After all they don’t have any gays either.

So, President Ahmadinejad says no gays in Iran. Maybe, like the U.S. military, not knowing about them is just his policy.

And, more important, because of their “no gays” policy the U.S. military may not have understood a word President Ahmadinejad said. They – like Chamberlain and Daladier – might have had to rely on the translations of others.

You see, from time to time gay people show up in the U.S. military. But because, like in Iran, there are no gays in the U.S. military, our government discharges them. According to MSNBC, in the course of the Iraq war, more than 50 were Arabic translators. Now who’s laughing?

Pat LaMarche of Yarmouth is the author of “Left Out In America: the State of Homelessness in the United States.” She may be contacted at PatLaMarche@hotmail.com.