October 5, 2009
Three Dangerous Stooges
by Victor Davis Hanson
Tribune Media Services

Last week, three dictators — from Iran, Libya and Venezuela — delivered lunatic hate speeches at the General Assembly of the United Nations.

Why do these anti-Semitic dictators feel so free to damn America from downtown New York? Why do their abettors spurn our requests for help? And why do creepy regimes plot to get nukes, and fund terrorists?

Easy. They do not fear, much less listen, to an indebted and energy-hungry America that either needs their cash or oil — or both.

Libya's Moammar Gadhafi raved for 90 minutes. He railed about everything from the Kennedy assassination to his own jet lag. He trashed the United States and the Jews. Even Gadhafi's translator collapsed from exhaustion trying to keep up with the stream-of-consciousness insanity.

Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad offered his usual madness. Once again, he libeled the Jews. He denied his country's breakneck efforts at getting the bomb. And he blamed the United States for his own self-inflicted problems.

Shortly afterward, Tehran disclosed it's been secretly building a second nuclear enrichment facility.

Venezuela's Hugo Chavez may have delivered the strangest monologue. He mostly idolized leftwing filmmaker Oliver Stone for making a fawning documentary about revolutionary Venezuela. But somehow Chavez also brought up the Kennedy assassination. And, yes, he also faulted America for his own problems.

Chavez has cut off all relations with Israel. Jews have been increasingly attacked in Venezuela, and reports have spread that Chavez is reaching out to Iran for a nuclear program.

Listening to all this insanity, it's clear that the problems these dictators pose (and the attitudes they represent) go beyond whether our president is Texan George Bush or post-national Barack Obama. And they cannot be solved alone by loud or soft presidential rhetoric, but only by changing both our behavior and theirs.......