Mahmoud at Morningside Heights

Monday’s Columbia University reception for Iran’s dictator Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was not “the great thing about America.” It was a day of shame for us all.

The media is abuzz with talk of how tough Columbia president Lee Bollinger was in introducing the Iranian to a packed house of students and faculty. Bollinger gave the world’s leading terrorist a 15-minute tongue lashing.

Here’s what Ahmadinejad and his Tehran accomplices have given us.

In 1979, they took 52 Americans hostage at the U.S. Embassy. They held them for 444 days, beating them mercilessly and frequently threatening them with guns.

In 1983, an Iranian-backed suicide bomber drove a truck into the U.S. Marine barracks, killing 241 Marines and Navy Corpsmen in their sleep.

Then, in 1985, the Iran-backed Hezbollah hijacked a TWA jetliner and took it to Beirut. There, Navy diver Bobby Stethem was bludgeoned with a pistol in an attempt to make him cry for mercy. Petty Officer Stethem remained silent under a savage assault until he lapsed into unconsciousness. His tormentors shot the brave young American sailor and dumped his body onto the tarmac. Lt. Col. Rich Higgins (USMC) was kidnapped, tortured and hanged in Beirut. His hanged body was ghoulishly displayed on the Internet.

We expect our leaders to understand the full nature of terrorism and not to be taken in by offers of “dialogue” with mass murderers. The only thing Mahmoud Ahmadinejad should have felt on U.S. soil is the click of handcuffs.

Tony Perkins is the president of the Family Research Council. This article is excerpted from the Washington Update that he compiles for the FRC.