Bush, Ahmadinejad cross paths at U.N.

President George W. Bush used his final speech to the U.N. General Assembly this week to call for a global effort to battle terrorism and foster democracy. “The United Nations and other multilateral organizations are needed more urgently than ever,” Bush declared. Calling the fight against terrorism “the fundamental challenge of our time,” Bush said Iran and Syria “continue to sponsor terror.” As Bush spoke, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made a thumbs-down sign from his seat in the audience.

Later, Ahmadinejad took to the podium to denounce the U.S. as an empire “reaching the end of its road.” He also defended Iran’s refusal to suspend its uranium enrichment program, which has lead to U.N. sanctions. “A few bullying powers have sought to put hurdles in the way of the peaceful nuclear activities of the Iranian nation,” Ahmadinejad said.

Some of Bush’s criticisms of dictatorial regimes were on target, said The Boston Globe in an editorial. But Bush “exhibited a characteristic blind spot when calling for more international cooperation in the fight against terrorists and extremists.” After all, Bush’s presidency has been an exercise in unilateralism. While he might be “oblivious to the contradiction” in his call for multilateralism, his listeners surely were not.

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If the U.N. assembly was paying attention at all, said The Washington Post, it was to the “financial crisis and the worsening violence in Afghanistan and Pakistan.” Iran has largely dropped off the radar screen, which is “just what Tehran’s ruling mullahs were hoping for.” With the U.N. unlikely to act against Tehran, it will fall on Barack Obama or John McCain to halt Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

A group of left-wing American church leaders is making Ahmadinejad’s task even easier, said Paul Marshall and Nina Shea in National Review Online. The group extended hospitality—and a public relations coup—to the Holocaust-denying tyrant. Their plan for an “interfaith dinner” with Ahmadinejad couldn’t be more misguided—especially since it “coincides with the Iranian parliament’s adoption of a mandatory death penalty for ‘apostasy.’”