Too bad Dr. Lee Bollinger, who has a law degree, forgot an essential cross-examination principle: Never ask a hostile witness a question you don't already know the answer to. If he'd remembered that bit of courtroom wisdom before he invited Iran's president to Columbia University, perhaps jihadists around the world wouldn't be laughing at America right now.

Bollinger is the president of Columbia, which invited Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to a question-and-answer forum on campus this week. The showdown was supposed to expose the Iranian propagandist, but it turned out to be the biggest public relations disaster in the history of American foreign relations.

The controversial event had been condemned by legions of Americans including Columbia alumni. But the university stubbornly resisted calls to cancel the visit. It was a gamble, a cynical publicity stunt designed only to enhance Columbia's beleaguered reputation.

Pundits were salivating over the epic showdown. The bellicose claims of liberals sounded pretty good. Their game plan – or so they claimed – was to have the dictator facing tough cross examination by Columbia's faculty. That, they thought, would make him buckle.

(Column continues below)

Instead, Bollinger and company handed the jihadist a propaganda victory beyond his wildest dreams. They allowed the most cunning demagogue jihadists have produced to enter U.S. soil, thrash a prestigious university and belittle the dignity of Americans all at once – and all of this in defense of "free speech."

Bollinger began the controversial event with a few diminutive words about free speech. "It is a critical premise of freedom of speech that we do not honor the dishonorable when we open the public forum to their voices." Then the circus began in earnest, with Bollinger launching into a litany of accusations. He cited the Iranian government's "brutal crackdown" on dissidents, assailed Ahmadinejad's denial of the Holocaust as "ridiculous," and called Mahmoud "either brazenly provocative or astonishingly uneducated."

It was looking good. Bollinger was talking tough. I have to admit, I was almost admiring his performance – that is, up until the point he started in on his "white man's burden" bit.

"I am only a professor who is also a university president, and today I feel the weight of all the civilized world yearning to express the revulsion at what you stand for. I only wish I could do better."

Too bad he didn't feel the burden of handing over a propaganda cue to the Iranian. Too bad his smug, self-righteous lecturing about free speech clouded his judgment. And too bad "I'm-in-a-mood-for-a-jihad" wasn't exactly shaking there on the "dock." Because all of Bollinger's tough talk crumbled when Mr. Jihad took the stage.

Iran's president retorted that Bollinger's introduction was discourteous and intellectually dishonest. He said that in Iran, "free speech" is honored so much that no Iranian audience would be treated to a "vaccination" before the invited guest could speak. What he didn't say, of course, was that such a guest speaker would be treated to a lobotomy long before there was any need for a vaccination.

As for the cross examination, Ahmadinejad didn't actually answer any questions, as was to be expected, although he didn't exactly dance around them either.

When asked if they will stop seeking nuclear technology, he pointed to what he called American hypocrisy. "What right do you have to keep smaller nations from providing the necessary infrastructure to power themselves?"

When asked if Israel should be allowed to exist, the Iranian smugly said: "Why should the Palestinian people suffer for a European problem?"

When asked why Iran executes political dissidents and homosexuals, Mahmoud dismissively asserted, "We don't have that phenomenon in Iran" – a point with which he almost won my admiration.

Not once did he lose control. Not once did he look flustered. And not once did the Columbia faculty land a punch.

The so-called penetrative cross examination did nothing – except to make the questioners look like a bunch of fools and give the Iranian president some scattered bursts of applause.

Columbia gambled big time. The payoff could have been huge. Had they actually succeeded in giving a fatal rhetorical blow to the Iranian, showing him up for the jihadist lunatic that he is, Bollinger would have redeemed himself from the Minutemen fiasco of last year.

But in the end, Bollinger's performance was anything but decisive. In fact, it was Ahmadinejad who gave the liberals a whipping. And they deserved it. Unfortunately for Americans, that thrashing also extended, in the eyes of the jihadists, to the rest of their country, their society and their culture.

If there was a public relations victory scored at this event, it wasn't for "liberal" values. No, the victory was won by the madman. "I'm-in-a-mood-for-a-jihad," the Iranian president, a man who wants to destroy Israel and, eventually, America itself, took advantage of Columbia's stupid and arrogant invite and brazenly wagged his finger in the face of the "great Satan," – all on America soil.

And that is why Cairo, Baghdad and Tehran are laughing America to scorn.

---

Related special offer:

"Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West"

"Showdown with Nuclear Iran"