WHY DON'T THEY KEEP HIM OUT?

Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad -- the Izod Ayatollah -- has come back to New York to address the UN General Assembly. If the United Nations today bore even the remotest resemblance to the international peacekeeping body it was founded to be, the line to denounce him would snake around the block, and Ahmadinejad would be arrested as soon as he set foot in New York. In fact, the International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem has called for just that: it is preparing a petition for the UN Secretary-General, calling for the Iranian Thug-in-Chief’s arrest and indictment on charges of inciting genocide against Israel.

But the visiting Iranian president can’t be arrested: he’s “legitimized” by Iran’s UN membership, and the UN Treaty prevents his detention.

And, of course, in the run-up to Ahmadinejad’s visit, the hard Left is planning to honor him. The perpetually-outraged women of Code Pink are planning a protest -- against George W. Bush, of course. The UN General Assembly’s new president, leftist priest and old Sandinista Miguel d’Escoto, will clink glasses with Ahmadinejad at a dinner in his honor hosted by five American liberal Christian organizations, the Mennonite Central Committee, the Quaker United Nations Office, the World Council of Churches, Religions for Peace and the American Friends Service Committee.

Hillary Clinton and a coalition of Jewish groups demonstrated the tenacity of partisan politics even in the face of the prospect of nuclear genocide from Iran: first Clinton declined to attend a rally protesting Ahmadinejad’s UN appearance when she found out Sarah Palin would be there, and then the Jewish groups hosting the rally disinvited Palin.

Our national unity in the face of the threat from Iran must have the mullahs quaking.

In light of his many belligerent statements, frequently demonstrating genocidal intent, it is appalling that the UN would once again allow Ahmadinejad a platform, and shameful that d’Escoto and the rest would welcome him rather than denouncing him. Ahmadinejad has boasted that “the annihilation of the Zionist regime will come.” During Israel’s incursion against Hizballah in Lebanon in 2006, he declared, “The Islamic umma [community] will not allow its historic enemy [Israel] to live in its heartland.” Israel’s end is near, he said: “There is no doubt that the new wave [of attacks] in Palestine will soon wipe off this disgraceful blot [Israel] from the face of the Islamic world.” He has declared that “the Zionist regime is counterfeit and illegitimate and cannot survive.”

His genocidal statements have gone beyond Israel. At the “World Without Zionism” conference held in Tehran in October 2005, as the crowd chanted “death to Israel, death to America, death to England,” the Iranian President again recalled Khomeini’s words: “Once, his eminency Imam [Ruhollah] Khomeini stated that the illegal regime of the Pahlavis must go, and it happened. Then he said the Soviet empire would disappear, and it happened. He also said that this evil man Saddam [Hussein] must be punished, and we see that he is under trial in his country. His eminency also said that the occupation regime of Qods [Jerusalem, or Israel] must be wiped off from the map of the world, and with the help of the Almighty, we shall soon experience a world without America and Zionism, notwithstanding those who doubt.”

Ahmadinejad has threatened Iran’s foes with nuclear action: “Today, the Iranian people is the owner of nuclear technology. Those who want to talk with our people should know what people they are talking to. If some believe they can keep talking to the Iranian people in the language of threats and aggressiveness, they should know that they are making a bitter mistake. If they have not realized this by now, they soon will, but then it will be too late. Then they will realize that they are facing a vigilant, proud people.”

Last July, he crowed that “the big powers are going down. They have come to the end of their power, and the world is on the verge of entering a new, promising era.”

The “new, promising era” that Ahmadinejad envisions features a dominant Iran and a beaten, subservient America, as he himself explained in August 2006: “If you want to have good relations with the Iranian people in the future, you should acknowledge the right and the might of the Iranian people, and you should bow and surrender to the might of the Iranian people. If you do not accept this, the Iranian people will force you to bow and surrender.”

It doesn’t look as if force will be needed. The UN General Assembly is lining up now to do just that.