Allowing Qaddafi To Visit Sends The Wrong Message--Especially To Americans*

*Video courtesy of Fox News.

Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi is coming for a visit to Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey. And as the characteristically intelligent Rabbi Shmuley Boteach demonstrates, the current administration's maddeningly obsequious invitation to one of the world's most accomplished former sponsors of terrorism is incredibly shameful.

Granted, it should be said that the good Rabbi has a personal stake in the matter as Qaddafi is moving in next door in preparation for a speech at the perennially tolerant U.N., the master of the Islamic socialism and international terrorism of decades past arrogantly removing a fence and many beautiful trees in the process. And yet so many neighbors have even greater cause for complaint, especially when considering that many of the victims of Pan Am 103--the flight wherein 270 lives were destroyed by terrorist Abdelbaset Ali Mohamed Al Megrahi, a Libyan intelligence officer recently released prematurely from prison to a hero's welcome in Tripoli simply because he is dying from terminal prostate cancer--came from this very neighborhood.

With some soberness, it should be noted that Rabbi Shmuley is correct in suggesting that Secretary of State Clinton ought to permit Qaddafi to pitch his tent on her own lawn, or at least on that of the U.N.--after all, such a selfless act would certainly do much in giving currency to the idea that predictably dismissive politicians actually appreciate the real cost of such an ill-conceived visit. But perhaps the best course of action posited is ultimately to deny his visa altogether and let him stay in his own blighted country to consider the consequences of pursuing peace mostly out of a gnawing sense of political self-preservation.

To be sure, while President Bush normalized relations with Libya and President Obama has continued with that theme--though with an appalling penchant for inappropriate appeasement for those who wield unbridled authoritarianism to retain power--Americans rightly expect continuing progress in Libya towards an open society that respects human life. Or at the very least, they demand such simple reverence while visitors tread on American soil.

To ignore such a reasonable demand sends the wrong message--that both wholesale appeasement for historically brutal regimes and sneering political agendas unreservedly designed for self-preening are of greater significance than the lives of American citizens.