Q. What do Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Barack Obama have in common? 

            A. The president of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Democratic candidate for president of the United States of America have both chosen to spend much of their lives in the company of people who are virulently hostile to this country.  At least some of them seek to bring about, as Ahmadinejad puts it, a “world without America.”

            As it happens, Ahmadinejad will be given Tuesday a platform for his anti-American invective by the United Nations.  That organization increasingly not only shares a generalized transnational ambition to transform a sovereign, powerful United States in favor of one-world government.  Worse yet, thanks to the growing petro-wealth and aggressiveness of the leaders of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), the UN is actually starting to accommodate itself to that bloc’s ambition to have the new world order be arranged according to the totalitarian program the Iranian and other Islamists’ call Shariah.

In the early days of the Iranian revolution, Ahmadinejad was a street thug (and, according to some Americans taken hostage in the U.S. embassy in Tehran, one of their tormentors) in the service of the radical Shiite Islamist, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.  Ever since, he has been rewarded for his loyalty to the most intolerant strains of Islam and for his hostility to the “Great Satan.” 

            Today, that service continues as the front-man for the current ruling theocracy, led by another radical cleric, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.  The Iranian regime is not content with having Mahmoud Ahmadinejad touting repeatedly its determination to bring about a world without America – and, by the way, without Israel, either.  It is acting to acquire the capability to fulfill these genocidal threats with the development and deployment of the means of launching unimaginably destructive nuclear attacks against these nations. 

Is that possible?  Unfortunately, given Israel’s small size and concentrated population, a single weapon could effectively achieve Ahmadinejad’s stated goal of “wiping Israel off the map.”  Less well understood is the fact that, according to a congressional commission, a single nuclear weapon used to unleash a devastating electro-magnetic pulse via a nuclear detonation in space, could cause “catastrophic” damage to this country, too.  By some estimates, were the electrical grid to be taken down for a very long time, nine out of ten Americans would be unable to survive.  A world without America, indeed.

Thankfully, the friends of Barack Obama who have exhibited their own, rabid hostility toward this country have had more modest ambitions towards “changing” this country – or at least not been in a position to act on Iranian-style apocalyptic visions.  It is now common knowledge, however, that his pastor for twenty-years, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, called on God to “damn America” and that one of Obama’s early political allies, convicted terrorist William Ayers, expressed regret that he was unable to “do enough” when it came to “setting bombs.” 

Before Messrs. Wright and Ayers, though, there was “Frank,” the name Obama gives in his memoirs to a man he describes as a formative influence during his early years in Hawaii. It turns out this Frank was none other than Frank Marshall Davis, a Stalinist black Communist whom the inestimably valuable Cliff Kincaid (www.usasurvival.org), has identified as a “high-level operative in a Soviet-sponsored network in Hawaii,” which “the communists had targeted…largely because of its strategic location and importance to the U.S. defense effort.” Kincaid describes Davis as a “propagandist, racial agitator and recruiter for the Communist Party of the USA.” He reports that, during the 19 years Davis was under FBI surveillance, Obama’s mentor “spent much of his time” photographing Hawaii’s shorelines and beachfronts – presumably not for their scenic value.  

Last, but not least, there is increasing evidence of Obama’s long-standing ties to two others with records of hostility towards this country. According to investigative reporter Kenneth Timmerman (www.newsmax.com/newsfront/obama_sutton_saudi/2008/09/03/127490.html), the first is Khalid al-Mansour (a.k.a. Don Warden), once a prominent advocate for racist black nationalism.  Since his conversion to Islam, al-Mansour has worked closely with a Saudi billionaire anxious to “exert influence in the United States,” Prince Alwaleed bin Talal.   It will be recalled that the latter was the Wahhabi whose largesse then-New York Mayor Rudy Guiliani famously spurned after 9/11 upon learning the Saudi royal had blamed American policies for that day’s horrific attack.  Obama reportedly benefited from these Islamists’ help in securing a position at Harvard Law School – a university that now has a $20 million center named for the prince that helps legitimate the seditious practice of Shariah in America. 

            We know that Barack Obama has, in the past, declared his willingness to meet with the leaders of Iran without precondition.  While he has subsequently qualified that commitment, it seems fair to conclude that, given what they have in common, the Democratic candidate would feel unencumbered by a reluctance to dignify – to say nothing of encourage – so vociferous a proponent of anti-Americanism as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. 

It is clear what kind of “change” the Iranian president believes in and that which has animated several of Barack Obama’s long-time friends.  This week’s presidential debate may afford an opportunity to determine to what extent change inimical to America is also what the Democratic candidate believes in.