Another Dinner with the President

"The format of the evening is curious. In his calm and fluent voice — 'dear friends,' he calls us — he requests that we not ask questions,
but make statements, so that he can react to them in a form of
dialogue. The academics are not shy. They make statements not only
about the need for dialogue and reconciliation, but castigate the
Iranian government for chilling press freedoms and for arresting
Iranian-American scholars who were only trying to foster better
relations between America and Iran. Throughout, Ahmadinejad is courtly,
preternaturally calm, and fiercely articulate.

After an hour, he is ready to respond. He does so first with a
half-hour ode to the relationship between man and God that might have
been dictated by the Iranian poet Rumi. "I believe that Almighty God
created the universe for mankind. Man is God's most important creation
and it is through him that we appreciate the beauties of the universe.
God has sent man here on a mission." That mission, he says, is to
pursue love, justice, kindness and dignity. In fact, he repeats those
works so often that it begins to sound like a mantra: Love. Justice.
Kindness. Dignity. He speaks with the quiet zeal of a
not-very-flamboyant televangelist. "The pursuit of justice through love
and kindness and human dignity can end all conflicts on earth," he
says. "Inshallah.""

Another guest at this dinner was MSNBC Daily Nightly blogger Brian Williams.

Find Rachel Sklar's comment on the dinner in the Huffington Post and join the global debate, about whether dictators are ever good?!