You wouldn't be flip-flopping, now, would you?

You seem to be fretting now that people unfriendly to America might wring some propaganda mileage out of this. But they always do, anyway, even if, as you've pointed out in your examples, they have to out-and-out-lie, as the Iranian government tried to do with its own people; and as al-Jazeera did more subtly, lying by omission. Given that we can count on our enemies to be constant and predictable, I think we're better off taking the initiative as we did this time and confront the problem head-on.

Let's play Harry Turtledove, and imagine the propaganda that would result had Conservatives gotten their way and Ahmadinjad been banned from speaking anywhere but at the UN. We'd be accused of being afraid of Iran and its leader, of being too spineless to confront him, too unsure of ourselves and our values to risk pitting our ideas against his, and of being out-and-out hypocrites when we claim to value freedom of speech and thought so much.

And you know, that would sting, because there'd be an element of truth in it. It is cowardice to run away from the opportunity to confront somebody like Ahmadinejad, to just sit on the sidelines while he toured our country and leave unchallenged his attempts to derive propaganda value from the trip. He'd have won, if Conservatives had prevailed.

We spoiled Ahmadinejad's little jaunt to the USA, and I think we did good.