PrintApril 9, 2009
What planet is Roger Cohen on?
More Cohen follies on Iran, and this time, his ostrich-like pronouncements include heaps of praise for the current regime in Tehran.
Israeli's Prime Minister Netanyahu referred to the Iranian regime as a "messianic cult." Cohen dismisses this description as nonsense:
It's also the same "messianic apocalyptic cult" that has survived 30 years, ushered the country from the penury of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, shrewdly extended its power and influence, cooperated with America on Afghanistan before being consigned to "the axis of evil," and kept its country at peace in the 21st century while bloody mayhem engulfed neighbors to east and west and Israel fought two wars.I don't buy the view that, as Netanyahu told Goldberg, Iran is "a fanatic regime that might put its zealotry above its self-interest." Every scrap of evidence suggests that, on the contrary, self-interest and survival drive the mullahs.Yet Netanyahu insists (too much) that Iran is "a country that glorifies blood and death, including its own self-immolation." Huh?
The "Iran helped the US in Afghanistan" meme has been thoroughly overridden by their hiding al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders in the border region with Afghanistan.
And only a fantastically illiterate boob could make the statement that Iran was at "peace" with its neighbors as they have spent the last 6 years attempting to undermine the Iraqi government and establish a firm link with the Shias in that country so that they can dominate its affairs. This doesn't include their paid thugs in Hezb'allah starting a brief civil war in Lebanon and starting a war with Israel or their other paid thugs in Hamas also going after the Jewish state.
What an tool.
But that's not the half of it. Cohen on Pakistan:
On that ocular theme again, Netanyahu says Iran's "composite leadership" has "elements of wide-eyed fanaticism that do not exist in any other would-be nuclear power in the world." No, they exist in an actual nuclear power, Pakistan.
The idea that the mostly secular leadership in Pakistan - both government and army - can be in any way compared to the strict, fundamentalist, anti-modernists in Tehran is just incredible.
How many stupid things about Iran can Cohen write in one column? How about this:
Arab states, Netanyahu suggests, "fervently hope" that America will, if necessary, use "military power" to stop Iran going nuclear. My recent conversations, including with senior Saudi officials, suggest that's wrong and the longstanding Israeli attempt to convince Arab states that Iran, not Israel, is their true enemy will fail again.What's going on here? Israel, as it has for nearly two decades, is trying to lock in American support and avoid any disadvantageous change in the Middle Eastern balance of power, now overwhelmingly tilted in Jerusalem's favor, by portraying Iran as a monstrous pariah state bent on imminent nuclear war.A semblance of power balance is often the precondition for peace. Iran was left out of the Madrid and Oslo processes, with disastrous results. But that's a discussion for another day.
First, does Cohen actually believe the Saudis would tell him, a western infidel worm, their true feelings about the re-emergence of the Persian menace in the Arab world? Who is Roger Cohen that any Saudi would reveal the innermost fears connected with that regime? Glory be what an arrogant fool.
Secondly. I think it safe to say that the only people who want Iran part of the peace process are Hamas and the Iranians. Anyone else who thinks it a good idea are simply shills for the Iranians. Ask Fatah if they want the Iranians meddling in the peace process - a turn of events that would put them at great disadvantage with Hamas. And the whole point is moot because until the Iranian regime disavows its president's statement that Israel should be "wiped off the map," the chances of Israel sitting down with the mullahs are less than nil.
Cohen spent a few days in Iran, got the snow job for the ages, and now fancies himself a peacemaker. He is a dangerous, uninformed fool. Even the UN - the U fricking N - believes that the Iranians may be trying to build a bomb and IAEA chief ElBaradei believes the Iranians are very close to that goal.
And here, the unkindest cut of all:
Israeli hegemony is proving a kind of slavery. Passage to the Promised Land involves rethinking the Middle East, starting in Iran.
"Slavery" for whom? Who have the Israeli's enslaved? A democratic country set down in a sea of enemies and Cohen believes that Israel "hegemony" (defined as "leadership or predominant influence exercised by one nation over others") is "proving a kind of slavery?" Does Israel exercise "predominant influence" over Syria? Jordan? Lebanon? If not its immediate neighbors, who? Who has Israel enslaved? And if you argue that they have "enslaved" the Palestinians, you can't make the argument that Israel is being hegemonistic because they wish to protect themselves from fanatical suicide bombers and fighters.
A better question is "Why is the New York Times allowing this ignoramus to write for them?"
