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Cohen's Cuddly Mullahs

[Commentary] Max Boot - Roger Cohen of the New York Times is rapidly becoming Iran's foremost apologist in the U.S. In his latest special pleading on behalf of the theocratic dictators in Tehran, Cohen trots out the Mother of All Dumb Analogies: "Imagine if Roosevelt in 1942 had said to Stalin, sorry, Joe, we don't like your Communist ideology so we're not going to accept your help in crushing the Nazis. I know you're powerful, but we don't deal with evil." The reason that the U.S. allied with Russia in 1942 was that the two countries faced a common existential threat in Nazi Germany. As soon as that threat disappeared, the U.S. and USSR became mired in a decades-long Cold War. What common threat does Cohen imagine would bind the U.S. and Iran together? A Martian invasion? Cohen spins a "normalization scenario" and writes: "Any such deal...can be derailed any time by an attack from Israel, which has made clear it won't accept virtual nuclear power status for Iran." So you see the Iranians are ready to change their ways, to become a paragon of Western liberal virtue. If only the nasty Israelites would let the nice Iranians have a nuclear program, everyone could walk off into the sunset, arm in arm. It is rare to get such insights outside of official Iranian government organs.
2009-04-17 06:00:00
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