The Banality of Roger Cohen

In an op-ed entitled "The Banality of Good" in today's New York Times, Roger Cohen asks:

"What was it like in the leafy Grunewald neighborhood [of Berlin] to watch your Jewish neighbors — lawyers, businessmen, dentists — trooping head bowed to the nearby train station for transport eastward to extinction?"

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/04/opinion/04iht-edcohen.html

Cohen, of course, was born after the Holocaust, yet we can nevertheless ask him, what was it like to sojourn in the Islamic Republic of Iran at a time when Baha'is, Kurds, Sunni Muslims, homosexuals, political dissidents, and journalists were trundled off to prison, torture and/or execution? In this regard, Cohen's op-eds speak for themselves:

• In "The Other Iran" (Feb. 1, 2009), Cohen declared that the "Islamic Revolution has proved resilient in part through flexibility", and "axis-of-evil myopia has led U.S. policy makers to underestimate the social, psychological and political forces for pragmatism, compromise and stability" in Iran.

• In "Reading Khamenei in Tehran" (Feb. 18, 2009), Cohen insisted that "Khamenei sees his primary task as safeguarding a revolution whose core values include . . . social justice."

• In "What Iran's Jews Say" (Feb. 22, 2009), we were told that the "reality of Iranian civility toward Jews tells us more about Iran - its sophistication and culture - than all the inflammatory rhetoric." Cohen failed to inform us that he was speaking with Iranian Jews via an interpreter who was reporting back to the Iranian government. He also failed to inform us of what he later acknowledged at Sinai Temple in LA: the Jews with whom he spoke were exercising self-censorship.

• In "From Tehran to Tel Aviv" (Mar. 22, 2009), Cohen told us that the Iranian "regime's provocative rhetoric masks essential pragmatism" and "the mullahs are anything but mad".

• In "Israel Cries Wolf" (Apr. 8, 2009), Cohen concluded: "What's critical right now is that Obama view Netanyahu's fear-mongering with an appropriate skepticism, rein him in, and pursue his regime-recognizing opening toward Tehran".

• In "Iran Awakens Yet Again" (Jun. 10, 2009), Cohen enthused: "For months now, I've been urging another look at Iran, beyond dangerous demonization of it as a totalitarian state. Seldom has the country looked less like one than in these giddy June days." Cohen described Iran's democracy as "incomplete but vigorous".

• In "Iran's Day of Anguish" (Jun. 14, 2009), Cohen finally backtracked a bit and acknowledged "I erred in underestimating the brutality and cynicism of a regime that understands the uses of ruthlessness."

• In "My Name Is Iran" (Jun. 18, 2009), Cohen labeled Mir-Hossein Moussavi "the reformist of impeccable revolutionary credentials". No mention that as prime minister, Moussavi presided over the execution of thousands of dissidents. No mention that Moussavi defended the taking of hostages at the U.S. embassy in Tehran and backed the fatwa against British author Salman Rushdie.

• In "Children of Tomorrow" (Jun. 22, 2009), Cohen described his meeting with the son of Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, whom Cohen called "the establishment's embittered eminence grise". Cohen failed to note that Rafsanjani, a leading backer of the "reformist" Moussavi, is charged by Argentine prosecutors with masterminding the 1994 suicide bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, which resulted in the murder of 85 people and the serious wounding of 151.

• In "Iran's Second Sex" (Jun. 26, 2009) Cohen came full circle and acknowledged that Iranian women's "subjugation became a pillar of the Islamic state," despite his original premise that the Islamic revolution's "core values" include "social justice". Cohen of all people complained that Qom's mullahs "have lots of training in how to say the opposite of what they said before."

In today's op-ed, Cohen would have us know, that "In the quiet Quangels, Fallada has created an immortal symbol of those who fight back against 'the vile beyond all vileness' and so redeem us all." Yet where in all of Cohen's commentary from Iran was there a meaningful analysis of the stoning to death of women convicted of adultery, the hanging of homosexuals, or the savage persecution of Iran's Baha'is?