Roger Cohen's "Tunisian Dominoes?": The Beginnings of the Next Fairytale

Roger Cohen has breezed into Tunisia, and today, in an op-ed entitled "Tunisian Dominoes?" (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/21/opinion/21iht-edcohen21.html?hp), he tells us:

"These are heady days in the Arab world’s fragile democratic bridgehead."

Cohen concludes:

"There will, in coming weeks, be agents provocateurs bent on the worst, and the usual Muslim-hating naysayers. Arab democracy is threatening to a host of vested interests and glib clichés. It is also the only way out of the radicalizing impasse of Arab klepto-gerontocracies and, as such, a vital American interest."

Lest we forget, in 2009, in an op-ed entitled "Iran Awakens Yet Again" (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/11/opinion/11iht-edcohen.html), Cohen, who doesn't speak Farsi, informed us:

"Iran, its internal fissures exposed as never before, is teetering again on the brink of change. 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."

So, in Iran Cohen witnessed "giddy" days, and now in Tunisia Cohen is witnessing "heady" days.

Unfortunately for Roger and the rest of the world, his Iranian bubble burst, but this did not prevent him from ignoring the agony of Iran's Baha'is, Kurds, homosexual community, Sunnis and political dissidents, while fabricating that fairytale. Today, in making the case that Tunisia is the Arabs' "Gdansk", which will bring democracy and freedom to the Arab world, Cohen is again choosing to ignore the inconvenient.

Hamas, which came to power in Gaza by way of democratic elections in 2005, is not willing to hold new elections. Instead, they are still busy consolidating power in the Gaza Strip by imprisoning and executing Fatah opponents, while persecuting Christians and gays. For the record, the Hamas leadership does not consist of aging despots clinging to power; rather, its leadership consists of brutal Islamists, who do not hesitate to kill and terrorize in order to maintain power.

Cohen disparages 82-year-old Hosni Mubarak, but fails to acknowledge the brutal massacre of Egypt's Christian Copts outside a church in Alexandria earlier this month, which left 25 persons dead. When Mubarak departs the scene, Cohen does not tell us what the Muslim Brotherhood, if they come to power in Egypt via democratic elections or otherwise, has planned for Egypt's Copts, who comprise some 10% of Egypt's population.

In Lebanon, Hassan Nasrallah, head of the Hezbollah party (i.e. Party of God) and far from being "old", just brought down the Lebanese government, owing to a draft indictment by a UN tribunal, pinning Hezbollah with responsibility for the assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in 2005. Saad Hariri, Rafik's son and no "oldster", has thus far not caved in to Hezbollah; however, this past week Hezbollah threatened a coup, when it sent its "blackshirts" throughout Beirut in a display of force.

Tunisia is the Arab world's "democratic bridgehead"? Roger, don't you think it's a little early to be making such pronouncements? Don't you think before doing again what you did in Iran, you should first take several years to learn more about this country?

Forgive me, Roger, for suggesting that one need not be an "agent provocateur" or "Muslim-hating naysayer" in order to disagree with your latest analysis, particularly given how wildly off the mark your past analysis has proven. It could just well be that much of the Arab Middle East is currently not ready for freedom of thought and expression, which are the hallmarks of western democracy.

Thomas Friedman's "Saudi Time": A Sure-Fire Peace Proposal! . . . Not

In an op-ed in today's New York Times entitled "Saudi Time" (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/08/opinion/08friedman.html?hp), Thomas Friedman calls upon King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia to take the lead role in bringing about Middle East peace. Friedman writes:

"Some eight years ago, in February 2002, I interviewed then-Crown Prince-now-King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia at his horse farm outside Riyadh. I shared with him a column I had written — suggesting that the Arab League put forth a peace plan offering Israel full peace for full withdrawal from the West Bank, Gaza and Arab East Jerusalem for a Palestinian state — when he feigned surprise and said: 'Have you broken into my desk?' The Saudi leader said he was preparing the exact same plan and offered it up — 'full withdrawal from all the occupied territories, in accord with U.N. resolutions, including in Jerusalem, for full normalization of relations.'”

Friedman concludes:

"King Abdullah should invite Mr. Netanyahu to Riyadh and present [his peace plan] to him personally."

Personally, I would take the Abdullah-Friedman Plan a few steps further . . .

After Netanyahu arrives in Riyadh, signs off on Abdullah's peace plan, and is given a tour of Mecca, we should expect Hamas, Iran's proxy in Gaza, whose charter calls for the murder of all Jews (not just Israelis), to stop firing mortar shells, rockets and missiles (some 11,000 since 2001) into Israel.

And when a "rogue" Hamas operative fires a shoulder-held missile at a 747 landing at Ben Gurion Airport (some five miles from Israel's border with the Palestinian Authority -- Israel is only 9 miles wide at its waist) and sends the jet crashing to the ground, Israel will simply accept the provocation as one of the risks it took for peace.

And Hezbollah, Iran's proxy in Lebanon, will turn its arsenal of 50,000 rockets and missiles aimed at Israel, over to the Lebanese government.

And Saudi Arabia's own war with Shiite rebels, backed by Iran, in Yemen's northwest Saada province, which has left 175,000 people homeless, will end overnight.

And Saudi Arabia will stop lashing and handing out prison sentences to women who have been gang raped.

And Libya will no longer celebrate the release from prison of Lockerbie bombers.

And the killing of Black Africans (some 400,000 murdered) by Sudan's Arabs will suddenly end.

And 35 million Kurds, living in Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran, will be granted statehood, thus putting an end to years of pillage and atrocities directed against them.

And Iran will stop imprisoning and executing its peaceful Baha'i minority, grant homosexuals the basic human rights to which they are entitled, and stop stoning to death women for alleged adultery.

And throughout the Muslim Middle East, there will be an end to "honor killings" against women, and those guilty of murdering their wives, daughters and sisters will be punished.

Quickly, Bibi! I'll drop by your house later today, and let's make those flight reservations to Riyadh!

From Iran with Love: Neda's Fiancé Visits Israel

On Monday Iranian journalist Caspian Makan, the fiancé of Neda Agha Soltan, whose murder during a demonstration in Teheran on June 20 rocked the world, met on Monday with Israeli President Peres. Makan, who fled Iran via Turkey after serving time in Tehran's Evin Prison, came to Israel as a "peace ambassador".

According to the Jerusalem Post:

"Neda was an enlightened person, a freedom fighter, to whom nothing was more important than freedom. She loved humanity with all her soul, Makan told Peres.

. . . .

After she was murdered, she became a global symbol of freedom. Her courage and determination led to a closing of ranks among the Iranian people and hopefully, said Makam, would produce the results of which Soltan had dreamed.

. . . .

Peres told Makam that he understood how difficult it was for him to carry the burden of grief. He assured Makam that he would find friends and a very warm reception in Israel, and added that he appreciated the fact that Makam had given him the opportunity to personally convey his condolences over the tragedy and to express his hopes for Iran’s future.

Makam replied that he had been impressed by what he had already seen in Israel. It was in his a view a country that respected its citizens and allowed them total freedom – a situation that contrasted radically with that of Iran.

Before leaving, Makam said that he had come to Israel on behalf of his people as an ambassador of the peace camp. He had no doubt that Neda’s soul felt the warmth and the sensitivity of the reception he had been accorded in Israel."

http://www.jpost.com/Israel/Article.aspx?id=171614

It is remarkable that this story did not receive greater coverage throughout the world.

There is no historic basis for hostility between Iran and Israel. As I have frequently noted, the current animus between Israel and the Islamic Republic of Iran is an orchestrated sideshow involving a power struggle between Sunni and Shiite Islam.

But let's ignore the macro and concentrate on the micro: Makam's visit to Israel was a powerful personal message of peace of the kind needed to bring sanity to the region.

Roger Cohen: Obama Requires Viagra to Handle Iran

In a tedious op-ed in today's online New York Times entitled "Iran in Its Intricacy", Roger Cohen limply opines that the U.S. must avoid military confrontation and patiently seek a diplomatic solution to the current crisis involving Tehran's efforts to build nuclear weaponry. My reponse, if The Times deigns to post it:

Roger Cohen, who in the past insisted that "Iran is not totalitarian", now concludes: "It is time for the United States to help Iran’s emergence from isolation . . . through firmness allied to creative diplomacy and sustained involvement."

"Creative diplomacy and sustained involvement"? Sorry, Roger, but I don't have a clue what you're talking about, although it did require "sustained involvement" to make it through your op-ed. My guess is that your elusive verbiage would elicit chuckles from the persons being tortured to death in Evin Prison in Tehran.

"Firmness", however, I do understand, as does Ahmadinejad, and regarding firmness, please consider the following chain of events:

“I would never take a military option off the table.”
Barack Obama on Iran, throughout the 2008 presidential campaign.

"We are not taking any option off the table at all.”
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, January 2009 Senate confirmation hearing, responding to a question concerning the Iran military option.

"What we are going to be working on over the next several weeks is developing a significant regime of sanctions that will indicate to [Iran] how isolated they are from the international community as a whole."
Barack Obama, Press Conference, February 9, 2010

"Obviously, we don't want Iran to become a nuclear weapons power, but we are not planning anything other than going for sanctions."
Hillary Clinton, Al-Arabiya television, Wednesday, February 17, 2010.

"We are moving expeditiously and thoroughly in the Security Council, I can't give you an exact date, but I would assume some time in the next several months."
Hillary Clinton on her plane to Buenos Aires, responding to the question when the U.S. might seek sanctions against Iran, March 2, 2010.

Firmness? The Obama administration is obviously in need of Viagra.

Thanks for the advice, Roger. You've been so right in the past.

Just Say No to Iran!

Over the course of recent months we have been forced to suffer Roger Cohen's paeans to Persian "civility" scrawled over the pages of The New York Times. Now, in a May 24, 2009 op-ed published by The Times entitled "Are We Losing Iran?", Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett also implore President Obama to forge "a new approach toward Iran." The Leveretts contend:

On its present course, the White House's approach will not stop Tehran's development of a nuclear fuel program - or, as Iran's successful test of a medium-range, solid-fuel missile last week underscored, military capacities of other sorts. It will also not provide an alternative to continued antagonism between the United States and Iran - a posture that for 30 years has proved increasingly damaging to the interests of the United States and its allies in the Middle East.

Does this mean that Israel is no longer an ally of the U.S., or, do the Leveretts presume to know what is best for Israel as well as America's other Middle East allies, i.e. Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan?

The Leveretts go on to say:

The notion of an Israeli-moderate Arab coalition united to contain Iran is not only delusional, it would leave the Palestinian and Syrian-Lebanese tracks of the Arab-Israeli conflict unresolved and prospects for their resolution in free-fall. These tracks cannot be resolved without meaningful American interaction with Iran and its regional allies, Hamas and Hezbollah.

Sorry, Leveretts, but you've got it wrong. Hamas and Hezbollah are not Iran's "regional allies", but rather Iran's regional surrogates, busying themselves with murder, suicide bombings, terror aimed at civilians, the undermining of governments allied with the U.S., and illegal drug dealings. Are you asking the U.S. to be nice to Iran in the hopes that Iran will call off its dogs? Do you presume that Iran is capable of dictating terms to Syria, which views Lebanon as its backyard?

More to the point, how does anyone write an op-ed of this nature without mentioning Sunni/Shiite tensions? Do you know that the dozens of tribal conflicts among the Arab nations and between Iraq and Iran have claimed an exponentially larger number of lives than the combined Israeli/Arab wars?

And how does anyone call for "a new approach toward Iran" without mentioning the oppression of Iran's Baha'is, Kurds and Jews?

Yes, the ascension of President Obama undoubtedly marks a sea change in U.S. foreign policy, but does this mean that the U.S. need befriend every rabid totalitarian regime, every savage repressive theocracy, with the goal of fostering "change"? Guess what? You cannot and should not be friends with everyone, and in the instance of Iran, Obama should just say no -

• Because Iran persecutes its Baha'i minority in much the same way that the Nazis persecuted the Jews;
• Because Iran brutally persecutes its Kurdish minority;
• Because Iran stones to death alleged adulterers with their children watching;
• Because Iran severs the hands of alleged thieves;
• Because Iran tortures and murders unfriendly journalists;
• Because Iran imprisons anti-regime bloggers;
• Because Iran calls for Shiite revolution across the globe;
• Because Iran funds suicide bombings directed against civilians;
• Because Iran sponsors terrorist bombings against Jews as far away as Argentina;
• Because Iran supports genocide in Darfur;
• Because Iran hangs homosexuals;
• Because Iran has called to "wipe Israel off the map";
• Because Iran oppresses and sanctions violence against women;
• Because Iran seeks to undermine governments friendly to the U.S., e.g., Egypt;
• Because a regime crazy enough to do all of the above is crazy enough to let its nukes fly;
• Because if Iran has the bomb, Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan will also be quick to follow (strange how these four countries are not perturbed by the Israeli arsenal, but then Israel is not calling for Shiite revolution).

If Obama turns a cold shoulder to Iran, does this mean that tiny Israel will be reenacting Thermopylae against the Persian hordes? Nah. As already noted, enmity between Shiites and Sunnis far exceeds Iran's hatred against the Jews, and with oil at $60 a barrel, Iran cannot meet its domestic budget while pursuing foreign intrigue.