Imagine if we could put Nicholas Kristof in a time machine and take him back to Nazi Germany in 1938, when Hitler was herding Jews and communists into concentration camps and readying his war machine for a strike against Poland. Would Kristof travel around Germany and write opinion pieces, telling us how fond ordinary Germans are of America despite the horrors being perpetrated by their government?
Flash forward to 2012: Kristof is undertaking a 1,700-mile road trip across Iran and seeking to convince us of the goodwill of Iran's citizenry toward the US, notwithstanding that country's repeated calls for the annihilation of Israel, its discrimination against Baha'is, Kurds and Sunni Muslims, its murder of homosexuals, and its stoning to death of women accused of adultery.
Bear in mind that Kristof does not speak Farsi, which makes this feeble attempt at journalism that much more farcical.
Of course, in his prior
New York Times op-ed, "Hugs From Iran" (
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/14/opinion/kristof-hugs-from-iran.html) and in today's op-ed, "Pinched and Griping in Iran" (
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/17/opinion/sunday/kristof-pinched-and-griping-in-iran.html), Kristof is kind enough to mention in passing mistreatment of Baha'is, but there is no mention of Iran's threats against Israel, no discussion of the oppression of Iran's Kurdish minority, no utterance concerning the hanging of homosexuals, and no condemnation of the stoning of women.
In today's opinion piece, Kristof tells us that ordinary Iranians are suffering as the result of economic sanctions and declares, in his expert judgment, that the threat of military action against Iran's nuclear weapons development facilities should therefore be retracted:
"Yet, with apologies to the many wonderful Iranians who showered me with hospitality, I favor sanctions because I don’t see any other way to pressure the regime on the nuclear issue or ease its grip on power. My takeaway is that sanctions are working pretty well.
This success makes talk of a military strike on Iranian nuclear sites unwise as well as irresponsible. Aside from the human toll, war would create a nationalist backlash that would cement this regime in place for years to come — just when economic sanctions are increasingly posing a challenge to its survival. No one can predict the timing, but Egypt, Tunisia and Yemen have shown that unpopular regimes that cannot last, don’t."
It never occurred to Kristof that the West would not have imposed sanctions or be negotiating with Iran over its nuclear weapons development facilities if Israel had not threatened to destroy those facilities from the air.
Also, Kristof fails to mention that Iranians rose against their tyrannical regime in 2009, but Obama refused to back the protesters, whose leaders were imprisoned.
Moreover, Syria is demonstrating that if an unpopular regime is willing to brutalize its citizenry while the world does little more than raise a disapproving eyebrow (thank you again, Obama), it can last far longer than anyone might have dreamed. And in Iran's case, it might last just long enough to send a ballistic missile, armed with a nuclear warhead, hurtling toward Israel, described by the ayatollahs as "the Little Satan."
Threaten Iran with a military strike to neutralize its nuclear armaments facilities? No, says Nicholas, who is being showered with Iranian hospitality, we mustn't do that.
And I'm certain Kristof would have also opposed threats to strike Nazi Germany's war machine in 1938, despite violations by that country of its Versailles undertakings. Imagine the bloodshed that could have been saved if a united world had demanded a cessation of Germany's preparations for war. Would mere economic sanctions have stopped Hitler? Sorry, Nicholas, not a chance.
