Yourish.com

02/16/2010

Cohen pines for Palestine

Filed under: Israel — Tags: — Soccerdad @ 9:30 am

Roger Cohen – the columnist who vouched for the moderation of Iran’s rulers - was off to such a promising start, in Hard Mideast Truths:

Here’s what I believe. Centuries of persecution culminating in the Holocaust created a moral imperative for a Jewish homeland, Israel, and demand of America that it safeguard that nation in the breach.

But then he takes a quick turn into nonsense.

But past persecution of the Jews cannot be a license to subjugate another people, the Palestinians. Nor can the solemn U.S. promise to stand by Israel be a blank check to the Jewish state when its policies undermine stated American aims.

Israel has made continual efforts since 1993 to reach some sort of accomodation with the Palestinians. But in the end the biggest efforts: Barak’s offer to Arafat at Camp David in 2000 and Olmert’s offer to Abbas in 2008, were rejected as insufficient. Yaacov Lozowick summarizes:

Since Rabin in the 90s, Israel has had the following prime ministers, who had the following take on how the conflict with the Palestinians might be either resolved, or at least managed if resolution is impossible, as most Israelis are convinced, even though this means it’s they (and the Palestinians) who aren’t going to have peace:

Shimon Peres, 1995-96. Considerably more dovish than Rabin, and elected out of office because he was refusing to recognize that the Palestinians weren’t using the same rulebook.

Binyamin Netanyahu, 1996-1999, elected only after changing the Likud’s platform to acquiesce in partition as the way to resolve the conflict (i.e repudiating Greater Israel).

Ehud Barak, 1999-2000, elected on the clear platform of negotiating a partition with the Palestinians, he offered to dismantle some 80% of the settlements in the summer of 2000, and was praised for this by Bill Clinton.

Ariel Sharon, 2001-(Dec) 2005, initially elected to defeat the 2nd Intifada, not negotiate with Arafat, in 2005 Sharon unilaterally pulled out of Gaza while dismantling 23 settlements, then split the Likud and set up Kadima so as to continue the partition on the West Bank.

Ehud Olmert, 2006-2009, Olmert was elected in 2006 on an explicit promise to disband settlements and evacuate Israel from most of the West Bank, even if the Palestinians wouldn’t give peace in return. This intention was derailed by the 2nd Lebanon war, yet by September 2008 Olmert was offering the Palestinians more than they had ever been offered, including an effective 100% of the West Bank or adjacent areas and partition of Jerusalem.

2009– Binyamin Netanyahu indeed doesn’t look like your run-of-the-mill NIF activist, yet he has openly accepted partition as the way to reach a two-state solution.

Even with those rejections, Palestinians are, for the most part, ruled by their own corrupt and dysfunctional governments. They may not constitute a nation, but that’s the result of choices made by Palestinian leadership. Cohen, in effect, approves giving the Palestinians a veto over peace thus removing any incentive for them to reach an agreement with Israel.

Cohen is not alone in promoting this. But given how utterly discredited he was by the Iranian regime, I didn’t think it unreasonable to pile on.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

06/21/2009

What next in Iran?

Filed under: Iran — Tags: — Soccerdad @ 2:00 pm

I looked up through the smoke and saw a poster of the stern visage of Khomeini above the words, “Islam is the religion of freedom.”

When he’s not acting as an apologist for the Iranian regime, Roger Cohen has a really good eye for detail. Earlier Cohen wrote:

Khamenei has taken a radical risk. He has factionalized himself, so losing the arbiter’s lofty garb, by aligning himself with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad against both Mir Hussein Moussavi, the opposition leader, and Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a founding father of the revolution.

He has taunted millions of Iranians by praising their unprecedented participation in an election many now view as a ballot-box putsch. He has ridiculed the notion that an official inquiry into the vote might yield a different result. He has tried pathos and he has tried pounding his lectern. In short, he has lost his aura.

The taboo-breaking response was unequivocal. It’s funny how people’s obsessions come back to bite them. I’ve been hearing about Khamenei’s fear of “velvet revolutions” for months now. There was nothing velvet about Saturday’s clashes. In fact, the initial quest to have Moussavi’s votes properly counted and Ahmadinejad unseated has shifted to a broader confrontation with the regime itself.

(via memeorandum)

Wolf Howling takes comfort from another observation of Cohen’s

The Iranian police commander, in green uniform, walked up Komak Hospital Alley with arms raised and his small unit at his side. “I swear to God,” he shouted at the protesters facing him, “I have children, I have a wife, I don’t want to beat people. Please go home.”

and adds:

Maybe the next time, that Iranian policeman does not turn away from the protestors, but joins them. For there will come a point when those in the security apparatus see their kinsman being beaten, maimed and killed and say, enough is enough. When that happens, the evil that is Iran’s theocracy will fall.

Is Cohen’s description of a “ballot box putsch” accurate? There’s an excellent Iranian electoral map (from the Guardian) over at the Middle East Strategy at Harvard blog that illustrates s the unlikelihood of this being an honest election.

And what of the man around whom the protesters are uniting? Here’s something from Michael Ledeen who produces a statement he believes comes from Mosavi’s camp regarding the American administration (via memeorandum):

By such statements, your administration and you discourage the Iranian people, who believe and trust in the values of democracy and freedom. We are pleased to see that you have condemned the regime’s murderous violence, and we look forward to stronger support for the rightful struggle of the Iranian people against the actions of a regime that is your enemy as well as ours.

Given his history, it’s reasonable to wonder if Mousavi himself believes in freedom and democracy. Indeed Fausta – who notes that electoral thief Chavez is apparently looking to help out Khameini – links to Andrew Bostom, who writes:

One need only watch this surreal pre-election “debate” between the head of the Khameini faction, Ahmadinejad, and the champion of the Rafsanjani faction, Mousavi-“Hizballahi” (see reference below) to understand the closed circle which Iran remains. They don’t disagree on “issues” such as Holocaust denial, or brutality to prisoners of war—let alone the notion that Iran remain an oppressive, jihadist theocratic Shiite Islamic State—in the mold of their ultimate spiritual leader the late Ayatollah Khomeiini—they have trivial tactical disagreements, and are in a jealous power struggle between themselves and the competing jihadist factions they represent.

However Michael Totten holds out some faint hope, that perhaps the protests will transform Mousavi too:

Mousavi himself probably doesn’t know what his agenda will be a week or a month from today if he’s still alive and out of prison. If he wins the internal power struggle, topples “Supreme Guide” Ali Khamenei, and becomes president, he might end up more Khrushchev than Gorbachev. History, though, is moving at light speed in Iran. And human personalities can be powerfully transformed during volcanic upheavals where the stakes are victory or destruction.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

06/15/2009

No Roger, there is no Santa Claus

Filed under: Iran — Tags: — Soccerdad @ 10:00 am

It’s always sad when a child has his childhood fantasies ripped away from him. It didn’t seem that long ago that Roger Cohen (and David Ignatius) were telling us that the “Mad Mullahs” of Iran were just a neo-conservative myth.

Even now, in Iran’s day of anguish Cohen writes:

Iran exists still, of course, but today it is a dislocated place. Angry divisions have been exposed, between founding fathers of the revolution — Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader, and Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the former president — and between the regime and the people.

Khamenei, under pressure from Rafsanjani, appeared ready to let the election unfold, but he reversed course, under pressure, or perhaps even diktat, from the Revolutionary Guards and other powerful constituencies.

Khamenei, apparently, was forced to do his dirty deed, stealing the election from the less obviously extreme Mousavi. But wait a second, Roger, what did you call him? “Supreme leader?” Old myths die hard I suppose. I wonder how he felt the first time he discovered that there was no such thing as a tooth fairy? Did he take it this hard?

It’s not like there weren’t observers who didn’t see this coming or who didn’t believe in the tooth fairy in the first place. And of course there are those who, unfortunately, know what’s about to come next.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

05/18/2009

Jolly Roger

Filed under: Iran, Israel — Tags: — Soccerdad @ 9:00 am

Roger Cohen, who has spent the last several months arguing that Iran is moderate because only 75% of its Jews chose to or were able to leave, is at it again ahead of President Obama’s meeting with Prime MInister Netanyahu. In Arabs, Persians Jews he writes:

American interests are, however, another story. They are not served by having no communication with Iran, the rising Mideast power; nor by the uncritical support of Israel that has allowed West Bank settlements to grow and peace to fade; nor by relationships with Arab states that comfort stasis.

With opinion writers of a certain ilk, the growth of “settlements” – not terror – has been the biggest impediment to peace in the Middle East. Shmuel Rosner, though, points out that a settlement freeze isn’t as clearly defined as many seem to think.

The problem is the phrase “settlement freeze.” As a slogan it’s catchy, but in practice the discussion between the U.S. and the Israeli government is much more nuanced. There’s the “freeze” on new settlements (Israel doesn’t build any); there’s Israel’s commitment to remove illegal outposts (and the sub-issue of who determines what’s illegal); there’s the issue of building within existing settlements – those that are part of “settlement blocks” (which will presumably remain in Israeli hands according to the 2004 “Bush letter to Sharon”), and those that aren’t part of the blocks; there’s the issue of building only for “natural growth”; there’s, of course, the question of building in greater Jerusalem.

For the Arab League a settlement freeze would mean Israel even giving up the Ramat Eshkol, Amot and Gilo neighborhoods in Jerusalem. Even under the most conciliatory Israeli government that isn’t going to happen. But when politicians, diplomats, academics and journalists say “settlement freeze” they are effectively supporting the most extreme interpretation of “settlement” and giving further fodder to Israel’s enemies.

And as far as the failure to engage Iran has been a failure, what did those who did engage Iran determine?

Yet as Thérèse Delpech, a leading nonproliferation expert at France’s Atomic Energy Commission, warned last October at a Brookings Institution lecture, “We [the Europeans] have negotiated during five years with the Iranians . . . and we came to the conclusion that they are not interested at all in negotiating, but . . . [only] in buying time for their military program.” In those five years, she also noted, Tehran never implied that if only the Americans were at the table the clerical regime would be amenable to compromise.

I realize that being wrong doesn’t bother Roger Cohen. Read the rest if you want.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

04/27/2009

There is no Sadat

Filed under: Hamas, Iran, Israel, Israel Derangement Syndrome, Jew Cooties — Tags: — Soccerdad @ 9:30 am

Stop him before he writes again. Roger Cohen’s latest column, Clinton’s Middle East Pirouette, starts off badly:

The sparring between the United States and Israel has begun, and that’s a good thing. Israel’s interests are not served by an uncritical American administration. The Jewish state emerged less secure and less loved from Washington’s post-9/11 Israel-can-do-no-wrong policy.

At the time of 9/11, Israel had been under assault in the course of the so-called “Aqsa intifada” for nearly a year. The Aqsa intifada had resulted from seven years of acting as if Yasser Arafat could do no wrong. It was a period when Arafat and the PA received legitimacy, money, arms and territory and built a terror infrastructure with which to attack Israel. After Arafat rejected Ehud Barak’s offer in 2000, he launched the intifada using the resources he had received, uncritically over the previous seven years. Israel was condemned for fighting back. So at 9/11, Israel was less secure and less loved from President Clinton’s Arafat-can-do-wrong policy. Not as Cohen would have it.

From that start, Cohen goes on to other flights of fancy.

The whole desolate West Bank scene is punctuated with garrison-like settlements on hilltops. If you’re looking for a primer on colonialism, this is not a bad place to start.

Most Israelis never see this, unless they’re in the army. Clinton witnessed it. She was, I understand, troubled by the humiliation around her.

Desolate? Try punctuated with Arab-owned mansions! And let’s not forget, much of that “humiliation” is the result of Israel defending its population against terror.

Cohen’s also impressed by this.

Clinton also indicated an important shift on Hamas, which the State Department calls a terrorist group. While stressing that no funds would flow to Hamas “or any entity controlled by it,” she argued for keeping American options open on a possible Palestinian unity government between the moderate Fatah and Hamas.

So long as a unity government meets three conditions — renounces violence, recognizes Israel’s right to exist and abides by past agreements — the United States would be prepared to deal with it, including on $900 million in proposed aid, Clinton indicated. Washington does business with a Lebanese government in which Hezbollah controls 11 of 30 seats, although Hezbollah is also deemed a terrorist group.

As I would point out when a news article uses such weaselly language. No one “calls” or “deems” Hamas and Hezbollah terror groups. That’s what they are by definition. And while Cohen considers the American shift on Hamas important; it’s important for the wrong reason. Likely what we will see, is that if Hamas and Fatah agree to power sharing, the administration will conclude that Hamas has met the necessary conditions for engagement. Just like Clinton’s husband did in in the 90’s with Arafat. I think that Cohen knows this and that’s why it’s important. The conditions are a fig leaf. If Hamas and Fatah come to terms, the administration will happily accept that as proof of Hamas’s “moderation.”

Such a changed U.S. policy makes a lot more sense than the previous one, which insisted on Hamas itself — rather than any Palestinian unity government — meeting the three conditions. No peace can be made by pretending Hamas does not exist, which is why advancing Palestinian unity must be a U.S. priority.

This sensible shift will anger Israel, although it deals indirectly with Hamas through Egypt. Israel’s de jure stand on Hamas — that it must recognize Israel before any talks begin — is wildly at odds with Israel’s de facto methodology since 1948.

Actually, peace cannot be achieved by pretending that Hamas does not mean what it says. Cohen’s ludicrous formulation here is so patently false, it cannot be simple ignorance. He can’t use ignorance as an excuse when he is so motivated by malevolence towards Israel.

When Israel’s ignored threats – such as the one from Arafat and Fatah starting in 1993 – it assumes great risks. Recognition is a simple thing to demand. If Israel’s enemies cannot acknowledge its right to exist in a straightforward manner, why should we expect them to do anything more difficult that is required for peace?

So it’s a week in which I cheer Clinton, although her reference to “crippling sanctions” against Iran if the proposed rapprochement fails was a mistake. Sanctions haven’t worked and won’t.

Tehran will not come to the table if it sees Obama’s extended hand as just a deceptive prelude to “crippling” measures. My advice to Tehran: watch what Obama says. He’s driving Iran policy.

Let’s see what happened when President Obama reached out unconditionally to Iran. An American journalist was then convicted of espionage (though she had been arrested for purchasing alcohol) and Iran’s President Ahmadinejad led the UN in an orgy of antisemitic declarations. The generous approach proved a boon for Iran’s hardliners. But why does Cohen assume that it’s the United States that must show its good faith towards Iran? Why not require anything of Tehran? Is there any terrorist or tyrant who is not reasonable to Roger Cohen?

Obama’s doing it in a way that means the Israeli-American friction evident in Clinton’s remarks will be a theme of his first year in office. As Lee Hamilton, the president of the Woodrow Wilson Center, told me: “Initiatives are underway that show the United States is going to have some major differences with Israel.”

He also said Netanyahu is “a little more flexible than maybe he’s given credit for.”

Netanyahu as Begin the peacemaker? It’s not impossible. Nor is Obama to Tehran. Provided the president pushes on the two fronts at once.

This is so condescending to defy belief. Begin could make (a cold) peace because he had a Sadat to conclude a deal with. Who does Netanyahu have? Abbas, a Holocaust denier with no power? Meshaal, a terrorist living in Damascus? Ahmadinejad, a Holocaust denier on the world stage?

And, of course, Cohen’s idea that outreach to Iran is part of a peace strategy is absurd. Here’s Barry Rubin on the topic of Ahmadinejad’s acceptance of a two-state solution.

So in effect Ahmadinejad just said that he would never accept a two-state solution but why put that in clear words when the dumb Westerners can be left to interpret it as they wish.

Roger Cohen, dumb Westerner. I like that.

Israel Matzav addresses the point about “humiliation:”

I moved to Israel in 1991 and I live in Jerusalem not far from the former dividing lines between the eastern and western parts of the city, and between Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria. When I moved to Israel – 24 years after Judea and Samaria had been liberated by the IDF – there were no road blocks between Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria. The ‘Palestinians’ were free to cross the ‘green line’ at will and many of them did so daily to work at jobs within the ‘green line.’ Many Israelis used to travel to Bethlehem and Ramallah and other cities across the ‘green line’ to hunt for bargains. What changed everything was terrorism that took a new and dangerous turn in Israel during the post-Oslo period. And the first Israeli leader to place roadblocks between Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria was none other than that mythical peacemaker (and ‘friend’ of Clinton’s philandering husband), Yitzchak Rabin.

via memeorandum.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

04/20/2009

When self-defense is a holocaust or the continued rantings of Roger Cohen

Filed under: Iran, Israel, Israel Derangement Syndrome — Tags: — Soccerdad @ 10:00 am

Roger Cohen is at it again. He writes in Israel, Iran and Fear:

In the German mirror stands Israel, another vibrant democracy birthed from the crime, albeit one, unlike Germany, that has not found peaceful coexistence. Israel, too, craves closure on a past that holds the insistent specter of annihilation.

So Israel’s birth is every bit a crime as the Holocaust?

Let’s go over some of the details of Israel’s founding.

On May 15, 1948, the day the British Mandate over Palestine ended, the armies of five neighboring Arab states invaded the new State of Israel, which had declared its independence the previous day. The invasion, heralded by an Egyptian air attack on Tel Aviv, was vigorously resisted. From the north, east and south came the armies of Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Transjordan, and Egypt.

The invading forces were fully equipped with the standard weapons of a regular army of the time – artillery, tanks, armored cars and personnel carriers, in addition to machine guns, mortars and the usual small arms in great quantities, and full supplies of ammunition, oil, and gasoline. Further, Egypt, Iraq, and Syria had air forces. As sovereign states, they had no difficulty (as had the pre-state Jewish defense force) in securing whatever armaments they needed through normal channels from Britain and other friendly powers.

In contrast, the Jews had no matching artillery, no tanks, and no warplanes in the first days of the war. Some supplies of these weapons arrived in the days that followed, however, and turned the tide. Little more than small arms – in paucity- had been available to the Haganah which on May 28, 1948, was to merge with other Jewish defense groups to form the Israel Defense Forces. Two Jewish defense forces, the Irgun Zeva’i Le’ummi and the Lohamei Herut Israel agreed to cease their independent activities, (except in Jerusalem) and to absorb their members into the newly founded IDF.

So Israel’s “crime” in being founded was defending itself against those who sought to destroy it. Forgetting about the refugees (from what would become Israel and the Arab states – whether they invaded or not), Cohen is equating Jewish self-defense with Jewish annihilation?

Obviously, I would argue otherwise. The Germans had to come to terms with the actions of their fathers. I’ll take Cohen’s word that they’ve done so successfully. But they only needed peaceful coexistence with themselves. However Israel hasn’t found peaceful coexistence because the same nations who sought to destroy them 61 years ago, still seek to do so today. And if they can’t do so militarily they will use institutions to weaken Israel until it is vulnerable. With cover provided by foreign policy sophists like Cohen, Israel’s enemies seek to delegitimize it and render it defenseless. It isn’t Israel that needs to change.

Here’s the nub of Cohen’s argument:

Yes, Israel is small — all the land between the Jordan River and Mediterranean Sea is scarcely bigger than Maryland — and its environment hostile. This, as former President Jimmy Carter notes in a fine new book, makes it vulnerable. But as Carter also writes in “We Can Have Peace in the Holy Land,” Israel has a “military force that is modern, highly trained and superior to the combined forces of all its potential adversaries.”

Not only that, Israel has a formidable nuclear arsenal; it has made peace with Egypt and Jordan; it has a cast-iron security guarantee from the United States; it has walled, fenced, blockaded and road-blocked the roughly 4 million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza into a pitiful archipelago of helplessness; its enemies, Hezbollah and Hamas, only declared victory in recent wars by preventing their own destruction.

His fallacy is that just because Israel does not face existential threats, it faces no threats whatsoever. Even assuming that his premise is correct – if Iran develops a nuclear bomb his premise is clearly wrong – his conclusion is wrong. Yes by any military measure Hezbollah and Hamas lost their recent wars with Israel. But both puppets of Iran threatened hundreds of thousands of Israelis. Hamas still launches rockets that can reach large sections of southern Israel’s. Hezbollah isn’t actively attacking Israel now, but under the watchful (but ineffective) eye of the UN has rebuilt its capabilities of attacking Israel’s north.

And after Israel withdrew from the major Arab cities in Judea and Samaria in the mid 90’s and from Gaza in 2005, first Fatah and then Hamas strengthened themselves. They used their newfound freedom to build a terror infrastructure not a civil society.

After dismissing all of the real threats faced by Israel, Cohen identifies the one that really bothers him.

Far from Iran, and the tired Nazi analogies misleadingly attached to it, there is another threat. As Gary Sick, the prominent Middle East scholar and author, suggested to me recently: “The biggest risk to Israel is Israel.”

A core contradiction inhabits Israeli policy. While talking about a two-state solution — at least until Netanyahu redux — Israel has gone on building the West Bank settlements that render a peace agreement impossible by atomizing the 23 percent of the land theoretically destined for Palestine.

The irony here is incredible. After equating Israel’s self-defense with the Holocaust, Cohen now dismisses Nazi analogies made to today’s Iran, whose leader uses genocidal language to threaten the Jewish state.

But that’s besides the point. According to Efraim Karsh, over 99% of the Palestinians no longer live under Israeli control. The idea that Israeli settlements somehow “atomize” Palestinian land is untrue.

What is true is that Cohen declares any Israel concessions that fail to satisfy the Palestinians as being insufficient. Furthermore he concludes that if Israel doesn’t satisfy Palestinian demands Israel will be illegitimate. (And he does this in the course of endorsing a state that will be ethnically cleansed of all Jews!) So he gives veto power to the hardest liners among the Palestinians and effectively justifies terror against Israel.

Please also see Israel Matzav and Elder of Ziyon.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

04/14/2009

The man with the silver tongue and the myth of moderation

Filed under: Iran — Tags: , — Soccerdad @ 6:30 pm

I’m tempted to say about Roger Cohen that the less said about him that better, but quite a few people have written excellent ripostes to his latest venality that are worth checking out.

In Roger Cohen’s world, the extremists in Iran are actually moderate!

But there’s another delusion about Iran, and that is that the moderates are actually moderate. Here’s Time Magazine’s Scott MacLeod:

I strongly hope and believe that Saberi’s case will have a positive outcome. The sensible people in the regime will see to that. They know Saberi is no spy. Yet, the Committee to Protect Journalists, which has collected more than 10,000 signatures on a petition in Saberi’s support, is alarmed. “News reports that the Iranian authorities have charged Roxana Saberi with espionage are deeply worrying,” says CPJ Middle East and North Africa Program Coordinator Mohamed Abdel Dayem. “Saberi has been working openly as a journalist in Iran for years. The public prosecutor must clarify why these charges have been brought and allow Saberi’s attorney to view them immediately.”

(emphasis mine)
And the poster child for the “sensible people” in the Iranian regime is former president Ayatollah Mohammed Khatami. Alas for those who are looking for moderation from Khatami, his record is not overly inspiring – except superficially. Michael Rubin observed:

True, when Khatami emerged on the world stage, he was a breath of fresh air. Diplomats applauded when, after his swearing-in on August 4, 1997, he declared: “We are in favour of a dialogue between civilisations and a detente in our relations with the outside world.” Khatami became the toast of European capitals, with prime ministers tripping over themselves to host him in their capitals.

On March 9, 1999, during his first visit to Europe, Khatami told the Italian parliament: “Tolerance and exchange of views are the fruits of cultural richness, creativity, high-mindedness and harmony. One must recognise this opportunity.” Back in Iran, though, his message was different. He banned Israeli and Jewish non-government organisations from participating in the Tehran preparatory meeting ahead of the UN Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance.

Then, speaking to Iranian television on October 24, 2000, he declared: “If we abide by human laws, we should mobilise the whole Islamic world for a sharp confrontation with the Zionist regime. If we abide by the Koran, all of us should mobilise to kill.”

Alas, such incitement was not mere rhetoric, and to suggest, as Camilleri does, that Khatami condemns terrorism is at best half-true. Khatami may have offered condolences after the September11, 2001, terror attacks in New York and Washington, but the bipartisan 9/11 Commission subsequently found that his government had granted transit across Iran to at least eight of the 14 Saudi hijackers who had trained in Afghanistan’s al-Qa’ida camps.

When it comes to “moderates” in the Muslim world academics, diplomats and journalists are forever hearing what they want to hear and disregarding the rest.

The true level of moderation is something to keep in mind when considering how to outfit the Iranian regime with new surveillance technology or offering the regime new diplomatic flexibility.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

03/26/2009

The fierce irrelevance of Roger Cohen

Filed under: Hamas, Israel, Israel Derangement Syndrome — Tags: — Soccerdad @ 11:00 am

Roger Cohen thinks that we can have peace in the Middle East, if the United States would just listen to a bunch of experts associated with the US Middle East Project. In the Fierce Urgency of Peace:

Pressure on President Obama to recast the failed American approach to Israel-Palestine is building from former senior officials whose counsel he respects.

Following up on a letter dated Nov. 6, 2008, that was handed to Obama late last year by Paul Volcker, now a senior economic adviser to the president, these foreign policy mandarins have concluded a “Bipartisan Statement on U.S. Middle East Peacemaking” that should become an essential template.

Deploring “seven years of absenteeism” under the Bush administration, they call for intense American mediation in pursuit of a two-state solution, “a more pragmatic approach toward Hamas,” and eventual U.S. leadership of a multinational force to police transitional security between Israel and Palestine.

Exactly how different this engagement would be from President Clinton’s is unclear. But despite focusing on Middle East peace, Clinton left office with Yasser Arafat leading a second “intifada” against Israel. In other words – even if one accepts the mistaken notion that the Bush administration was absent from the peace process – there’s no evidence that American engagement will bring peace.

Cohen cites Henry Siegman. Siegman’s an interesting choice of expert given that he once wrote an article claiming that Hafiz Assad wanted to make peace with Israel and that by using Hezbollah to attack Israel, Assad showed his commitment to peace.

Another of the experts that Cohen cites is James Wolfensohn. Again he’s an interesting choice, as Barry Rubin writes:

Didn’t James Wolfensohn learn from his dialogue with Hamas over those greenhouses he bought for them and they trashed to make into rockets?

Cohen can quote all the experts he likes and maybe President Obama will heed his advice. But experience shows that the approach Cohen advocates will not bring peace. Until Palestinian and Arab resistance to Israel changes, no amount of Israel concessions or American pressure will bring peace to the Middle East.

MJ Rosenberg demonstrates his discerning intellect (via memeorandum) by declaring Cohen his favorite NYT columnist:

I read today’s column in Brussels and thought, for a moment, that I was reading The Independent or The Guardian. Or Ha’aretz.

I would agree, but no one except for an anti-Israel ideologue would consider that praise.

He also noted Cohen’s brilliant analysis.

As Cohen puts it, it is time to “stop being hung up on prior Hamas recognition of Israel and watch what it does rather than what it says. If Hamas is part of, and remains part of, a Palestinian unity government that makes a peace deal with Israel, that’s workable.

What Hamas does is launch rockets against civilians. Apparently to Cohen and Rosenberg that’s a sign of their commitment to peace. If you want a proof of their intellectual irrelevance, you really don’t need to know anything else. (Unfortunately, their views may not be irrelevant politically.)

UPDATE: Israel Matzav deftly dismantles Cohen’s four point plan for Middle East peace. Daled Amos questions the assumptions and the expertise of the experts Cohen subscribes to.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

03/23/2009

Breaking the ice with Iran

Filed under: Iran — Tags: , , — Soccerdad @ 11:00 am

During the campaign Michael Totten wrote about why Barack Obama’s pledge to renew relations with Iran wouldn’t amount to anything.

Withdrawing all U.S. forces from the Middle East likewise is not going to happen. Obama may want to bug out of Iraq as quickly as humanly possible, but there isn’t even a small chance that he’ll shut down American military bases in Turkey, Kuwait, and Qatar.

Iran’s preconditions are unacceptable. Whatever preconditions Obama would have, if he had any, would almost certainly be unacceptable from the point of view of the Islamic Repubic. The interests of the U.S. and Iran are diametrically opposite, and they have been since 1979. Obama may not understand this, but at least Tehran does.

Supporting this analysis, Barry Rubin provides an amusing anecdote.

The New York Times reports that Ayatollah Khameini rejected the President’s overture.

In his most direct public assessment of Mr. Obama and prospects for better ties, Ayatollah Khamenei said there could be no change between the countries unless the Obama administration put an end to hostility toward Iran and brings “real changes” in foreign policy.

“They chant the slogan of change but no change is seen in practice,” Ayatollah Khamenei said in a speech before a crowd of tens of thousands in the northeastern holy city of Mashhad.

Still as is the case with the Middle East, the reporter throws in the requisite optimism.

Still, he left the door open to better ties with America, saying “should you change, our behavior will change, too.”

This gives tea leaf reader Roger Cohen the pretext to claim that there are tea leaves to read.

View all that as an opening gambit. Khamenei also quieted the crowd when it began its ritual “Death to America” chant and he said this: “We’re not emotional when it comes to our important matters. We make decisions by calculation.”

That’s right: the mullahs are anything but mad. Calculation will demand that Iran take Obama seriously.

This, of course, suits Cohen fine as he believes that reaching out to Iran and keeping Israel at arms length makes sense. Given that he’s been defending Iran’s tyranny, it’s impossible to conclude that he’s judged American interests accurately. More likely he’s judged Israel to be a liability, so he’s happy to have an alternative, regardless of the cost. After all, doesn’t he regard Iran’s nuclear proliferation to be at least a source of instability, if not a threat? Apparently not.

(Cohen mis-titled his essay “From Tehran to Tel Aviv” as he’s advocating a diplomatic move in the other direction.)

But John Bolton does.

While President Obama’s unanticipated Nowruz holiday greeting to Iran generated considerable press attention, his video wasn’t really this week’s big news related to the Islamic Republic. Far more important was that a senior defector — Iran’s former Deputy Minister of Defense Ali Reza Asghari — disclosed Tehran’s financing of Syria’s nuclear weapons program. That program’s centerpiece was a North Korean nuclear reactor in Syria. Israel destroyed it in September 2007.

At this point, it is impossible to ignore Iran’s active efforts to expand, improve and conceal its nuclear weapons program in Syria while it pretends to “negotiate” with Britain, France and Germany (the “EU-3″). No amount of video messages will change this reality. The question is whether this new information about Iran will sink in, or if Washington will continue to turn a blind eye toward Iran’s nuclear deceptions.

Talking with Iran, according to Bolton, will only strengthen Iran’s resolve to develop nuclear weapons.

Finally, on a somewhat related note, Tehran promised Secretary of State Clinton that it would release an Iranian-American journalist from Evin prison.

Earlier this week, the father of the Iranian-American journalist Roxana Saberi, told Lindsey Hilsum of Britain’s Channel 4 News that he had spoken to his daughter, who is still being held in Evin Prison. He added that waiting for her release is “a nightmare.” Ms. Hilsum reported on Channel 4’s World News blog that Reza Saberi said his daughter “didn’t sound terribly good,” when he spoke to her on a telephone in Evin Prison on Monday. “She said life in prison is psychologically challenging.” That is, as Ms. Hilsium says, obviously an understatement. Mr. Saberi added: “We told her to hang on, and not give in. The whole world is with her.”

Two weeks ago, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that the U.S. State Department had been working through intermediaries to win Ms. Saberi’s release, and an Iranian official said that Ms. Saberi would be released “within days.” Her father told Ms. Hilsum that if his daughter was not released by the start of the Iranian New Year’s celebrations this Friday evening, she is unlikely to leave Evin Prison before the end of the two-week holiday.

Why do the proponents of engagement with Iran ignore Ms. Saberi’s fate and this direct rebuff of American diplomacy? And why didn’t President Obama bring her up in his Nowruz message last week? It’s one thing to seek conciliation. It’s another to turn a blind eye to injustice.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

03/16/2009

Banality of a weasel

Filed under: Iran, Israel Derangement Syndrome, Jew Cooties, Juvenile Scorn, Media Bias — Tags: — Soccerdad @ 11:00 am

I suppose I should be generous to Roger Cohen. According to Roger Simon, Cohen flew out to LA on his own initiative – and dime – in order to defend his defense of the Iranian regime. But Simon writes that Cohen was just self-involved and deaf to criticism.

So I knew I would find Cohen annoying at best, but I had no idea how boring he would be. He began by saying he would make some brief remarks before taking audience questions. Those remarks ended up filling the better part of an hour and were as predictable as they were lecturing. There was hardly a word the columnist said that surprised, even if you could give him plaudits for having the courage to say them in front of an audience of Iranian Jews who clearly voted against his views with their feet. They left the country.

Cohen’s opening statement ended, also predictably though inappropriately, with an impassioned defense of diplomat Charles Freeman, allegedly just pushed out of potential government office by that evil omnipotent cabal of AIPAC, right wing bloggers, etc. No word, of course, on Freeman’s execrable defense of the Chinese government in the face of the pro-democracy movement in that country and the student massacre at Tiananmen. This display of what Orwell might have called “objectively pro-fascist” behavior by Freeman apparently does not dismay Cohen, despite murmurings about China I heard all around me from a predominantly Jewish audience. In fact, Cohen didn’t have half the grace of that audience who actually gave a polite round of applause to his deadening speech.

Cohen’s own account of the talk in LA shows no more self-awareness.

I have, in a series of columns, and as a cautionary warning against the misguided view of Iran as nothing but a society of mad mullah terrorists bent on nukes, been examining distinctive characteristics of Persian society.

Iran — as compared with Arab countries including Syria, Saudi Arabia and Egypt — has an old itch for representative government, evident in the 1906 Constitutional Revolution. The June presidential vote will be a genuine contest by the region’s admittedly low standards. This is the Middle East’s least undemocratic state outside Israel.

Notice how he can’t even avoid a dig at Israel. Not calling it the most democratic state in the Middle East, but the “least undemocratic.” He doesn’t point out that the only candidates who run, are those who are approved. True, it’s more open than Egypt but to compare it to Israel, is a mark of intellectual dishonesty, not an indication of sober reflection.

While Bernard Lewis, in a recent article in Foreign Affairs, posits an epochal clash between “Islamic theocracy and liberal democracy” whose outcome will be decisive, I don’t see any victor in this fight. Rather, a variety of compromises between the two forces will emerge, as in Iran.

It is therefore in America’s strong interest to develop relations with the most dynamic society in the region. What autocrats from the Gulf to Cairo fear most is an Iranian-American breakthrough, precisely because it would shake up every cozy, static regional relationship, including Washington’s with Israel.

I’m glad to know that Cohen disagrees with Bernard Lewis. Lewis is, in fact, out of favor with the current trends in Middle East scholarship. Of course that’s more a reflection on the state of the scholarship than on Dr. Lewis. And given Lewis’s six or more decades of serious study, I don’t give much credence to the guy who just acted as a shill for the Iranian government who disputes hm.

Another distinctive characteristic of Iran is the presence of the largest Jewish community in the Muslim Middle East in the country of the most vitriolic anti-Israel tirades. My evocation of this 25,000-strong community, in the taboo-ridden world of American Middle East debate, has prompted fury, nowhere more so than here in Los Angeles, where many of Iran’s Jewish exiles live.

At the invitation of Rabbi David Wolpe of the Sinai Temple, I came out to meet them. The evening was fiery with scant meeting of minds. Exile, expropriation and, in some cases, executions have left bitter feelings among the revolution’s Jewish victims, as they have among the more than two million Muslims who have fled Iran since 1979. Abraham Berookhim gave me a moving account of his escape and his Jewish uncle’s unconscionable 1980 murder by the regime.

“Unconscionable?” Cohen throws out the word as a glib attempt to show outrage. But it doesn’t fit with the rest of rosy words to describe the Iranian regime. And while he derides the “taboo-ridden world of American Middle East debate,” Cohen is remarkably silent on the 75,000 Jews who left Iran in the past thirty years. He has studiously avoided mentioning that, focusing instead on the 25,000 who remain as if their presence is a testament to some great openness. In fact it is a reflection of how difficult it is for them to leave.

Pragmatism is also one way of looking at Iran’s nuclear program. A state facing a nuclear-armed Israel and Pakistan, American invasions in neighboring Iraq and Afghanistan, and noting North Korea’s immunity from assault, might reasonably conclude that preserving the revolution requires nuclear resolve.

What’s required is American pragmatism in return, one that convinces the mullahs that their survival is served by stopping short of a bomb.

And no doubt it’s pragmatic to threaten a nearby state with annihilation with those very weapons. Come on, is there anything that Iran does that Cohen doesn’t see as a sign of pragmatism?

Cohen argues that the Iranian nuclear program is a sign of its pragmatism. A couple of Iranian dissidents argue that the very fact that the Iranian regime is so extreme is a reason not to trust it with nukes. (I don’t know if I agree with their argument in its entirety.) But here’s the gist of their argument:

Tehran’s nuclear ambitions must be viewed in context. The free world does not fear a nuclear Iran because of the bomb; the world is full of nuclear bombs. People fear a nuclear Iran because of the radical Islamist ideology of those who would be the holders of such a bomb. Nuclear power can embolden a government, and Iran’s ruling mullahs, regardless of their factions and infighting, are united in wanting to stay alive. The “Islamic bomb,” as the so-called moderate Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani has proudly called it, can help ensure the survival of the regime.

Those in power in Iran are responsible for terrorist attacks throughout the Middle East, not to mention in Buenos Aires, Paris, Vienna and Berlin. They are fundamentally opposed to liberal democracy and its ensuing individual rights. They still imprison the young for having parties and listening to music and stone women to death for extramarital sex. In the name of God, they persecute religious minorities and imprison mullahs who speak of freedom. They still chant “death to America” at the official sermon every Friday and force children to do the same as part of the school curriculum. Drug addiction is common among large swaths of society. The regime’s oil-rich apparatus is rotted by extremes of corruption and unaccountability. Like communist totalitarian regimes of the past, it seeks to maintain a facade of revolutionary idealism for the outside — particularly for the liberation-hungry Arab world — while its people endure the bitter realities of life under an ideological state.

Since 1979, successive U.S. administrations have “engaged” the Iranian government in negotiations while maintaining a myth of no talks. All the while, Tehran has avoided any real change in behavior. It has amassed greater military might and regional influence, and escalated its repression of the Iranian people and its patronage of Lebanese Hezbollah and anti-Israeli, anti-American Islamist ideology throughout the Muslim world. And along the way, it has managed to convince some on the European and American left of its harmlessness, and even of “Islamic” progressiveness.

Put in that context, Iran’s government doesn’t sound nearly so “pragmatic,” does it? And why do these dissidents live abroad? Is it perhaps because they fear the “pragmatism” of the mullahs?

But in the end (as Roger Simon) noted, Roger Cohen comes back to the same thing. The real extremists are the people who objected to the appointment of Chas Freeman.

That, in turn, will require President Obama to jump over his own bonfire of indignation as the Mideast taboos that just caused the scandalous disqualification of Charles Freeman for a senior intelligence post are shed in the name of a new season of engagement and reason.

For Cohen engagement = reason. But when dealing with unreasonable regimes that equation is non-existent. But no matter how discredited Cohen’s premises are, he persists. He defends tyrants with tiresome but irrelevant platitudes.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

03/09/2009

Cohen: killing Jews is legitimate

Filed under: Anti-Semitism, Israel, Israel Derangement Syndrome — Tags: — Soccerdad @ 9:00 am

After defending the Mullahcracy of Iran, Roger Cohen has followed his premise to its logical conclusion in Middle East Reality Check.

Like Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah has long been treated by the United States as a proscribed terrorist group. This narrow view has ignored the fact that both organizations are now entrenched political and social movements without whose involvement regional peace is impossible.

Britain aligned itself with the U.S. position on Hezbollah, but has now seen its error. Bill Marston, a Foreign Office spokesman, told Al Jazeera: “Hezbollah is a political phenomenon and part and parcel of the national fabric in Lebanon. We have to admit this.”

Hallelujah.

Precisely the same thing could be said of Hamas in Gaza. It is a political phenomenon, part of the national fabric there.

One wonders if he would feel the same way about bank robbers who held hostages in the bank they robbed for a week. Would the robbers then become part of the “commercial fabric,” worthy of being treated the same as their hostages?

As I wrote last week, in response to a plea for recognizing Hamas, recognizing Fatah didn’t bring the peaceful utopia many like Cohen claimed would occur if Israel recognized Fatah and accepted Arafat as a peace partner.

Perhaps a few contrary memories will serve to jog his memory.

Hamas and Hezbollah are both terrorist organizations dedicated to the destruction of Israel. Once Israel withdrew from southern Lebanon, Hezbollah did not lay down arms like hopeful but ultimately clueless pundits predicted it would. It continued building its offensive capability in order attack Israel’s northern border. Until they disarm, they’ve shown every reason that their actions will follow their words.

Cohen again:

With respect to Hamas, the West has bound itself to three conditions for any contact: Hamas must recognize Israel, forswear terrorism and accept previous Palestinian commitments. This was reiterated by Clinton on her first Mideast swing.

The 1988 Hamas Charter is vile, but I think it’s wrong to get hung up on the prior recognition of Israel issue. Perhaps Hamas is sincere in its calls for Israel’s disappearance — although it has offered a decades-long truce — but then it’s also possible that Israel in reality has no desire to see a Palestinian state.

Decades long truce? So that’s what Israel’s supposed to pin its security on? An organization that can’t even bring itself to describe a goal of unqualified peace with Israel? As I pointed out above, Israel’s bitter experience with Fatah, show that terrorists.don’t easily change their stripes.

If a Palestinian state will be governed by the likes of an unreformed Fatah or Hamas, Israel would be suicidal to agree to a Palestinian state ruled by either or both.

It’s also worth pointing that in the fifteen years since Israel signed the Oslo Accords Israel has taken substantive actions to create a Palestinian state despite the risks and costs involved. Israel has ceded land to its enemies – though they haven’t reformed – given them money and even arms and seen all of that turned against its own people. At some point, people like Cohen have to stop asking themselves if Israel is doing enough for peace and coexistence and ask instead if the Palestinians (and Arabs generally) are doing anything to promote peace. They would if they looked at the facts on the ground and at recent history. But they are too blinded by their hatred of Israel or by their foolish hope in the reasonableness of terrorists to see what’s been obvious.

Further Cohen writes:

Speaking of violence, it’s worth recalling what Israel did in Gaza in response to sporadic Hamas rockets. It killed upward of 1,300 people, many of them women and children; caused damage estimated at $1.9 billion; and destroyed thousands of Gaza homes. It continues a radicalizing blockade on 1.5 million people squeezed into a narrow strip of land.

And since Israel’s declared its unilateral ceasefire, has Hamas in Gaza gone back to building a peaceful society?

Why not check out Elder of Ziyon’s monthly Qassam calendars for January, February and March (so far)? Please note that this a society that scavenged its sewage pipes to fire on Israeli civilians. Cohen is willing to look past the hatred that motivates groups like Hamas and Hezbollah and act as if they are motivated simply by grievance.

Judea Pearl, in an interview with Jeffrey Goldberg, had a simple but effective response to such naivete.

There is good and there is evil. The men who killed my son had a grievance, everybody has a grievance. Once you focus on the grievance, rather than the terrorist act itself, the terrorist has won.

But it’s not just that views like Cohen’s grant a victory to the terrorists, it’s worse than that. Here’s Guy Bechor writing about Europe (h/t Yaacov Lozowick):

The trend is growing across the world and it has nothing to do with Israel: Israel is the tool used in order to secure achievements. Israel is what the Jews used to be in the past.

When we see, in Turkey or Italy, Jewish-owned stores being marked so the locals refrain from buying there, what kind of future do the children of the 750,000 Jews in Western Europe have? You worked for a country that will always view you as foreigners. Following World War II, you made some countries rich, but now we see a quiet Jewish rally in the Swedish capital being banned because of fears of Muslims violence there. What kind of future do you have in this continent, which is becoming increasingly Muslim?

Britain’s decision to start talking to Hezbollah is not something to be emulated, as Cohen claims. It is something that makes the killing of Jews even more acceptable. It is something that makes the hatred of Jews even more acceptable.

Cohen foolishly believes that Iranian Jews are free. He believes the grievances of Hamas and Hezbollah are legitimate. At some point though, his comfort level with the killing and oppression of Jews makes you wonder if he is simply a fool or a knave.

UPDATE: Elder of Ziyon finds some irony:

When Cohen calls for negotiations, he is asking for a process to begin where people’s words have meaning; where the representatives of each side are assumed to be telling the truth and are putting their positions forth in good faith. Negotiations without the ability to trust the words of one of the sides is worthless. Cohen, however, calls Hamas leaders liars for saying they want to destroy Israel and calls Israeli leaders liars for saying they want to live in peace with Palestinian Arabs.

And he wants both sets of liars to negotiate!

UPDATE II: Israel Matzav has weighed in too and gives Cohen a much-needed history lesson:

Cohen either ignores or has no knowledge of history whatsoever. He claims that Israel has no desire to see a ‘Palestinian’ state. Israel bent over backwards to create a ‘Palestinian’ state. In 1967, Israel offered back all of the territory it had liberated in a defensive war (Israel was attacked by Egypt, Syria and Jordan simultaneously). Of course, it didn’t offer that territory to ‘Palestinians’ because ‘Palestinians’ barely existed then. It offered that territory back to the countries from which it liberated that territory and who – by the way – showed absolutely no interest in creating a ‘Palestinian’ state during the years (1948-67) that they controlled the West Bank Judea and Samaria and Gaza. In response, Israel got the ‘three noes of Khartoum: no recognition, no negotiation, and no peace with Israel. It’s fashionable to claim today that was only a ’starting position.’ But if it was, no one bothered to tell Israel that.

In 1973, Israel fought another existential war. Hamas didn’t exist back then. The Arab countries still did their own dirty work. That war had nothing to do with the creation of a ‘Palestinian’ state.

In 1979, Israel signed the Camp David accords with Egypt and returned every last grain of sand in the Sinai to Egypt. At the time, it was decided that the ‘Palestinians’ would get autonomy in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, but there was no ‘Palestinian’ willing to recognize Israel’s right to exist.

Beginning in 1993, Israel entered into the Oslo accords with Yasser Arafat, believing – foolishly – that he would lead his people to live with us in peace. Hamas continued to be rejectionist.

From 1993 to 2000 Israel spent millions of dollars and thousands of hours of its time trying to create a ‘Palestinian’ state. The ‘Palestinians’ weren’t interested. They only wanted to destroy the Jewish state. They responded with terror.

Yaacov Lozowick questions Cohen’s assumption:

Cohen believes the answer is that Arabs aren’t any different from Jews (or Americans, or Brits, or even Chinese far that matter). Since they’re just like us, yet some of them behave so nastily, it must be because we’re doing things to them that make them nasty; since we’re responsible, we need to be better.

I, on the other hand, am stuck with the question. Why is it, indeed, that Arabs (or at any rate, many of them, and many of their regimes), are less pragmatic than Jews (or Americans, or Brits, or even Chinese, for that matter)?

And Daled Amos “reality checks” Cohen’s “Reality check.” Point by point. When he’s all done, Cohen’s “analysis” is reduced to a series of unsupported suppositions. It’s an excellent example of fisking.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

02/03/2009

Apologist for the mullahs

Filed under: Iran — Tags: — Soccerdad @ 10:00 am

Roger Cohen has made his distaste for Israel known time and again. But what country does he show understanding towards? Iran is one.

In The other Iran, Cohen engages in apologies for the current leadership of Iran. For example Cohen writes:

In this land of competing currents, the U.S. has focused on one: Iran as an expansionist, would-be nuclear power. Iran’s political constellation includes those who have given past support to terrorist organizations. But axis-of-evil myopia has led U.S. policy makers to underestimate the social, psychological and political forces for pragmatism, compromise and stability. Iran has not waged a war of aggression for a very long time.

Khaled Meshaal would beg to differ.

Hamas leader Khaled Meshal thanked Iran on Monday for many kinds of assistance but omitted any mention of the military aid that Israel and the United States have accused Iran of providing the Islamist movement that controls the Gaza Strip.

Yes, I know that Hamas is just a proxy and Hamas isn’t acknowledging Iranian military help. However Hamas’s terror is aggression by other means. And the denial of the arms smuggling is simply not credible.

Cohen continues.

Tehran shares many American interests, including a democratic Iraq, because that will be a Shiite-governed Iraq, and a unified Iraq stable enough to ensure access to holy cities like Najaf.

A “democratic Iraq?” Please. Iran supported the insurgency and is looking to dominate Iraq, not have a democratic pro-American country next door.

Finally he engages in one of those bits of wishful thinking based on some “sophisticated” analysis.

It opposes Taliban redux in Afghanistan and Al Qaeda’s Sunni fanaticism. Its democracy is flawed but by Middle East standards vibrant. Both words in its self-description — Islamic Republic — count.

Yes, by Middle Eastern standards – outside of Israel and currently Iraq – Iran’s flawed democracy is “vibrant,” but that’s pretty faint praise. Also its support of Hamas and Al Qaeda shows that it puts strategic interests ahead of doctrinal interests.

Roger Cohen is someone who is obviously beyond shame. He is openly advocating for the tyrants of Iran.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

01/29/2009

The irony of change

Filed under: Iran — Tags: , , — Soccerdad @ 9:00 am

I don’t have many arguments with Roger Cohen’s latest column, After the War on Terror. He’s correct that the President’s interview on Al Arabiya marks the end of the war on terror; that words are important and that President Obama is a lot closer to Cohen own “Israel is wrong” belief than President Bush was. It’s just that Cohen believes these are good things, I believe they are bad.

Cohen writes:

Tony Blair, now also a Middle East envoy and Mitchell’s partner in Belfast, once put it to me this way: “The only reason we got the breakthrough in Northern Ireland was we did in the end focus on it with such intensity over such a period that every little thing that went wrong — and everything that could go wrong did at some point — was all the time being managed and rectified.” He described the approach as: “Any time we can’t solve it, we have to manage it, until we can start to solve it again.”

Bush had the ideological framework wrong. Obama has righted it by ending the war on terror. Now comes the hard Middle Eastern slog of solve-manage-solve. It will need the president’s unswerving focus.

Barry Rubin, however, writes (on Facebook):

Second, two blocs contend for regional power. The better-organized, more coherent side is led by Islamist Iran, with junior partner Syria, Lebanese Hizballah, Palestinian Hamas, and Iraqi insurgents. Also on the Islamist–but not Iranian–side are Muslim Brotherhoods and al-Qaida. All want to destroy Western influence, Arab regimes, and Israel.
The other grouping consists of the other Arab states, Israel, and the West. Yet this alignment is weak, disorganized, and full of internal conflicts.

This illustrates the mistake Cohen is making. Cohen pretends that the West and the Iranian axis have enough in common that differences can be negotiated away. Prof. Rubin, on the other hand, is arguing that Iran’s interests diverge dramatically from those of the West. There is no managing and no accommodating Tehran.

Furthermore Fouad Ajami writes that this change is ironic.

The irony now is obvious: George W. Bush as a force for emancipation in Muslim lands, and Barack Hussein Obama as a messenger of the old, settled ways. Thus the “parochial” man takes abroad a message that Muslims and Arabs did not have tyranny in their DNA, and the man with Muslim and Kenyan and Indonesian fragments in his very life and identity is signaling an acceptance of the established order. Mr. Obama could still acknowledge the revolutionary impact of his predecessor’s diplomacy, but so far he has chosen not to do so.

Despite his oh-so-openminded approach to Iran (and other tyrannies) Cohen fails to grasp that he is acting as an apologist for its despotism. George Bush, for all his faults, tried to change the status quo in the Muslim world and make its citizens free. I had not remembered that President Bush had been interviewed numerous times on Al Arabiya. Unlike his successor, the former president was, at least at times, unapologetic for his actions and beliefs:

Q- But would these moments — I mean, these emotional moments, would they make you reconsider or rethink about what’s going on in our area now (Middle East)?

THE PRESIDENT: Not really. As a matter of fact, I leave most of the meetings reassured that the loved one, in this case, fully understanding what we were doing. See, I believe that, one, it’s noble to liberate 25 million people from a tyrant; two, that we cannot allow Iraq to be a safe haven for people who have sworn allegiance to those who have attacked us. In other words, I believe we must defeat the extremists there so we don’t have to face them here at home. And three, I believe the spread of liberty will yield peace. And I believe the Middle East is plenty capable of being a part of the world where liberty flourishes. That’s what I believe people want.

And so I leave those meetings saddened by the fact that a person has pain in her heart — and yesterday she had pain in her heart — but encouraged by the fact that her son died for a noble cause and a necessary cause. And that’s exactly what she told me.

President Obama’s outreach has been met with an angry slap, (via memeorandum) not a hand of conciliation. Apparently, Ahmadinejad did not have the benefit of reading Cohen’s column before reacting to President Obama’s words.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

12/02/2008

EoZ, Roger Cohen smackdown

Filed under: Israel, Israel Derangement Syndrome, Israeli Double Standard Time — Tags: , — Soccerdad @ 11:00 am

Emanuele Ottolenghi and Noah Pollak have already responded to Roger Cohen’s Try Tough Love Hillary. Cohen argues that peace – that is necessary for Israel – can only be achieved if Israel cedes all the land demanded by the Arab world for a “just” peace. And for Israel to make those necessary concessions, it needs to be pressured by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

There’s one point that Cohen made that is hard to swallow.

I am fiercely attached to Israel’s security. Everything depends, however, on how that security is viewed. Israel can continue humiliating the Palestinians, flaunting its power with a bully’s braggadocio. It will survive that way — and be desperately corroded from within. Neither domination nor demography favors Israel over time.

“[F]iercely attached?” What does that mean? Anyway anyone who’s been paying attention to the past fifteen years would note that after Israel pulled out of six cities in late 1995, it was struck by a wave of terror in early 1996; after Israel withdrew from southern Lebanon in 2000, Hezbollah was strengthened, setting the stage for the 2006 war and Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza strengthened Hamas, which proceeded to upgrade its armaments leading to regular missile strikes against the Israeli city of Sderot.

Frankly, Israel, following Oslo has not been a bully at all, it has been in a state of slow retreat. However its retreats have been met with its enemies strengthened doing the bullying from a better strategic position.

To argue that more retreats are necessary for Israel’s security after the past fifteen years, Cohen is either oblivious to the record or deluding himself.

But perhaps the most effective refutation to Cohen’s many distortions, cliches and untruths is Elder of Ziyon’s excellent Islamist strategy vs. Western tactics

Part of the reason that the West is so keen on pressuring Israel is the unstated but very relevant viewpoint that, somehow, Israeli concessions will take the wind out of the sails of jihadists, that Israeli sacrifices – or the sacrifice of Israel – will appease the terrorists who will no longer have broad-based support in the Islamic world. There is not a shred of evidence to support this wishful thinking; and there is plenty of evidence that shows it to be false.

The West is attuned to short-term thinking. Perhaps this is because of the need to elect new leaders every few years, but it sacrifices long-term strategy for vaporous short-term gains. It would be laughable to even consider that the West has a plan to defeat the Islamist world that spans more than a decade.

The Arab and Muslim psyche, on the other hand, is very much attuned to long-term trends. A hundred years is but a blip in Islamic history and, from their perspective, Israel has not yet lasted as long as the Crusades. The battle takes decades and centuries; it is not something that has to be mopped up by the next election cycle.

But perhaps more importantly, the Israeli-Arab conflict isn’t merely about “Palestine,” it is part of a wider conflict.

Islamic extremism does not look at “Palestine” as the be-all and end-all of their expansionist goals. Al Qaeda’s founder put it succinctly when he said “jihad will remain an individual obligation until all other lands which formerly were Muslim come back to us and Islam reigns within them once again. Before us lie Palestine, Bukhara, Lebanon, Chad, Eritrea, Somalia, the Philippines, Burma, South Yemen, Tashkent, Andalusia.” And this is hardly an exhaustive list of land that Islamists covet.

Each of these seeming “land disputes” is prosecuted locally, as if they each have individual merit, and the fair-minded West will look at each dispute dispassionately and tactically. Well-meaning Westerners will be “even-handed” (and subconciously pro-Islam) in many of these claims, all the while ignoring the worldwide pattern that they represent of inexorable Islamist encroachment and expansionist thinking.

Cohen’s misguided prescription misses this point. If Israel heeds his advice, it won’t just be strengthening Palestinian rejectionists. It will be strengthening the jihadists throughout the world. Cohen’s liberalism feeds extemism. It’s a point that he’s too blind to see.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Powered by WordPress