Well hey, so long as everybody screwed up, it's all fine! So long as there wasn't a single voice raised in opposition to what was done, so long as we didn't shout down anybody who had a different idea of things, so long as nobody who spoke up against this bullshit was punished, drummed out of public life, called a traitor on national television or demonized for daring to opine that instituting a regime of torture was pretty fucking stupid, so long as we are all equally complicit in this there's no need to punish anybody. Because if it's all of us, then it's none of us really, and isn't it funny how that always works out so beautifully?

I am just so violently opposed to the idea of transferring your moral cowardice onto the country at large to get it to share the blame for your own wussitude on the fundamental questions of our time. It is just so incredibly cheap and small and mean.

Athenae reminds Cohen that the "fact of the matter is, not everybody lost their damn minds, and it is a profound dishonor to those who held to their convictions in the face of overwhelming public pressure to go all kill-crazy that we lump them in with the nutballs painting their chests red, white and blue." See FAIR's magazine Extra!: "Wrong on Iraq? Not Everyone: Four in the Mainstream Media Who Got It Right (3-4/06) by Steve Rendall

Two weeks ago, Cohen--writing from Iran--mocked the war-seeking cartoon caricature of Iran as The New Nazi Germany craving a Second Holocaust. To do so, Cohen reported on the relatively free and content Iranian Jewish community (25,000 strong). When that column prompted all sorts of predictable attacks on Cohen from the standard cast of Israel-centric thought enforcers (Jeffrey Goldberg, National Review, right-wing blogs, etc. etc.), Cohen wrote a second column breezily dismissing those smears and then bolstering his arguments further by pointing out that "significant margins of liberty, even democracy, exist" in Iran; that "Iran has not waged an expansionary war in more than two centuries"; and that "hateful, ultranationalist rhetoric is no Iranian preserve" given the ascension of Avigdor Lieberman in Benjamin Netanyahu's new Israeli government.

Today, Cohen returns with his most audacious column yet: Noting the trend in Britain and elsewhere to begin treating Hezbollah and Hamas as what they are--namely, "organizations [that are] now entrenched political and social movements without whose involvement regional peace is impossible," rather than pure "terrorist organizations" that must be shunned--Cohen urges the Obama administration to follow this trend.

Not prone to rose-tinted views, Greenwald reminds us that "in the very recent past, not even our Constitution's First Amendment has been a match for the endless exploitation of American policy, law and resources to target and punish Israel's enemies," writing that "the U.S. government has made it illegal merely to broadcast Hezbollah television stations and has even devoted its resources to criminally prosecuting and imprisoning satellite providers merely for including Hezbollah's Al Manar channel in their cable package."

Now if only the Times didn't feel compelled to "balance" such sensible views with outright calls for terrorism by Israeli forces. See the FAIR Action Alert: "Terrorism on the New York Times Op-Ed Page: Friedman Supports Civilian Suffering as 'Education'" (1/14/09)