What Is Wrong With Juan Cole?

If there was anything I would think we on the right and the left could agree upon, it would be that Iran's President is a anti-Semite, a cruel dictator, and busy making sure that weapons that kill our boys in Iraq make into the hands that are willing to do the killing. But Mr. Cole thinks that we on the right just use Ahmadinejad for our own purposes to promote war:

Demonizing the Iranian president and making his visit to New York seem controversial are all part of the neoconservative push for yet another war.

We are demonizing Ahmadinejad?? Usually when one says that someone is being demonized, it means that it is being done unfairly. They aren't really evil at all. It means someone is making them look that way.

Does Ahmadinejad need demonizing? He does quite well demonizing himself. He calls the holocaust a myth. He wishes for Israel to be wiped off the face of the earth. He stands proudly in front of signs that say "Death To America." He executes young men for being gay (even though we now know that there are no gays in Iran. I suppose they are all dead) He hangs 16 yr old girls who have sex without the benefit of marriage from cranes in the middle of a city.

Is this not "demon like" enough for Mr. Cole? Is it only "neo-cons" who see the evil here? Is Mr. Cole that blind? It seems so. He defends the right of Ahmadinejad to visit ground zero:

His request was rejected, even though Iran expressed sympathy with the United States in the aftermath of those attacks and Iranians held candlelight vigils for the victims. Iran felt that it and other Shiite populations had also suffered at the hands of al-Qaida, and that there might now be an opportunity for a new opening to the United States.

Iranians might have held candlelight vigils, but Ahmadinejad certainly did not. No amount of fake sympathy coming from this man will make up for the fact that he arms those who kill our soldiers.

Mr. Cole says that Ahmadinejad denies he is an anti-Semite and has never called for any Israeli civilians to be killed.

What part of this quote from Ahmadinejad does Mr. Cole not understand?

"There is no doubt that the new wave [of attacks] in Palestine will wipe off this stigma [Israel] from the face of the Islamic world." Recalling the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, leader of Iran's Islamic revolution, he said: "As the imam said, Israel must be wiped off the map."

I'm thinking that wiping Israel off the map might result in a few Israeli civilians deaths. And denying one is an anti-Semite does not make one innocent of it.

It is fine for Mr. Cole to be upset at any talk of war with Iran. But he does his cause no favor by defending the indefensible.