We Now Return to Our Regularly Scheduled Anti-Americanism

The phrase "useful idiot" comes to mind, and as disinclined as I am to further its reach, an op-ed by Ed Kinane in today's Providence Journal — "The U.S., not Iran, is the terrorist nation" — is simply too stunning (if predictable) not to note:

This drumbeat of war displays a grotesque double standard. Who is really on any axis of evil? Who is really a terrorist state, a nuclear threat?

Well, certainly not that democracy-loving victim of Western aggression, Iran! "In the last two centuries," Kinane asks, "has Iran — or Persia as it used to be called — invaded any other nation?" Nukes? Please. The Iranians would never use them. "It's the United States that occasionally threatens to use the nuke and that keeps alive its first-strike option."

Truly, the likes of Kinane have paid no attention to the changing methods of war, when it comes to actual terrorist states. Moreover, he seems to have had no ear for evidence that disagrees with the worldview that he, in his commitment "to nonviolence and social justice," would like to believe. Such folks have been out there all along, but one senses that they're veritably titillated that the bad old times in which they thrived may be making a comeback.