On "Fresh Air" today, Times correspondent Dexter Filkins told Terry Gross during a discussion of Afghanistan that Iran is "the archenemy of the United States."
President Karzai invited Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran, you know, the archenemy of the United States, to give a speech in Kabul.
And just as I was exclaiming at the folly of that claim, Filkins added,
he [Karzai] invited the president of Iran to come and give a speech or a press conference in the presidential palace, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the archenemy of the United States.
Gross did not challenge Filkins. But compare his assertions with what Haaretz columnist Bradley Burston says about Israel’s relation to Iran:
Occupation is an ugly word. That is why people who support the idea of a Jewish state should use the term, and use it often. Because, on this, Israel’s 62nd independence day, the Occupation has to be identified for what it has become: Israel’s worst enemy.
Not Iran. Not Hamas or Hezbollah. All three would like to see Israel cease to exist. But our government has tools to fight them. Against the Occupation, though, the government is powerless.
