Roger Cohen would like you to know that while Iran still sucks, it doesn’t suck as much as you have been led to believe.

Every once in a while we read an article and ponder: What the heck was the point of that?

Cohen provides an example of this in his article in the New York Times by taking umbrage that Iran has somehow been tagged as a totalitarian state.

Totalitarian regimes require the complete subservience of the individual to the state and tolerate only one party to which all institutions are subordinated. Iran is an un-free society with a keen, intermittently brutal apparatus of repression, but it’s far from meeting these criteria. Significant margins of liberty, even democracy, exist. Anything but mad, the mullahs have proved malleable.

Now, don’t you feel just a tad chagrined that you’ve been saying all those nasty things about Iran over the years?

Cohen even goes the “they can’t get stuff to work – just like us” route to prove some rationalizing similarities between Iran and the West.

If you’re thinking trains-on-time Fascist efficiency, think again. Tehran’s new telecommunications tower took 20 years to build. I was told its restaurant would open “soon.” So, it is said, will the Bushehr nuclear power plant, a project in the works for a mere 30 years. A Persian Chernobyl is more likely than some Middle Eastern nuclear Armageddon, if that’s any comfort.

This logic, of course, depends fully on the belief that the degree of government intervention is directly proportional to infrastructure effectiveness – a failed notion as we all know.

Cohen saves his best for last though:

But the equating of Iran with terror today is simplistic. Hamas and Hezbollah have evolved into broad political movements widely seen as resisting an Israel over-ready to use crushing force. It is essential to think again about them, just as it is essential to toss out Iran caricatures.

You know, broad political movements that still employ terror techniques at the drop of hat and which are sponsored in part by Iran.

Actually, having some time now to reflect on what we just read, we do know what the point of the article was: Cohen demonstrating through his writing what a nitwit and a journalistic incompetent he is.