Now that the word of the day is "engagement," media figures are rushing justifying President Obama's change of American policy vis-à-vis the Middle East. Therefore, Mr. Roger Cohen regularly enlightens us, via the New York Times editorial page, as to the goodness and inner beauty of Iran of the ayatollahs, and the reasonableness of Hezb'allah and Hamas, invisible perhaps to the common herd, but clearly perceived by his enlightened eye. But while Mr. Cohen deliberately writes in a folksy, accessible style, spicing his pieces with anecdotes and wordplay, another expert, Mr. David Ignatius of Washington Post, produced recently a much more straightforwardly analytical piece for Foreign Policy, which also aims to justify "engagement" as the only rational way to proceed in the Middle East. Telling us that the key demand of Middle Easterners is "dignity," he argues that once treatment of the Moslems with "dignity" is adopted as...(Read Full Post)