Strange Praise

Much like the Iranian exiles Anne Applebaum praises today, I think the Holocaust did, in fact, take place and that Holocaust deniers are bad people. The lead of Applebaum's column, however, is fairly strange. She analogizes these Iranian exiles to the exiled Bolsheviks of pre-WWI Russia, and criticizes those who doubted the Bolsheviks could bring revolution to Russia. The German government eventually decided that since Lenin and his party supported surrender in the first world war, that Germany should sponsor the Bolsheviks, and provided transportation for Lenin to return to Russia along with funds and other forms of support in the very early days of the revolution. Lenin took over Russia, signed the treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Germany, and managed to set into motion in Russia a series of incredibly horrifying events that Applebaum herself has documented.

Nevertheless, she appears to be arguing that this German policy toward Russia should serve as a model for America's approach to Iran. Why not count on exiles? After all, they might turn out to be just like the Bolsheviks! An odd, odd woman.