I thought David Ignatius’ column today was informative, interesting and well constructed. I think he makes some good points, though perhaps he over-interprets their significance. But that’s all beside the point. What made me stop dead in my tracks was a very odd assertion:

There’s another small detail about Iran that strikes me as relevant, now that I’m back home. As I explained in an earlier column, Tehran is a city of crazy drivers who nearly collide at every intersection. But the police are quite strict about requiring seat belts — something I don’t often see in the Muslim world. Even fatalistic taxi drivers buckle up. Another surprise: When I was traveling last week from Tehran to the holy city of Qom, there were actually police on the highway with radar guns, stopping pilgrims who might be tempted to speed. And I’m told the new mayor of Tehran, Mohammad Qalibaf, who succeeded the rabble-rousing Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has created a special hotline so people can call and get potholes filled and trash collected.
Now I submit to you: A nation that is wearing seat belts is probably not a mortal enemy of the United States.
This is a week when we remember, with horror, that there are dangerous killers in the Muslim world. But unless we make big mistakes, we should not find ourselves condemned to a permanent war, much less a clash of civilizations.

Me: Whaaaaa? How does this work? What am I missing? The rest of the column was so measured I’m open to the idea that seat-belt-use is unheard of among mortal enemies. But I just don’t see how. I’m not comparing Iran to Nazi Germany, but I do know that Nazi Germany was our mortal enemy and they were fastidious about all sorts of things, including public safety. I’d have to look up the data on seat belts. I get that Ignatius is going for some grand insight about human nature here, but I just think it’s so weird that it’s actually bizarre he didn’t try a bit harder to defend it. He just throws it out there for the sagacity to melt into the reader. Well, it ain’t melting for me. I need the heat lamp of explanation.

I mean wasn’t the whole “banality of evil” thing about how even the most reprehsensible and murderous people can be “normal” in other spheres of life? They just accept the assumptions of the regime and therefore see nothing wrong with carrying them out? Are there people at the CIA writing memos saying, “Don’t worry about Iran, they wear seat belts there”? If there are, I would like to know their names please so I can put a note in with my taxes asking that it not go toward their salaries.