what you mean "we"?

None of the beltway pundits are one of us. You can't name one, which would be fine, if there weren't so many who are one of "them."

We don't even ask that much. We don't want bias and support. We just want accuracy and the exposure of outright lies.

I almost dropped my coffee when I say the Cohen column title this morning. I blasted off a letter to the editor. My last line was this:

This reader wonders first, why it should matter if there was an "underlying" crime beneath Libby's crime, and second, why Libby lied if there was no other crime.

Cohen annoyingly begins by mentioning Robert Jackson, former attorney general and Supreme Court justice, telling his prosecutors what NOT to prosecute. Cohen does mention what Gonzales' attorneys should not have been doing.

The neocon dearth on fairness has no bounds. They come screaming foul to their fallen comrade's side while shirking the affects that losing a loved one causes that ripples through the commoners experience from this dastardly war they started. They show faux outrage and only slight embarrassment that the Walter Reed fiasco was even exposed. They yell the loudest for no amnesty for the some-odd 12 miilion laborers willing to risk an undocumented American dream, then cry unfair and demand amnesty claiming all kinds of phooey when it's one of their own. Their elitism is as clear as glass and the only limit this side of death that money won't buy this bunch of hooligans will be when the people demand it. How Mr. Cohen sides with their logic is beyond me.

MJ, the only Richard Cohen cares about Scooter is that they are both Jews. It is rachmones (empathy) for a brutha. Sickening. Read what Phil Weiss said about this in the New York Observer: June 06, 2007

The 20% of Jews who are Republicans have alot to atone for.

As Asian-Americans Soul-Search Over Va.-Tech Shootings, Liberal Jews Must Soul-Search Over Neocons and Iraq

A couple weeks ago I watched an Asian-American panel on C-Span talking about responses in their community to the Virginia Tech shootings. The main feeling was, shame; they worried that non-Asian Americans would blame the Asian community for the murders. I heard the same word, "shame," from two Korean-American friends. But in the end, no one blames Asian-American culture for a kid going crazy in Blacksburg. We all know that Cho is not representative.

I think that is the true thrust of my post yesterday on Scooter Libby: Where is the liberal Jewish soul-searching on Iraq? When will the liberal Jewish community dissociate itself from Libby and Feith and Wurmser, and Kristol and Abrams-- and say, We understand that they were acting as nationalist Jews in pushing for the Iraq war; we denounce that sort of thinking, it must be discredited. Then discredit it by openly addressing the Israeli occupation. Until that soul-searching takes place, the "connected" liberal Jewish community, by which I mean the political insiders and public intellectuals, can rightly be accused of some degree of complicity in this horrible war. For by failing to perform that post-mortem, they are failing their jobs, as journalists and intellectuals, to explain to American how this debacle took place.

Let me be clear. I am not singling out rightwing Jews as the agents of the Iraq tragedy. That responsiblity can be widely shared, with Bush and Cheney and other American-nationalist militarists, as well as with the credulous press and the chauvinist element of the American populace that supported the war. But the Libby letters I wrote about yesterday underline a crucial fact of this war: that Jewish nationalists who opposed the peace process in Israel played a key part in producing the ideas that gave us the Iraq debacle. This is simply indisputable. They called for an Iraq war for years, and then they were all over the White House, notably Perle, Feith, Abrams, and Cheney's Middle East adviser David Wurmser. I imagine that Cheney met a lot of them during his and his wife's sojourn at the American Enterprise Institute before 2000. I say "imagine" because the journalism has not been done on Cheney's ideological education.

My challenge is to the liberal Jewish community because it has given cover to these crazed ideologues in a number of ways. First, a lot of liberals drank the neocon Koolaid on Iraq, and gained prominence for doing so: Thomas Friedman, Kenneth Pollack, The New Yorker Magazine. They endorsed the neocon view that the way to respond to the 9/11 attacks was to smash something in the Arab world. As I have noted here before, Friedman and Paul Berman (as well as neolib Lawrence Kaplan and neocon Bill Kristol in their book) said going after Iraq was necessary because Saddam subsidized suicide bombers in Israel--as though Israeli interests and American interests were congruent. More important, in justifying the war, Friedman and Berman and Pollack all overlooked the Israeli occupation of Arab lands. Pollack never mentions it in his 500-page war manifesto, a manifesto which presumes to inform us how the Arab "street" will respond to an invasion of Iraq.

Thus neocon support for a militaristic response to the Arab world gained wide adherence in the liberal Jewish community. And today the failure to anatomize the neocon madness for what it was, rightwing nationalist Jewish thinking, suggests that the liberal Jewish community is still infected by these ideas, still accepts them, or is in outright denial of its acceptance. Even as the horrors multiply in Iraq.

I understand why that accounting is not taking place: fears of antisemitism. People will blame the Jews. Leander hints as much in his comment yesterday on my post about necon social connections:

[Yours] is such a mad line of thought that on the net - at least considering the propagandists - it easily merges with the larger extreme right wing conspiracy lore: freemasons, jesuits, jews and somewhere secretly in the back a black pope pulling strings. I wouldn't touch any of this stuff, if it wasn't written by someone with superior knowledge of European and especially Russian history.

Leander is imposing a literacy test. You have to know European history before you can offer an opinion about important social and ideological connections in Washington today. That doesn't stop the New Republic when it comes to Mormons! And imagine for a moment that there were Muslims all over the Bush Administration, and the U.S. then blundered tragically in the Middle East. Would those Muslims escape scrutiny from all but those writers who had studied the history of the Caliphate? Absurd. Journalists would try to anatomize Muslim thought (as Paul Berman does, to his great credit, in a piece on Islamic radicals in the latest New Republic). The same scrutiny should come to bear on the rightwing Jewish nationalists. And until the liberal Jewish intellectual community--which knows damn well that fervid Zionism played a role in the Iraq war planning--undertakes that post-mortem, it is providing intellectual cover to those nuts. Maybe out of fear of an antisemitic reaction, yes. But, a, how legitimate are those fears? And b, how selfish is it to continually valorize those fears-- even as Iraq dissolves in pogroms that have nothing to do with Jewishness..

One of the most revealing pieces of information I learned this year is that Americans for Peace Now, a noble group that has always called for a Palestinian state, is a member of the constituent board of the evil AIPAC. Yes: AIPAC, which bangs the Likud drum in the States, is a representative organization. It includes rightwing groups like ZOA, but also Americans for Peace Now. Why hasn't Peace Now broken with AIPAC? Out of fear, I am sure: the Jewish fear that if the Israel lobby in the U.S. is somehow compromised, the breathing tube for Israel will be crushed, and the Jewish state will die. I understand the fear, but look at the consequences: APN has been a party to rightwing lobbying, to an organization that refuses to condemn anti-Arab racists like Avigdor Lieberman.

A very similar complicity has taken place in the Iraq war connection. Liberal Jews have by and large banded with the neconservatives out of fear, in this case fear of reprisals against influential Jews in the U.S., and thereby utterly failed their mission as intellectuals: to tell us how this hateful war came about. Who has failed? I would single out The New Yorker and the Nation Magazines, and on from that The New York Times. If you want an honest description of the neocons as a Jewish movement, you have to go to neocons themselves, to Benjamin Ginsberg and the late Murray Friedman.

I think this entente is at last crumbling at the edges. Why? Because liberal Jews feel discomfort over the fact that they've been hijacked for a disastrous Middle East agenda. Three data points:

1. At a recent panel on New York intellectuals at the Center for Jewish History, Eric Alterman of the Nation said that if you look at 30 years of Commentary and The New Republic, neither magazine has "felt free" to criticize the actions of the Israeli government, despite a long history of disastrous policy. Michael Walzer half-agreed: "I do think Commentary is a Bolshevik magazine with a party line."

2. In the New Republic on-line John Judis made the heroic point that dual loyalty is imposed on Jewish intellectuals by the Israel supporters, and by accepting it they are guilty of a kind of "bad faith."

3. Tony Judt, a student of European history if ever there was one, Leander, brought up the same issue at NYU last year, lamenting that trend in intellectual life of "identity intellectuals who ask themselves of a policy, of the law or of the war, not Is it true, is it just, is it bad or good, but rather is it good for people like me or people like us, is it good for my cause?" Judt was talking about leftwing Muslims on campus, yes, but also: Jewish neocons.

These statements are the shadow of the Iraq War. They represent a real discomfort in the liberal Jewish community over the bad thinking of their friends, their college roommates, their cousins: the neocons. Let the soul-searching begin!

Posted at 07:40 AM in Iraq, Journalism, Neocons, Politics, Culture, Religion | Permalink

Imagine Bill Kristol sympathizing with John Podesta. Remember how they hounded Vince Foster to his death?

Imagine Bruce Lindsey getting indicted and convicted and how the Washington Establishment would have reacted.

Starr was forever leaking to the media about how he was about to indict Bruce Lindsey. It never happened. But if it had happened the Richard Cohens, Fred Hiatts of the Washington Media Elite would have shown him no mercy. They would have demanded the maximum punishment. He was not "one of us" in the immortal words of Sally Quinn.

BTW Richard Cohen wrote a similar column after Poppy pardoned Casper Weinberger for Iraq Contra. Cohen praised Poppy for doing the right thing and pardoning a member of the DC Establishment.

Cohen even mentioned that he and Weinberger shopped at the same supermarket. It would have been a travesty of justice for "one of us" to stand trial and maybe even go to jail. "It's not right" as Paris Hilton said.

Cohen's epitaph should at least include mention of how many keyboards he personally ruined when defending his favorite perjurers. I think somebody had a situation similar to yours while reading Glenn Greenwald this morning in Salon.

On the other hand, if Cohen represents the Liberal Media, perhaps keyboards aren't our best weapons, after all. Functional electronic ballot boxes might be a good start.

On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron. H.L. Mencken

"My challenge to the liberal Jewish community..."

So whe the hell are Alterman, Rosendberg, Yglesias, Josh Marshall and many others?

As a group, American Jews are more convinced that Iraq war is a bad thing then almost any other group. Part of it, no doubt, is a suspicion that the war will fail and some dominoes will fall down damn close to Israel.

What was more important to neocon success: the fact that they represented Israeli chauvinism or that it stroke a chord with American chauvinism? Given that they succeeded in USA?

Finally, let us think politically for a moment. There are two ways to look at Middle East mess. One is that we have to realize that the interests of USA and Israel are sharply divergent and hunt down all disloyal elements exhibiting too large allegiance toward the latter. The second is that the policies that were overtly or not so overtly promoted to support Israel failed, and that the cost of this failure can be much more profound for Israel than for USA, and that militaristic zero-sum thinking reach a dead end.

On the level of advocated acts of commission and omission those two positions do not differ a lot, but politically, the first one is a non-starter. I also think that the second one is more correct.

Glenn Greenwald unloaded on Cohen as well.

He focused on this quote - "they [should not] be called to account for practicing the dark art of politics. As with sex or real estate, it is often best to keep the lights off" - in railing against prevailing elite media attitudes.

I was a little surprised that Greenwald, a lawyer, failed to draw on a well-known quote from one of the most respected Supremes of recent year to illustrate his point...

Louis Brandeis: "Publicity is justly commended as a remedy for social and industrial diseases. Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman."

Someone should really break the news to Cohen that the courts take a dim view of those who abuse the legal process. The "little" crimes of perjury, obstruction of justice and the like abuse the system of justice, regardless of any underlying crimes.

I did like the suggestion that there is a Jewish cabal of which Libby and Cohen are apart. It is good to see olde charges from the Left or the Right die hard. However, it seems that it much more about the preceived rectitude of the Washington elites. Ever since Woodward and Bernstein became stars and as famous as anyone they cover there as been an ever more close association between the Washington Press and those they cover.

Daniel A. Greenbaum

More brilliance from Daniel Gree:
"I would like to know why the Left-wing Jews so quick to blame the United States and Israel are so silent on the brutality of Saddem and others of the Arab World?"

Because I'm an American and am responsible for the actions of my government and because my government is the one world power that funds Israel to the hilt.

Why would I waste my breath criticizing Saddam Hussein. Here is Daniel's logic. "I can't believe you criticize the new math teacher at the high school when you have nothing to say about the guy who kidnapped and murdered 5 kids in Tennessee."

Criticism of Saddam, Hitler, Stalin, etc is a given. Unlike you, Daniel, liberals don't even consider those animals in the universe of people about whom it is necessary to offer judgement. Some things are just so fucking obvious except to the utterly obtuse.

"Richard Cohen feels bad for him. And why is that? It is because for Cohen, and those of his ilk, the affairs of government constitute just one big game. Democrats, Republicans, liberals, conservatives are all playing a game that ends in time for cocktails."

Well said. That in a nutshell is what is dooming this country to keep committing tragic mistake after mistake, on both sides of the aisle (tho the RepubliKlan side is winning heavily on points). Sophistry and gamesmanship. It renders a society incapable of governing itself. Its like watching a black-comedy movie that gets bleaker and bleaker by the minute, but there ain't gonna be no happy Hollywood ending to our psycho-political drama folks.

UA

do we have to Frog March Cohen out of the Washington Post too? These liars and the lies they tell. I wouldn't spend a moment nitpicking this dungpile of an article from Cohen. Thats like picking fleas of a dead dog. But I would call the Washington Post, remind them that they have some credible writers, and that Cohen is out of line with the facts intentionally spinning his cause celebre and make sure his inkwell runs dry at the Washington Post. Send him over to the Wastington Times so he can booty bump with Wes Pruden and co. Divide and conquer.
and ask congress to support the impeachment bill against Cheney while you're at it. I got 15 more calls in today.

Richard Cohen column after the Casper Weinberger pardon;

http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2007/6/19/125936/723

...when Weinberger was indicted by Lawrence E. Walsh, the special Iran-contra prosecutor, I despaired.

...Back when Caspar Weinberger was secretary of defense, he and I used to meet all the time. Our "meetings" -- I choose to call them that -- took place in the Georgetown Safeway, the one on Wisconsin Avenue, where I would go to shop and Cap would too. My clear recollection is that once -- was it before Thanksgiving? -- he bought a turkey.

I tell you this about the man President Bush just pardoned because it always influenced my opinion of Weinberger...

Cap, my Safeway buddy, walks, and that's all right with me. As for the other five, they are not crooks in the conventional sense but Cold Warriors who, confident in the justice of their cause, were contemptuous of Congress. Because they thought they were right, they did not think they had to be accountable. This is the damage the Cold War did to our democracy...