Neocons Fade, Even At the New York Times
I am really intrigued by Roger Cohen of the New York Times. Suddenly, the anti-neocons have a powerful voice on the New York Times editorial page.
On Gaza, Iran, Chas Freeman and a host of other Middle East issues, Roger Cohen is challenging the tired old CW of the late Abe Rosenthal, William Safire and Bill Kristol. In fact, he has brought the first creative thinking on Middle East issues since Anthony Lewis retired from the op-ed page a dozen years ago.
Why now? First, I think Cohen has changed his views. Until relatively recently, I found him predictable and safe. But then something clearly opened his eyes. My guess is that it was the Iraq war. He seems to have concluded that the people who lied us into that debacle can't be trusted on anything else either. So he's looking at other issues fresh and he is coming up with some startling conclusions.
And he's not alone either. Has anyone noticed how Andrew Sullivan has evolved recently? Until Gaza, he was still pretty much the son Martin Peretz might have had. But now he's furious and it shows. (Read his writing on Chas Freeman).
In fact, pretty much the entire blogosphere (other than crazy right sites like"Little Green Footballs," and COMMENTARY) seem to be waking up to the realization that the Middle East status quo is disastrous.
And now the New York Times. Maybe in a century or two, the Washington Post will come around. (Note: The Los Angeles Times is also doing some great stuff on its editorial pages).
Neocons may have just won a battle but, with Iraq as their ever-lasting legacy, they are losing the war.
The neocons have had a pretty good ride. They have gotten their way many times more than they should have. They are still scheming and are far from dead. But they are past their peak.
They have gotten away with their crimes, mostly by operating above the law or as the law. No formal punishment is in prospect.
Therefore let us kick them, hard, repeatedly and as often as we get the urge.
March 16, 2009 9:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
First, I think the changing reins of power in DC has, in a way, freed some to return to their more natural viewpoints or at least voice things they were "chilled" from saying before.
Second, I wonder if the Gaza decimation (rather decimation X 10) turned Cohen back around; just as it has opened eyes and enraged hearts around the world. I don’t think Israel realizes the damage it has done to its own reputation (as you have probably written about).
March 16, 2009 10:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
All those snakes need is a "terrorist" attack big enough so that Americans refuse to see their fingerprints all over it.
The bigger the lie, the easier the sell.
We'll go running back into their arms like after 9/11, impressed with their calm in the wake of great tragedy.
March 16, 2009 10:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
I don't underestimate what fading power is willing to do out of desperation.
March 17, 2009 1:14 AM | Reply | Permalink
Me neither. Cheney's whispered warning of another attack brought me chills. I have never forgotten how close the bin Laden's are to the Bush family, and I would not put it past W and Dick to put something together to perpetuate their power.
March 17, 2009 3:05 AM | Reply | Permalink
Osama Bin Laden's family ostracized him long before 9-11. It is ridiculous to make a chain Bush family -> Bin Laden family -> Osama Bin Laden. We don't need conspiracy theories to make the obvious assessment that the Bush family has been disastrous for America. However, I would put absolutely nothing past Dick Cheney or any other neocon.
March 17, 2009 9:36 AM | Reply | Permalink
Obviously, you missed the reporting several years back showing that many bin Laden family members in Saudi Arabia have maintained connections with their lost sheep Osama and that financial contacts have been part of that.
And the Bush family? You seem to have missed a whole school of books and analysis on the surreptitious nature and activities of this family-led cartel.
Keep up!
March 17, 2009 10:33 AM | Reply | Permalink
Richard Perle (who tried to pretend recently that there wasn't any such thing as "neoconservative foreign policy") once fantasized as follows: "If we just let our vision of the world go forth, and we embrace it entirely, and we don't try to piece together clever diplomacy but just wage a total war, our children will sing great songs about us years from now."
But instead of great songs and marble statues, the neocons will be remembered with nothing but SCORN and DERISION.
March 17, 2009 12:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
cohen's views might have been changed by actually going to iran. imagine that.
March 17, 2009 1:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
Don't worry MJ! Don't get upset! The New York Times editorial page is still in in good hands!!
See also Sadly, No! on Mr. Douthat.
March 17, 2009 1:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
Don't worry MJ! Don't get upset! The New York Times editorial page is still in good hands!
Here is an extensive resume of the NYTs latest editorial acquisition. A real winner, this one.
March 17, 2009 1:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
Mr. Cheney and the American military officer class fear, more than anything in the world, any period of relative stability which might allow an accounting for the Bush years. They will gladly sacrifice Obama to this need, the entire US as we know it, if need be. It's not just Cheney and the gang, it's thousands of people, all depending on everything they did in the last eight years going down the old memory hole.
I wonder if Obama grasps this and has what it takes to confront those people, or even dis-empower them without confrontation.
They are certainly doing a good job of making sure Obama is stained with as much of their crimes as possible.
March 17, 2009 1:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
Sorry MJ, but Cohen is just another example of a useful idiot working for a prominent Western newspaper, a tradition going back to Duranty (look that one up – he was NYT correspondent in Moscow during the height of Stalin’s terror, which he safely ignored in his articles. Got a Pulitzer too).
Being a Jew from the former Soviet Union I read dozens of articles like Cohen’s gleefully republished by official censored Soviet press (as Cohen’s was by Iranian one). The guy went to Iran, talked to a few Jews through a government-provided interpreter, and marveled about the fact that the formerly 100,000 strong Iranian Jewish community has dwindled to 25,000 but hasn’t disappeared completely, like the Jews from Arab countries have. Hey, they are even allowed to vote for their very own designated Jew in the Parliament! The pitiful twit immediately brings up memories of “friends of USSR” from the West who wrote sympathetic pieces about great achievements of Soviet workers democracy – similarly informed and penetrating pieces of journalism. I thought the genre has died together with the unlamented USSR, but no... He even had the gall to debate Iranian expatriates who actually know what is really going on there.
Cohen claims noble motives by saying:
This is true of course, but crude uninformed propaganda like Cohen’s substitutes one distorting lens with another, and two lies do not make one truth.
March 17, 2009 3:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
"formerly 100,000 strong Iranian Jewish community has dwindled to 25,000 but hasn’t disappeared completely, like the Jews from Arab countries have"
Good God, where could all those Jews have gone? What horrible genocidal fate has befallen them? And why has the US done nothing about this atrocity?
March 17, 2009 11:35 PM | Reply | Permalink