How Long Before NY Times Fires Roger Cohen For Taking On Neocons
Roger Cohen is a fearless columnist. In the New York Times, of all places, he challenges every Middle East assumption of the neocon right.
He believes that the President's greeting to Iran on Friday was a master stroke: "President Obama achieved four things essential to any rapprochement.He abandoned regime change as an American goal. He shelved the so-called military option. He buried a carrot-and-sticks approach viewed with contempt by Iranians as fit only for donkeys. And he placed Iran's nuclear program within "the full range of issues before us."
"By doing so, Obama made it almost inevitable that one of the defining strategic issues of his presidency will be a painful but necessary redefinition of America's relations with Israel as differences over Iran sharpen.."
And, he notes, the Iranian response was not the hysterical rejection described by the neocon media. Check it out. Cohen is truly a fresh voice on these issues.
To get back to my headline question. Can Roger Cohen get away with his shockingly realistic opinions of the Middle East or will he be fired? My guess, he'll be fired. Check this out from some neocon jokester demanding Cohen's head. The neocons usually get their man.
Also, see Richard Silverstein's wise analysis.
Bush the Second gave Israel carte blanche. Israel like that, got used to it, and now expects it. As a result, Israel has become not unlike a spoiled teenager who senses that its privileges are about to be taken away. Such a teen usually acts out. Pere's speech on the same day as Obama's is just that. The teen just might continue to act out by further trashing Gaza, build more settlements, and attack Iran.
Will Obama be able to give Israel some tough love? Or will he increase the spending limit on the teen's credit card? Oops! he's done that already to the tune of $30 billions.
Let's hope that Obama does not continue to act as an enabler of a troubled teen. Isn't it strange that for the Man Of Hope that his supporters are left with only hope? I hope he does this. I hope he does that.
March 23, 2009 8:48 AM | Reply | Permalink
This part seems important in the context of a new strategy in Afghanistan, and increasing the chances for stability in Iraq after we leave, our two main concerns right now:
speaking of Iran, Cohen:
Iran’s apparent inclination to take up a U.S. invitation to attend a conference on Afghanistan later this month may be more significant than Khamenei’s words. In any event, overcoming a 30-year impasse will take time and consistency...."
We've had a policy for years -- decades -- that has only worsened our position in the ME. Yes, we need access to oil for a while yet, don't we? Something has got to change or tensions will lead to more war centered on oil. The policies that tied us too closely to Likud and Riyadh and has gotten more and more unbalanced, has alienated the vast populations of Shiite Muslims in the region. That's just a reality, and Cohen's take on this is refreshing, and highlights some of the elements that should lead to better outcomes.
March 23, 2009 8:52 AM | Reply | Permalink
MJ:
I'll bet you two hundred bucks that Roger Cohen is not fired by the Times. If I win it goes to the Israel Policy Forum. If you win, charity or cause of your choice. You know where I live; you're organization has my name, number, e-mail, firm and everything. How long does Cohen have to stay there? Your call.
I'm serious because I take this notion that any portion of the Jewish community controls the media to be a very serious allegation.
Your call MJ. I'm makin' you an offer you cannot refuse. :)
Full Disclosure: We are counsel to of the unions with a bargaining unit at the Times, and I do quite a bit of work for them. They are not writers and I have no inside dirt.
Bruce S. Levine
New York, New York
P.S. Why do some Americans who also care about Israel and who also want to see us improve our relations with Iran have a need to present where they're at as a zero sum game. I submit that it is anything but the case, and that an improved relationship with Iran is in the interest of Iran, the United States, Israel, and the world in general. Methinks that certain zero sum gamers like to put gasoline on fires because the flames look groovy. I also submit that those who present the Israel/Iran "choice" as a zero sum one are destined to contribute to the defeat of any genuine efforts on the part of President Obama to effect change on the international scene. Honey and vinegar; it's as simple as that.
March 23, 2009 9:54 AM | Reply | Permalink
Bruce:
You're making a pretty safe bet. Oped columnists may well be excluded positions under the New York Guild's collective agreement, but only in some bizarro world is Cohen's writing even marginally controversial. And one blogger is not an organized campaign.
Cohen doesn't treat interaction with Israel and Iran as a zero-sum game. He does correctly note that Obama and the incoming government are on diverging paths over Iran; that is what he says will chill U.S.-Israeli relations.
That seems undeniable in the best of scenarios; imagine if Israel "goes it alone."
I sorta get that you're trying to argue for some middle path; I just don't think one exists anymore. People are going to have to make some stark, wrenching choices.
All my sympathy and best of luck in representing NYT employees at this time.
March 23, 2009 2:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
Why would the New York Times be so dumb as to fire Cohen for failing a neo-con settler litmus test? Would other NYT columnists such as Dowd, Collins, Herbert, Krugman, Friedman, cower and remain silent? The more Cohens speak out, the harder it is to propping up the Big Lie of "self-hating Jews", but why should the Times care about that propping being upended?
March 23, 2009 9:59 AM | Reply | Permalink
Tne notion posited by MJ is part of the parlor game, and that's why I'm putting it to the test with my little wager for a good cause. Join me PTroub, place a bet with MJ and maybe we can turn all this stuff into something good by raising money for charities and/or advocacy groups.
In fact, let's all get in on this. Let's make wagers. Identities can be protected by giving your names to MJ's organization. Let's have some fun, debate the issues, and raise some money for good things.
March 23, 2009 10:04 AM | Reply | Permalink
I don't know that he will be fired. I do know that a gang of heavies told PBS to fire Bill Moyers for criticizing Gaza. But, sadly for them, Bill Moyers' show is supported by foundations and they could not touch his funding. And he's Bill Moyers, ferchrissake.
So, in stead, they got the Post (or the Times or both) to go after Moyers over the Walter Jenkins affair (yes, it took place in 1964). 45 years later, they think they can get Moyers over his quite respectable behavior back then.
In the end, Moyers is fine but not for lack of trying.
Can they "get" Cohen. They will try. But the more people on the blogosphere predict his downfall, the less likely it is to happen. Shining a light on this McCarthyism is the best thing I can do.
Hell, even I could be a victim of this scourge. I'm no Bill Moyers!
March 23, 2009 10:13 AM | Reply | Permalink
But, MJ, people always try and do stuff like this. C'mon, we libs have tried to get rid of right wing whackos for decades. It's the American way. Sorry, I do have that unapologetic defensive streak, but I submit, that folks should take extra care about perpetuating notions that the media can be controlled by Jewish interests. It is absurd at the threshold to simply ignore analogies to ample historical precedent.
And I reiterate that, while advocates are free to do what they wish, the most productive course of action for Americans who care about both Israel and Iran is to stress what is fundamentally true, that better relations with Iran is better for everybody.
March 23, 2009 10:19 AM | Reply | Permalink
And, by the way, I'm sorry, I hate to be non-linear, but one can be critical (not to the extent of a Radosh) of Cohen for what he wrote about Jews in Iran and still favor improving relations with that country. MJ, I assume you know at least as many Iranian Jews as I do (perhaps not), and you know that 3/4 of that population has left since the overthrow of the shah. It was not easy for them to leave the land of their great-great-great times 20 grandparents' home. Cohen made a sophomoric blunder, and I submit for political purposes, by focusing without context (i.e. why have so many Jews left a nation they have lived in for 3,000 plus years) that Jews can still worship and eat kosher lamb chops in Iran. And I am not calling on the guy to get fired, but I would like to discuss this stuff in a world where I don't get called a neocon for calling Cohen out on his Iranian Jewish stuff. One can favor improved relations with Iran and still understand that anything that the Jews who spoke to Cohen in Iran said was going right back to the central government in the report of Cohen's guide. Cohen admits that. Life, and Iranian politics, are anything but linear.
March 23, 2009 10:27 AM | Reply | Permalink
I agree on Iran's Jews but I also believe that their story has very little, if anything, to do with the neocons' fixation with Iran.
Of course, if, God forbid, the neocons succeed in getting a military attack on Iran, Iranian Jews will probably pay a terrible price. In general, I take neocon (not you) concern for Iranian Jews as seriously as I do their concern about Chas Freeman's views on Japan....or was it China.
March 23, 2009 10:33 AM | Reply | Permalink
"I agree on Iran's Jews but I also believe that their story has very little, if anything, to do with the neocons' fixation with Iran."
I agree and that's my point. I think Roger Cohen also foolishly inserted them in an equation they have absolutely nothing to do with. To the extent neocons would do that, shame on them as wekk. But Cohen is the guy who wrote that life is beautiful for the remnants of the Jewish community over there, and offended thousands of Persian Jews, many now good and loyal Americans, by playing political football with their brothers and sisters.
Again, I live in a world where one can criticize both the Radoshes and the Cohens of the world and still favor a new approach to and improved relations with Iran. One thing has nothing to do with the other.
March 23, 2009 10:52 AM | Reply | Permalink
should be shame on them "as well".
March 23, 2009 10:53 AM | Reply | Permalink
I agree.
March 23, 2009 11:19 AM | Reply | Permalink
Bruce,
Thanks for the usual voice of reason. I agree with everything you said in this thread. You were right to bring up Cohen's idiocy about Iranian Jews - this is another hint that he continues a venerable tradition, and therefore is quite safe. I wrote about that in a previous comment, but alas I don't know how to find a link, so here is a long quote (sorry):
======
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. He even had the gall to debate Iranian expatriates who actually know what is really going on there.
Cohen claims noble motives by saying: ” I return to this subject because behind the Jewish issue in Iran lies a critical one — the U.S. propensity to fixate on and demonize a country through a one-dimensional lens, with a sometimes disastrous chain of results.”
This is true of course, but idiotic uninformed propaganda like Cohen’s substitutes one distorting lens with another, and two lies do not make one truth.
======
This brings up a much broader problem - how to relate to people living in "normal" comfortable Western world the truth and the horror of living in a totalitarian society. Remember, its called totalitarian because the state's crippling ideology and its armed and unarmed agents permeate each and every aspect of life. Solzhenitsyn talked about that problem, e.g. in his Nobel lecture. I believe the least we can do is to remember that Iran is a totalitarian country, and if an opinionator is oblivious to that fact, we should ignore him/her.
Disclaimer for the overexcited: free countries might be at peace, or even in a military alliance with a totalitarian state (e.g.Soviet Union in WWII). I believe the example here are people like Churchill or Orwell. The latter fought Spanish fascists, took part in the war effort against the Axis, but still wrote "Homage to Catalonia" and "Animal Farm". His eyes have been wide open. So should ours.
March 23, 2009 3:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
We do. Liberals try to get rightwingers fired. I don't think so. Yes, the occasional Imus goes down over racism. But I can't think of anything equivalent to the onslaught produced by criticism of Israel.
Who, on the right, has ever denied a faculty position the way Juan Cole was at Yale for being considered anti-Israel. Walt and Mearsheimer would both be out (can anyone doubt this) if they didn't have tenure. Sommers told Walt as much when he warned him not to publish.
No, in my opinion, there is no issue like this and has not been since the Red Scare of the 50's.
March 23, 2009 10:37 AM | Reply | Permalink
i could give you 100s of examples of people losing their jobs , arrested, jailed, plotted against..etc etc...by jewish people in the media.
but you believe its clever to turn this into a "jewish controll over the media" argument.
i will make you a bet that i can name 100 incidents where "jewish" control cost people their jobs because they said the wrong thing about israel.
all you need to do is show me an example to match each one from the left, since you claim "this sort of thing goes on all the time".
deal?
it really offensive to argue against something that is so obviously true, unless you to are guilty of it.
March 23, 2009 12:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well please feel free to show us your list of 100s Senator McCarthy. I'm all eyes.
March 23, 2009 12:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
Bslev, this blog by MJ is an extension of an ongoing discussion about the influence of AIPAC, the “Jewish Lobby”, and of the wishes of the state of Israel on American policy. Twice previously I have posed my question in similar discussions and neither time has it brought any response, so I will frame it a different way and direct it to you since you seem so well informed on the subject..
If I said that the aforementioned groups caused the War in Iraq, or that it was done for their purposes, I expect that you would argue vociferously that that was not the case. I would not make that argument though, because I think that while they were an influence in that direction they were not the overriding reason. It was a confluence of many factors that took our country into that war.
What I would suggest is that if AIPAC had opposed the invasion with all the force and influence that it wields in pursuit of what it sees as Israel's best interests, if the other voices of Jewish groups had also done so, and if the right wing in Israel had been against the invasion, the war would not have happened.
Dennis Kucinich and a few other members of Congress could not stop the war from happening. Tens of thousands of protesters who represented a small percentage of all the Americans who were against the war could not stop it from happening. Our Constitution could not stop it from happening nor could common sense. Millions of demonstrators all over the world could not stop it from happening. The United Nations could not stop it.
If I am correct that the “Jewish Lobby and/or the State of Israel could have stopped the war, had they seen that to be in their interest, then I think they have too strong a voice in U S affairs and to often use it to speak for the wrong things
What is your opinion? Could they have stopped it?.
March 23, 2009 12:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well I ain't no expert Lulu, but I do think I've seen you pose this question previously. I guess I find it hard to believe that, had all Jewish political orgainizations lined up in opposition to the war, all things equal, it would have made a difference. On the other hand, if you think about what other elements would have to be in place that would have resulted in unified Jewish opposition to the war, then I suppose that we would have had an environment in which the war could have been prevented. I just can't say.
March 23, 2009 12:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
Fair enough. I tried to think how I would have answered my own question and came up with an answer much like the second part of yours. Obviously, I disagree with the first part so I guess neither of our opinions have changed any.
Thanks for responding.
March 23, 2009 12:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
Do not go gentle into that good night, MJ.
We've got your back.
March 23, 2009 10:55 AM | Reply | Permalink
Yea, I'm real dangerous asswipe. This is why I love to have conversations here. I tried. Ciao.
March 23, 2009 11:06 AM | Reply | Permalink
Oh, maybe you were referring to MJ's fear of getting fired by his employer. If so, sorry. But I'll bet 200 bucks with you that MJ gets to keep his job regardless of what he writes. :)
March 23, 2009 11:09 AM | Reply | Permalink
You are right. My organization is great.
March 23, 2009 11:21 AM | Reply | Permalink
On that we wholeheartedly agree as well MJ. IPF is one fine organization that serves an increasingly important role in American politics. You have every reason to be proud to be part of that group, and anyone who is serious about moving ahead in the Middle East, with respect to Iran, Israel, and Palestine, should really try to spend a little bit of time at the IPF website every single day.
http://israelpolicyforum.org/
March 23, 2009 11:37 AM | Reply | Permalink
THANKS!
March 23, 2009 11:54 AM | Reply | Permalink
re "Shining a light"
In other words, a kind of self-non-fulfilling prophecy? Hopefully unneeded -unlike Freeman, Cohen already has the job- but I can understand the precautionary motive. This is not ultimately about any groups "controlling" anything but about pressure for truth pushing back pressure for hypocrisy. Cohen can be a bit naive at times, but his Iran series was an excellent piece of journalism and he certainly hit the nail on the head more than once with it. NY Times would be nuts to go litmus testing him, but one cannot take sanity in the mainstream media for granted these days.
March 23, 2009 11:57 AM | Reply | Permalink
Well, yes, in the end, but PBS did pull Moyers off of NOW and cut the program from 60 minutes back to 30. And my local Public Television station dropped NOW even before PBS pulled Moyers out of it. I think that was all more over not beating the drum for the Iraq war than anything else, but I'm sure other issues added fuel to the fire.
And yes, he is back now, and thank God for it, with a program that is every bit as outspoken and muckraking as NOW was under his direction (I haven't watched NOW since he left it, so I'm not sure what it is currently like), but he was off the air at a time that was critical to the national debate.
March 23, 2009 4:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
The revolutionary component of Roger Cohen is that he's a self-proclaimed "liberal interventionist" and one-time Iraq War supporter who's opposed to carpet bombing Iran's phantom "nuclear weapons facilities". If the Times fires him, that'll be a feather in his cap, and he can go elsewhere. The NYT has spent the last decade utterly destroying its own reputation and credibility; it's now just another failing rag beset by the comic-opera embarrassment of handing over its editorial values to the Mexican tycoon who rode to its financial rescue. We can expect sober fairness in its consideration of complex issues like immigration in the way we can expect Wall Street and the banking industry to become a paragons of Spartan self-denial. It's the newspaper of record only if the record is a tired, tawdry fable.
March 23, 2009 10:29 AM | Reply | Permalink
Cohen is doing great work. Hard to believe saying simple things like maybe Iran can be dealt with rationally or can be expected to act in its own interest is either rare or controversial. But sadly it is both. Happily Mr. Cohen is putting his NYT op ed real estate to truly valuable use.
March 23, 2009 11:08 AM | Reply | Permalink
While I read and pretty much agreed with Cohen's piece today, I was more interested in Ethan Bronner's article in today's NYT about the religious right wing's increasing influence within the Israeli Army, and tensions between that group and the more "traditional" secular army. He reports about the equivalent to our Air Force Academy evangelicals, who have put a decidedly holy war tone into the recent Gaza intervention. His piece is based on a leaked set of interviews of soldiers that reported abusive treatment of Gazans.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/22/weekinreview/22BRONNER.html?hpw
March 23, 2009 12:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
I thought Cohen's article was refreshing. It still bothers me when I see comments about Iran's alleged nuclear weapon's capability from anonymous U.S. or Israeli defense officials.
Does anyone read Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed? Here's his blog:
http://nafeez.blogspot.com/
And here's a piece he wrote about the West's historic interest in claiming Iran has nuclear weapons:
http://www.iprd.org.uk/images/stories/pdf/the%20iran%20threat.pdf
March 23, 2009 1:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
The people who want to start wars have pressed hundreds of buttons until they found the ones that work.
A similar campaign in the past : Ten Commandments In The Classroom !!
The object is to alarm the US public about Iraq ( done ) and next Iran. The most effective button is the shrill claim that the target country has nuclear weapons.
In this sales campaign it matters very little what the actual condition of Iran's nuclear project is. What matters is that the US public hears the factoids and lies that alarm them. How many US voters are going to read an understand a long, fact-and-jargon laden paper on the topic ?
Alas for the malevolent Harold Hills trying to sell the next war, the US public seems to be distracted just now. The claim that "Iran Has Nukes" is not getting the desired response.
Will the War Promoters give up ? No. Will they keep trying new buttons ? You bet.
March 23, 2009 11:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
Great links, tpmgary. Thank you.
March 23, 2009 4:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
How long before they turn off the electric at that paper because the bill is late.
March 25, 2009 11:39 AM | Reply | Permalink