A tenured New York Times "pundit/reporter" Roger Cohen lets Kosacks know where they sit in the political discourse in this country
:
Nor does it seem likely that the America-hating, over-the-top ranting of the left - the kind that equates Guantánamo with the Gulag and holds that the real threat to human rights comes from the White House rather than Al Qaeda - will abate during the Bush presidency.
That’s what we get for being right about the war, right about how bad Bush would be and how wrong he and his neocon/pundit/expert/war cheerleaders were about this entire mess we’re in.
Roger Cohen is a neocon wingnut who thinks that detaining people and torturing them is a great idea, even if they might be innocent. He mocks Democrats for calling our torture cells gulags. We hung Japanese and German war criminals for some of the same things we are doing to others right now.
This has been a bleak year for nuanced thinking. President George W. Bush likes to speak in certainties; contrition and compromise are not his thing. Among hyperventilating left-liberals, hatred of Bush is so intense that rational argument usually goes out the window. The result is a mindless cacophony.
A bleak year for nuanced thinking. Roger, it was a bleak year for nuanced thinking when you where saying it was all a great idea and attacking critics of the war. Is it a mindless cacophony to oppose torture Mr. Cohen? Was it a mindless cacophony that predicted the Invasion would be a disaster? Bush has so damaged America that it will take years to even see the whole picture, and gasbags and other tenured "pundits" like you should be asking who was right and who was wrong? Who was right about how bad Bush would be and how screwed up this war would be? The Mindless cacophony was right, and war cheerleaders like yourself end up with egg on your face. And you’re still unrepentant.
Bush, even after the thumping of the Republicans in November, equates criticism of the war in Iraq with defeatist weakness. Much of the left, in both Europe and the United States, is so convinced that the Iraq invasion was no more than an American grab for oil and military bases, it seems to have forgotten the myriad crimes of Saddam Hussein.
So most Americans don’t want to be torturers. But Roger Cohen sees nothing wrong with ringing a man’s balls out all in the Wah On Terra. When we speak up for American principles, this Bush lover calls us morally equivalent. It is beyond belief how the neo cons and Conservatives have destroyed what little decency our criminal justice system had left in it, and Roger Cohen is OK with that.
This state of affairs is grave. The threat posed by Islamic fanaticism, inside and outside Iraq, requires the lucid analysis and informed disagreement of civilized minds. Bush's certainties are dangerous. But so is the moral equivalency of the left, the kind that during the Cold War could not see the crimes of communism, and now seems ready to equate the conservative leadership of a great democracy with dictatorship.
Quoting the Euston Manifesto, he says
""We recognize that it was possible reasonably to disagree about the justification for the intervention, the manner in which it was carried through, the planning (or lack of it) for the aftermath, and the prospects for the successful implementation of democratic change. We are, however, united in our view about the reactionary, semi-fascist and murderous character of the Baathist regime in Iraq, and we recognize the overthrow as a liberation of the Iraqi people."
This is what he wants the left to sign onto. So then when we torture people, it’s OK, but we when the Baathist torture people, well then, they’re murderous. What are we seeing here? Un...er...moral equivalency.
Here is how the fair and balanced Roger Cohen lays out the arguments from the left:
If you're tired of sterile screaming in the wilderness, tired of the comfortably ensconced "hindsighters" poring over every American error in Iraq, tired of facile anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism masquerading as anti- Zionism, try the Euston road in 2007. It might actually lead somewhere.
Hey Roger, what if we’re tired of the lies from the America-Is-Always-Right Peanut gallery? How about when asshats like yourself cheer on a war that turns into a disaster but can find no responsibility in what you helped to bring about from your elevated status?
How about this Roger: We were right and you were wrong. So maybe you should stop giving advice.
link here:
http://select.nytimes.com/...