Richard Cohen: Wanker of the Century
In a rare instance of honesty and clarity, Richard Cohen describes how he approached writing his 2002 and 2003 columns that beat the drums for war in Iraq.
I thought the war would do wonders for the Middle East and that it would last, at the most, a week or two. In this I was assured by the usual experts in and out of government. My head nodded like one of those little toy dogs in the window of the car ahead of you.
Translation: “I was already on the bandwagon,people told me what I wanted to hear, and I spewed it forth as gospel truth.”
And from this unimpeachable platform, Richard Cohen has the audacity to attack Hilary Clintoon for not leveling with Americans over her vote for war. Richard Cohen, he of motive pure and intention bold, believes that Hilary Clintoon owes the nation an explanation. But where’s Richard’s explanation? He doesn’t say: that’s “extraneous”. Translated: “That’s uncomfortable.”
Fuirthermore, what would Richard “fool or a Frenchmen” Cohen have said about Ms. Clintoon had she voted against war? Perhaps something along the lines of “the war’s opponents — no longer feel compelled to prove a case or stick to the facts. As with Vietnam, this is becoming an emotional battle between ideologues who, as usual, don’t give a damn about the truth”? or perhaps Clinton “is George McGovern all over again. I do not quibble.”
The fact is Richard Cohen is as culpable as anyone else in the mess we’re in: perhaps he didn’t vote for the war as Hilary Clintoon did, but he certainly wrote reams of columns in its favor, in the paper of record for Washington DC and much of the nation. A related fact is that Richard Cohen has a very hard time accepting that culpability: like Winston Smith in room 101, accountability seems to be Cohen’s “worst thing in the world”, shrieking like the tortured Smith “Do it to Julia! Do it to Julia! Not me! Julia! I don’t care what you do to her. Tear her face off, strip her to the bones. Not me! Julia! Not me!”
[H]ow come she now says she did not think Bush, armed with a congressional resolution, would hurry to war?
I certainly did. It was about the only thing I got right about the war, which, the record will show, I supported.
Cohen writes the preceding words as if it is some badge of honor to not only have been utterly, tragically wrong on the war in Iraq, a war which he personally advocated that has thus far led to the deaths of some 3,000 and growing American troops, but that in his wrongness, Cohen is superior to Ms. Clintoon because while Ms. Clintoon’s explanations are twisted, his own are nonexistent, explained away as “a lapse in judgement.”
In the same article, Cohen attacks Clintoon for his very own failings. As has been pointed out repeatedly, in the march to war, Richard Cohen ran to the head of parade with his drum majors baton: the very minute the war started, Cohen turned around on a dime, and became a critic.
Is it yet another coincidence that, aside from Obama, all the Democratic presidential candidates from the Senate have also reversed course, arriving at their opinions after excruciating thought, or have they merely put their finger to the wind? In other words, have they changed their minds or merely their positions? It’s hard to know. In Clinton’s case, she is dead center in American public opinion, foursquare for what’s popular and courageously opposed to what’s not. Most Americans oppose a precipitous pullout from Iraq and — surprise! — so does Clinton.
Putting aside that this strange “coincidence” of Democrats changing their minds or positions on the war might have something to do with the fact that the war’s not going very well, the fact is that Cohen’s behavior is exactly the same as that which he condemns. When the war was popular, he was a supporter; now that it’s not, he’s against it!
Our prisons are filled with people whose “lapse in judgement” led to the death of one individual. Cohen’s “lapse” helped cheer thousands to their deaths: before Cohen starts demanding Clinton’s accountability moment, perhaps he’d better make make an appointment for his own.
Too often when a columnist gets a job at the Post, he tosses principle out the window. Yet this is precisely what we want in a columnist — principles and the courage to stick to them. Instead of Cohen criticizing Clinton for saying she had been misled by Bush and his merry band of fibbers, exaggerators and hallucinators, I’d like to hear an explanation of how he thinks he went wrong and what he learned from it. I don’t want to know how Bush failed Clinton. I want to know how Cohen failed his country.
Interestingly Cohen’s defense is that which we’ve been accusing him of for the past six years: “My head nodded like one of those little toy dogs in the window of the car ahead of you.”
A toy bobble-head dog. Couldn’t have said it better myself.
