They’re Killing Us

John Aravosis, linking to Steve Soto’s wonderful post about liberal pundit Richard Cohen, says in his headline “good guy, but dead wrong about Karl Rove and the war in Iraq.” He may be a good guy, I don’t know him, but the problem is that he’s dead wrong about a lot of very important things at exactly the wrong moment.

I’ve written a lot about Richard Cohen over the years because I think he is a large part of what ails our side in this political/civil war. The liberal elite pundits, whom everyone assumes speak for “reasonable Democrats” are the first link in a chain that defines Democrats as being without conviction or belief. Democratic politicians, the media and the strategists take cues from their positions as to what constitues the “correct” liberal position. And it’s killing us.

Richard Cohen is the poster boy for this destructive effete punditry. His claim yesterday that the Plame investigation was “not a major story. It’s a crappy little crime and it may not be a crime at all,” is just the latest in a long line of cocktail party bon mots that seem almost designed to ruin any chances the Democrats have of making headway in the media. Perhaps there is no better example, however, than this one from November 2000:

Given the present bitterness, given the angry irresponsible charges being hurled by both camps, the nation will be in dire need of a conciliator, a likable guy who will make things better and not worse. That man is not Al Gore. That man is George W. Bush.”

At precisely the wrong moment, Cohen made precisely the wrong argument. It is his very special gift. The Republicans can always count on Cohen to give the respectable liberal view that Republicans are really the good guys and prove to everyone else that Democrats are a bunch of wimps.

Yesterday, he claimed that he doesn’t blame reporters for getting the Iraq war wrong because they have to rely on their sources, (which we now know is solely comprised of the Bush administration and each other.) John Aravosis politely replies:

I’m a reporter, a writer, an activist, and many other things. And I didn’t “get it wrong” like Richard Cohen apparently did. I totally got that something didn’t add up BEFORE the war in Iraq started. I remember telling many people that the fact that the rationale for going to war in Iraq had changed, oh, 27 times (literally) had me a bit concerned. I remember telling them that I supported going into Afghanistan but Iraq smelled fishy – Bush didn’t have a clear reason for going in and something didn’t smell quite right.

Oddly enough, Cohen was an early skeptic of the war. Back in July of 2002 he was questioning the necessity for war:

The reason I started this column with LBJ’s letter to Marshall Surratt of Dallas, Texas (a copy of which Surratt recently sent on to me), is that the lack of candour and the willingness to exaggerate the stakes in Vietnam cost both Johnson and the United States dearly. Not only was the triggering event for that war, the Tonkin Gulf incident, either wholly or partly concocted, it was used to justify a policy that had already been decided.

Is the same thing happening with Iraq? Are the events of September 11 being used to justify a goal that was already something of a fixation for some Bush administration figures?

I don’t know. But I do know that certain hard questions have not yet been answered.

[…]

The US can take casualties, but only if it understands why. War plans are being drawn up in the Pentagon. But explanations are lacking at the White House.

All it took to turn him into an enthusiastic supporter was Colin Powell, every reasonable liberal pundit’s favorite Republican Daddy. He could hardly contain his breathless relief that he could now join in the excitement:

“…the case Powell laid out regarding chemical and biological weapons was so strong — so convincing — it hardly mattered that nukes may be years away, and thank God for that. In effect, he was telling the French and the Russians what could happen — what would happen — if the United Nations did not do what it said it would and hold Saddam Hussein accountable for, in effect, being Saddam Hussein.

The French, though, are so far deaf to such logic. Their foreign minister, Dominique de Villepin, said that the consequences of war are dire and unpredictable. He is right about that. But the consequences of doing nothing — and mere containment of Iraq amounts to nothing — are also dire and somewhat predictable. The United Nations will be revealed as a toothless debating society — a duty-free store on the East River — and every rogue will have learned a lesson from Saddam Hussein: Stall until everyone loses interest.

By this point a very large minority in the US and majorities of everyone in the rest of the world were convinced otherwise. There were massive protests that were disregarded as old hippy relics by the beltway media elite. It was clear that they were not being skeptical of any of the many rationales the Bush administration presented — all they knew was that Bush had decided to go to war come hell or high water and once they knew that they became supporters of the war. Their intoxication was palpable.

And while the Republicans were being extolled for their resolute courage, the Democrats were being portrayed as bedwetting panic artists. This image was used to great effect during the presidential campaign. It was at this point that liberal Richard Cohen, with his usual impeccable timing, chose to admit that he had gotten all askeered about anthrax:

I’m not sure if panic is quite the right word, but it is close enough. Anthrax played a role in my decision to support the Bush administration’s desire to take out Saddam Hussein. I linked him to anthrax, which I linked to Sept. 11. I was not going to stand by and simply wait for another attack — more attacks. I was going to go to the source, Hussein, and get him before he could get us. As time went on, I became more and more questioning, but I had a hard time backing down from my initial whoop and holler for war.

[…]

The terrorist attacks coupled with the anthrax scare unhinged us a bit — or maybe more than a bit. We eventually went into a war that now makes little sense and that, without a doubt, was waged for reasons that simply did not exist. We did so, I think, because we were scared. You could say we lacked judgment. Maybe. I would say we lacked leadership.

Very inspiring, no? A leading liberal admitting that he supported the Bush administration because he was afraid. Does it get any worse than that?

The Democrats have an image problem. And that image problem is constantly reinforced by the liberal pundits who helped create it in the first place. We are saddled with this milquetoast reputation in large part because the “reasonable” liberal pundits have political tin ears and yet are catered to and listened to by Democratic politicians and their handlers.

Like I said, I’m sure Richard Cohen is a good guy. But no politician anywhere should care what he thinks or listen to him or anyone like him, and there should be a concerted effort to persuade the media that these guys do not speak for us. Richard Cohen is what’s killing us.

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