Sunday, February 28, 2010

Another left-liberal, Jewish "progressive" in MSM unmasked as a serial-warmongering Israel-firster

Liberal Richard Cohen Wants Israel-First War Policy
(Rense.com) -- By Stephen Sniegoski --

While we are explicitly told by anti-war commentators such as Juan Cole that the only type of American Jews pushing for war on Iran are right-wing ones, it is apparent that Jewish liberals such as Richard Cohen are also in the pro-war camp.
See: http://tinyurl.com/JuanColeonIsraelLobby

Now Cohen, just like a number of rightist neocons, does not directly call for an attack on Iran, but rather advocates a policy that certainly would lead in that direction. Specifically, he says that it is time for Obama to start acting "crazy" toward Iran because of the alleged failure of diplomacy.
Iran and the Crazy Factor, Washington Post, February 23, http://tinyurl.com/cohencrazy

Such a recommendation of craziness is predicated on Cohen's belief that Ahmadinejad and the Iranian leadership in general are crazy and that the only way to fight crazy people is by likewise acting crazy: "fight crazy with crazy." Cohen writes: "I have no idea whether Ahmadinejad merely acts crazy or is crazy. I do know, though, that Iran seems intent on getting nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver them. I also know that nothing the United States and its allies have done has dissuaded Ahmadinejad (or the mullahs or the Revolutionary Guard Corps) from his goal. It may be time for Barack Obama, ever the soul of moderation, to borrow a tactic from Richard Nixon and fight crazy with crazy. The way things are going, it would be crazy not to."

It is rather odd that Cohen would pick Nixon's advocacy of madness as a model for emulation, since Nixon, and especially his bellicosity, were hardly admired by liberals such as Cohen during his presidency. Moreover, Cohen acknowledges that Nixon's crazy strategy "while cunning, didn't work on the North Vietnamese." Desiring the adoption of a previously failed strategy is hard to fathom...

What Cohen does not even make an attempt to show is that in regard to American security the danger of not attacking Iran outweighs the terrible impact of a war in the Middle East, which would be a likely result from his recommendation that Obama act crazy. It would seem to be a general consensus that a war on Iran at the present time would have terrible consequences for the already-battered world economy, which would certainly affect the US. It should be pointed out that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Michael Mullen, reflecting what has been the consensus view of the American military leadership, has expressed strong opposition to any military strike on Iran and desires the continuation of peaceful diplomacy.
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/dreyfuss/513886/admiral_mullen_no_attack_on_i ran

In sum, it would appear that the liberal Richard Cohen does not differ substantially from his co-religionists on the Right in his militant position toward Iran. And there is nothing particularly new about this. Cohen had supported the war on Iraq and only later recanted, after the war had become unpopular, but included Israel in his explanation for his earlier pro-war position: "Saddam Hussein was a beast who had twice invaded his neighbors, had killed his own people with abandon and posed a threat - and not just a theoretical one - to Israel."
"The Lingo Of Vietnam," Washington Post, November 21, 2006, p. A-27)

It would seem therefore that the safety of Israel always looms very large in the minds of even liberal Jews...MORE...LINK

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