Cohen slams Obama for not having established "a no-fly zone" in Syria earlier, which would have involved the United States bombing and destroying Syria's air force, a clear act of aggression and an obvious boon to Al Qaeda and ISIS.
Cohen also says he was for "arming the rebels," another violation of international law which -- when tried by Obama to appease the drumbeat from Cohen and his ilk -- led to many U.S.-trained and U.S.-armed rebels taking their equipment and skills to Al Qaeda and ISIS.
Yet, Cohen -- on the prized opinion real estate of The Washington Post's op-ed page and in his nationally syndicated column -- unapologetically encourages an illegal invasion of another country while condemning Russia for doing the same except that Russia was following international law by working with the sovereign government of Syria and therefore has not "invaded" Syria.
We also are supposed to forget that Cohen's ideas would benefit Sunni jihadists, such as the Al Qaeda-dominated "Army of Conquest" which could use the "no-fly zones" to mount a victorious offensive to capture Damascus and create a humanitarian crisis even worse than now.
Possibly with ISIS chopping off the heads of "infidels" -- Christians, Alawites, Shiites, etc. -- and with Al Qaeda having a new home in the center of the Middle East to plot terror strikes on the West, Cohen's plan might necessitate a major U.S. military intervention that would get even more people killed and deal the final death blow to the American Republic.
In evaluating Cohen's lame-brained double-think, it is worth remembering that he was one of the many U.S. opinion leaders who cheered on Secretary of State Colin Powell's deceptive Iraq War speech to the United Nations on Feb. 5, 2003. Waving "we-love-Colin" pompoms alongside all his esteemed colleagues, Cohen laughed at anyone who still doubted that Saddam Hussein possessed hidden WMD stockpiles.
"The evidence he [Powell] presented to the United Nations -- some of it circumstantial, some of it absolutely bone-chilling in its detail -- had to prove to anyone that Iraq not only hasn't accounted for its weapons of mass destruction but without a doubt still retains them," Cohen wrote. "Only a fool -- or possibly a Frenchman -- could conclude otherwise."
Ha-ha, did you get that clever line -- "Only a fool -- or possibly a Frenchman" -- pretty funny except that by heaping ridicule on those of us who doubted Powell's evidence, Cohen contributed to the deaths of some 4,500 U.S. soldiers, the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, the cost to U.S. taxpayers of more than $1 trillion, and chaos now spreading across not just the Middle East but into Europe.
In a normal place where there was some modicum of accountability, you would have expected Cohen to be banished to Storage Room B with his red stapler or worse. But no, Cohen is back running with the same juvenile in-crowd, behaving just as stupidly and just as recklessly as he has many times in the past.
Obama Intimidated
But the larger problem is that President Obama appears intimidated by this collection of know-it-alls who preen across the editorial pages of The Washington Post and The New York Times or who hold down prestigious "fellowships" at the Brookings Institution or other big-name think tanks or who self-identify as "human rights activists" advocating "humanitarian" wars.
Arguably, Obama has always had an outsized regard for people with establishment credentials. It is, after all, how he rose through the ranks as first an extremely bright academic and later a talented orator and politician. Without family connections or personal wealth, he needed the approval of various influential individuals. If he offended them in some way, he risked being pigeonholed as "an angry black man."
Indeed, the comedy duo Key & Peele developed a series of funny skits with Jordan Peele playing the always proper and controlled Obama and Keegan-Michael Key as "anger translator Luther." Obama even invited "Luther" to translate Obama's speech to the 2015 White House Correspondents Dinner, except that by the end of that talk Obama was expressing his own anger and Luther peeled away.
The problem in the real world is that Obama remains cowed by the Important People of Washington -- represented in that oh-so-important crowd at the dinner -- and bows to their misguided thinking.
Obama also is facing a beefed-up lobbying operation for Saudi Arabia to go along with the always formidable Israel Lobby. The Intercept reported that in September the Saudi kingdom added to its large stable of thoroughbred influence-peddlers by signing "Edelman, the largest privately owned public relations agency in the world [and] the Podesta Group " a lobbying firm founded by Tony Podesta, a major fundraiser for the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign."
Indeed, the repressive Saudi kingdom may need some special P.R. help as it prepares to behead Ali Mohammed al-Nimr whose body would then be attached to a cross or otherwise displayed in a crucifixion that would leave his corpse to rot for several days as a warning to others. Al-Nimr is a Shiite who at the age of 17 in 2012 participated in a pro-democracy demonstration that was viewed as an affront to the monarchy.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
2
1
1
