By the time he's done, Cohen manages to explain away hatred towards the U.S. as being the result of the U.S. "adhering to certain principles" (this is certainly true, but Cohen clearly means moral principles), rather than the result of the U.S. having strayed from moral principles. Our support of Israel, our bombing of Iraq, our deliberate policy of starving Iraqi children, our overthrow of democratic leaders, our support for oppressive regimes—all of these historic U.S. policies and deeds are the result of policy-makers "adhering to certain principles", and thus good and true and right.
The U.S. not only has done nothing to deserve the hatred of others, but they only hate us because we are so good, and so we should therefore take pride in the fact that we are so unloved by so many people in so much of the world.
It is hardly uncommon for such utterly nonsensical arguments in favor of existing U.S. policies to be propagated among the educated elite, among politicians and the intelligentsia. That this state of affairs even exists offers extraordinary insight into the political culture of the U.S. and is a sad commentary upon the health of true moral principles amongst educated Americans.
[1] Richard Cohen, "They Honor Us With Their Hate", The Washington Post, July 10, 2007
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/09/AR2007070901234_pf.html
[2] David Brown, "Study Claims Iraq's 'Excess' Death Toll Has Reached 655,000", The Washington Post, October 11, 2006
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/10/AR2006101001442_pf.html[3] Richard Cohen, "The Lingo of Vietnam", The Washington Post, November 21, 2006; A27
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/20/AR2006112000965_pf.html[4] Interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski, Le Nouvel Observateur, January 1998 (translated from the French by William Blum)
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/BRZ110A.html[5] Ahmed Rashid, "Taliban: The Story of the Afghan Warlords", (Pan Macmillan, London 2001), p.5
[6] "Afghanistan War", The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition, 2007
http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1E1-AfghanWar.html[7] "Iraq surveys show 'humanitarian emergency'", UNICEF, August 12, 1999
http://www.unicef.org/newsline/99pr29.htm[8] Andrew Buncombe, "Infant mortality in Iraq soars as young pay the price for war", The Independent, May 8, 2007
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2521681.ece[9] John Pilger, "Squeezed to Death", The Guardian, March 4, 2000
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