Tag: neoconservative

Oh, so *now* Richard Cohen wants to be a neoconservative. Because Obama.

Point (Richard Cohen, “America’s Left Slides Down A Slippery Slope In Iraq,” 2014):

…people will die of starvation or thirst or a bullet in the back because we didn’t do what we could easily do.
This is not who we are. This is not who we should be.

I recognize that these are not easy issues. I recognize further that we are a war-weary nation and that events in the Middle East are so convoluted, they redeem the preposterous plots of “Homeland.”

But, Lord, how did the moral center of the American left get so isolationist and selfish? How did it manage to cede the moral high ground to the right? Why does it see no difference between a moral obligation to save lives by avoiding murder — not just with humanitarian measures — and a kind of militarist lust for yet more adventure?

Counterpoint (Richard Cohen, “The Myth of American Exceptionalism,” 2011): Continue reading Oh, so *now* Richard Cohen wants to be a neoconservative. Because Obama.

War funding passes, of course.

Hot Air Headlines categorized yesterday’s vote to sustain war funding as “Wikileaks docs can’t stop Congress from passing war funding bill:” it honestly surprised me that this could have been the reason for the leak in the first place.  I assumed general petty nastiness; after all, the leak was undoubtedly instigated by members of the organized antiwar movement, which means that they don’t need a specific reason to be evil and vicious.

Not that it made any difference, of course.  And it won’t make a difference in the fall, either.  Back in 2006, I – like most of the Right, really – still took the Democrats seriously when they ostensibly took the organized antiwar movement’s position on the GWOT.  Fortunately for the planet, we shouldn’t have: once in power Establishment Democrats fairly blatantly broke every promise that they made to the organized antiwar movement.  Not that the organized antiwar movement deserves more (or any) consideration in that regard: they combine having fairly vicious and bigoted policy goals with a remarkably masochistic willingness to submit to humiliation after humiliation, just as long as the kicks and beatings are interspersed with the occasional almost-kind word.  Still, it’s been over three years of degradation; you’d think that those people would have noticed by now. Continue reading War funding passes, of course.