Roger Cohen - Your ideas don't matter to society.

Ezra Klein has read NY Times OpEd columnist Roger Cohen's complaint that he gets no credit with Liberals for being merely a liberal hawk. Instead he is lumped in with and accused of being that most despicable of American political labels now, a "NeoCon."

His complaint? Anyone today who supports American military intervention is derided as a NeoCon. He claims that he is not. His is a nuanced pro-military intervention position in which he merely supports intervention in Serbia, but does not go along with the NeoCons.

Ezra takes that whine apart beautifully.

...the liberal hawks should pay attention to a scolding Tom Wilkinson (in the movie The Last Kiss) gives to the solipsistic Zach Braff. "What you feel only matters to you," he spits. "It's what you do, to the people around you, that matters. That's all that matters." [Snip]

American politics isn't about you. It's not about your ideas, or your personal vision of the world, or your purity. Contemporary politics is not a landscape awaiting your morality plays and exhibitions of ethical decisiveness. It is not yours.

It is the impact of your ideas, and your commentary, that matters. That's all that matters. Yet years after their sustained dance of personal regard and self involvement helped blind the liberal hawks to the reality of George W. Bush's war, one of them, Roger Cohen, is retreading the same ground, wondering why his continued advocacy for war, (or at least continual attacks on its opponents) is folded into the critiques of the neocons.

Here's why: Roger Cohen is not president. George W. Bush is. And until Roger Cohen's foreign policy vision integrates itself with an understanding of American power, and how ideas interact with the current administration, he is, effectively, a neoconservative, or, worse, an enabler of the neoconservatives who's able to advocate for their policy agenda without needing to answer for their failures.

Cohen may not, personally, think like Bill Kristol. But he certainly writes like him. "Neocon, for many, has become shorthand for neocon-Zionist conspiracy," he says, naming no names, and instead offering a simple, generalized accusation of anti-semitism against all those who question the neoconservatives. "Baghdad is closer to Sarajevo than the left has allowed," he writes, obliterating the difference between a bombing campaign undertaken to end an ongoing genocide and a ground invasion undertaken to unearth weapons that didn't exist, overturn a regime we couldn't replace, and forcibly impose a system of governance that lacked foundations. "MoveOn.org is the Petraeus-insulting face of never-set-foot-in-a-war-zone liberalism," he scoffs, having never, himself, fought in a war, but nevertheless adopting the authority of those who have.

These are not arguments. They are smears. [Snip]

Cohen would no doubt respond that he is not a neoconservative, but a liberal interventionist. "Distinction matters," he protests. "The neocon taste for American empire is not the liberal hawk’s belief in the bond between American power and freedom’s progress." But this war, and any that occur until January 2009, will not be conducted by Roger Cohen. They will be conducted by neoconservatives animated by a taste for American empire. And so the distinction does not matter, because any hawkish actions will be undertaken and overseen by those on the wrong side of it. Roger Cohen may feel like he is a liberal hawk, and thus distinct. But what Roger Cohen feels does not matter, because Roger Cohen does not control any branch of the American military. Who he empowers, and which actors in American politics find their ideas legitimized by his columns, is all that matters. And in that, he is worse than a neoconservative. He's a liberal hawk who knows better, but whose interest in writing about his own virtue overwhelms his judgments concerning the actual actions of those who wield power. He is not a neoconservative. He is a narcissist.

In short - the NeoCons and Bushies have thoroughly screwed up America and the world with their militaristic nationalist fantasies. They clearly have not learned how they screwed up. Instead, they are trying to find out who prevented their success and want to kill whoever that is, not accepting the clear reality that they are themselves their own worst enemy and the source of their defeats.

It is not the liberals, the anti-war Democrats, the al Qaeda members or the Sunni Wahabbi terrorists who are causing their grand plans to collapse into dust. It is their own blindness, ignorance and stupidity that is defeating the Bush people. And as long as the Republicans retain control of the White House, this situation will continue.

There is no "nuanced liberal war hawk position" that can get around the fact that the NeoCons and incompetent Bushies control any possible military action at this time and that will remain the case until February 2009. Any "liberal war hawk" who suggests using military options to the current incompetent crew is one of them.

No amount of whining from Cohen that he didn't mean to support the incompetence of the current leaders will detract from the fact that support of Cheney/Bush/NeoCons means their failures are those of their supporters also.

Thanks, Ezra. Extremely clear and most accurate. "What you feel only matters to you," ... "It's what you do, to the people around you, that matters. That's all that matters."