PrintFebruary 1, 2011
Richard Cohen Redeemed
When the subject is Islam or Islamism, few voices on the left find the courage to abandon their near universal political correctness. Paul Berman and Christopher Hitchens are among that small minority. On 1 February, Richard Cohen of the Washington Post came out of the political closet to join the ranks of candor. His essay on the dangers of a successful revolt in Egypt is a good an assessment as can be found anywhere. He pulls no punches either about the duplicitous and dangerous Muslim Brotherhood. Remember that this is the same Cohen who once argued that Israel was a "historical mistake."
If Cohen can see the light, then there may be a flicker of hope for the rest of the so-called "mainstream" media. Contrast the Cohen essay with John Kerry's pandering, on the same subject, in the New York Times. Kerry can't see the threat to Egypt, Israel, or America. The Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relation's Committee gets high marks for consistency; Vietnam through Afghanistan, he seeks peace at any price - even if the price now includes the loss of Israel.
Nonetheless, the Cohen turnabout illustrates the larger threat to national security today: a press, a government, and an electorate unwilling to recognize an imminent danger. In any democracy, an ill informed electorate can be as dangerous as any external enemy. Kerry and a host of like minded apologists in journalism, the administration, and academia have held the appeasement high ground long enough. If Richard Cohen can challenge the Quislings on the pages of the Post, all hope for national security sanity is not forlorn.
