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CounterPunch
December
18, 2002
Ariel Cohen, American Hero
by ANTHONY GANCARSKI
Those who fret over foreign entanglements may
want to avoid glancing at the resume` of National Review Online
contributor Ariel Cohen. Mr. Cohen has led an admirably itinerant
life. Born in Yalta, with eleven years of Israeli residency to
his credit, Mr. Cohen might not seem like the first person you'd
contact for US foreign policy advice. But there he is, safely
ensconced in the CFR and the Heritage Foundation, with a tidy
sinecure as research fellow in Russian and Eurasian Studies in
the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International
Studies.
Talk about your immigrant success stories!
It is perhaps fitting that America, having dumped its manufacturing
base in favor of importing cheap and shoddy goods from foreign
lands, has opted to do the same for its intellectual class. Mr.
Cohen, according to his bio on the Heritage Foundation's website,
is "a passionate debater on the Palestinian/Israeli conflict.
In numerous television appearances and opinion articles, Cohen
has made the case that no peace will exist in the Middle East
as long as Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian Authority continue
to encourage or ignore terrorist attacks on Israel, perpetrated
by Arab extremist groups."
What a refreshing viewpoint! You certainly
don't get enough pencil-necked geeks who couldn't win fistfights
squawking fitfully on cable news shows about "Israel's right
to defend itself" (with US armaments, of course). These
folks are akin to those who claim they have a right to sleep
with prostitutes paid off by the Washington regime.
What's that, you say? No one actually
claims that Washington should pay for their patronage of whores,
with the possible exception of members of that government? Well,
of course. It's absurd to think that anyone could make the case
that government-subsidized prostitution was "good public
policy." After all, everyone knows the feds can't underwrite
sex. They can only underwrite death.
And death, of course, is where the spectral
Ariel Cohen comes in. For Mr. Cohen seems to know that death
is coming before the rest of us. For example, his Heritage bio
claims that he urged Congress to "offer to help Russia and
China in countering the efforts of radical Islamic groups in
Central Asia, including the Taliban and the Osama bin Laden organization."
Golly, what foresight! It's as if Cohen, urging a preemptive
strike, somehow knew the threat Al Qaeda posed even before our
own government.
Of course, I don't mean to imply that
there is any way in which Mr. Cohen's love for America could
be doubted. Indeed, this American patriot showed his true feelings
for his country in a playful little piece for NR Online entitled
"Privatize Iraqi Oil", in which he comes off as the
policy-wonk tagalong brother of Ken Adelman.
Like the aforementioned Adelman, Cohen
feels free here to riff on language, displays a marked insouciance
toward both language and war itself. In Cohen's reckoning, "the
U.N. Security Council is caught up in a chain of events that
is likely to end up in removal of Saddam Hussein's regime"
that -- coincidentally enough -- requires the Bush team to "plan
for the future of a post-Saddam Iraq." Well, of course,
we're the indispensable nation and all. The ever-pragmatic Cohen
cautions that "Sound economics are needed to help the Iraqi
people rebuild their lives and their country after two decades
of wars and four decades of repression under the current regime."
It goes without saying that Cohen's not
here to give us a history lesson. The point of his piece is the
future. That said, consider his CFR-approved version of how Iraq
met its current dire economic circumstances:
Saddam's regime has succeeded in bankrupting
the country even though it boasts the world's second-largest
oil reserves after Saudi Arabia. . .GDP for 2001, at the market-exchange
rate, is estimated to be only about one-third what it was in
1989. Iraq also is hobbled by its $140 billion foreign debt.
This devastation was wrought by such policies as the nationalization
of the country's chief export commodity, oil; extensive central
planning of industry and trade; the 1982-1988 war against Iran;
and the invasion of Kuwait, which precipitated the 1991 Gulf
War.
To hear Cohen tell it, there never were
economic sanctions or repeated bombing runs over what passes
for Iraq's sovereign territory. The implication is that "nationalization"
and "central planning" were the chief causes of Iraq's
current condition. The facts run so contrary to Cohen's assessment
that it seems less necessary to refute them than to simply point
out how blatantly disingenuous his rewriting of history is here.
His confidence in telling such lies only underscores his knowledge
that the system is rigged such that the voices of genuine pacifism
will never get a fair hearing.
For Cohen is a war hawk. As long as he
doesn't have to do the fighting, of course; unlike Fightin' Bill
Clinton, don't expect him to grab a shotgun to protect Israeli
soil, er, American Interests ™ from the Butcher of Baghdad's
marauding Republican Guard. In fact, it about tears Ariel Cohen
up inside to consider what actually happens in a war. In lieu
of discussing the fighting on the streets of Baghdad forecasted
to accompany "regime change", the decorous dual citizen
shies away from descriptions more graphic than "the road
to economic prosperity in Iraq will not be easily paved"
and maunderings about ending "Saddam's brutal and repressive
regime".
What does he care, though? It's not going
to be Ariel Cohen's homeboy Tommy bayonet fighting with twelve-year
old boys defending their parents' homes. Nor will it be Ariel's
uncle charged with the unenviable task of shooting retreating
soldiers. Ariel Cohen can write such dispassionate words about
American wars precisely because he has no innate love for Americans.
He didn't grow up going to flea markets and buying knockoffs
of designer gear. Nor does he know what it is to live and die
for his local high school or college football team. It was never
for Ariel Cohen to hear the music of Al Green while driving back
from freshman year of college, and understand that the Reverend
knew things about God and sex and life that you needed to learn
before you could call yourself a man.
Ariel Cohen loves neither God, man, nor
country in any meaningful sense. He's a professional, and his
goal in life is to get paid and be on the winning side. This
is why it's so easy for him to blather on about the "market
economy" being the salvation for Iraqis. Too bad about all
those poor folks dead from radiation poisoning -- Cohen has nothing
for them -- but "to bring modern economic expertise and
management skills to Iraq, the government will have to hire Iraqi
expatriates as well as other Western-educated Arabic speakers
with financial, legal, and business backgrounds to fill key government
positions on economic reform and privatization."
The government will simply have to hire
them! Yet another utterly contemptible formulation of the theory
that Iraq is intended to be nothing more than an oil plantation,
a Wyoming with better falafel and worse strip clubs. To call
Cohen and his ilk Zionists gives them too much credit. Israel,
like the US itself, is just a pawn to get the right people paid.
Anthony Gancarski, a frequent contributor to CounterPunch,
makes his home in Spokane, Washington. Email him at Anthony.Gancarski@attbi.com.
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