Taking Issue: Nick Cohen Disagrees with Johann Hari: Replies
Hari, Johann
NICK COHEN' S response is perplexing, characterized as it is by daft hyperbole —_ (I'm Maoist now?), denial of his own statements, and arguments that he knows I agree with and have done more to...
...Cohen writes, "For the record, I have written many pieces about civil lib - erties...
...I received a slew of Islamist death threats after I worked undercover at Britain's most extreme mosque and then appeared on the Islam Channel to expose and challenge the anti-Semitism, homophobia, and totalitarianism of jihadists...
...If readers go to www.democratiya.com/ review.asp?reviews_id=94, they will find Cohen writing a long piece dedicated to citing Orwell as a major influence...
...Then he sadly obfuscates further by building a straw man about George Orwell...
...As Nick knows, I have been asking this very question longer and more persistently than he has...
...I am gay...
...And—in a fawning account of meeting Paul Wolfowitz in the same newspaper: "I was clearly in the presence of real power...
...The list of odd misrepresentations goes on...
...This has involved painful rethinking of my own previous position, as I made clear in the very first paragraph of my review...
...One of my Iraqi friends is now living in a Basra neighborhood where Talibanstyle militias beat women who walk onto the street without a veil and stone adulteresses...
...Cohen's preferred tactic —enthusiastically supporting the Bush strategy—has actually enlarged and spread jihadism, as every major study of the phenomenon shows...
...His work can be read at www.johannhari.com 82 DISSENT / Fall 2007...
...Each of his claims about my "deception" has a similar clear quote disproving them...
...This is the consequence of the war Cohen still claims was necessary and worthwhile in his columns...
...Far from repudiating this, Cohen linked to it prominently on his Web site...
...In these strange times, the only person who believes that this is possible or desirable is George W. Bush . . . [and he is] feared and hated by right-thinking people the world over for saying so...
...It's disappointing he doesn't try to defend his positions or engage with any of my arguments, despite the fact I tried hard to fairly summarize his case...
...For example, he denies ever arguing that the West was right to back Saddam in the 1980s...
...This information doesn't fit into his Manichean polemics so, rather than defend his case, he simply pretends it isn't so...
...If he wants to renounce this argument, that is welcome...
...And, again in the Observer: "Neoconservatives . . . [are] hated because of their espousal of causes the liberal-left had once owned but no longer had the moral self-confidence to defend...
...For example, he simply repeats his claim that the Iraq War marked a radical break with Henry Kissinger's influence on U.S...
...In conversations with me, Cohen has explicitly cited Orwell as a long-term inspiration since childhood...
...JOHANN HARI is a columnist for the Independent newspaper in London...
...So it is deeply strange for him to write, "Every now and again Hari manages to shake himself out of his world of makebelieve and acknowledge that we're up against a fascist enemy...
...The caveats he quotes in his response constitute literally a few hundred words out of tens of thousands backing Bush DISSENT / Fall 2007 81 enthusiastically, as anybody who reads his book will see...
...foreign policy—and, to sustain this, he ignores the lengthy part of my review pointing out that Kissinger is now, according to Bob Woodward, "the most senior foreign policy advisor to [Bush] outside the administration...
...Yes, this is indeed "blind faith...
...Cohen is ethnically Jewish...
...I was in the presence of a politician committed to extending human freedom...
...Here are his words from his recent book Pretty Straight Guys: "The world had little choice but to support Saddam's unprovoked war on Iran...
...To give another example, he denies he has shown support for the more propagandistic claims of the neoconservatives...
...but he cannot claim I invented it...
...I cannot understand why he now denies it...
...He asks, "What kind of left is it that shrugs as Iraqi trade unionists are butchered or Iranian feminists are persecuted...
...I assumed this was an uncontroversial point...
...Where we disagree is on how to defeat them...
...We both agree that Islamists are a monstrous foe who would kill us both given the chance...
...I would like to have an intelligent conversation with Nick Cohen about how to do this—but, alas, it seems he prefers to engage in name-calling and a baffling denial of his own words...
...denial of his own statements, and arguments that he knows I agree with and have done more to advance than he...
...If they go to www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/ politics/article1321818.ece, they will find an interview with Cohen from the Times of London, in which Orwell is described as "his intellectual hero and forerunner...
...Yet if readers go to—for example, www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/ 0„1939959,00.html—they will find Cohen arguing that the British state should be deporting terror suspects to countries where they will almost certainly be tortured, because human rights are less important than "national interests...
...A victory for the Ayatollahs would have left the Iraqi, Kuwaiti and Saudi oilfields at Iran's mercy...
...I AM PUZZLED that Cohen will not defend his own writing, instead denying much of it exists...
...In light of the horrific evidence about how the Iraq War has increased jihadism and the already vast misery of Iraqis, I prefer to develop strategies that actually defeat fascists, rather than handing millions of recruits and the control of entire cities to them...
...He is clearly implying to readers that he has written in support of civil liberties...
...While he was opposing the war to depose the Taliban, I was traveling to the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, and later Iraq, where I have supported persecuted feminists and backed underground gay groups...
...Yet he wrote in the Observer in January 2005, "In the long-run the only solution is for the global move towards democracy to get moving again...
...As anybody who read my review is aware, my criticisms of his book do not consist of a denial that jihadis are a fascistic enemy who must be defeated...
Vol. 54 • September 2007 • No. 4
