The Single Biggest Loser Of All Time
Roger Cohen, you are a pathetic excuse for a person:
When I weigh this picture — a middle Eastern Pol Pot (and who cares that the United States once supported him, it makes no difference to anything at this stage) on one side; more than four years of war and killing and Iraqi disintegration on the other — I agonize.* […]
The difference between the Iraqi hell of yesterday and the Iraqi hell of today is that the former was without hope (Saddam would have handed over to his even more sadistic sons) while the latter is characterized by flux that may, over a long period, produce some semblance of a decent society.
Sigh, I don’t have to go through today’s headlines, do I? Well, why not then:
* NEAR TIKRIT – A suicide truck bomber killed three people and wounded 13 at a police checkpoint near the city of Tikrit, 175 km (110 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.
* BAGHDAD – A car bomb killed four people and wounded 10, including four women and three children, near the Technology University in central Baghdad, police said. Another police source said it was a roadside bomb attack.
* BAGHDAD – Four explosions hit near the Polish embassy in central Baghdad, a Polish diplomat said. There were no injuries or major damage, he said.
* BAGHDAD – U.S. forces killed five gunmen and detained three suspected Iranian-backed “Special Groups” members during a raid in the Shi’ite Sadr City district of northeastern Baghdad, the U.S. military said.
* BAGHDAD – A car bomb killed one person and wounded six in the al-Kamaliya district of eastern Baghdad, police said.
* BAGHDAD – A roadside bomb wounded four people in the northwestern Kadhimiya district of Baghdad, police said.
* BAGHDAD – Six bodies were found in different areas of Baghdad on Sunday, police said.
* BAGHDAD – A roadside bomb targeting a U.S. patrol wounded two civilians in eastern Baghdad, police said.
Hey, cheer up, dead Iraqis. If it makes you feel any better, know that Roger Cohen is agonizing just as much as you are.
But here’s the best line:
Civilized disagreement is the mark of any healthy society.
Again, I’m sure the hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis thank you for agreeing to keep it civil.
Loser.
* Gavin adds: To see how seriously Cohen “agonizes” over Iraqi casualties, let’s revisit one of his greatest hits, from January of this year.
With 6,438 murders in the state (not just the city) of Rio de Janeiro in 2005 (the state had a 2005 population of 15,383,407), Cohen declares that Brazil is at war — a War that Dare Not Speak Its Name:
As a result, Rio’s loveliness has never been without its taint of blood. More than 18,000 violent deaths in less than three years are a lot. If the toll were in Baghdad, people would be talking about it. But the world’s attention is a capricious thing.
It seems from the way he frames the piece that Cohen was in Rio for a winter vacation, and decided to break out the notebook and cell phone for a poolside report. Perhaps, then, we can arrange a vacation for him to the Baghdad of hopeful flux, where he can be plied with cocktails to research the deaths under his “Middle-Eastern Pol Pot” as they compare to actual, and not entirely Cohen-generated, estimates of Iraqi wartime deaths:
Study Claims Iraq’s ‘Excess’ Death Toll Has Reached 655,000
By David Brown
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 11, 2006A team of American and Iraqi epidemiologists estimates that 655,000 more people have died in Iraq since coalition forces arrived in March 2003 than would have died if the invasion had not occurred.
Truly, if violent deaths in Baghdad during the three years from 2003 to 2006 were as high as 18,000, “people would be talking about it.” But Roger Cohen’s attention is a capricious thing.
What the flux?!!1!
“Civilized disagreement is the mark of any healthy society.”
To be fair, I think he means fish slapping…
There needs to be a new word or phrase created for people like Cohen. “Toady” doesn’t cut it anymore. “Hypocrite” isn’t specific enough. I don’t think that even my best word for his ilk, “Quisling”, goes far enough anymore.
The difference between the Iraqi hell of yesterday and the Iraqi hell of today is that the former was without hope (Saddam would have handed over to his even more sadistic sons)
Thees comparison reminds me of sometheeng I heard an Iraqi Doctor say on the BBC:
: “When Saddam ruled Iraq, there was no light at the end of the tunnel, now, there is no tunnel.”
while the latter is characterized by flux that may, over a long period, produce some semblance of a decent society.
Bloody flux.
Pfui.
Why don’t you talk about all the wonderful employment opportunities we’ve created in Iraq for suicide bombers, Mr. Rocket? Clearly you want us to lose.
Shorter Roger Cohen: Because going to war is always a good idea, until it isn’t.
Roger NeoCohen sez I respect those who denounce the invasion and believe it has produced, and will produce, only disaster.
We’re all “smug” DFH terrorist-enablers providing aid and comfort to teh enemy, but he respects us anyway.
And the idiotic commenter award goes to!…drumroll please…Richard Weissfeld Encino, CA — 08 October 2007 12:08 am
how he manages, in his response to the responses to his monstrousity to hit every goddamn strawman is…mind-boggling. random accusations of anti-semitism? check. saying that the worst amongst your commenters are representative of the whole? check. ignoring substantive arguments because of same? check. calling out serious (quote unquote) interlocutors because something, anything, was unacceptable to you? check (NB mike tomasky’s tone, you see, his tone!!! OMG HIS TONE WAS SNARKY!!!) continuing to pretend one’s own stance has no weight, even when one is paid because one’s stand has weight? check check check checkmate.
i hate these people. i’ve known michael walzer all my life, and he of all people got iraq wrong. i’ve had to tell my family that if i see michael i won’t be pleasant or respectful. these people need to be smacked in the nose with a pee-soaked rolled up newspaper (preferably carrying their by-line somewhere amidst the urine) until they understand the rage they have generated is based on TAKING THEIR WORDS AND THEIR ACTIONS SERIOUSLY AND ON THEIR FACE.
aaaaaaaarrrrrrrgggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhh.
I might catch hell for this one,but when did it become fashionable for Jews to be fascists?
Hmm… someone should introduce this lovely fella to Beth.
Somehow this comment made me think of this….
Beth, I hear you callin
But I can’t come home right now
Me and the boys are fightin’
And we just can’t hold the ground.
Just a few more decades,
And I’ll be right home to you
I think I hear them shootin’
Oh, Beth what can I do?
Beth what can I do?
I think the ’70s left me permanently brain-damaged.
I might catch hell for this one,but when did it become fashionable for Jews to be fascists?
Great. Now R-Co can look at this blog and say “OMG THOSE ANTI-SEMITES CALLED ME A NAZI!!!”
I’ve got your “civilized disagreement” right here, you warmongering batshit crazy motherfucker.
#
The Hon. Dr. St. Rev. Bradley S. Rocket, Esq, PhD, MD said,
October 8, 2007 at 20:35
I might catch hell for this one,but when did it become fashionable for Jews to be fascists?
Great. Now R-Co can look at this blog and say “OMG THOSE ANTI-SEMITES CALLED ME A NAZI!!!”
I guess I have to point out that I’m Jewish again.I knew it.
and who cares that the United States once supported him, it makes no difference to anything at this stage
indeed. it makes no difference whatsoever…
Hey Roger: Like a warm, comforting shower, your words cleans the body and soul of all the filth and vitriol.
No, that’s a high-colonic.
Pollita divertimenta.
Well, to be fair, calling Cohen a Nazi and calling him a Fascist aren’t the same thing.
And, for the record, I’m also Jewish.
I did, however, once make a particularly vile, ultra-right Zionist organization’s voluminous online SHIT (Self-Hating and/or Israel Threatening) Jews list.
But they never told me whether they considered me Self-Hating, Israel-Threatening, or both.
Nobody knows how to run a hate site anymore!
roger cohen is to the washington post as scott lileks is to the minneapolis tribune.
Civil disagreement? Is that what you call what’s happening to Iraq?
It’s kinda like civil war, I guess…
mikey
I was more referring to the Richard Weissfield comment.Calling your opposition vermin or cockroaches is standard fare for fascists and cryto-fascists.Orinocus has a good article on the implications of this.You will find this sentiment and language among the anti-immigrant crowd,anti-Islamic crowd etc.etc.ad nauseum.
hey hey! Easy with the ivil-cay ar-way talk there, mikey. If you use those words, then teh terrorists win!
DEMIZE!- fair is fair, though I personally don’t like giving these guys anything to whine about. They just use it as a distraction from the fact that they’ve been horribly wrong.
Say I know of a family in a really rotten situation, in which the husband is a mean, abusive alcoholic, but he’s the only wage earner, and the family is desperately poor and barely surviving as it is, with really no where else to turn and no one to turn to.
If I let them stay in this situation, they may be stuck in it forever, and down that imagined direction in the future lies despair.
On the other hand, if I shoot the father, they might just be able to free themselves from this situation, with the mother going out and getting a good job despite not having any readily marketable skills and the children managing to pull together just so.
I guess I’ll have to think heavily on whether or not I should shoot the father, and how, and how I want to describe this decision.
The difference between the Iraqi hell of yesterday and the Iraqi hell of today is that the former was without hope (Saddam would have handed over to his even more sadistic sons) while the latter is characterized by flux that may, over a long period, produce some semblance of a decent society.
He knows this, how? In a sense, it’s heartening, listening to a broken, profoundly wrong man try and hash out some mitigating good that might come out of the barbarity, so that his Hamlet-like conscience may be salved.
On the other hand it sounds like hash he pulled from his ass to throw out some self-serving bullshit about a people he can’t possibly give a shit about, who live in a country he plainly doesn’t understand in the service of a foreign policy he can’t seem to grasp.
Why do bad things have to get better? What ‘characterization’ of Iraq in flux is heartening to him — the brain drain, the mass exodus of everyone with money and/or a transferrable occupation, the rampant corruption, the civil war or the ethnic cleansing?
Or, conversely, you could make a similar claim that while Stalin may have killed tens of millions of people, he created flux which, over a long period of time produced a semblance of a not-fully-malignant authoritarian like Putin. It’s fucking meaningless.
The comparison of Saddam to Pol Pot is especially revolting. The only thing the two have in common is that both were useful to the US for a while.
Also, clearly we leftists should have been calling for the USSR or China or Cuba to have carpet bombed Guatemala City when Guatemala was under the control of Reagan’s best friends the actually genocidal military.
In addition, we should have recommended the bombing and complete destruction of Spain under Franco, Portugal under Salazar, Argentina under the Junta, and of course Chile under Pinochet.
Yes, it would have left those countries devastated wastelands of want and war, and yes it would have killed more than those already being slaughtered by their regime, but, by god, My Conscience was at risk and I might have decided that these populations could not outlive their tyrants.
I did, however, once make a particularly vile, ultra-right Zionist organization’s voluminous online SHIT (Self-Hating and/or Israel Threatening) Jews list.
Congratulations. I know the group: Masada2000.
For the Sadly Nosians who don’t know the reference, The Siege of Masada was when a bunch of far-right Jewish extremists known as the Sicarii holed up in a fortress in the First Jewish-Roman War, who committed mass suicide, even killing their own children, rather than allow the Romans to take them captive.
The historical similarities being that it is now Israel who holds Palestine under siege, and this far-right Jewish extremist group is entirely willing to sacrifice other people’s children to maintain their grip on power.
tTtally O/T, but I think I found the grill that Cornfed Yankmee was hoping he’d get.
Behold the Hemi Grill.
While cohen certainly has a “bully pulpit” at the washington post, he’s been a stupid chump for a long, long time. I wouldn’t worry about his “persuasive influence”, either in supporting the war or ending the occupation. That said, he really doesn’t have a clue. C. Northcote Parkinson once wrote (i’m paraphrasing to make a point) that corporate boards should consist of poor academics and rich executives, because they understood (abstractly) the value of money. Middle-class people, he said, get hung-up on subjects of mere tens-of-thousands, which they understand, and give short shrift to items of millions, which they can’t fathom. Cohen understands 18k dead brazilians (while he is in brazil) but is vaporous at 655k dead iraqis thousands of miles away. I suspect he’s not alone. Its just too big a number, and too far away.
tTtally.
Word.
Question: is the post made better or worse by first line and the last word. Does calling Cohen a “pathetic excuse for a person” and a “loser” make the facts any less damning or do anything more to underscore Cohen’s poor logic? Or does such language just make it more likely that the only people this post, and blog, will convince of anything are its author and readers of their own righteousness and the “other side’s” evil motives and stupidity? And what is the point of that?
Buster: It’s a comedy blog. If you can’t say what you are actually thinking on a comedy blog, and make wisecracks, and state your mind, then where can you actually do those things?
Dear Busterpie:
The post is made better by the accurate description of its subject, and the commentary is made worse by the concern trolling.
P.S. That’s some name.
Thank you for concern-trolling.
There are certainly ways to atone for being completely wrong about the Iraq war. Heck, lotsa different folks were wrong about it- a solid majority of people in this country supported it for a good time.
The first thing you have to do when your view of the Iraq war has been exposed as horribly wrong is to say, “I was wrong.” Lotsa folks did this. Heck, even Tom Friedman managed to sack up and admit (albeit six years too late) that his reaction to 9/11 (“Suck on this!”) was stupid.
Roger Cohen doesn’t meet this basic qualification. Instead, he smears people who don’t like neoconservatives as anti-Semites. He cries that he and his fellow liberal hawks really meant well, and that they agonize- AGONIZE!- daily about all the people that their policy has killed. They are, in short, completely self-absorbed and they believe that they need the Iraq war to go well in order to maintain their belief that they are noble people with noble intentions. Because that’s all that matters to them, you know- their own feeling of inherent goodness.
All: points taken. I confess to being a ridiculous noob, so much so that the term “concern trolling” is new to me. As you were, then.
Hmm. I don’t understand Busterpie’s point.
People who think war is a good solution to anything are losers.
Stupid, mendacious losers.
What, brad should not correctly identify the taxonomy?
Why, for heaven’s sake?
mikey
Oh, I’m righteous alright. In that ’80s buttrock sort of way…
As for Bubba…
Ms. Buttocks,
that Masada 2000 Shitlist is a glorious thing.
-my old roomate is on it, listed as “this long-haired graduate student freako.”
-a friend of my mother’s is on there, despite the fact that she is very much a Roman Catholic (a vaguely Germanic last name seems to have fooled the website).
Brad.This is my main site.I am not that up on the meta-politcs of blog cross linking.I did give pause before my 1st.comment so your concern is def.valid and I certainly wouldn’t want to sully may favorite site in any way.and as an Italian-Jew I am both guilty ,and, extremely emotional,gesticulating wildly while uttering epithets in arcane tongues.
DEMIZE- don’t worry about it. And I have no problem with calling the neocons fascists (though I think imperialists is technically more accurate).
He called him loser? I was so appalled by Cohen’s words I didn’t notice it. Now I’m outraged… well, maybe not.
I miss Bruce
Buster, you don’t have to be ridiculous. And there is nothing wrong with being a noob, as long as you learn. You should just understand that this is a comedy blog where people can say what they actually think, and make wisecracks, and be stoopid, and it’s all expected. And a concern troll is someone who tries to shame you into being quiet. Doesn’t work too well around here.
Brad R. said,
October 8, 2007 at 21:14
DEMIZE!- fair is fair, though I personally don’t like giving these guys anything to whine about. They just use it as a distraction from the fact that they’ve been horribly wrong.
Brad R., they’re going to do that anyways. Send ’em to Glenn.
atheist,
While this may be a ‘comedy’ blog — I don’t find anything Bradrocket said to be particularly funny, or inapt, about Cohen.
He’s a self-involved loser who can’t see to the end of his face while the world burns around him. His retarded support for ponies that win wars, gold that falls in the form of death and destruction and rainbows that sprout from blood is bad enough, his disingenuous counterattacks and lame justifications are really just rear-guard actions to cover his ass.
If people are more offended by calling Cohen an asshole than actually getting rightfully mad at his rampant ego and disastrous support they should go have the vapors somewhere else.
I am so sick of people who mistake passion for incivility and civility for virtue.
Shame on you, Atheist. Now be quiet!
No, no, I agree with Mr Cohen. He’s the real victim here. All those Iraqis may well be dead or bereaved or injured or displaced from their homes, but at least they are spared the ambiguity… the agony… of buyer’s remorse. He is afflicted — yes, cursed — with the mental capacity to accommodate the cons as well as the pros of occupying Iraq, and the unflinching honesty to admit that neither alternative is ideal. The man’s a martyr.
Also, he can engage in civil disagreement, not like you unpatriotic traitorous anti-semitic hippies with your uncivil, simplistic opposition to war.
* BAGHDAD – Six bodies were found in different areas of Baghdad on Sunday, police said.
———————–
I especially like the one. “We don’t know what the fuck happened. They were just there.”
Nice going, assholes.
*this* one, I should have said.
There needs to be a new word or phrase created for people like Cohen… I don’t think that even my best word for his ilk, “Quisling”, goes far enough anymore.
My choice is queazling, because every time I have to read Roger Cohen’s ilk fondling their own “sensitivity”, it makes me want to throw up.
Preferably on the queazling in question, of course.
Does this dude have a family? I can’t help worrying about his family life.
“Have you any idea how guilty I feel, each time you make me punch you? How come I never get any sympathy?”
All those Iraqis may well be dead or bereaved or injured or displaced from their homes, but at least they are spared the ambiguity… the agony… of buyer’s remorse. He is afflicted — yes, cursed — with the mental capacity to accommodate the cons as well as the pros of occupying Iraq, and the unflinching honesty to admit that neither alternative is ideal. The man’s a martyr.
Just so, Herr Doktor. I doubt it’s possible for a sackful of puss like Cohen to understand why normal, rational people look upon his queazling self with horror, but he could at least pay tribute to the outer forms of decency by not fondling his touchy ambiguities and quivering rationalizations in the public forum.
sackful of puss
See? This just pisses me off. Anne Laurie finally makes a typo and the result is a cleverly amusing double entendre. It really isn’t as easy as all that for the rest of us, young lady…
mikey
The man is undoubtedly sensitive. So are my haemarhoids, but they contribute more to the world.
Who let the puss out of the sack?
“Have you any idea how guilty I feel, each time you make me punch you? How come I never get any sympathy?”
That’s the first page in the sociopath’s playbook. “Feel sorry for me, because the hurt I’ve caused other people has inconvenienced me!”
t4toby,
Man, that’s an awesome grill. Who doesn’t want to barbecue large slabs of meat on something you have to kickstart and rev up. If it had a place to play Hank Williams Jr. records, it’d be the redneck holy grail.
Oh, he’s not talking about George Bush.
To be fair, PP is generally credited with 5 megadeaths, while Bush is only at about 1.2 MD. Saddam, however, was a rank amateur as a mass murderer, possibly not even making 1 MD, despite having decades to work on it.
If you give him credit for the Iran/Iraq war, he crosses the 1MD threshold…
mikey
Matt T-
I’m not sure I understand the mechanics, but it sure is shiny.
Seems more like a Toby Keith player would fit.
And shargash-
Megadeath’s pretty cool, but I’ll take Ride the Lightning era Metallica any day.
Aww, damn. I left my straw man hanging out again…
To be fair, PP is generally credited with 5 megadeaths, while Bush is only at about 1.2 MD. Saddam, however, was a rank amateur as a mass murderer, possibly not even making 1 MD, despite having decades to work on it.
This bothered me too. I was just thinking this morning, what ever happened to the mass graves? Before the war we had Tony Blair going round claiming there were 300000 bodies in mass graves all over Iraq. After the war, in Nov of 2003, he had it up to 400000. And yet the actual details didn’t look right. There were too few graves, with too few bodies and then in mid-2004, Blair admits that there were actually 5000 that we know of. 5000 bodies, not graves. And since then, has anybody said anything? WTF?
See, Paul, here’s the deal.
The boogeyman tends to lose his effectiveness after you catch him, “try” him and execute him.
It’s like the old joke.
What time is it when you hang the boogeyman?
Time to get a new boogeyman!!
I’ll be here all weak….
mikey
Mikey, I *meant* to do that.
Such is my story, and I’m sticking to it.
Mad props for “I’ll be here all weak”, dude!
Question: is the post made better or worse by first line and the last word. Does calling Cohen a “pathetic excuse for a person” and a “loser” make the facts any less damning or do anything more to underscore Cohen’s poor logic? Or does such language just make it more likely that the only people this post, and blog, will convince of anything are its author and readers of their own righteousness and the “other side’s” evil motives and stupidity? And what is the point of that?
Answer: why don’t you cram it with walnuts, ugly.
Thanks for this Brad, and your previous one. Fuck these wingnuts. It’s like they are part of some conspiracy to discredit the whole field of journalism by doing a terrible fucking job at it. We need to smash their faces
-my old roomate is on it, listed as “this long-haired graduate student freako.”
I saw that, and I had to laugh at the website. I trust I won’t be giving anything away if I give his last name, since it’s on the website and easy to find via Google with the terms you gave.
The quote is “Bar-On [“Hard-on” in Hebrew???] recently signed a one-sided petition for “U.S. Jewish Solidarity with Muslim and Arab Peoples of the Middle East”… which was nothing less than a full-fledged “mugging” of Israel!”
Oh, well done chaps! You don’t even know the language of the nation you claim to defend. “Bar” is a patronymic, meaning “son of”, which is why there are a full fifteen names there that start with “Bar” something. What a bunch of illiterate, immature morons.
The difference between the Iraqi hell of yesterday and the Iraqi hell of today is that the former was without hope … while the latter is characterized by…well, not hope either.
Fixed.
There needs to be a new word or phrase created for people like Cohen…“Toady” doesn’t cut it anymore. “Hypocrite” isn’t specific enough.
“Whistleprick” seems appropriate.
I like Whistleprick.
But it kind of has a ring of respect.
How ’bout “Hoodydoo”?
mikey
How about Cohen the Barbarian? a permanent moniker of sorts
Doctor: Well, I understand that you’ve had a really bad, really uncomfortable case of diarrhea for a while. But if you’ll let me chop off your left leg above the knee without anesthetic and inject you with this experimental new drug that induces fifty-six straight days of projectile vomiting, there’s a chance you may feel better some day.
Patient: [?!?!!!?!?interrobang]
Doctor: Right, then. Let’s get started, shall we?
Queazling, whistleprick, hoodydoo, Cohen the Barbarian. Wow. I like them all, actually. Thanks folks!
Reminds me of an old Daumier cartoon.
Doctor, leaving patient’s apartment after scheduling serious surgery, looks worried. Patient is touched by doctor’s concern.
Doctor says
“I’m not worried about you; we’ll put you to sleep through it.
I’m worried about me, because it only works one time in a hundred!”
I used to read the International Herald Tribune regularly, and page two had regular columns by Roger Cohen “Globalist” I could have gotten more useful opinion from Pravda, like Lysenko’s Farm Report. Week in and week out, every column boiled down to “hey Old Europe, stop hating on George Bush.”
I thought the Bush-worship couldn’t get any worse, until the IHT started featuring Elisabeth Bumiller’s White House blowjobs. That didn’t last too long. I think a lot of readers got tired of the first few pages sticking together.
We’re still stuck with Friedman. And the young fart Jeff Jacoby of the Boston Globe.
Good point, Mikey. I’ve been selling Saddam short. Still, you have to give Dubya credit for being the first mass murderer of the 3rd millenium CE to go over 1 Megadeath (though somebody in Darfur is giving him a run for his money).
“his even more sadistic sons”
yadda yadda rape room rape room yadda…babies pulled from incubators yadda yadda…
I’m so busy crying over what MIGHT have happened in Iraq under the Caligularic rule of them there sadistic Hussein boys (imagine Vincent Price x 2!), that I keep forgetting about the ACTUAL premeditated gang rape and murder of a child – and the summary execution of her entire family – in Mahmoudiya by U.S. soldiers, and likewise the beatings and rapes of nameless un-charged, un-tried female and male prisoners alike in Abu Ghraib and elsewhere; and on & on…
“while the latter is characterized by flux that may,”…
Yeah, we sure are fluxed in Iraq.