Ah, so I gather that among the three, Cohen is the serious one. Or maybe it's just that Foreign Affairs guys got to stick together? This review originally appeared in Foreign Affairs, Vol. 73, No.4. It is displayed here with the permission of Foreign Affairs. clausewitz.com (4th hit on google, but sheesh, it was only 1 paragraph ).
As far as hatchet jobs go, though, it seemed pretty diplomatic to me, particularly compared to, say, the war on Powell declared by the bloviating pundits and local followers. Not to mention the never-ending Clinton hatred campaign among all factions of the right. It's not like there's a shortage of neocons beating war drums these days, and I don't see much indication that they've all miraculously united on the one true course via independent thought. None of the drum beaters seem to have all that much in the way of answers for what happens after the military ops are over. I think Schwartz is entirely correct to point out the historical record on that front; WWII was quite exceptional for the US there. Offing Lumumba and installing Mobutu in the former Belgian Congo seems a lot more typical of cold war history; looking much beneath the surface on that front can be quite chilling. W's attitude toward "national building" seems entirely in line with US history, again aside from post-WWII reconstruction. That seems like a problem to me. |
