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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: gao seng who wrote (94946)	11/29/2000 10:07:28 PM
From: gao seng	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

William Cohen never served in uniform. Dereliction of Duty Cohen’s MIA. By Michael Ledeen, fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and author of Tocqueville on American Character One could not ask for a better example of the corruption of American politics than William Cohen, allegedly the secretary of defense. You will recall that Cohen was criticized some time back, when, after attending a Hollywood party, he stayed at one of the posh hotels in the Los Angeles Basin instead of spending the night with his troops on a California military base. Some, perhaps annoyed by his Armani wardrobe, suggested that a real SecDef would have shown more respect for America's fighting men and women than for a bunch of movie folks. But then William Cohen has never been one to show excessive concern for our soldiers and sailors. He's signed off on the feminization of the military, and he's been fully on board concerning the scandalous policy of arming the People's Republic of China, for which he risks being long remembered. He was a co- conspirator in the criminal behavior of Kenneth Bacon, Cohen's henchman who leaked Linda Tripp's private papers to the media. And he has participated in the cover-up of the systematic erosion of the morale and readiness of our armed forces. Cohen has been long despised by uniformed officers because of his failure to stand up for them, but even Cohen's harshest critics would have been hard pressed to imagine his total dereliction of duty during the electoral crisis. It isn't much to ask from a defense secretary that he insist all military votes be counted. Yet during all the protests, law suits and charges of vote fraud, one heard nothing from Cohen. Instead, he had his spokesmen issue bland reassurances that every serviceman and woman had received ballots, and all their ballots had been delivered on time. There are scores of first-hand reports that a substantial number of servicemen and women did not, in fact, get their ballots at all, never mind on time. But even if they had, the issue went far beyond that. Even Secretary Cohen must have noticed that overseas military ballots were being excluded on the basis of outrageous technicalities, often in plain contravention of federal requirements. General Schwartzkopf noticed, and spoke out. Cohen didn't. He played the bad soldier and kept his mouth shut in the interests of his political bosses, even though, as Cal Thomas has pointed out, it's obvious that the excluded votes are those from soldiers and sailors either at sea, or in the most dangerous places on the ground. For this alone, Cohen deserves the censure of the American people. Why did he do it? First, because when things get tough, Bill Cohen runs for cover. He's got spokespeople to take the heat for him. Second, because he didn't want to be criticized by the Democrats, and didn't imagine that the Republicans would be able to hurt him. This is no doubt one of the reasons he went into the Pentagon in the first place. He thought he was joining the winning team. Republicans very rarely destroy their political enemies, while Democrats do it all the time, bringing down targets from Richard Nixon to Newt Gingrich. Katherine Harris is halfway to the political gallows right now, and you may have heard her remark that she hadn't heard from many Republicans recently (and don't expect them to reward her bravery even if Bush takes the White House). The third reason for Cohen's craven betrayal of his troops is his unquenchable opportunism, combined with a penchant for McCarthyism. Nominally a Republican senator from Maine, he was often indistinguishable from the Democratic left, particularly when the Democrats waged open warfare against the Reagan administration during the Iran-Contra Affair. On that unhappy occasion, Cohen would publicly slime participants on national television, and, when later asked for details by inquisitive reporters, coolly remarked "sorry; I misspoke." But he never corrected the public record. That's for us to do. nationalreview.com