Richard Cohen

October 15, 2008

Richard Cohen writes this morning in the Miami Herald about tonight’s debate. He poses some hypothetical questions to each of them. One of them is below.

“Senator Obama and Senator McCain, you both favor NATO
membership for Ukraine & Georgia. Please tell us how you
would explain to an American soldier why he or she would have
to fight for either country. Please explain why Georgia is in
our national interest.”

Among the smarmiest of the modern American Liberal ass kissing “I’m so guilty” suck-up Kumbaya keening “men without chests” bastards is Richard Cohen. Long before bullying became a crime caused by the Republican Congress undoing “Midnight Basketball” you knew little peckerheads like him in high school. If you had nothing else to do you gave Little Dick some nuggies. Most times he earned them.

But when he’s right he’s right.

It was better said in Parliament in 1938.

“They are a faraway people of whom we know little.”

The speaker was Neville Chamberlain. The “faraway people” were the citizens of Czechoslovakia.

The only opposition was from an aging curmudgeon. His response was simple. “We had to choose between shame and war. We chose shame; we will have war.”

Winston Churchill said it.

Fast forward to 1960.

This country does strange things in elections.

The Democrats claimed that the Republicans allowed a “missile gap” to develop between Russia and America, said gap placing this country in mortal peril. The thought that President Eisenhower, a man who led an army of 10,000,000 men, a man who defeated Hitler 11 months and 2 days after he landed in Europe, would allow his country to be in peril was, of course, ludicrous.

A case could be made that the Democratic contender, a 14 year veteran of Congress, a wounded Navy veteran, got his job because the paternal grandfather of ACORN, Daley the First, cooked the books in Chicago and Cook County a few hours after the polls closed. Some things never change. But I digress.




Speaking of “faraway places” Google up Quemoy and Matsu. Above all find them on a map. Senator Kennedy repeatedly said “Any place is defensible if free men choose to do so”.

Khe Sanh
Mitla Pass
Pork Chop Hill
DD-557
Torpedo Squadron 8
Wake Island
Belleau Wood
Omdurman
Rorke’s Drift
The Wheat Field
Tralfalgar
Valley Forge
Lepanto
Tours
Thermopylae

It’s too late to explain to Corporal Leonard W. Putnam why he “had to fight” in some faraway land. He was killed in action “in the Pacific Area on May 25, 1945”. In fact, a Japanese mortar shell took off most of the right side of his body in Okinawa. That certainly qualifies as a “faraway place”.

He was a 42 year old piano salesman from Jersey City, New Jersey who married my wife’s great aunt Millie. They had no children.

The only visible reminder is a scroll hanging about 7 feet from where I type. It reads thus.

“He stands in the unbroken line of patriots who dared to die
that freedom night live, and grow, and increase its blessings.
Freedom lives and through it he lives –
In a way that humbles the undertakings of most men.”

Harry S. Truman
PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES







The solipsism of people such as Richard Cohen precludes him from being humbled by anything outside of himself. The thought of men fighting and dying for something greater than themselves is an alien concept. It is a trait missing in his DNA double helix.

I can only call attention to his smarminess. It would take a Dante to describe it justly.