Nick Cohen is a British newspaper columnist who expresses his opinions every week in the Observer, the Evening Standard and other publications. After 9/11, he opposed the toppling of the Taliban and spoke of “America’s anarchic sabotage of global security”. But in the run-up to March 2003, he became a vocal advocate of the invasion of Iraq, and an obsessive critic of those who opposed the war.
His book, What’s Left?, based on his pro-war columns, can be fairly summarized as follows. Economically, socialism is now an impossibility; but social liberalism is entirely victorious. With no realistic goals remaining, and fuelled by irrational anti-Americanism, “the Left” has therefore allied itself with theocratic maniacs (Islamists), and hence supports homophobia, misogyny and “fascism”. This argument has also lately been advanced by, among others, Christopher Hitchens and David Aaronovitch.
Cohen’s initial definitions of what he means by “the Left” are self-servingly sloppy: “you know the Left when you see it, and there were times it felt like the right word”. As a result, he is able to make sweeping assertions about the morality and motivation of huge numbers of people, without citing any evidence that his self-righteous scorn applies to more than a few eccentrics and extremists. Although grudgingly concluding, after many slurs and abusive epithets, that anti-war opinion was in fact reasonable, Cohen then argues that the Left subsequently lost credibility by failing to “support” democracy after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. The following is typical:
The liberals gave aid and comfort to the Islamists and the Baathists. The “insurgents” were able to use the liberals’ slogans – “It’s all about oil!” “It’s illegal!” – and to taunt their opponents with the indisputable fact that their supposed liberal allies in New York, London, Berlin and Paris didn’t support them.
Cohen’s accounts of history, philosophy, economics and politics are simplistic and often fallacious. Every source he cites is pressed into the service of a Manichaean rhetoric. He never explains what “support” amounts to (compared, for instance, to the exercise of real power by the various actors in Iraq). And, interestingly, Cohen’s credulous and enthusiastic support for Ahmad Chalabi throughout 2002–03 has been airbrushed from What’s Left?.