Rice Asks Eliot A. Cohen to Be Her Counselor

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has filled the position vacated by Philip D. Zelikow earlier this year by tapping Eliot A. Cohen to be her “counselor”. The Washington Post characterizes Eliot Cohen as “an outspoken critic of the administration's postwar occupation of Iraq”. WaPo goes on to say: “Despite Cohen's sometimes caustic views on administration policies, officials said he has impressed both Rice and President Bush with his writings.” HaHaHaHaHa! If it can be proven that Bush has actually read with his own eyes anything Eliot Cohen has written, I promise to watch Fox News for one hour. Cohen's 2002 book “Supreme Command” was about the relationship between civilian commanders in chief and their military leaders. WaPo says, “The counselor position is unique to the State Department. It was once one of the top jobs at Foggy Bottom -- formerly held by such luminaries as George F. Kennan, Robert Lansing and Helmut Sonnenfeldt -- but it laid dormant during Bush's first term until it was resurrected by Rice. Zelikow played a critical role for Rice as an intellectual sounding board, operating as a one-person think tank who churned out policy papers on a variety of issues and took on special tasks while unencumbered with managerial responsibilities.” Eliot A. Cohen signed William Kristol’s Project for the New American Century Statement of Principles in 1997. He believed then and believes now that the US should preemptively invade nations just to let them know who’s boss. Eliot A. Cohen, whose premise in “Supreme Command” is that politicians and not generals should make the major strategic decisions in wars, now can “churn out policy papers on a variety of issues and take on special tasks while unencumbered with managerial responsibilities”. The Secretary of State has a dandy new “one-person think tank”. In 2005, when Cohen’s son was being deployed to Iraq, Cohen said that he believed the decision to invade Iraq had been “sound”. Cohen had a problem with what he called "cockamamie schemes" and the "under-planned, under-prepared and mis-manned Coalition Provisional Authority." But Eliot A. Cohen never questioned for a moment the wisdom and rightness of the Bush administration’s illegal and unnecessary war in Iraq. If newspapers are touting in their lede paragraphs that Eliot A. Cohen is an outspoken critic of the administration's postwar occupation of Iraq, as WaPo would have it, let it be known that Eliot A. Cohen still believes the preemptive attack on Iraq was right, that he still is a neoconservative hawk, and that he was very critical of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group report. WaPo says the job of Rice’s counselor does not require Senate confirmation and that Cohen is expected to formally take the post in April, but he will begin working as a consultant to Rice before then. If the Bush administration needs a politician to shout for war with Iran against the soberer opinions of generals, they’ve got their man: Eliot A. Cohen.