Richard Cohen is about as good as we get for a mainstream columnist these days, and he has a good column attacking the Eric Holder nod for Attorney General. All because Holder approved the Marc Rich pardon. The big issue, as I say again, is Why would a man disfigure his career for Marc Rich? Cohen can't explain it:
his other qualifications, could not say no to power. The Rich pardon
request had power written all over it — the patronage of important
Democratic fundraisers, for instance. Holder also said he was "really
struck" by the backing of Rich by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and
the possibility of "foreign policy benefits that would be reaped by
granting the pardon." This is an odd standard for American justice, but
more than that, what was Holder thinking? That U.S.-Israeli relations
would suffer? Holder does not sound naive. He sounds disingenuous.
I think Cohen is being disingenuous. He knows the hypocrisy at work here as well as anyone. The real issue here is, Why is Israel so important to our politicians? Who are those unnamed important Dem fundraisers? Why was Holder swept up
in Israel stuff against his better judgment? What is the "power," to use Cohen's
coinage, of the Israel lobby? Why did Ehud Barak have open access to Bill Clinton all thru 2000, in ways that Aaron David Miller say crippled Camp David? Cohen joined the tiresome attacks on Walt and Mearsheimer a year back. That wasn't helpful to his readers; for they actually explain things. The nexus that goes undissected in the paragraph above is one that Americans have a right to know about.
