today we have a column from The New York Times‘ Roger Cohen (presumably no relation) that accomplishes that task with even more stunning (though equally unintentional) brilliance.
Cohen observes, quite rightly, that President Obama — who repeatedly vowed to usher in The Most Transparent Administration Ever — has taken U.S. foreign policy almost completely underground and draped it in sweeping, anti-democratic secrecy:
The Obama administration has a doctrine. It’s called the doctrine of silence. A radical shift from President Bush’s war on terror, it has never been set out to the American people. There has seldom been so big a change in approach to U.S. strategic policy with so little explanation. . . . President Obama has gone undercover.
So finally, after a long search, we have discovered a “change†from Bush’s foreign policy: whereas Bush fought his wars out in the open and with Congressional approval, Obama fights them covertly and with no public discussion, debate or accountability: he’s “undercover.†Cohen lists the numerous covert wars the Obama administration is fighting — meaning wars fought without a whiff of public debate or even acknowledgement — including in Iran, Pakistan, and Yemen (he could have added Somalia). Referring to the numerous murders of Iran’s nuclear scientists (and sometimes wounding of their wives), Terrorist explosions routinely taking place in that country, and cyber attacks on their facilities, Cohen points out that it “would take tremendous naïveté to believe these events are not the result of a covert American-Israel†effort
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