Johann Hari

Nick Cohen has responded to my review of his book here.

This is my reply:

Nick Cohen's response is perplexing, since it is characterised by daft hyperbole (I'm Maoist now?), denial of his own statements, and arguments that he knows I agree with and have done rather more to advance than him.

It's disappointing he doesn't try to defend his positions or engage with any of my arguments, despite the fact I tried hard to fairly summarise his case. For example, he simply repeats his claim that the Iraq war marked a radical break with Henry Kissinger's influence on US foreign policy - and, to sustain this, he ignores the lengthy part of my review pointing out that Kissinger is now, according to Bob Woodward, "the most senior foreign policy advisor to [Bush] outside the administration." This information doesn't fit into his Manichean polemics so, rather than defend his case, he simply pretends it isn't so.

He asks: "What kind of left is it that shrugs as Iraqi trade unionists are butchered or Iranian feminists are persecuted?" But as Nick knows, I have been asking this very question longer and more persistently than he has. While he was opposing the war to depose the Taliban, I was travelling to the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, and later Iraq, where I have supported persecuted feminists and backed underground gay groups. I received a slew of Islamist death-threats after I worked undercover at Britain's most extreme mosque and then appeared on the Islam Channel to expose and challenge the anti-Semitism, homophobia and totalitarianism of jihadists. So it is deeply strange for him to write: "Every now and again Hari manages to shake himself out of his world of make-believe and acknowledge that we’re up against a fascist enemy." Unlike Cohen, I have taken considerable risks that demonstrate my opposition to this enemy.

As anybody who read my review is aware, my criticisms of his book do not consist of a denial that jihadis are a fascistic enemy who must be defeated: we both agree that Islamists are a monstrous foe who would kill us both given the chance. (I am gay; Cohen is ethnically Jewish). Where we disagree is on how to defeat them. Cohen's preferred tactic - enthusiastically supporting the Bush strategy - has actually enlarged and spread jihadism, as every major study of the phenomenon shows. One of my Iraqi friends is now living in a Basra neighbourhood where Taliban-style militias beat women who walk onto the street without a veil and stone adulteresses. This is the consequence of the war Cohen still claims was necessary and worthwhile in his columns. The caveats he quotes in his response constitute literally a few hundred words out of tens of thousands backing Bush enthusiastically, as anybody who reads his book will see.

I am puzzled that Cohen will not defend his own writing, instead denying much of it exists. For example, he denies ever arguing that the West was right to back Saddam in the 1980s. Here are his words from his recent book 'Pretty Straight Guys, P127: "The world had little choice but to support Saddam's unprovoked war on Iran. A victory for the Ayatollahs would have left the Iraqi, Kuwaiti and Saudi oilfields at Iran's mercy." If he wants to renounce this argument, that is welcome; but he cannot claim I invented it.

Each of his claims about my "deception" have a similar clear quote disproving them. To give another example, he denies he has shown support for the more propagandistic claims of the neoconservatives. Yet he wrote in the Observer in January 2005:"In the long-run the only solution is for the global move towards democracy to get moving again. In these strange times, the only person who believes that this is possible or desirable is George W Bush... [and he is] feared and hated by right-thinking people the world over for saying so." And, again in the Obsever: "Neoconservatives... [are] hated because of their espousal of causes the liberal-left had once owned but no longer had the moral self-confidence to defend". And - in a fawning account of meeting Paul Wolfowitz in the same newspaper - : “I was clearly in the presence of real power...I was in the presence of a politician committed to extending human freedom.” Yes, this is indeed "blind faith".

The list of odd misrepresentations goes on. Cohen writes: "For the record, I have written many pieces about civil liberties." He is clearly implying to readers that he has written in support of civil liberties. Yet if readers go to - for example - http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1939959,00.html they will find Cohen arguing that the British state should be deporting terror suspects to countries where they will almost certainly be tortured, because human rights are less important than "national interests".

Then he sadly obfuscates further by building a straw man about George Orwell. In conversations with me, Cohen has explicitly cited Orwell as a long-term inspiration since childhood. Here is a review in which he clearly claims Orwell as a major influence influence, and here is an interview that Cohen linked to from his website that describes Orwell as his "intellectual hero and forerunner." I cannot understand why he now denies it; I assumed this was an uncontroversial point.

In light of the horrific evidence about how the Iraq War has increased jihadism and the already-vast misery of Iraqis, I prefer to develop strategies that actually defeat fascists, rather than handing millions of recruits and the control of entire cities to them. (This has involved painful rethinking of my own previous position, as I made clear in the very first paragraph of my review; Cohen must have been blinking very hard to miss it.) I would like to have an intelligent conversation with Nick Cohen about how to do this - but, alas, it seems he prefers to engage in name-calling and a baffling denial of his own words.

POSTSCRIPT: Oliver Kamm has another response here. Bizarrely, he thinks that placing the quote from Nick - that the West had to support Saddam - in the wider context negates it. It doesn't. Read the rest of the passage, which he helpfully provides. Nick isn't paraphrasing somebody else's view; he isn't talking hypothetically; he is speaking as himself, describing the world as he sees it. And that is a world where "the world had little choice but to support Saddam's unprovoked war on Iran. A victory for the Ayatollahs would have left the Iraqi, Kuwaiti and Saudi oilfields at Iran's mercy." The words mean what they say, and no amount of wriggling can change that. He goes on to say the West should have cavilled at the use of chemical weapons in Halabja and the later invasion of Kuwait - both more than five years after the war began. They are the sole qualifiers. This does not change the fact he says there was "no choice" but to support Saddam's attack on Iran, when, of course, it was a very real and quite obscene choice.

In private conversation with me - in the company of quite a few other witnesses, including Andrew Sullivan - Nick made this point much more forcefully, saying the West had to back Ba'athism at that point. Nick is indeed clear, and anyone can see what he's saying. I can't understand why Nick won't just defend what he has written and said, or retract it. I've said stupid things in the past, as everyone sometimes does. I don't deny saying them, and slur anyone who repeats them as liars; I own up and say I was wrong.

Nick and Oliver's tactic seems to be to throw a great deal of aggressive invective, but not to actually engage with any of the points I made in the review. This morning I got a call from a friend in Baghdad, who I profiled in the Independent a few years ago; her cousin was killed by an American soldier three weeks ago as he approached a checkpoint. It put the unreal, arid debate with them into a horrible sort of context. Even if every single person on the left had taken the position Nick recommends and donated money to the Iraqi trade unions - as I recommend too: www.iraqitradeunions.org - her cousin would still have been shot. To blame "the left", and implying that it is liberal op-ed columnists who are driving the Iraqi insurgencies, for this situation is delusional.

(To be fair to Oliver, at least he admits he is an outright defender of neoconservatism, even if he glosses over the real actions of the neoconservatives and even if he surreally cites Eliot Abrahms - who helped unleash the fascist Contras on Nicaragua - as a witness for his defence. Nick won't even admit to his own fawning descriptions of neconservatism and George Bush, instead posing as some sort of critic of them. )

Oliver talks about the fracture-lines within the American right over what should drive US foreign policy, and suggests I am ignorant of them. I can assure him I'm not: I have interviewed some of the leading figures in these debates, and read extensively about them. (I must admit I find it a bit tedious that he argues as if almost everyone who disagrees with him is ignorant.) He says I don't offer evidence that the US is acting in Iraq primarily because of oil. In 1977, Paul Wolfowitz - as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defence for Regional Programs - wrote: "We... have a vital and growing stake in the Persian Gulf Region because of our need for Persian Gulf oil and because events in the Persian Gulf affect the Arab-Israel conflict." In 1990, Dick Cheney - then Defence Secretary - said of Iraq and Kuwait: "We're there because the fact of the matter is, that part of the world controls the world supply of oil." When does Oliver think this stopped being the driver of US foreign policy? How does the presence of Eliot Abrams change it?

(There's another response to Oliver at the blog AaronovitchWatch here.)

POSTSCRIPT: On a final note, here is Oliver Kamm's latest comment, in which he claims his book - subtitled "The left-wing case for a neoconservative foreign policy" - is not an outright defence of neoconservatism. When you reach this level of silliness, it's time to check out of the debate...

Amazingly, though, Kamm simply passes over in silence the fact that I have totally debunked his claim that I distorted Nick's support for Western backing of Ba'athism in the 1980s. He then proceeds to ignores the Dick Cheney quote, pretending it's not there so he can question a conclusion I draw from it. Instead of dealing with what I say, he has gone on to making more transparently incorrect allegations, presumably in the hope that one of them sticks. It's a bit depressing to see somebody argue in this unsequential and specious way, really.

I think it's sadly revealing that while I have linked to everything Nick has to say on this, along with many other critics of my position, Nick has not linked to this reply, in the list of comments on this article. He hasn't even informed his readers it exists.

There are some further comments (one compaing me to a chipmunk, an frequent accusation which, as my mother once told me "is awffy harsh on the fuckin' chipmunks") here, here, and here. There's also another critique of Nick's book here which Nick will now almost certainly accuse of being fictitious, untrue, made-up etc etc. He has responded to everyone who has criticised the book so far in this way, to my knowledge. If literally everyone has 'misunderstood' your book, Nick, maybe there's a problem with the book, not the reviewers.

(At last! A way to resolve this, advertised here. I'm up for it if Nick is...)

POST-POSTSCRIPT: There are yet more comments by Oliver Kamm here, and a post debunking his latest claims here.

(Unfortunately Oliver still doesn't engage with the fact that he has not debunked my quote about Nick supporting Ba'athism in the 1980s; indeed, I have shown his attempted debunking is nonsense. He hasn't honestly engaged with any of my responses to Nick's false claims. I should add, however, that Oliver was very nice to me when a nutcase set up a website calling for me to be killed, and e-mailed blogspot to complain about it. Despite our plain and big disagreement on this issue, where we both think the other is arguing dishonourably, I like him personally, and I'm grateful to him for the way he acted then.)

I also see Nick is now linking to ludicrous and discredited accusations that were made about me by a British scandal sheet four years ago, shortly after I criticised its former editor for his rancid homophobia, and its current editor for other reasons. Nick, would you be prepared to defend a single one of those accusations? Or are you just tossing any old mud you can find because you don't have answers to my arguments?

It's also sadly hypocritical for Nick to complain that I am not prepared to see libellous comments about myself on websites I've been associated with in the past. Nick closed down his own comments section on his website because he was worried about libel, and derogratory and defamatory remarks about him are routinely (and quite rightly) removed from the Guardian/Observer website. Will he tell the Guardian Online to keep up all the slurs against him from now on because he will never sue? Will he reopen the comments section on his own site? If not, he has no right to condemn me.

Thanks to everyone who has e-mailed in support about this row. Sorry I haven't responded to you all but I'm working my way through a pile of commissions at the moment...

Anyway, enough of this: my article about France's secret war in Africa follows soon...

Very last comment here. This is a typical e-mail from a reader, called Anna Powell:

"I was very interested to read the diagreement between you and Nick Cohen, which I found through a link from the Harry's Place blog. Your review was thorough and very critical, but it was not nasty or personally abusive. So I was surprised that Nick Cohen, who I have admired for many years ever since he wrote for the Independent, reacted by being so abusive about you. It is bonkers to call anyone who criticises their former position Maoist, especially since Cohen himself is advocating a position that is 180 degrees opposite to what he was saying three years ago. I thought Cohen would have some interesting responses.

As you say, he doesn't deal with any of your arguments. He seems to have latched onto one fairly trivial line of the review, about his parents supporting Orwell, and inflated into into a big issue. The links you provide show that he does indeed claim Orwell's mantle. The Times interview you link to shows that he actually suggests meeting interviewers in the pub where Orwell used to live, and points this out. You could mention this on your website. I could not understand Oliver Kamm's argument about the passage where Cohen supports supporting Saddam. As you say, the lines surrounding it do not contradict what Cohen says in that passage. If anything, I thought they made it look worse.

I thought the nub of your review was when you say "When you are more inclined to blame liberal op-ed writers for the Iraq disaster than Donald Rumsfeld, something has horribly gone wrong with your explanatory framework." This put together a feeling I have had about Cohen's writing for some time. He has asked in a recent interview "why can't you talk and chew gum at the same time?" He was presumably meaning why can't you on the left condemn Islamism and neoconservatism. But Cohen very rarely criticises neoconservatism, and more often apologises for it, as the quote you give about Wolfowitz shows. In his own terms, he can walk but he can't chew gum.

This argument inspired me to go out and buy Cohen's book, which I have read this weekend but not quite finished. I have to say I think your representation of it was very fair. Your review highlights the strengths of the book but also why everyone I know who has read it has had an uneasy feeling. You said you were "bemused" by Cohen's response. I am not "bemused" but appalled."