History lesson | 17 March 2007

‘One of the least edifying sights in  Britain today is that of Douglas Hurd expressing his righteous anger over the war in Iraq…’ So begins one Roger Cohen’s rant in the International Herald Tribune under the heading ‘Globalist’.  Some globalist. What I find much less edifying is Roger Cohen, presumably an American, giving us lessons on how to treat the Muslim threat to our Christian and enlightened way of life. Let me explain.

Cohen’s beef with Douglas Hurd is that he, as foreign secretary, was gutless while the Serbs were committing genocide against the Bosnian Muslims between 1992 and 1995. Hurd I do not know and the little I met of him I didn’t like. It was during a Speccie dinner at Christopher’s following our summer party. The sainted Frank Johnson was editor. I had just gotten into trouble with the Puerto Rican community in New York, and Rudi Giuliani was after me. Conrad Black had courageously rebuffed Giuliani, who had threatened a boycott of all Black newspapers unless Taki was fired, as had Frank. I was placed one away from Hurd at the dinner table and he gruffly asked me who I was. ‘Who are you?’ was my response. He did not like it, so Frank Johnson stepped in and introduced me as the Puerto Rican ambassador. End of story.

Cohen charges that Hurd and others contrived to turn the Bosnian war into a ‘perpetratorless crime in which all were victims and all more or less equally guilty’. He goes on to express his disgust in very strong terms, coming close at times to  comparing the Serbs to the Nazis. He then praises Blair to the sky for having committed British troops to war five times.