Coming to this debate a little late, I second Ezra Klein when he says of Roger Cohen:

These are not arguments. They are smears. They are attacks aimed at degrading the credibility, rather than the beliefs, of the coalition that opposes the Iraq War. And in intent and effect, they are indistinguishable from Bill Kristol’s worst columns, save for the possibility that they are more effective, because they ostensibly come from within the Left, rather than outside of it.

Sullivan has replied to it, saying of Klein’s post:

It’s an attack on any independent thought outside of the situational demands of a political coalition. It is a full-throated and not-even-regretful support for the subjugation of free inquiry and free ideas to the demands of political organization. It makes Sidney Blumenthal seem intellectually honest.

Clearly, Sullivan and I are reading two very different Ezra Klein posts, and I might add that nothing can make Sidney Blumenthal seem honest.  For Sullivan, Klein’s post is “chilling,” while I find it quite congenial and sensible.  First, Sullivan employs this language of suppression and subjugation, when it is clear that Klein is resisting Cohen’s attempt to denounce and delegitimise criticism of “liberal hawks” and the war.  Someone is trying to suppress dissent, but it isn’t Ezra Klein. 

It is Cohen who speaks of conspiratorially-minded loonies who supposedly mutter darkly about Jews, while Klein points out Cohen’s tendentious (one might even say dishonest) prattling about anti-Semitic conspiracy.  It is Cohen who is engaged in anything but “independent thought” and “free inquiry,” instead preferring the comfortable cell of the war supporter who continued to support his ideal Form of the war in spite of the way it has actually been waged.  Rarely has a more predictable liberal defender of aggressive war appeared on the stage. 

Klein’s distinction is quite right: Cohen’s self-identification as a “liberal hawk” is highly subjective and based on a need to distinguish himself, at least superficially, from the even more morally obtuse people who have led the charge for the war.  Using the name “liberal hawk” is a way to say, “Yes, I’m for aggressive war, but not like the neocons are.  I’m in it for the right reasons!”  Indeed, I would go further than Klein to say that such people are in some ways actually considerably worse than the neocons, for whom talk of freedom and democracy is at least partly tongue-in-cheek or at least expendable in the last resort, because they actually do believe this garbage and seem to think that murdering liberating people leads to the improvement of mankind.  Neocons often say things like this, but it is not always clear whether they are simply having us all on.

Sullivan defends Cohen up to a point by insisting that Cohen is sincere, but he seems to miss Klein’s point that Cohen’s sincerity or lack of it doesn’t matter to the end result of how Cohen’s commentary affects the debate.  Yes, every writer has a duty to his conscience to say what he thinks is right.  The problem, as I should think would be obvious, is that Cohen thinks that aggressive war is right and regards those who think otherwise as somehow morally compromised or lacking in seriousness.  That ought to be enough to discredit him, but unfortunately it is not.  It is precisely the content of what Cohen says that is Klein’s target.  Cohen’s motives and sincerity are, by Klein’s own admission, irrelevant to the significance of Cohen’s echoing of pro-war talking points.  Cohen serves his function by covering the left flank of the War Party, and even helps to consume antiwar energies in internecine quarrels about our respective attitudes towards Roger Cohen.  The fact that opponents of the Iraq war are spending any time at all fighting with each other over Roger Cohen’s support for the Iraq war is an indirect confirmation of the very phenomenon that Klein is describing.  Above all, his function is to run interference, muddle the issue and throw in distracting references to Kosovo.  If there was ever anything farther removed from free inquiry, I don’t know what it would look like.

Update: Klein responds to Sullivan here.
Incidentally, it is astonishing that Sullivan could read Klein’s response to Cohen as proof that Klein is the apparatchik.  Perhaps neither deserve that label, but it is an enormous stretch to say that Klein has delved here into some fetid den of partisan lackeydom.  He is calling b.s. on Cohen’s blustering op-eds that denounce the left-wing critics of “liberal hawks” on the grounds that said op-eds are, well, b.s.  He is refusing to let Cohen define the terms of the debate and write out everyone to the left of Friedman as intolerable.  Sounds good to me.