Who's Afraid of a Counterfactual? Roger Cohen, Apparently, in His New Essay on Yitzhak Rabin

I know that I sound like a broken record (an idiomatic expression that may be alien to many these days), but I need to apologize once more for having been delinquent in my posts over the last several months.  In my defense, I’ve been busily finishing chapter 6 of my new study on counterfactual history (a chapter that deals with how “what ifs” were employed during the years of the American and French revolutions) and haven’t done much aside from that.

Today, though, I feel compelled to comment on Roger Cohen’s new piece in the New York Times, “The Incitement in Israel that Killed Yitzhak Rabin.”

It’s an interesting article that laments Rabin’s assassination and fantasizes about how it might have been avoided with a wide range of “if only” statements.

What I find irritating, however (and I should say that I really like Cohen’s work overall), is that he feels compelled at the outset of his essay to disavow the very mode of speculative argumentation that underpins its central arguments.

As he bluntly puts it:

“I’m not big on counterfactual historical musings. The hypothetical is tempting and tantalizing, but valueless.”

Cohen goes on to add that

“There is one exception to my impatience with historical hypotheticals. It haunts me. That is the assassination almost a quarter-century ago of Yitzhak Rabin…In this case I find it impossible not to think, “If only.”

Cohen goes on to describe how a new Israeli film on the assassination, “Incitement, directed by Yaron Zilberman, prompts him to reconsider a bunch of “what ifs,” noting:

“I can’t help wondering. If only Rabin had lived. If only Israel had confronted the fanatical scourge in its midst before it was too late. If only Israel had understood earlier the poison of the occupation. If only enormous security lapses had not allowed Amir to lurk for a long time close to Rabin’s car and fire at point-blank range. If only Shimon Peres, Rabin’s successor, had not proved so inept, squandering an enormous lead to allow Netanyahu to win the 1996 election. If only the honor of the warrior had not given way to the dishonor of the indicted politician.”

Given the counterfactual nature of this paragraph, it is jarring to see Cohen’s flatly asserting at the outset of his essay that counterfactuals are "valueless." Why does he -- and why do many others -- feel obliged to dismiss counterfactual thinking only to embrace it at the same time?

I have found in my research that countless major thinkers have expressed a similar kind of obligatory – but hypocritical – dismissiveness towards counterfactual history.  Plutarch criticized Herodotus for using “what ifs” in his Histories, only to employ them himself in his Morals.  Johann Gottfried Herder dismissed the point of wondering “what if” in his Philosophy of History only to employ dozens of counterfactuals elsewhere in the same text. 

I discuss these and many other examples in my book.  In the process, it becomes clear Cohen’s disclaimer is hardly new.  But it still rankles.

In an era when so many streaming shows are based on counterfactual plots (For All Mankind, The Man in the High Castle, Watchmen, etc.), I would have thought we were passed this point.

Apparently not, though, for journalists, historians, and other scholars, who seem comfortable confining counterfactuals to the closet except on those occasions when they wish to drag them out -- reluctantly and with embarrassment – for the sake of exploiting their rhetorical and analytical value.

Bringing an end to this embarrassment by establishing the ubiquity and legitimacy of counterfactual speculation is one of the things I hope my forthcoming book can accomplish.