Cole Slaw
I can't remember exactly when I stopped reading Juan Cole's website. He is a professor and Arabist, and his site often is full of valuable background material on Arab and Islamic issues, as well as links to articles from Middle Eastern and South Asian media.
There was a time, at the run-up to the Iraq invasion, when I could nod assent to his views of that issue, such as:
He was clearly of the left, and his audience was more or less anti-war, but he was a tempered voice in that faction, and he knew the realities of Saddam's Iraq in a way Michael Moore never will. As late as April 1, 2003, he was writing:
But I thought he had a tendency to be warped by what he hated -- in this case, Israel and Bush. And it's hard to write about the modern Middle East without involving one or the other or both of those, so I turned away from him because of the warping. Especially after the invasion ended and the reconstruction of Iraq began.
In the first days of the war, he would write such as this: "The rest of us have a responsibility to work to see that the lives lost are redeemed by the building of a genuinely democratic and independent Iraq in the coming years." [March 19]
But by April 1, 2003, the tone seemed different. While he still supported the overthrow of Saddam, he called the Pentagon trying to run a post-war Iraq "an increasingly bad idea," and advised, "We should win, cut our losses, and turn Iraq back over to Iraqis." Which Iraqis, and how, he does not say. That was the logical point, if not the date, when I started to look elsewhere.
On Feb. 17, he summed up one opinion piece he found: "In other words, the Bush administration is not actually going into Iraq to establish democracy. Rather, the Iraqi people will just be forced at gunpoint to trade a belligerant dictatorship for a pliant one. This is to be Chile 1973, not Japan 1945. I have been very afraid myself all along that the Cheneys, Rumsfelds and Wolfowitzes would pull this switch on us at the last minute."
The irony is, in later advocating that the U.S. simply pull out of Iraq, Cole must know he condemns the Iraqi people to the same hell he implied Cheney and Rumsfeld were going to foist on them.
So why am I culling through Cole's archives now? He's recently been hit hard by a number of the bloggers I follow, notably Jeff Jarvis, for promoting the theory that the brave Iraqi brothers who run Iraq the Model are a CIA front. Cole claims he wasn't saying it was so, just passing along the meme. But one of the qualities that made his site valuable was that it wasn't just a blog linking to blogs: it drew from media and authoritative sources. Now he's just playing nasty whisper-down-the-lane games. That's sad.
And Jarvis' wrath is not misplaced. As we've seen before, even casual statements made by U.S.-based "authorities" on the Internet can mutate into awful tragedies by the time they travel halfway round the world.
The war of words between Jarvis and Cole rages in Jeff's "comments" section (Cole doesn't allow comments). And a lot of the Cole supporters have been using this as a weapon: "You're just mad because Juan Cole was right all along about Iraq and you weren't."
So I thought I should test that. I wanted to see if Cole, with his obvious knowledge, had more insight than anyone else I was reading. I focused on his posts from February, March, and April 2003.
Cole rarely makes a true predicition. But he will make a suggestion. "If this news is true, then it might mean ...." That's reasonable. He claims no magical insights, such as his devotees attribute to him, and he often writes that he is surprised by developments.
The absence of stockpiles of WMD, for instance. It's nice to have his own words on that, because so many in the anti-war movement (I don't know if Cole is among them) now act like they knew that all along:
It seems Cole was on the same information roller-coaster as the rest of us.
When he did peer into the future of Iraq, Cole predicted some things correctly. Many of those were "gimmes": Things any reasonable and informed person would predict. Such as the residents of "Saddam City" renaming it "Sadr City" first chance they got.
But his weather vane often shifted with events. At times he predicted an easy victory for the coalition, but in the sticky moments in mid-March he switched to rhetoric of quagmire.
Here are some selections from Cole's Web site from 2003:
Again, I'm not trying to run the guy down, but to disarm his minions who seem to think him infallible.
There was a time, at the run-up to the Iraq invasion, when I could nod assent to his views of that issue, such as:
"My own knowledge of the horrors Saddam has perpetrated makes it impossible for me to stand against the coming war, however worried I am about its aftermath. World order is not served by unilateral military action, to which I do object. But world order, human rights and international law are likewise not served by allowing a genocidal monster to remain in power." [Feb. 5, 2003]
He was clearly of the left, and his audience was more or less anti-war, but he was a tempered voice in that faction, and he knew the realities of Saddam's Iraq in a way Michael Moore never will. As late as April 1, 2003, he was writing:
"I hold on to the belief that the Baath regime in Iraq has been virtually genocidal (no one talks about the fate of the Marsh Arabs) and that having it removed cannot in the end be a bad thing. That's what I tell anxious parents of our troops over there; it is a noble enterprise to remove the Baath, even if so many other justifications for the war are crumbling." [April 1]
But I thought he had a tendency to be warped by what he hated -- in this case, Israel and Bush. And it's hard to write about the modern Middle East without involving one or the other or both of those, so I turned away from him because of the warping. Especially after the invasion ended and the reconstruction of Iraq began.
In the first days of the war, he would write such as this: "The rest of us have a responsibility to work to see that the lives lost are redeemed by the building of a genuinely democratic and independent Iraq in the coming years." [March 19]
But by April 1, 2003, the tone seemed different. While he still supported the overthrow of Saddam, he called the Pentagon trying to run a post-war Iraq "an increasingly bad idea," and advised, "We should win, cut our losses, and turn Iraq back over to Iraqis." Which Iraqis, and how, he does not say. That was the logical point, if not the date, when I started to look elsewhere.
On Feb. 17, he summed up one opinion piece he found: "In other words, the Bush administration is not actually going into Iraq to establish democracy. Rather, the Iraqi people will just be forced at gunpoint to trade a belligerant dictatorship for a pliant one. This is to be Chile 1973, not Japan 1945. I have been very afraid myself all along that the Cheneys, Rumsfelds and Wolfowitzes would pull this switch on us at the last minute."
The irony is, in later advocating that the U.S. simply pull out of Iraq, Cole must know he condemns the Iraqi people to the same hell he implied Cheney and Rumsfeld were going to foist on them.
So why am I culling through Cole's archives now? He's recently been hit hard by a number of the bloggers I follow, notably Jeff Jarvis, for promoting the theory that the brave Iraqi brothers who run Iraq the Model are a CIA front. Cole claims he wasn't saying it was so, just passing along the meme. But one of the qualities that made his site valuable was that it wasn't just a blog linking to blogs: it drew from media and authoritative sources. Now he's just playing nasty whisper-down-the-lane games. That's sad.
And Jarvis' wrath is not misplaced. As we've seen before, even casual statements made by U.S.-based "authorities" on the Internet can mutate into awful tragedies by the time they travel halfway round the world.
The war of words between Jarvis and Cole rages in Jeff's "comments" section (Cole doesn't allow comments). And a lot of the Cole supporters have been using this as a weapon: "You're just mad because Juan Cole was right all along about Iraq and you weren't."
So I thought I should test that. I wanted to see if Cole, with his obvious knowledge, had more insight than anyone else I was reading. I focused on his posts from February, March, and April 2003.
Cole rarely makes a true predicition. But he will make a suggestion. "If this news is true, then it might mean ...." That's reasonable. He claims no magical insights, such as his devotees attribute to him, and he often writes that he is surprised by developments.
The absence of stockpiles of WMD, for instance. It's nice to have his own words on that, because so many in the anti-war movement (I don't know if Cole is among them) now act like they knew that all along:
"The failure of the British or US troops to turn up any stockpiles of chemical or biological weapons is striking. Perhaps it is the case that they are well hidden or that they are hidden in Baghdad or to the north. It is dangerous to get out on a limb here and say they just don't exist. But the possibility that they just don't exist now has to be taken increasingly seriously.
"As someone who was myself alarmed last fall by reports of Saddam getting nukes, I have to say that I increasingly feel I have been duped." [April 1]
It seems Cole was on the same information roller-coaster as the rest of us.
When he did peer into the future of Iraq, Cole predicted some things correctly. Many of those were "gimmes": Things any reasonable and informed person would predict. Such as the residents of "Saddam City" renaming it "Sadr City" first chance they got.
But his weather vane often shifted with events. At times he predicted an easy victory for the coalition, but in the sticky moments in mid-March he switched to rhetoric of quagmire.
Here are some selections from Cole's Web site from 2003:
- Feb. 6: "The US government decided to launch this war shortly after September 11 (some administration figures had wanted to do so for many years before), and the war is going to happen. I suspect the Security Council in the end will go along with it reluctantly or at least not formally object." [emphasis added]
- Feb. 27: [Outlining potential scenarios for disaster in Iraq] "What will happen if we give the Turks too much authority to intervene in Kurdistan, and fighting breaks out between the Turks and the Iraqi Kurds, and if the Iraqi Kurds turn against the US?"
- Feb. 28: "The Bush administration may yet pull off a [U.N.] resolution."
- March 27: "I think the Arabic word for quagmire is probably al-mustanqa`. Washington will probably have to learn to pronounce it." Also, "... the Baath and the Republican Guards are standing firm ...."
- March 31: "... I have for a long time tried to warn that the Sunni Arabs, including the Republican Guard, would make a strong stand against the invaders."
- April 5: "I very much fear that the combination of the Iraq war, drift to fundamentalism in South Asia, and Sharon's frankly fascist policies in the Occupied Territories are likely to produce more anti-American terrorism and more American ripostes, so that the whole thing ratchets out of control."
- April 7: "There are reports that the coalition has flown Iraqi National Congress leader Ahmad Chalabi to southern Iraq, along with about 1,000 INC fighters. These latter are expected to help clean up the lingering resistance in the south from Saddam partisans and to form the nucleus of a new Iraqi national army. Presumably they can also be called on to begin providing some security in the Shiite cities of the south."
[A case of Cole predicting something that would have been good news for the coalition and the Bush Administration if it had happened. These were a minority, though.] - April 8: "Meanwhile, the Taliban of Afghanistan have regrouped and made several strikes at the Karzai government lately. When Afghanistan has elections, if it does, who do you think is going to win in Paktia Province?"
[Apparently, Karzai took 96 percent of the vote in Paktia Province. Now, the form of Prof. Cole's question might disqualify it as a prediction, but the tone of it, and the lead-up to it, leaves me with the conclusion that, whatever he did expect, he didn't expect the U.S.-backed, non-fundamentalist candidate to win that particular vote.] - April 22: [As Shi'ite pilgrims prepare to flock to holy sites] "A million or two pilgrims are expected, which could be explosive in a small town like Karbala. Tempers may run high, and after all people just lived through a brutalizing war. Will there be trouble?"
Again, I'm not trying to run the guy down, but to disarm his minions who seem to think him infallible.
Labels: Juan Cole
