The Juan Cole 'Bush-Israel' Derangement Syndrome

 

The arrogant and notoriously anti-Israeli Professor and Blogger Juan Cole, somewhat of a hero in the Liberal Blogosphere, has "come away from [listening to the President's unguarded comments yesterday @ G8 summit] shaken and trembling", the President's comments being "a little window into the superficial, one-sided mind of the man, who has for six years been way out of his depth."

"Shaken and trembling?" Umh, especially when in another breath, or should I say post, he accuses Israel of ethnic cleansing, which TPM's John McCutchen extends to "a 60 year ethnic cleansing campaign." I have left the talented Tiger Hawk to tear Dr. Cole apart for that moment of sheer lunacy. It is not the first time The Professor is "caught in the act of being himself", but each time it seems his constitution is less able to deal with his unwarranted superciliousness and condescension, not to mention rampant anti-Semitism. Scott Johnson @ Powerline quite rightly concludes on the matter "The adage that it is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt may apply here." Addressing a man who passed "disgusting comments about "Jewish American Likudniks,"his implications regarding the dual loyalties of Jewish American neo-conservatives, or comments displaying his public vulgarity" Scott is being too kind.

Presumably the Liberal 'standard issue' hysterical anti-Israeli propaganda, coupled with the usual Bush Derangement Syndrome, and the odd conspiracy theory is enough for The Professor to pull out the anti-hyperventilation paper bags in his never ending quest to be on the decidedly wrong side of every issue .

I cobbled the Bush-Blair exchange on Israel and Lebanon, accidentally caught at the G8 on mike, together from WaPo and ABC News.

    BUSH to Blair: "I think Condi is going to go (to the Middle East) pretty soon."

    BLAIR: "Right, that's all that matters, it will take some time to get that together . . . See, if she goes out she's got to succeed as it were, where as I can just go out and talk."

    BUSH: "See, the irony is what they need to do is get Syria to get Hizbollah to stop doing this shit and it's over."

    BLAIR: "Who, Syria?"

    BUSH: "Right . . . What about Kofi? That seems odd. I don't like the sequence of it. His attitude is basically ceasefire and everything else happens."

    BLAIR: "I think the thing that is really difficult is you can't stop this unless you get this international presence agreed." . . .

    BUSH: "I felt like telling Kofi to get on the phone with Assad and make something happen. We're not blaming Israel. We're not blaming the Lebanese government."

So, the whole blow-up is Syria's fault, for putting Hizbullah up to making mischief. No reference to Israeli actions in Gaza. No reference to, like, the wholesale destruction of Lebanon by the Israeli air force. And no blame for the Lebanese government of Fouad Siniora. And Bush thinks that Nasrullah of Hizbullah takes direct orders from Damascus. And he thinks that if Bashar al-Asad orders Hizbullah to stop firing its little katyushas and give back the two Israeli soldiers, everything will suddenly settle down.

It is an astonishingly simple-minded view of the situation, painted in black and white and making assumptions about who is who's puppet and what the Israeli motivations are. Israel doesn't appear as a protagonist. It is purely reactive. Stop provoking it, and it suddenly stops its war.

Since Israel is just being provoked and has no ambitions of its own, in this reading, it is useless to begin with a ceasefire. That treats the two sides as both provoking one another. Here, only Hizbullah matters, so you lean on Syria to lean on it, and, presto, peace breaks out.

It is a little window into the superficial, one-sided mind of the man, who has for six years been way out of his depth.

I come away from it shaken and trembling.

Professor, the feeling is mutual. Perhaps it was better for one of the so called 'Netroots Left' to stay silent after all, especially if they are ranked as one of the 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America today. We can be grateful that 'The Taliban Yale' is still left with some good sense to reject the good Professor.

My friend Jeff Goldstein, analyzes the one time 'Taliban Yale' hopeful Dr. Cole, and his 'final solution for the Israeli crisis', and provides some added fun, with videos of The Professor in action  (h/t Jeremayakovka) I am not quite sure who is funnier, the interviewer Diogenes Veritas who "drapes a pair of ferrets over his bald spot" (Jeff you're so funny) or The Professor who claims that he is unjustly accused by those who would ordinarily call Ariel Sharon anti-Semitic. Well he is Juan of a kind....

Comments

[Kenny Pierce]

Just thought, in light of Coal's braying on and on about Israel's "indiscriminate" bombing:

You will find here a map of just exactly how much of Beirut has been "leveled." It is instructive.

Alexandra, if you want to refer to this in more active threads, feel free.

[Miss Carnivorous]

Juan Cole is a gay man. I am in no way saying that there is anything wrong with being gay. However, Cole has an unnatural erotic obsession with Arab men and probably Arab terrorists themselves. He wants to be the male version of Patty Hearst. I have noticed that most of the non Arab, Arabists are gay men. These are not the middle east experts, but those that come out of the woodwork to defend Islamists, right or wrong. When an Islamic edict is passed against homosexuality, the Arabists are quick to come out and say that the edict has been misinterpreted by the west and that Islam really isn't against homosexuality. Supreme denial, is what they harbor.

I mentioned this in my blog and a Spanish blogger made a comment about the Arab specialists in Spain all being gay men that go to Morocco for sex with boys and when the TV stations need experts to speak on the side of Islam, these guys show up and defend the terrorists, etc, etc. These guys are invested in keeping the culture male dominated and keeping women in the background. I am sorry to write this graphically, but there has always been a psycho/sexual element to the Islamists' program anyway.

[Kenny Pierce]

Yousef Ibrahim has a piece in today's Sun in which he takes a rather markedly different view than Professor Cole, indeed a rather more extreme view than my own as expressed in the snark above. My position was that Israel is doing for Lebanon what Lebanon can't do for itself, and that the more effective Israel is in its war against Hizbullah, the better off Lebanon will be when the shooting's over. Cole's opinion is that it sucks to be Lebanon now that they can't get any "succor" from Syria to protect them against everybody's enemy Israel.

Now comes Ibrahim to say that not only is Israel really on the side of Lebanon -- Israel is on the side of the majority of Arabs across the Arab world in this case, and the majority of Arabs realize it. Ibrahim begins:

Yes, world, there is a silent Arab majority that believes that seventh-century Islam is not fit for 21st-century challenges. That women do not have to look like walking black tents. That men do not have to wear beards and robes, act like lunatics, and run around blowing themselves up in order to enjoy 72 virgins in paradise. And that secular laws, not Islamic Shariah, should rule our day-to-day lives.

And yes, we, the silent Arab majority, do not believe that writers, secular or otherwise, should be killed or banned for expressing their views. Or that the rest of our creative elite - from moviemakers to playwrights, actors, painters, sculptors, and fashion models - should be vetted by Neanderthal Muslim imams who have never read a book in their dim, miserable lives.

Nor do we believe that little men with head wraps and disheveled beards can run amok in Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Iraq making decisions on our behalf, dragging us to war whenever they please, confiscating our rights to be adults, and flogging us for not praying five times a day or even for not believing in God.

More important, we are not silent any longer.

My favorite quote, actually, comes from Abdul Rahman al-Rashed, whom I wouldn't know from Adam (I've admitted I'm no expert on this matters already) but whom Ibrahim calls "possibly the most influential Arab opinion-maker today":

"We have lost most of our causes and the largest portions of our lands following fiery speeches and empty promises of struggle coupled with hallucinating, drug-induced political fantasies."

Preach on, brother Rashed!

But now, of course all of this must be taken with a grain of salt, because what, really, does Mr. Ibrahim know of the Arab street, compared to the infallibly informed Professor Cole? Only think, for example, of how much better Professor Cole speaks Arabic than does Mr. Ibrahim. [shaking head sadly at Mr. Ibrahim's foolish presumption]

Also, with all due respect to Mr. Rashed, when it comes to the terrorists and their political fantasies, I'm not at all sure you can blame their mental dysfunctionality on drugs.

I think it actually has more to do with the goats...

[jess1dering]

THAT , Kenny Pierce was screen-spitting funny and tragically true.

[jess1dering]

Me thinks it's safe to say that Old Prof. Cole knows lots of facts, old and new, but has no ability to put the info. together into rational opinion. Pity is, so many see the degree, the position and conclude that he must know what he's talking about. It's a freak show , I tell you, A FREAK SHOW !!!

[Kenny Pierce]

Jess, if you hate somebody enough -- and Cole unquestionably hates Israel -- everything's their problem at bottom.

There's an old joke from the Soviet Union that runs like this (you're expected to know that the shopkeepers would naturally steal most of the shoes and sell them out the back door on the black market):

A rumor has spread in Moscow that a particular store has shoes to sell, and the resulting line that has instantly formed, is three blocks long. An hour goes by as everyone stands patiently in the snow, and then the door opens and a clerk steps out.

"Comrades!" he calls, "I regret to say that there are not enough shoes for all of you. All Jews are ordered to step out of line and go home."

The Jews step out of line and trudge off disconsolately and the door closes. Another hour in the snow goes by, and then the door opens.

"Comrades! There are still not enough shoes. All who are not Party members are ordered to step out of line and go home."

Another hour.

"Comrades! There are still not enough shoes. All who have not been in the armed forces, defending the Rodina from her enemies, are ordered to step out of line and go home."

It is starting to get late.

"Comrades! There are still not enough shoes. All who did not fight in the Great Patriotic War, are ordered to step out of line and go home."

The day will end before long.

"Comrades! There are still not enough shoes. All who were not decorated for bravery under fire, are ordered to step out of line and go home."

There are two shrivelled and bent old Russian guys standing patiently in the snow. The sun is going down. The door opens one last time.

"Comrades! Forgive me, but there are no shoes."

One of the old soldiers looks over at the other in disgust and complains:

"Those f***ing Jews always manage to get the best of everything!"

[jess1dering]

To my eyes it appears that the problem is FAR from having it's roots in Israel. It appears that everywhere that radical Islam exists, and I do mean world-wide, it is accompanied by fierce intolerance, isolation and an insistence on "HAVING IT'S OWN WAY" . It also appears to me that in the event of failure by political pressure to get it's own way, the ensueing violence is particularly brutal , savage, and murderous. Is that an unfair generalization ? If not, how then can Israel be percieved as the core problem ?
BTW: I saw footage of the leaflets the Israelis dropped. It was touching. Of course they were shown being picked up and ripped up by angry Lebanese. Perhaps cherry picking footage by our own lefty press ? I have read blogs by citizens of Lebanon who place the blame squarely on the Terror Organizations. Who knows. I do feel so sad for those poor people and the fact that the cowardly thugs embed themselves among civilians sickens me. Honorable...HA!!

[Kenny Pierce]

You notice something else Cole betrays without realizing it? This moron of a President who is so stupid and so doesn't know anything about the Middle East, somehow finds himself in a situation where American interests are more freely pursued by our allies, and less openly objected to by the usual subjects, than in any time in my memory. Somehow the completely incompetent cowboy-with-no-skills-of-diplomacy, is getting more cooperation from the other players in the Middle East than we've ever seen -- France, Cole assures us, has "ceded the Levant to the US-Israeli sphere of influence." Hizbullah attacks Israel, Israel fights back -- and the states of the Arab League practically all look at Hizbullah and say, "You started it." Utterly unprecedented.

But that doesn't shake the Professor's placid conviction that this President -- like Professor Cole himself in the intellectual kiddie pool of your choice -- has for six years "been way out of his depth."

The guy's just hilarious.

[jess1dering]

Oh I do so very much enjoy this site !!! How can having your perspective broadened be so much fun.??? Although multiple screen-sprays are a waste of good tea :)
BTW: Juan is , perhaps , the most lampoonable guy I've come across in years.

[Kenny Pierce]

Well, the kids were an hour late getting back from the Schlitterbahn church youth group expedition last night, and I get pretty flippant when I get bored. Writing that helped pass the time.

There's, like, zero fact-checking in all of that. I mostly wanted to have an excuse to say things like, "The world of future possibilities is, after all, an enchantingly expansive domain." It's a major goof-off piece of snark.

If I were being serious, I'd temper some of the analysis -- I don't really think, for example, that Israel is all that likely to go in with ground troups, though I certainly think they have been taking steps to ensure that they can do so successfully if they choose. I'm afraid that even if Israel does a great deal of damage to Hizbullah, the Lebanese democrats won't be able to keep Hizbullah under control after Israel leaves. But I do think it's likely that Israel's fundamental goal is to see the Lebanese democrats in full control of Lebanon and for Israel to be out of Lebanon entirely but still safe from terrorist attack in that quarter. I also think that the majority of Lebanese would be delighted with that result, and that so would the French, British and Americans. For the Syrians, for the Iranians, for Hamas and of course for Hizbullah, that would be a disaster of the first order.

Here, I'll put it this way. Professor Cole proclaims himself, at every opportunity, an expert on all things Middle Eastern, even now and then rather pathetically assuring us that real live Middle Easterners have said to him things like, "Professor Cole, you speak Arabic very well." (Having myself been told more times than I can count, "Ken, you speak Russian very well!" I can assure you that I heard such compliments a ton when my Russian was terrible and my Kazakh friends felt I needed some encouragement, but that the better my Russian gets the fewer compliments I get on it. Somebody should point out to Professor Cole that when you say, "Hey, people in the Middle East have told me, 'You speak very good Arabic,' what you communicate to most people who have any experience in foreign languages is that your accent and grammar are sufficiently bad that polite natives appreciate the strenuous effort you're making and encourage you tactfully. Or perhaps Professor Cole goes around asking random persons on the Arab Street, "Hey, how's my Arabic? It's good, right?" You would have to get clarification from the Professor and his giant economy-sized ego.)

By comparison, I freely admit that I am a software consultant who has never been either to the Middle East or to a military academy and who speaks not a word of Arabic, and therefore I am no expert at all.

But I will go on record as saying that I think it is more likely that within the next two years a genuine and long-lasting peace will be concluded between the Lebanese democratic government and Israel (cemented with help from the United States in restoring Lebanese civilian infrastructure) than that Israel will take over southern Lebanon and expel all the current Lebanese residents (which is what "ethnic cleansing" means). Professor Cole thinks the opposite. If it turns out that the software developer is correct and the Middle Eastern expert is wrong, what do you think the odds are that the Middle Eastern expert will learn a single blessed thing from the experience?

[igout]

I drink to the success of the IDF in gunning down the Hes&Ham brothers. But it seems to me that the USA has to keep its eye on the bigger picture. It's the oil, stupid.

Firmly pacifying the middle-east is in the interests of every nation that needs oil. That includes the USA, Japan, India, China, the EU. Certainly, that should be sufficient grounds for an genu-ine multi-lateral hit job on the Islamic Republic of Iran. Does anybody not see that sooner or later, we have to take them out?

We can either do this with fancy speechifying from on high about democracy and whatnot, and have everybody think we're just hogging the oil for ourselves and the jews. Or we can be smart for once, and first make sure everybody knows they'll get in on the booty. Then make the kill.

[Jeremayakovka]

Incredible job, Kenny. What do you call that? A "Research and Destroy" mission?

[Kenny Pierce]

Alexandra,

Okay, here's you an express-version fisking -- not very carefully fact-checked or anything and I would imagine unfair to Cole at several points, because I was doing it mostly for the sake of amusement. Also it's probably been overtaken by events since I threw it together last night while waiting for the kids to get home to Schlitterbahn and am only just now getting around to posting it. I'm not really as confident in my opinion as is my pose; I'm just seeing how infuriating-to-the-Jew-hater I can manage to make myself. ('Cause the man shorely does hate the Jews.)

OK, kids, before we get to Prof. Cole’s “informed” comments, let’s review some salient facts.

1. The best possible outcome in Lebanon from Israel’s perspective would be its rapid maturation into a responsible country in which the rule of law was dependable, and therefore with whom meaningful negotiations could be held.

2. The major obstacle to the survival of the Lebanese democracy is the fact that Hizbullah is well armed and would absolutely be willing to train those arms on its fellow Lebanese, its primary loyalties being to Syria and Iran.

3. The Lebanese government cannot take out Hizbullah on its own and therefore does not have effective control of its own country.

4. What makes Hizbullah truly dangerous both to Israel and to Lebanon is its armaments and its ability to rearm courtesy of Syria and Iran.

5. Therefore from a tactical perspective the most rational goal for Israel is to capture and/or destroy Hizbullah’s armaments and leave Hizbullah unable to resist the force of the Lebanese democracy, where a majority of voters want permanent peace with Israel.

6. If you’re going to do that, then Hizbullah needs to have the bulk of its armaments all in one area, and they need not to be able to hightail it out of that area nor to have reinforcements coming in.

7. Which means that if you’re the Israelis, the obvious thing to do is to cut off Hizbullah’s lines of communication and resupply in preparation for a devastating ground assault, and then to hand over the formerly Hizbullah-controlled areas to the democratic Lebanese government.

8. Furthermore, you would like as much as possible to maximize the ratio of terrorists killed and (even more importantly) armament neutralized, to civilian casulaties collaterally incurred. This is complicated because Hizbullah deliberately does everything possible to use civilians as human shields, so that they and Prof. Cole can point to the corpses and call the Israelis murderers. This is why (as one of Cole’s commentors seems blissfully unaware) the Geneva Conditions specifically do not apply to organizations like Hizbullah that deliberately try to blend in with civilians in order to save their own lives at the expense of the citizens’. It is also the mark of terrorists, who are willing not just deliberately to target civilians from the other side, but also deliberately to rack up dead civilians on their own side, at least in preference to their own dead selves.

There is in this case, however, a possible solution: self-selection, based on two critical facts. (a) Hizbullah is likely to try to stand and fight, especially given the pathological degree to which Arab culture is shame-based; but non-Hizbullah civilians are by comparison likely to try to flee. (b) Even if Hizbullah tries to chicken out, still the fact remains that the more destructive Hizbullah’s weapons are, the harder they are to carry out by hand.

If, therefore, what you want to do is kill Arabs, then you come in with devastating and indiscriminate force with as little warning as possible. But if what you want to do is kill terrorists while letting as many civilians as possible get away, then you take your time preparing the battle space and you make sure everybody knows which part of Lebanon they do not want to be in and you give people plenty of time to clear out – while at the same time making it bloody hard to move truckloads of rockets either out of or into the killing zone you’re carefully setting up. Prof. Cole will shortly tell us (though he’s not bright enough to realize the import of what he is saying), in his own post, that this is in fact precisely how Israel is behaving.

That is, it seems to me, the situation the IDF finds itself in if we assume that they are rational actors who want to find some sort of path to peace and security for their children in the immediate and longer-term future. But of course, perhaps Israel is not in fact composed largely of rational actors who for most of a human lifespan have been threatened on all sides by implacable, insatiable, Jew-hating, child-murdering (as a deliberate target of attack, not as collateral damage) religious-fanatic nutcases. Perhaps they are indeed the demonic Israeli spawn of Prof. Cole’s imagination, bent on gratification of racial hatred. What is so fascinating in reading Prof. Cole’s stuff is the much greater degree to which the Arab cultures he champions, really suffer from the evil characteristics on which he fixates, than do the Israeli culture the contemplation of which leaves him bereft of all reason in droolingly bitter anti-Semitism. (Though, for the sake of the not so fleet of thought among us, I should explicitly observe that those evil characteristics are found not throughout Arab culture, but only in a subculture of that culture that seeks to dominate the rest and has found its best path to success in the nursing and inflaming of hatred against Israel – in which nursing and inflaming process, Prof. Cole is an enthusiastic, though we may hope sufficiently stupid as to be unwitting, accomplice. Lebanon itself encapsulates this discrepancy: those who want peace have the majority of the votes, but Hizbullah, for another couple of weeks, has the majority of the firepower, and thus Lebanon finds itself in a war neither its people nor its government want.)

So, with that background, here we go into Juan’s Juonderland...

Israel invaded Lebanon on Monday, sending ground troops into the south. Israeli leaders say that they do not intend a long-term occupation. But then war is unpredictable.

[UPdate: The Israeli land force briefly went over into Lebanon but then withdrew.]

Don’t worry, Juan boy, I’d say the odds are pretty good they’ll be back.

Israel's government killed another 42 Lebanese civilians in aggressive airstrikes on targets mostly unrelated to Hizbullah on Monday.

Well, I suppose you might think those targets are unrelated to Hizbullah if you don’t know a damned thing about lines of supply or isolation of the enemy or preparation of a battle space.

Thousands of innocent Lebanese have been forced from their homes by the bombings, especially in the South, and have headed up to Beirut (which the Israelis are also indiscriminately bombing). Some 100,000 Lebanese have fled to Syria, though Israeli bombing of roads and bridges has not made it easy for them to get out.

Let’s set aside the superfluous “indiscriminately,” which means nothing given Cole’s complete absence of military expertise and therefore his complete inability to divine the rationale by which targets are discriminatingly chosen. One can simply point out that Hizbollah’s headquarters are in southern Beirut (mostly for the sake of one of his commentors who said the bombing of Beirut had nothing to do with Hizbullah because you can’t fire rockets into Israel from Beirut), and move on. But I should very much like to know how the Professor suggests that Israel interdict Hizbullah’s lines of escape, resupply and reinforcement, without at the same time making it at least a little bit hard to leave the area for the civilians among whom Hizbullah has (in violation of the Geneva Conventions and – Hizbullah no doubt trembles in its nightmares at the thought -- United Nations resolutions! [gasp] How they dare...!) hidden themselves and their weapons. At any rate, Israel’s taking so long to getting around to the carpet-bombing and genocide that, even with the damages to the bridges, 100,000 Lebanese civilians have already gotten out of the danger zone. The nice thing about the Israelis is, they’re so incompetent. All those targets that got away...

Furthermore, let us be charitable and assume that the Professor has not seen this tidbit. Let’s also be realistic and recognize that since it comes from the IDF he would instantly dismiss it as a lie. And let’s also err on the side of fairness to the idiot’s side (since sometimes my lady Truth, bless her tender heart, gets stuck having an idiot defend her), and recognize that the IDF could, in fact, be lying, though also Hizbullah could, in fact, be doing exactly what the IDF claims. Which do you think might be more probable?

Evidence, off the top of my head, that Israel wants to avoid killing civilians: 100,000 Lebanese having been given time to escape while the IDF leisurely kills a few hundred of them. Also, it is at least claimed that the IDF dropped leaflets warning residents to stay away from the Hizbullah offices in southern Beirut before opening attacks on those headquarters.

Evidence, off the top of my head, that Hizbollah wants to have as many civilians as possible in between them and the IDF: they’ve spent the last couple of decades establishing their military positions in places where attacks on the military positions would kill as many civilians as possible.

Perhaps Professor Cole will tell us on what evidence he believes that Hizbullah is more concerned with avoiding Lebanese civilian casualties than is the IDF. And perhaps pig shit will one day turn out to be the ideal fuel for cold fusion. The world of future possibilities is, after all, an enchantingly expansive domain.

Although, because of widespread Western racism, very few over here care about these displaced persons,...

By which the Professor seems to mean that very few people over here agree with his political views.

...they face a desperate situation. Roads have been bombed out, and bridges are gone. Lebanese television reported on numerous villages bombed. Rescue teams attempting to take an injured woman to a better hospital with more supplies were blocked when they found the bridge destroyed.

This is entirely correct. That is what happens when a craven and weak military force takes up its stations in and amongst hordes of civilians for the express purpose of making it difficult for its enemies to attack said military force without bringing harm to the civilians in question. It is precisely why the Geneva Conventions do not apply to, for example, people who refuse to wear uniforms so that it’s easy to tell which people are the civilians you want to let live and which are the bad guys you have to kill. That is also why people like Juan Cole blame Hizbollah and Hamas and other such terrorist organizations for the deaths of civilians, and why they go on to argue passionately that the carrot of Geneva Conventions protection that the signatories intended as an incentive to and a reward for responsible behavior, not be rendered completely useless by its indiscriminate extension to those who can’t be induced to behave responsibly at any price...oh, wait a minute, I have the feeling I’m not getting something exactly right there...oh, well, close enough.

If the reports coming out of Lebanon can be believed, the Israelis are only sometimes striking known Hizbullah safe houses or facilities or missile emplacements.

Correct, Sherlock. And this surprises you because...I suppose because you don’t know jack about military tactics and strategy.

A lot of their bombardment appears aimed at punishing civilian populations and forcing them north to Beirut.

I suppose it would appear so if you didn’t know anything about military tactics and...hmmm, a theme seems to be developing. It also would no doubt appear so if you were the kind of person who reflexively sees in any and all events more evidence that Jews are the scum of the earth. (“What’s that on my dog’s right buttcheek?? [gasp] My God, it’s a pimple! Those damned Israelis!”)

Such an approach would help explain the high number of civilian casualties.

ROTFLMAO. Israel is engaged in militarily isolating an enemy that has taken up position in and amongst civilians for the purpose of maximizing propagandistically useful civilian casualties in the event of an attack. They have been doing so for the past four days, targeting a country of three and a half million people that has almost 1,000 people per square mile and whose population is overwhelming concentrated in urban areas; and the areas targeted are (thanks to Hizbullah’s deliberate tactical decision) precisely the heavily urban areas. In those four days – and this includes up-to-the-minute numbers as I type, even though Cole’s post is now rather stale – a whopping 183 people have died in Lebanon with another 456 being wounded, which totals the Lebanese government declines to break down into civilian and military casualties. Let’s take a source more congenial to Professor Cole: al-Jazeera says the death toll is 254. So let’s be very generous indeed and say that 750 civilians have been hurt by the Israelis so far. This is the “high number of civilian casualities” that the distinguished Professor considers justification for his next statement:

That is, there may be an element of ethnic cleansing in Israeli tactics.

Now, consider that at that rate you’re looking at – conservatively – 650,000 years or so before you manage to get Lebanon “cleansed” – even if you count somebody as “cleansed” if you just dinged him in the nose with a soccer ball and made him cry. If ethnic cleansing is what the Israelis are after, they’d better get their act together.

Of course, one might object that ethnic cleansing involves depopulation more than infliction of casualties, and therefore that the 100,000 is a more relevant number. In other words, I could be accused of confusing ethnic cleansing with genocide. But – unless the Professor believes that the IDF intends to cleanse all of southern Lebanon of Lebanese and settle the area with Jews instead, then his charge of “ethnic cleansing” makes no sense whatsover. If the Professor intends by “ethnic cleansing” what the rest of the world means by “ethnic cleansing,” then that puts him on record as saying that Israel intends permanently to annex the south of Lebanon, thus demonstrating once again that insatiable lust for land that has given us the present state of affairs, in which one can make a comfortable living as a mohel in the Sinai Peninsula.

Meanwhile, one has to wonder – if the Israelis are into this ethnic cleansing thing, how is that about a fifth of their own citizens are Muslim, a number of whom actually are members of the Knesset? I had no idea so many Jews are Muslim. You learn something new every day, that’s the nice thing about the internet.

Oh, by the way, what does the Informed Professor think about Hizbollah and Hamas and their stated goals? Would he recognize that they have themselves made it explicitly clear that they will never be satisfied until they had successfully completed their own ethnic cleaning project – this one involving ethnic cleansing in its very real and appropriate sense? (That’s a real question, not a snark; maybe the Professor has condemned them in other posts of his. A little bit of Cole goes a long way so I certainly can’t claim to have an encyclopedic knowledge of his body of work.)

I must pause to point out here, with genuine pleasure, that the Professor does at least condemn Hizbollah’s deliberate targeting of Israeli citizens, in a post preceding that which I am fisking. To quote him:

Hizbullah's attacks on Israeli civilians are war crimes. The killing of the civilians in Haifa at the train station was a war crime. And threatening to release chemicals from factories on civilian populations is probably a war crime in itself, much less the doing of it.

Obviously, I do not accept that Hizbullah's actions justify the wholesale indiscriminate destruction and slaughter in which the Israelis have been engaged against the Lebanese in general. But they do have every right to defend themselves against Nasrallah and his mad bombers.

I very earnestly and sincerely congratulate him (choosing to overlook the absurdity of the “indiscriminate destruction and slaughter” line, given that Cole can no more help spasmodically emitting such a line every couple of paragraphs than a sufferer from TS can help the occasional tic) and ask those of us ATM’ers who, like me, are disgusted with his implacable anti-Semitism, to at least give him sincere credit for his condemnation of Hizbullah’s targeting of Israeli civilians.

The Irish Times reports:

' The civilian toll continued to mount in Lebanon yesterday as Israeli planes struck dozens of targets. Nine civilians, including two children, were killed when they were hit by a missile that struck a bridge in the southern port city of Sidon . In the southern city of Tyre , rescue workers pulled nine more bodies from the civil defence building that was hit on Sunday in an Israeli strike. Close to 200 civilians have been killed in Lebanon since the Israeli offensive began last week, when Hizbullah attacked an Israeli border patrol, killing three soldiers and capturing two. Five more soldiers were killed when they gave chase into Lebanon .'

Hmm, last I checked the government was reporting 183 and wasn’t breaking them down into civilian and military and at least twenty or so of the most recent corpses were definitely military...you think perhaps the Irish Times is being a bit careless in the finer points of its reporting?

Hizbullah sent rockets on Israel again Monday, with four hitting Haifa, including a strike that collapsed a building and injured 11 persons. Since the outbreak of the fighting last Wednesday, 24 Israelis have been killed, 12 soldiers and 12 civilians.

It is easy, you see, to figure out which dead Israelis are soldiers and which are civilians. That is because (pace the ignorance of at least one of Cole’s commentors) Israel at least attempts to follow the Geneva Conventions, while Hizbollah, being an essentially terrorist organization, does not.

The Guardian complains that the world leaders again did nothing on Monday to stop the massive Israeli assault on Lebanon.

Did the Guardian complain that world leaders were doing nothing to stop the Hizbollah assault on Israel? (Real question; I don’t know the answer...but I have my suspicions.)

I should explain to The Guardian about spheres of influence. Great Powers have them, and other Great Powers respect them if they do not want a war. That is why the US did nothing about the Soviets in Hungary 1956 or in Czechoslovakia in 1968. Soviet sphere of influence.

Thank God the Guardian has Juan Cole to educate them on the finer points of geopolitical theory. Now, let’s see how Professor Cole explains the Arab countries’ general lack of interest in involving itself in this war.

The Levant is now a joint US-Israeli sphere of Influence. Egypt and Jordan both have peace treaties with Israel and are non-NATO allies of the US. So they won't do more than politely disagree that Israel's wholesale destruction of Lebanon's infrastructure [quick note: if Cole thinks what has happened to Lebanon’s infrastructure is “wholesale destruction” then he hasn’t looked at any pictures of post-WWII Normandy or post-fire-bombing Dresden, or for that matter the trail of Sherman’s march to Savannah] is useful. Turkey is part of the joint US-Israeli sphere of influence, with close military ties to both countries. Iraq is now working the American training wheels, in Bush's parlance, and although it has not formally joined the full US-Israeli sphere of influence, it has no military to speak of and basically its legs are broken.

Wait, there's something I don't understand -- Saddam's always been good for suicide bomber reward money and such. Now there's a power-hungry madman who hates Israel, just what the doctor ordered; why don't the Lebanese go get him to help them? This is a great mystery. Perhaps the inimitable mind of the Professor can enlighten us on this point.

The Gulf monarchies have more or less acquiesced in the situation as well.

Syria and Iran are the only two significant dissenters. Syria is weak and isolated, having been expelled from Lebanon [well, except for its client Hizbullah] and having lost its Soviet patron a decade and a half ago. Iran is distant from the scene and although it might give some rockets and training to a group like Hizbullah, it does not have a history of direct military intervention in other countries anyway [and couldn’t get there to help in significant numbers even if they wanted to because of all those American soldiers sitting there in between Iran and Syria]. The Lebanese should not hold their breath expecting succor from either quarter.

I can’t help but pause for a moment to catch my breath and wipe the tears of laughter from my eyes at the thought of the Lebanese “holding their breath expecting succor” from – wait for it -- Syria and Iran. How could you ever hope to parody this guy? He’s the Dana Carvey to his own Poppa Bush. Anyway, back to the geopolitical analysis.

Okay, now allow me to proffer an alternative explanation:

The other Arab countries all know several things that Professor Cole doesn’t deign to treat as relevant and at least one that Professor Cole desperately doesn’t want to believe is true.

1. Iran is not an Arab country and doesn’t think much of Arabs.

2. Iran has every intention of taking control of the Arab world.

3. Syria is Iran’s sock puppet now that the Soviet fist has abandoned the Syrian sock.

4. Israel does not, and is never going to want, to conquer Egypt or Jordan or Saudi Arabia and take over.

In short, Israel is not a threat to Saudi Arabia as long as the House of Saud has the sense to leave Israel alone and not pull a stupid okay-I’ll-play-too stunt like Jordan did in 1967 (which stunt cost Jordan the West Bank). But Iran absolutely is a threat to Saudi Arabia. So on sheer grounds of self-preservation, why would the Arab states (other than Assad’s, which has no source of support left other than Iran and therefore no options left) take Iran’s side against Israel? (I could suggest a motive that in the past has been adequate, namely, deeply irrational hatred of Israel based on anti-Semitism; but in the first place, since the Arab nations are clearly refusing to get dragged in here, that motive is apparently no longer adequate, and in the second place Professor Cole would be wise always to avoid reminding his readers that such a thing as anti-Semitism exists.)

The European Powers all ceded the Levant to the US-Israeli sphere of influence a long time ago. [Tell that to the French – or maybe by “a long time ago” he means “way back all those many years ago when the truth about Oil for Food started coming out” – time being relative and all that.] They will not get out ahead of the US. They mostly deeply dislike the Apartheid policies of Israel in the Occupied Territories, but they also deeply dislike and fear Hamas and Hizbullah, having their own large Muslim populations that they don't want radicalized.

Also, they may perhaps have spent the last year looking at what happened to Gaza when Hamas finally got its own state, and they may have drawn some salutary lessons therefrom.

I wonder idly, if Professor Cole thinks Israeli policies are aptly described as “apartheid,” what term he would find appropriate for the massive Muslim ghettoes into which the policies of most of these European Powers, who so “dislike the Apartheid policies of Israel,” have crowded the majority of their Muslim inhabitants, and of the sky-high rates of hopeless unemployment to which those Powers’ policies have condemned their Muslim youth? King Phillip II, if memory serves, very deeply disliked the British privateers’ habit of taking gold from people at the point of the sword, but that dislike was not exactly due to an MLK-esque moral distaste for violence. That the European Powers dislike most of what Israel does is no doubt true; but considering the European track record over the twentieth century, this is if anything evidence that Israel is probably on the right track.

They probably realize, as David Clark wrote yesterday that Israel's policies are antithetical to the interests of Western governments. [As opposed to Oil for Food, which was very much in the interest of their Western governments, right up until the whistle got blown.] But they decline to challenge the US-Israeli sphere of influence because they believe it would cause them even more trouble to do so.

Let’s see: Europe is in one hell of a mess because for the last few decades it has been notoriously incapable of figuring out what its own interests are. If the Europeans have in fact come to the same conclusions as David Clark, that probably means that Clark has his head where the sun don’t shine. At least, if Jacques Chirac were to come out in support of a policy I also supported, I would drop everything else in order to double-check my own arguments before proceeding further with my newly Chirac-approved course of action.

So, basically, the Palestinians and the Lebanese are screwed.

At least, they are as long as Hamas and Hizbollah have enough guns and thugs to dominate their politics – but in Lebanon those days might well be numbered, thanks to the IDF.

The Lebanese might not have been in such a vulnerable situation if they had not kicked out the Syrians, though the Syrians were there in 1982 the last time Israel invaded.

Another thigh-slapper of a line: Professor Cole, in all seriousness, solemnly informs us that the Lebanese problem is that they got rid of their Syrian protectors and left the gate open for the vile Israeli ethnic cleansers – and as if that weren’t absurd enough in itself, he undercuts his own point before he even makes it to the end of the sentence.

Ahem...Professor, why is the IDF invading Lebanon? (I dare make, not his answer, but the answer an honest man would make: because Hizbollah, who doesn’t give a shit what the Lebanese people want, started a war with Israel using Lebanon as its base, in defiance of the Lebanese people and their democratically elected government.) Very good; and why does Hizbollah have this power to start a war? Would it not be because it took the Lebanese twenty years to kick out the Syrians, and because Hizbollah for all practical purposes remains a Syrian satellite working from Lebanese territory? So, um, isn’t Lebanon’s true vulnerability the fact that Hizbollah is armed, dangerous, and occupying Lebanese territory? So perhaps the Lebanese are in this fix, not because they kicked Syria out, but because it took them so long to do it.

But of course then this mess wouldn’t all be Israel’s fault; so that can’t be the correct explanation.

That is why there is terrorism in the Middle East. The Israeli occupation of the Occupied Territories has been barbaric and intolerable. It produced Hamas. The Israeli occupation of South Lebanon was barbaric and intolerable. It produced Hizbullah.

There is an entire essay to write about the degree to which Cole patronizingly dehumanises the Palestinians and Lebanese – as though they are such a morally debased people that there could never have been the slightest possibility that they could have responded to Israeli occupation as would have, say, Ghandi or Martin Luther King. What Cole is saying is that the Palestinians and Lebanese have always been teetering so closely on the edge of savagery that defeat in war would turn them into monsters as inevitably as the sun shines in the east. Personally, I think they deserve more credit for having played a role in their own choices and in their own character.

A wise Great Power can walk back such bad situations, as the US did in Europe and Japan after World War II. Unwise Powers get stuck with the Tar Baby.

But terrorism is a weapon of the weak [and, um, the evil, right, Cole buddy?] and should not be over-estimated as a deterrent for Great Powers. Mostly they see it as a cost of doing business, and even where the Powers suffer from it, it has the advantage of rallying home populations behind militaristic policies.

Well, that “cost of doing business” thing might have been Clinton’s attitude. It hasn’t exactly been Bush’s. As far as the “advantage of rallying home populations behind militaristic policies,” I’m really left speechless.

And oughtn't the point of any remotely sane foreign policy, be to convince terrorists and their state sponsors that terrorism not only should not be "over-estimated as a deterrent," but instead should be "recognized as an engraved invitation to a terminal butt-kicking"?

At some point the Europeans may find a way to step in.

As long as “stepping in” involves only talking and being impressed with their own moral superiority to all of the people who are actually involved and accomplishing something.

The elements of an eventual resolution of the current Israeli war on Lebanon are becoming clear in international diplomacy. Italian PM Romano Prodi of Italy is already thinking about how to round up 10,000 UN peacekeepers to insert in the Lebanese south as a buffer between the Israeli army and Hizbullah. Russia agrees and is willing to participate.

Except that the last thing any sane country in the world would want, is to have its safety from a mortal enemy guaranteed by a buffer of U.N. peacekeepers – not to mention, let’s say that you wander into a typical Tel Aviv halafel shop and say, “Here’s a great idea – let’s pull the IDF out of Hizbollah terrority and let the Russians protect us instead.” Do I have to say anything further about the reaction you’d get to that suggestions? Besides, since the Lebanese people generally object to having their eight-year-old daughters taught the basics of prostitution, I doubt the Lebanese want the blue-balls...excuse me, the blue helmets there either.

What Israel wants is for Hizbullah to be crushed as a viable military force, and they want the Lebanese democratic government to be able to take full control of its territory. The “diplomatic solution” Cole foresees is, I would think, a non-starter from the Israeli perspective.

Chirac and Blair are also on board with this plan, which will go to the UNSC from the G8 summit.

But Olmert, not being a fool, is not, and Bush’s name is notably absent in Cole’s list of Leaders Who Know How To Solve This Problem.

My advice: don't send the blue helmets unless you authorize them to shoot back when attacked.

[giggling, as the only possible reaction; this is like a Stephen Colbert line only Cole is serious.]

On the other hand, the Irish Times report above says that Israeli officials reject a UN deployment and insist instead that the Lebanese army must be stationed along the border.

Nah, ya think?

It is probably the Olmert government's hope that this posting will set the Lebanese army against Hizbullah, producing intra-Lebanese fighting that serves Israeli interests.

[sigh] The poor guy just doesn’t have a clue. Hizbullah and the Lebanese army are already at odds, and that is not in Israel’s interest. By the time Israel is through, however, they intend for Hizbullah to be left defenseless in the face of the Lebanese army. Israel doesn’t want Lebanon in a civil war. Israel wants Lebanon to be a functioning democracy because Israel knows perfectly well that a solid majority of the Lebanese want peace with Israel.

Israel, however, does not always get its way. We'll see. Peacekeeping is a ways off. The Israelis will fight their war first.

And win it, I might add, which is the best hope for peace the Middle East in general and Lebanon in particular has seen in dogs’ years. It may eventually sink in even on Professor Cole’s inflexibly informed mind that for the last two decades Lebanon’s war has been with Syria, not Israel, and that if Israel crushes Hizbollah, true and complete independence from Syria may finally be within Lebanon’s grasp.

But again, you put it that way, and Israel suddenly isn’t the Source From Which All Evil Springs; so it’s out of court in Juan Juorld.

How's that, Alexandra? (Not very good as sound geopolitical commentary, I'm afraid, but I had a good time trying to mimic Cole's own bombast and self-satisfaction.)

[Alexandra]

Victorino good to see you again, we've missed you. (btw I loved the title "Bushmert Says Brown is the New Black")

Now let me put that 'to the right of Attila The Hun' suit back on and say:

Well if The Professor says that, it must be true. Is this the same Professor Cole who:

recently wrote a bizarre post claiming that Dan Senor ordered the arrest of Muqtada Al Sadr.

On Nov. 10, Cole wrote in his Informed Comment blog that "I have it it from a source I consider reliable that the order for the arrest of Muqtada al-Sadr in early April, 2004, which came as such a surprise and threw the country into chaos for two months, came from Dan Senor. Senor is said to have acted on instructions from Neoconservatives in the Pentagon, and to have kept Paul Bremer, his putative boss, out of the loop. Bremer was presented with a fait accompli."

Dan Senor? Senor was a spokesman in Baghdad. Where did he get the authority to order arrests? Who would have obeyed such an order? Did Senor flash them his secret Neocon ring? Did he give them the secret Neocon handshake? Now you know why some Iraqi readers call Cole's site, "misinformed comment."

And the same Professor Cole who had this explanation of the root cause of the Lebanese war, and was slammed for it:

Professor Cole: "[Iraq's] old Sunni Arab power elite, mainly Baathists or the officer class, has not reconciled itself to the political ascendancy of the Shiites and Kurds. They still think they can destabilize the country and take back over. I would compare them to the Phalangists, the fascist Maronite Christians in Lebanon, who fought tooth and nail 1975-1989 against recognizing that Christians were no longer a dominant majority in Lebanon. Eventually they had to accept a 50/50 split of seats in parliament (which is generous to the Christians, given that Muslims are now a clear majority). That the Sunni Arab elite might be quicker studies than the Phalangists is possible but a little unlikely."

That Cole often too readily distils ill-informed smugness is one reason why his blog is so popular with his enemies, but this particular analogy is so off that I sincerely wonder whether he picked up anything about Lebanon when he resided there decades ago.

For one thing, the sobriquet "fascist" is meaningless here, inasmuch as the Christian militias, like their wartime foes, always were first and foremost sectarian. There never was any notion of, or application of, fascist ideology in the wartime Christian militias; and if Cole is going to bring up the fact that the main Christian party, the Kataeb, was influenced by (pre-World War II) European fascist parties, my only answer to that is that it all evaporated long long before 1975. In this context, Cole uses the world solely as an insult.

More egregiously, Cole has reinterpreted the Lebanese war to essentially be one of "Maronite Christians [fighting] tooth and nail ... against recognizing that Christians were no longer a dominant majority in Lebanon." That was part of it perhaps, but, c'mon Juan, whatever happened to the Palestinian presence, the gradual erosion of Lebanese state control over domestic affairs, the phenomenon of rapid urbanization that brought many new and contradictory social forces to Beirut? To reduce Lebanon's war to Christian stubbornness is splendidly shallow, and Cole misses entirely that minorities do have legitimate fears that might transcend their desire to hold on to power.

Is this the same Professor Cole that is not convinced of Saddam's death toll?

How many deaths to blame on Saddam is controverial. He did after all start both the Iran-Iraq War and the Gulf War. But he also started suing for peace in the Iran-Iraq war after only a couple of years, and it was Khomeini who dragged the war out until 1988. But if we exclude deaths of soldiers, it is often alleged that Saddam killed 300,000 civilians. This allegation seems increasingly suspect.

I see, so the number of Saddam's victims is suspect (over the course of three decades, two wars, a genocide, and specialized death troops and death chambers), but the Lancet report is "very tight."

Not to forget 'He distorts you decide' by Hitchens, for some more of Dr.Cole's unbiased commentary.

I do not read the rabidly anti-Semitic Professor's 'Ill-Informed Comment' for my information on Israel. The best essay that sums up Professor Cole's rabid anti-Semitism and biased commentary on the Middle East and Israel in particular, is written by Professor Efraim Karsh who is the prominent British historian of the Middle East at the University of London:

Resorting to the vilest invectives when talking about the Jews, he calls them “the butchers of Beirut”, Sharon “a mafia don, war criminal, land grabber, starver of children”, and so on. “Couldn’t he shut his enormous pie hole[?]” Cole wonders of Sharon. “Apparently [Bush] has fallen for a line from the neo-cons in his administration that they can deliver the Jewish vote to him in 2004 if only he kisses Sharon’s ass,” he writes in another post. And all this comes from a historian priding himself on his dispassionate and evenhanded approach.

Read that whole essay in full and tell me that you go to Professor Cole for information on the status of the present situation in the Middle East as a whole, and Israel in particular.

[Dr Victorino de la Vega]

Lebanon is being razed before our very eyes by the IDF.

Prof. Juan Cole sums up the situation north of the Sicaric Republic of Phariseestan:

"The death toll late Tuesday stood at 235 people killed in Lebanon and 25 in Israeli. About half of the Israeli deaths were military personnel. Only a handful of the Lebanese deaths have been military, and only a fraction of those have been Hizbullah fighters. In fact, have even ten Hizbullah guerrillas been killed by the Israelis since this fight began? They say it is a fight with Hizbullah. But then they bomb Greek Orthodox churches and milk factories"

[Ghost Dansing]

And those who thought I was just another Liberal blogger...some words from those who erroneously refer to themselves as "conservatives" (can't be a Conservative in America if you are not fundamentally Liberal...must be "conservatives" in some other sense).

"Conservative intellectuals and commentators who once lauded Bush for what they saw as a willingness to aggressively confront threats and advance U.S. interests said in interviews that they perceive timidity and confusion about long-standing problems including Iran and North Korea, as well as urgent new ones such as the latest crisis between Israel and Hezbollah."

"It is Topic A of every single conversation," said Danielle Pletka, vice president for foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank that has had strong influence in staffing the administration and shaping its ideas. "I don't have a friend in the administration, on Capitol Hill or any part of the conservative foreign policy establishment who is not beside themselves with fury at the administration."

"Conservatives complain that the United States is hunkered down in Iraq without enough troops or a strategy to crush the insurgency. They see autocrats in Egypt and Russia cracking down on dissenters with scant comment from Washington, North Korea firing missiles without consequence, and Iran playing for time to develop nuclear weapons while the Bush administration engages in fruitless diplomacy with European allies. They believe that a perception that the administration is weak and without options is emboldening Syria and Iran and the Hezbollah radicals they help sponsor in Lebanon."

That about sums it up. But then that arch-Conservative Madelaine Albright would say the same thing.

"As the White House listens to what one official called the "chattering classes," it hears a level of disdain from its own side of the ideological spectrum that would have been unthinkable a year ago. It is an odd irony for a president who has inflamed liberals and many allies around the world for what they see as an overly confrontational, go-it-alone approach. The discontent on the right could also color the 2008 presidential debate."

Of course "liberal" in this sense refers to Liberalism's tendency toward moderate versus extreme approaches to anything (Madelaine Albright would "war" at the drop of a hat...but would always proceed like Dubya's Daddy did in the first Gulf War and do adequate Diplomatic preparations)...even the governmental structure of the United States is designed especially to "moderate" extremes...that is why extremist Republicanism is trying to dismantle it.

It looks like Alexandra is attracting quite the full spectrum of readership these days. I took a look at Dr. Victorino de la Vega's BLOG...talk about a different perspective.

[jess1dering]

i-jaunically....!!??, ... you guys are killing me....(gasp).
Academia really has become a sort of fascinating freak-show, hasn't it? Much like the whole N.P.AAAAAAWR. set...so absolutely sold on their own superiority.
Like I said, it's a veritable freak show !

[gringoman]

NOTE: A good 20 minutes of work, analyzing the phenomenon of such as Professor Juan Cole, and where the current crop of acadimwits really come from, and how, i-juanically, it even inadvertently links up with some fringes on the Right as it impresses the campus soviet studentki who need to punish their bourgeois enablers for pampering their Ovaltine asses, not to mention the related examples of arrested development like "Pinch"Sulzbereger who is currently, for the unctuous neo-com cause, almost destroying his inheritance at the NY Times, and how these neo-coms tend to get the spotlight awarded to bitchy automatons (in some cases rising to catty) of banality and pseudo-logic, making the best of life as a eunuch of tenure....and there were pointers for the documentation available to the scholarly-inclined, including a very anti-seminal (semitic?) work that takes you right back and into their very DNA cells, (I not being currently available for proper exegesis etc etc) ....and then,after all this, brushing up against something and suddenly the whole insightfulpost, with its grand culmination, lost! Lost! Smashing the keyboard would do no good at all .....

Oh, well, better luck (or brushes with keyboard fate) next time....

[jainphx]

Let him rant it only helps those votes in November,then he can be breathless.He's a mental midget!

[jess1dering]

Old Juan Cole
has a terrorists soul
and a terrorists mind has he
while we're hit, hit, hit,
He says take that sh--,
and just let my sweet terrorists be.
You have no right
to engage in a fight
just because your provoked and besieged
standing up for your rights makes me trembling and stirred
(oh wait, that was shaken not stirred !)
You standing up for your rights
leaves me trembly and shaken
So watch out or my homies
your heads'll be takin'
.................................................
..................................
Perhaps that's it !! Perhaps aligning himself with barbarics helps him to compensate for his very estrogen drenched demeanor. Hmmm, think I'm on to something??

[Kenny Pierce]

What was most striking about Cole's post was the complete absence of even the most basic understanding of military tactics.

Unless it was the anti-Semitism.

Or the blatant double standard.

Or the sixth-grade quality to the writing.

Hey, Alexandra, would you like me to fisk his post?

[Jeremayakovka]

Cole even writes like Chomsky, his prose is laced with circular vague accusatory statements. He needs to take a quality freshman composition a course, not to teach undergrads Middle East history.

[jess1dering]

Five have been arrested in realtionship to the Bombay tragedy. Guess they're gonna get the credit they so hungered for :)

[The Ugly American]

Is there any academic with less credibility or more anti-Semitic?

Noam Chomsky?

[otimaster]

Give a little Help to your Italian friends

Our country has a new government which pretend itself democratic but is trying to move into a socialist dictatorship.

Violations of the rules of the democracy happens every day and the magistracy is used as an arm against the political opponents.
The Communists that are 60% of the coalition of left want to vote against the financing of the military missions in Afghanistan and Iraq, sorry if we will not be able to respect the promises made to your country.
The commanders of our Internal Security Services who helped the CIA to capture a terrorist are now moved from their role and inquires because what they did has been considered illegal.
The government has moved the commanders of the financial police that were inquiring on the red cooperatives.
These are some of the things that happen in our country.
Please read our blog for further information, if you want publish our appeal, take it read to your politicians, help us to convince our politicians to respect the democracy.

God Bless You

[Dr Victorino de la Vega]

Bushmert doesn’t care about “collateral damages”: someone who enthusiastically destroyed Bagdad, the former capital of an empire stretching from Spain to India, won’t have second thoughts about razing a small Levantine city-state with no oil to steal.

The Arab League and its Saudi and Egyptian “pillars” did nothing for Iraq in 2003, even though TeX-Aviv was then exclusively targeting their fellow Sunni Arabs…

One shouldn’t expect the Wahhabi thugs of Riyadh to lift a finger for Lebanon’s Christian and Shiite civilians who are suffering the brunt of Israel’s disproportionate retaliation.

Four days ago, the house of Saud sent a crystal clear message to Bushmert- a man who appreciates “moral clarity” whatever that means:

“The massacre can continue. Please Sahib President, make sure Yahweh’s glorious air force destroys in priority Beirut, the South, and the Beqaa valley. Allah blesses you. Saudi Arabia is your friend. You can always count on us. The Supreme Council of the Riyadh ‘Ulamas is praying day and night for your victory. We love you Mr. President. Allah loves you.”

[olivia clemens]

Adapted from a Real News Story
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20060718/D8IUEL3G0.html
----------

Group Insists It Carried Out India Attacks

Jul 18, 10:04 AM (ET)

BOMBAY, India (AP) - A little-known Islamic militant group that claimed responsibility for the Bombay train bombings warned Tuesday that it was planning attacks against government and historic sites in India in a rambling e-mail to an Indian television station that read in part:

"Yes it was us who did the train bombings and not those poseurs from Al-Qaida that you are so quick to lionize. We'll do it again too, just watch and we better get the credit we deserve, and film, and no mention of Al-Qaida, those poseurs."

The group claiming responsibility, Lashkar-e-Qahhar, Lashkar-e-Qahhar first claimed responsibility for the bombings in an e-mail Saturday to Aaj Tak television, although investigators say they are still trying to verify the claim and have had difficulty pronouncing the name of the group which may have been the catalyst for this portion of the email:

"And we are not "LQx2". We insist you have the dignity to pronounce our name correctly "Lashkar-e-Qahhar, Lashkar-e-Qahhar" for crissakes! And we are going ot get a fatwa issued on that retard female correspondent on BBC calling us "Lester and Carhart". "Lashkar-e-Qahhar, Lashkar-e-Qahhar"!! How many times do we have to tell you? What ever happened to educated journalists?"

The group on Tuesday addressed doubts about its initial claim of responsibility, and added that it plans to provide audio and video proof that it carried out the series of bombings that ripped through Bombay's packed commuter rail network during the evening rush hour.

"We have home-made videos of the courageous avengers in war garb and we have sent faxed and emailed statements to prove our authenticity. You think we made this up? Go to YourTube and you can see the video we made of the rigorous preparations."

LQx2 said in the e-mail, provided to The Associated Press by Aaj Tak, that 16 people took part in the July 11 attacks in Bombay - also known as Mumbai - and that one of them was killed.

But "all the remaining 15 mujahideens (sic) are totally safe, and celebrating the success of this mission and also preparing for the next mission with ample videotape footage to prove we did it, so there" said the e-mail, which was written in poorly punctuated and often ungrammatical English.

"We also request all the Muslim brothers and sisters of India to (not) go near the main historical, governmental and the monumental places of India (especially in Delhi and Mumbai) in future," the e-mail said. "Otherwise, they get hurt too."

Lashkar-e-Qahhar, which translates as the "Army of Terror," was unknown until it claimed responsibility for the March 7 bombings in the Hindu holy city of Varanasi that killed at least 20 people. It's struggle to gain credit for the wanton murder and wounding of hundreds is becoming commonplace among the many Islamic terror organizations struggling for their share of notoriety.

Investigators believe the group may be a front for Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, an Islamic militant group based in Pakistan that has long fought Indian rule in Kashmir, a predominantly Muslim Himalayan region. However, early press accounts espousing such a connection were furiously denounced in the emails we received.

"Oh and BTW, Lashkar-e-Tayyaba are lame goat-loving herders", went one statement that seemed to disassociate the LKx2 with Lashkar-e-Tayyaba.

The group is clearly aware of doubts surrounding its claim of being behind the blasts.

"We are surprised, why some media groups and peoples are disclaiming our responsibility?" the e-mail said.

"Therefore it has become necessary for Lashkar-e-Qahhar to prove our claim," it said. "Very soon, we will send you an audio/video tape regarding Mumbai blasts in color. No, Ahmed says we are out of color film. We will send more emails. Emails and maybe sketches of trains in flames!"

The e-mail was signed by a man calling himself Abu Mahaz, who identified himself as Lashkar's spokesman and the head of its "media group."

[Jeremayakovka]

Looking forward to watching the hornets swarm now that you've stuck a stick into that nest!