Icarus Cole
Michael Young | May 3, 2006, 2:13am
One of those delightful spats between public intellectuals seemed to be nicely developing yesterday, when suddenly everything went dramatically wrong as one of the guys went postal. In an article in Slate, Christopher Hitchens attacked Juan Cole's translation and interpretation of a speech by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad calling for the elimination of Israel.
He also wrote: "Cole is a minor nuisance on the fringes of the academic Muslim apologist community. At one point, there was a danger that he would become a go-to person for quotes in New York Times articles (a sort of Shiite fellow-traveling version of Norman Ornstein, if such an alarming phenomenon can be imagined), but this crisis appears to have passed."
Hardly a caress, but presumably, after a good mud-sling, both parties could have headed toward the showers and their previous life--Hitchens back to writing and Cole back to teaching at the University of Michigan and worrying about whether a Yale review board will offer him a new job in New Haven. Of particular irritation to Cole was that Hitchens used a passage from a letter he sent to the Gulf 2000 mailing list, which is private and where permission must be requested to quote. That's a reasonable beef from Cole, but he could have responded by simply correcting Hitchens' "inaccurate screed," based on his own declared knowledge of Persian, and asking Slate to publish a rebuttal.
Instead, Cole responded with a savage screed all his own, accusing Hitchens' of having a drinking problem, attacking the Right, the Bush administration, unspecified "US corporations", and much more with no connection to Hitchens' article.
Then there was this:
So sit down and shut up, American Enterprise Institute, and Hudson Institute, and Washington Institute for Near East Poslicy [sic], and American Heritage Institute, and this institue [sic] and that institute, and cable "news", and government "spokesmen", and all the pundit-ferrets you pay millions to make business for the American military-industrial complex and Big Oil.
We don't give a rat's ass what Ahmadinejad thinks about European history or what pissant speech the little shit gives.
I call on university students across America to begin holding antiwar rallies. The only way you can have a war on Iran is to draft the young people. It is you who are on the line. Demonstrate! Demonstrate against the very hint of war! Demonstrate to end the one we've already got! (See Speaker's Forum on Iraq
Here is what the real Iran experts think about the prospect of an Iran war.
Because Hitchens's dirty tricks and lies against me are only the beginning. Whoever stands against the Perpetual War machine will be attacked, slimed, marginalized, and destroyed if the warmongers get their way. I don't care. Thus far and no farther.
One, two, three, four. We don't want your stinking war!
This is the stuff of self-immolation. The Yale review board has said that in considering Cole's application it would not look at his blog, but only his academic achievements. However, this seems to be an increasingly untenable position given that a blog, like any other piece of public writing, is a perfectly reasonable window into someone's methodology and, well, mental balance. Somehow, it doesn't look very good when you react to criticism of something you wrote by calling the other person a drunkard and a thief.
Cole should have known better. When applying for an Ivy League post, do what everybody else does: lie low, stick to the consensus, and don't make an idiot of yourself, until you're inside the walls. My bet is that Cole will soon be hearing embarassed coughs from Yale.
(Full disclosure: I often write in Slate and am a member of the Gulf 2000 list. Neither affiliation has shaped my view of Cole's behavior, which, frankly, speaks volumes on its own.)
John | May 3, 2006, 4:23pm | #
Night Owl,
I don't Iraq is even close to the worse case scenerio and it is not getting closer every day. If you don't believe me take it up with Gen (ret) Barry McCafry, a long time critic of Rusmfeld and the war who just returned from visiting Iraq. The belmont club published large excerps of his report which read as follows:
The morale, fighting effectiveness, and confidence of U.S. combat forces continue to be simply awe-inspiring. In every sensing session and interaction - I probed for weakness and found courage, belief in the mission, enormous confidence in their sergeants and company grade officers, an understanding of the larger mission, a commitment to creating an effective Iraqi Army and Police, unabashed patriotism, and a sense of humor. All of these soldiers, NCOs and young officers were volunteers for combat. Many were on their second combat tour - several were on the third or fourth combat tour. Many had re-enlisted to stay with their unit on its return to a second Iraq deployment. Many planned to re-enlist regardless of how long the war went on.
What about the Iraqi Army in 2006?
The Iraqi Army is real, growing, and willing to fight. They now have lead action of a huge and rapidly expanding area and population. The battalion level formations are in many cases excellent - most are adequate. ... The recruiting now has gotten significant participation by all sectarian groups to include the Sunni. The Partnership Program with U.S. units will be the key to success with the Embedded Training Teams augmented and nurtured by a U.S. Maneuver Commander. This is simply a brilliant success story.
The same high grade, however, could not be given to the Iraqi police. Though some units are good, many units are unreliable or incompetent. They were the key element to future stability; they were improving but still had a long way to go.
The Iraqi police are beginning to show marked improvement in capability since MG Joe Peterson took over the program. The National Police Commando Battalions are very capable - a few are simply superb and on par with the best U.S. SWAT units in terms of equipment, courage, and training. Their intelligence collection capability is better than ours in direct HUMINT. ... The police are heavily infiltrated by both the AIF and the Shia militia. They are widely distrusted by the Sunni population. They are incapable of confronting local armed groups. They inherited a culture of inaction, passivity, human rights abuses, and deep corruption. This will be a ten year project requiring patience, significant resources, and an international public face. This is a very, very tough challenge which is a prerequisite to the Iraqis winning the counter-insurgency struggle they will face in the coming decade. We absolutely can do this. But this police program is now inadequately resourced.
The main problem remains political. But even there -- despite the potential for disaster -- there was hope.
The creation of an Iraqi government of national unity is a central requirement. We must help create a legitimate government for which the Iraqi security forces will fight and die. If we do not see the successful development of a pluralistic administration in the first 120 days of the emerging Jawad al-Maliki leadership - there will be significant chance of the country breaking apart in warring factions among the Sunnis and Shia - with a separatist Kurdish north embroiled in their own potential struggle with the Turks. ... There is total lack of trust among the families, the tribes, and the sectarian factions created by the 35 years of despotism and isolation of the criminal Saddam regime. This is a traumatized society with a malignant political culture. ...
However, in my view, the Iraqis are likely to successfully create a governing entity. The intelligence picture strongly portrays a population that wants a federal Iraq, wants a national Army, rejects the AIF as a political future for the nation, and is optimistic that their life can be better in the coming years. Unlike the Balkans—the Iraqis want this to work. The bombing of the Samarra Mosque brought the country to the edge of all-out war. However, the Iraqi Army did not crack, the moderates held, Sistani called for restraint, the Sunnis got a chill of fear seeing what could happen to them as a minority population, and the Coalition Forces suddenly were seen correctly as a vital force that could keep the population safe in the absence of Iraqi power. In addition, the Shia were reminded that Iran is a Persian power with goals that conflict with the Shia Arabs of southern and central Iraq.
And what about Al Qaeda in 2006?
The foreign jihadist fighters have been defeated as a strategic and operational threat to the creation of an Iraqi government. Aggressive small unit combat action by Coalition Forces combined with good intelligence - backed up by new Iraqi Security Forces is making an impact. The foreign fighters remain a serious tactical menace. However, they are a minor threat to the heavily armed and wary U.S. forces. They cannot successfully stop the Iraqi police and army recruitment.
