12 thoughts on “Best Juan Cole post ever”

  2. For my money, Juan Cole is a “must-read” every day for those who want to understand what is going on in Iraq. This is one of his best but he never fails to illuminate us.

  3. Why wage a “what if” battle? What is the point? I suspect that most of Peoria, Poughkeepsie, and Portland would simply respond with a glazed “huh?”
    The existing insurgency has insufficient intensity to retain people’s attention in the Nightly News. Most of the casualties are Iraqi and faceless statistics. The US will probably be able to stave off collapse through November, which is long enough. And don’t anyone, out of pure spite, hope that things get worse.
    Loads of Americans still perceive the Iraq venture as a just response to 9/11 and as part of a GWOT. See the latest polls:
    Pew Trust Poll (17-Sep-04): 46% say Iraq war helping war on terror.
    http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?ReportID=225
    http://people-press.org/reports/print.php3?PageID=885
    Harris Poll (3-Sep-04): 42% still say Saddam directly behind 9/11.
    http://www.pollingreport.com/iraq.htm
    Just watch: W will win because, not in spite, of Iraq, no matter what.
    Also note: the US was in far far worse shape in 1864 than Iraq is today, a civil war was going badly, daily casualties were in the thousands, cumulative deaths were nearly 20% of the population, and many people sneared at Lincoln’s emancipation (only of slaves in the states in rebellion), people called him all kinds of names, yet he still won re-election.
    Bush a Lincoln? Gosh, if US memory transmutes Reagan into a revered hero, anything is possible. Don’t underestimate the Rove-Fox coalition. WP’s Bob Woodward is especially party to the Bush myth-making. CBS and CNN have been disgraced, NYT promoted the original WMD scare, and the most of the rest of the media has gone “red” or MIA.
    Today, even after 30+ years, it is still political suicide to question the sanctity of the US role in Vietnam. Fuzziness about Kerry’s combat role in the war might have been forgiven by the Right if he had not become involved, afterwards, with anti-war groups. Worse, he has lacked any consistency or coherence on whether he supports the Iraq war or has an idea what to do about it.
    To argue with the Administration, it is important to offer a concrete alternative. You can’t just carp. As A. Cordesman recently remarked in a CFR interview, you don’t win something with nothing. That is the weakness of Kerry and Prof. Cole.
    Truth be known, none of the available options is particularly attractive, and neither Kerry nor any other Bush challenger has proposed a comprehensive plausible alternative. At this point, I suspect that the only posture that would win votes would be from the Right, viz. McCain, calling for Washington to free the military’s hand and “wipe out” the insurgents, etc.

  4. What conclusions would comparing the Iraqi ante-bellum status quo to the same counterfactual America yield? Doesn’t sound much better.
    Helena (and others) — what does an insurgency have to look like to earn your disfavor (even their ‘insurgent’ status?) This ‘insurgency’ is doing an excellent job of slaughtering thousands of Iraqi policemen — excuse me, ‘collaborators’, summarily executing nepalese mercenaries and somewhat less often killing a few occupation soldiers and civilian contractors. How is this a war of national liberation when the victims of its guerrilla forces are overwhelmingly both Iraqi and civilian?

  5. Alex, fewer Iraqi policemen (700+) have been killed so far than US troops. I don’t know of any estimates of the number of Iraqi civilians killed by the insurgents. The number seems to be substantial. So is the number killed by common criminals in the current lawless conditions. So is the number of Iraqi civilians killed by US forces.
    Most Iraqis (including Iraqi insurgents) seem to dislike both the US occupiers and the foreign Islamists who appear to be responsible for the suicide car bombs and televised beheadings.

  6. I don’t see where the brilliance of Cole’s piece lays. He describes a civil war where Moslem/Arab (partially Iraqis) kill indiscriminately other Iraqis. A modern civil war, in an Arab world taught by the Palestinians that the automobile is an explosive weapon sometimes also used for transportation. I have reader’s fatigue from Cole’s “America can do no right” in spite of our pouring taxpayer resources and soldier’s blood to try an stabilize Iraq.
    A world where Syrians converge to join the jihadi fight, in spite of all the scholarly arguments of Cole and the other Islamic apologist that Jihad doesn’t mean holy war, but some sort of inner struggle internal to oneself. Incidentally the passports of the captured and killed Syrians have an Iraqi entry visa designated “Jihad” [*]. So much for inner struggle.
    A crybaby Cole that complains when America in the past cycle abandoned the Kurds and the Shia, and will cry again if we leave the Iraqi project tomorrow leaving today’s partners to dry.
    If that is Cole’s best, please save me the rest.
    E. Bilpe
    [*] Evan Wright – Generation Kill – 2004

  7. E. Bilpe, I often find Cole a worthwhile read, though I agree that his incessant unproductive carping tries the patience. Also his tendency to label any Mideast specialist remotely to his right as a ‘Likud-‘ or ‘Mossad operative’ .
    No preference, if you can, go take a look at Iraqi Body count’s database. You may note, as I did, how many large scale civilian massacres have been attributed to truck/car bombs and mortar rounds. I note that you make the distinction between some other insurgents and the Islamists responsible for these attacks. However it remains these variables that are invoked endlessly by Cole and others in their one-sided criticism of the US and its allies. Are the people who bomb police stations and markets as targets unto themselves terrorists or insurgents?
    Cole conveniently does not extend his fanciful America to pre-war Iraq … wherein a megalomaniac president gasses half a million northern californians, and launches an invasion of mexico that kills four million explicitly over a disputed oilfield, and who exploiting the ensuing international sanctions further enriches himself and fortifies his authority, also killing 5 million children in the process. Maybe that stuff will be in chapter two.

  8. eBilpe
    “A modern civil war, in an Arab world taught by the Palestinians that the automobile is an explosive weapon sometimes also used for transportation.”
    — is that you speaking?…that is sad but a brilliant – and right on – formulation nonetheless…
    “I have reader’s fatigue from Cole’s America can do no right…”
    — I check in with Cole’s blog site regularly…he is well informed on developments in Iraq and is often good at connecting the dots…but, yes, his agenda gets in the way of his reporting…America is damned for the security problem…and when that problem is addressed, America is damned for its callous disregard for collateral casualties or shifting resources away from badly needed infrastructure upgrading…He seems to take delight in pointing out that based on his own sources the violence is actually much worse than reported in the media…or that, contrary to polls cited by the Bush Administration, his sources have polls showing that most Iraqis actually favor an Islamist state governed by Sharia law.
    Unlike many critics of American policy in Iraq, his background does not permit him to ignore the potential for civil war between the Sunnis, Shiites, Kurds, Turkkomen, etc., – not to mention sucking in neighbors like Iran, Turkey and Syria, but he seems to prefer that outcome (or at least seems indifferent to it) to the alternative – the totally unacceptable vindication of American policy to stabilize the country.

  9. “– is that you speaking?…that is sad but a brilliant – and right on – formulation nonetheless…”
    Yes, it is me, and there are more formulations where this one came from.
    Apologies for my delayed response, life is too short to spend every day checking every weblog… Nonetheless I was delighted to find that my Cole fatigue resonates with at least a couple of readers.
    Cheers,
    E. Bilpe

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