Wednesday, May 03, 2006
Iranian threats, "wiping Israel off the map," and the Hitchens v. Cole cage match
Iran yesterday repeated its threat to retaliate against Israel if the United States attacked it. There was no reaction from world leaders to this illegal and outrageous threat. In this, the formerly serious countries of the world continue a 27-year pattern of ignoring Iranian threats, and thereby patronizing that country into a state of rage. If a large and powerful country locating in a strategically propitious location and in control of valuable resources wants to be taken seriously, I say take it seriously. Of course, most people of the world who live some distance from Iran do not want to take it seriously, because that would then require them to do something about it, or at least keep their collective pie hole shut while the United States does something about it.
No matter, if the threat is sincere, there is a bizarre bit of good news in it. If Iran has decided that threatening to retaliate against Israel might deter an American attack, then it has probably also reached two other conclusions. First, that it needs to hold Israel hostage against the prospect of an American attack. This suggests that it won't hit Israel first, except perhaps with low-grade terrorist attacks through deniable proxies. Second, the Iranian leadership also seems to believe that America would rise up in Israel's defense in the event that Iran attacked Israel, which increases the credibility of our own threats. I'm not sure it's true, by the way, that we would go to war if Israel were attacked, but that hardly matters if Iran believes it anyway. Even more ironically, this belief of Iran is as much an unexpected dividend of the leftist slur that American policy is slaved to Israel as it is a function of their own blind hatred.
Either way, Iran's threat to retaliate against Israel for an American first strike can be interpreted as stabilizing, at least if it is sincere.
Of course, it is entirely possible that Iran's leaders are not sincere, and that they do not believe that Israel is a useful hostage against American attack. Their motive for these threats might be merely to pander to the Jew-baiters in their own ranks, or to redirect the attention of the Arabs to the Zionist entity. My own guess, however, is that they really do believe that their threat would deter the United States, and that these other considerations are but happy collateral benefits.
In any case, Iran's continued threats to annihilate Israel or predictions that Israel will be annihilated -- the difference is subtle but important -- are the subject of an absolutely hilarious spat between Christopher Hitchens and Juan Cole. In a broad attack on Cole's skills as a linguist and scholar of the region, Hitchens took this priceless shot last night in Slate:
However, words and details and nuances do matter in all this, so I was not surprised to see professor Juan Cole of the University of Michigan denying that Ahmadinejad, or indeed Khomeini, had ever made this call for the removal of Israel from the map. 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.
I, for one, am absolutely amazed that Glenn Reynolds didn't give that paragraph an "ouch." I mean, if one ever were going to use "ouch," this would be the opportunity.
Most of the rest of the Hitchens piece is devoted to torturing Cole's translation of various of President Ahmadinejad's statements, and is well-worth reading. Why should you care? Because it will prepare you to read Cole's response, which is one of the most defensive defenses I have ever read on a big-name blog. If Hitchens should have drawn an "ouch," Cole makes us cringe:
Back to Hitchens. How to explain this peculiar behavior on the part of someone who was at one time one of our great men of letters?
Well, I don't think it is any secret that Hitchens has for some time had a very serious and debilitating drinking problem. He once showed up drunk to a talk I gave and heckled me. I can only imagine that he was deep in his cups when he wrote, or had some far Rightwing think tank write, his current piece of yellow journalism. I am sorry to witness the ruin of a once-fine journalistic mind.
But the other reason for Hitchens's piece may be that he has become a warmonger, and it is possible that he wants a US war against Iran.
Read Hitchens, read Cole, and decide who is most in need of a 12-Step Program.
This is obviously nasty stuff to come from the keyboard of a professor at the University of Michigan, one of the TigerHawk alma maters. What's going on?
In part, this is just an escalation in a feud that has been going on for most of the last year. I have not been following every tit and tat, but I do know that George Galloway cited something Cole had written (I believe it was this deconstruction of Hitchens' arguments in support of the Iraq war) in a broadside attack against Hitchens at last September's debate between the two. I didn't note it in my coverage of that spectacle, but my memory is that Hitchens questioned Cole expertise, and I also remember thinking at the time that Cole would not take that lightly. Indeed, he didn't. From the dynamic archives of Informed Comment, there's this:
I just haven't had time to watch the Hitchens/ Galloway debate, and won't have time to do it until this weekend. Kind readers are messaging me to say that they thought they heard my name come up. In response to Galloway's citation of my article critiquing Hitchens's defense of the ongoing Iraq war, I am told that Hitchens said words to the effect that I "claimed" to know Arabic and Persian but that I had never been in the region to his knowledge, and that I changed my mind every two seconds. I haven't been able to find a transcript so I can't check if this is what he said or even if it is the purport of what he said. If he spoke as reported, or anything near, his argument was a mere ad hominem, having nothing to do with the issues, and it was moreover incorrect on the facts.That's right, Professor Cole. When he isn't figuring out how to rig voting machines, Karl Rove is plotting the next smearing of Juan Cole.
I have gotten a number of emails in recent weeks from readers who said they encountered people in cyberspace who alleged that I do not know Middle Eastern languages. So regardless of what Hitchens may or may not have said, it seems fairly obvious that there is some sort of Karl Rove-type campaign of disinformation out there in which I am being attacked on my strengths. You will remember that the Bushies arranged for doubt to be cast on John Kerry's distinguished war record, while conveniently papering over Bush's own dodging of the Vietnam war and his failure to continue to report for duty even on the homefront.
However, Cole may be particularly sensitive about public attacks on his credentials for a specific reason. There are rumors afoot that Yale University is proposing to hire Cole away from Ann Arbor. This should not surprise us, since Yale, I'm sure, feels the need to beef up the faculty available to nurture the Taliban (which does mean "students," after all) in its undergraduate population. Nevertheless, I have a few observations about the prospect of Cole moving to Yale.
First, does the Yale faculty really want a colleague who defends himself by accusing his opponent of being an alcoholic? What's Cole going to say to John Lewis Gaddis the first time they lock horns? Agree with him or not, can you imagine a personality less appealing than Juan Cole (at least as evinced in his writing)?
Second, it would certainly be a net positive for me, in that Juan Cole moving to Yale will make everybody forget that Princeton hired Cornel West.
Third, does Yale really need this embarrassment hot on the heels of the Taliban controversy?
Here's to hoping that Hitchens replies, and that Yale finds a way to turn Cole's recruitment into a public relations fiasco. For the entertainment of us all, of course.
UPDATE: Hugh Hewitt (another Michigan Law School alumnus, by the way) interviews Hitchens re Cole. Transcript and audio here.
MORE: Iowahawk has the first draft of Juan Cole's anti-Hitchens screed, including IM transcripts from another of Cole's chat groups. Bwahahaha!
31 Comments:
By 
allen, at
Wed May 03, 09:35:00 AM:
A dear friend had a wonderful retort to the accusation of inebriation: “My dear, tomorrow I will be sober; however, tomorrow you will still be stupid.”
By allen, at
Wed May 03, 09:49:00 AM:
Having watched Mr. Hitchens for decades, I would say he would not take the comparison to Sir Winston Churchill as mean: “I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me.
By Gaius Arbo, at
Wed May 03, 10:51:00 AM:
I hadn't taken the enormous amount of time necessary to slog through Cole's verbosity yet today. Thanks for hitting the high points! My post on Hitchen's piece said it would leave a mark. Judging by the defensiveness of Cole's reply, I think it did!
Gaius
By 
, at
Wed May 03, 10:56:00 AM:
I read both columns, and I think they both come off rather badly.
But on the relevant issues between them, I think Cole had the better of it. Just read the complete email that Cole has posted - the one that Hitchens excerpted. Seems clear to me that Hithcins (and especially all the many RW blogs that have commented) has seriously mischaracterized Cole's views on Ahmadinejad, and on the Iranians in general.
I don't agree with a lot of what Cole says, but I must admit to feeling a bit of an urge to rally to his side when I see the nature of the attacks against him. They seem to be classic dishonest hot jobs by petty propagandists.
And I think Cole is right about Hitchins. Hitch is amply demonstrated talents that soar miles above the level he now seems to operate at. Sad case.
By , at
Wed May 03, 10:58:00 AM:
Ooops , that would be "hit job", and "hitch _has_ amply demostrated"
Sorry, must get coffee....
By , at
Wed May 03, 11:00:00 AM:
I personally think it's nothing more than propaganda to gain support among ignorant Muslims and to rile up the fanatics to sign up for jihad while scaring the Jews at the same time. Not only that, this kinda tactic proves to be effective in distablizing the US's position in the Middle East because the media is feeding on it...as a result the gass prices keep going up, people in the west are panicking>>Bush loses support from the public...
If I were Iran and I wanted to get Bush impeached I'd keep this bluffing game going as long as possible too.
Iran knows full well they don't stand a chance as a global power, their only friends are the commies and that bloody shit hole called the Sudan. They certainly can't survive on their own unless they bring America down to it's knees.
By , at
Wed May 03, 11:05:00 AM:
The T-Hawk asks: "Third, does Yale really need this embarrassment hot on the heels of the Taliban controversy?"
To which I must answer, in the spirit of "When Harry Met Sally," "Yes. Yes. YES. YES! YESSSSSS!"
They must because they can do no other. These schools are doomed to forever act out the Biblical phrase about a dog returning to its own vomit. They are compelled. They are addicted. They cannot give it up. It is these institutions that alone must go for a 12-step intervention..... except that that would be a MISTAKE.
You see, it is beyond the capacity of the United States' extra spending money to build enough institutions to house the bull-goose looneys of academia. Hence, we allow them to place themselves in various existing institutions for life. It is cheaper in the long run and we'll still be able to find them when we need to.
By Charlottesvillain, at
Wed May 03, 11:47:00 AM:
Clearly calling Hitchins drunk is a cheap shot. After all,
He is not drunk who from the floor
Rises up to drink some more;
He is drunk who prostrate lies,
cannot drink, and cannot rise.
By , at
Wed May 03, 01:38:00 PM:
But let's face facts, the Iranian leadership is making these statements just ot keep the price of oil as high as possible. They are in it for the money.
No one in their right mind (yes, this is an issue), would pre-empt their response to any offensive action against themselves by pre-conditioning the oil thirty nations to the idea of high oil prices, Rather this looks like they just want the high oil prices.
By , at
Wed May 03, 01:38:00 PM:
Cole's full post is a good display of the schizophrenia of the good professor. The first half is the writing of a reasonable man - claiming that his positions were distorted, introducing nuance about the accuracy of translations from Persians, and so forth. You might agree or disagree, but the author seems like someone with whom you could have a conversation on the topic.
Then, around the the time the pictures start, he seems to become a completely different man, spewing forth slogan after slogan, with no justification or argument. This part is, to me, unreadable. I think reason is incapable of reaching someone this far sunk into ideology.
So which is the real Professor Cole? And why would an academic ever wish to advertise their use of arguments of the second type? It's all bizarre to me.
By TigerHawk, at
Wed May 03, 01:46:00 PM:
I think that the last comment is very perceptive. Cole at his best is often worth reading, if for no other reason than his considerable expertise. However, his strong political views often cause him to draw bizarre conclusions from the facts that he describes. Frustrating for all of us, since he is one of the few lefty bloggers that really focuses on foreign policy per se.
By , at
Wed May 03, 01:47:00 PM:
Allen, your friend is "borrowing" a famous line by WSC
"and you Madam are ugly...tomorrow I will be sober and you will still be ugly.."
By , at
Wed May 03, 03:16:00 PM:
OT, kind of.
"The first part of creating a mass movement is the mythic idea.. We put the myth out there that America was in chaos. America was not in chaos. … When 100,000 people marched on the Pentagon in 1967, we put out the myth that America was divided in two. America was not divided in two. But we put the myth out there and what happened, by ’69, ’70, America was divided in two." - Jerry Rubin
Juan Cole, Mary Mapes, Dan Rather, what about the "war records" of Clinton and Clinton? You all wouldn't expect the American people to attack (and repeatedly smear as a draft dodger, as you do) the son of a President who learned to fly a fighter jet, and who faces and deals with real threats to our nation as CinC, and to then ignore the Vietnam war records of Clinton and Clinton, would you?
/ not stuck on stupid.
By Jay Currie, at
Wed May 03, 03:17:00 PM:
Deliciously, Sullivan was with Hitchens as he finished his piece...
andrew sullivan
Now, knowing Cole, he'll probably take down his post and pretend it was never actually there...
By TigerHawk, at
Wed May 03, 03:50:00 PM:
Johnny Nobody -
I wasn't purporting to "represent" Cole's response, just as I didn't describe Hitchens argument. In both cases, I was reveling in the snark, and I quite clearly recommended that people read both.
By K2ENF, at
Wed May 03, 03:59:00 PM:
Yale is saying that they won't be considering the content of Cole's blog when they consider him for the position. Which strikes me as remakably like Cole himself not considering Ahmadinejad's public calls for the destruction of Israel, in considering the question of Iran's nuclear intentions.
By TigerHawk, at
Wed May 03, 04:02:00 PM:
Well, that will certainly be to Cole's advantage, and substantially increase the possibility of the public relations fiasco all bloggers of ambition are at least secretly hoping for.
By , at
Wed May 03, 04:24:00 PM:
I'm a big Hitchens fan. This wasn't his best effort. Nevertheless, he made his point: that Cole is advancing a preposterous but apparently very popular notion--that Ahmadinejad is all bluster, nothing to worry about, let's all relax, this is nothing new, etc.
Cole's entire argument is: Who're you gonna believe, me or your lying eyes? His "expert knowledge" is worth zero compared to the spectacle Ahmadinejad is making of himself. People are not that stupid. Really.
Let him go to Yale. What difference does it make? I have it on good authority that the millennials are a very skeptical bunch. Plus, as TigerHawk points out, we will have a lot of fun with him then.
By Tano, at
Wed May 03, 04:38:00 PM:
Y'all do realize, I hope, that -to be honest - well over 99% of us have never heard a word that Ahmadinejad has ever spoken. At least not in a language we understand. But of course, day in and day out we are told, by the media, and our Persian-illeterate blogger community, just exactly what he is saying - in nice english phrases that we can understand.
So along comes Cole who says that the meaning of the persian phrases is not quite what we are all being fed. And the instictive reaction of so many people is - gee, he must be nuts, or a traitor, or a sympathizer.
Why this absolute willingness to believe what the media tells you, from the very people that claim not to believe what the media tells us when it aint what we want to hear?
I'm not sure who has the nuances of Persian down better - I am not convinced on either case. But it does seem (to the extent that the character of the disputers is relevant) that Cole can get a little nutty sometimes, and Hitchens can be downright dishonest. Publishing private emails, and then leaving out the part that directly reveals Cole's views on the Iranians? Very bad show.
By Gordon Smith, at
Wed May 03, 05:29:00 PM:
I won't pretend to understand your love affair with someone as ethically challenged as Hitchens any more than I understand your unwillingness to expend any energy on the incompetent governance of the Bush administration. But I will say that Hitchens' willingness to dishonestly excerpt Cole's work from a private discussion group is another reason that Hitchens ought to be relegated to the same irrelevant stable as Bill O'Reilly.
By TigerHawk, at
Wed May 03, 05:53:00 PM:
Do we know that Hitchens knew the email was private -- it was, after all, a widely-circulated discussion group. Cole: "I belong to a private email discussion group called Gulf2000. It has academics, journalists and policy makers on it."
Cole says that "it has a strict rule that messages appearing there will not be forwarded off the list," but obviously one of the members broke that rule and forwarded it to Hitchens, or forwarded it to some intermediary who forwarded it to Hitchens. Curiously, Cole does not say whether the emails are labeled as private, or whether the privacy requirement is a ground rule imposed by Gary Sick, who organized the list. Given the substance of Cole's accusation and its tenor, I would have thought that if the email were legended as a private communication, he would have said as much. But, frankly, that is neither here nor there. Hitchens is a journalist. For purposes of this discussion, Cole is a voluntary public figure. Who thinks that journalists shouldn't publish such things if they are relevant, especially if the journalist did not obtain the published document under false pretenses or actual knowledge that it was private? Cole's outrage over the "private email" is either idiotic or manufactured. It is hard to say which.
By , at
Wed May 03, 06:59:00 PM:
TH:
One of Coles friends gave Hitch the memo. This wasn't some private love letter, it was an explanation of Coles political ideas regarding Iran. For people who are so happy with the sunshine that occurs when journalists expose classified material of our government why should Cole be so upset about having his political ideas exposed to the same sunshine.
By Dawnfire82, at
Wed May 03, 07:53:00 PM:
Because the US military and intelligence communities are occult, demonic entities who only keep secrets in order to hide their nefarious plots to strip the populace of all they hold dear whereas regular people keep secrets (i.e. privacy) in order to keep part of their lives untainted by the vulgar intrusions of the corrupt and dirty world, a beautiful and noble objective.
"But exposing someone private academic bitching contest emails won't get people killed."
.......
By , at
Wed May 03, 08:47:00 PM:
TH:
One major weakness of Cole's response is that he does not take in Ahmaddinejad's entire speech that the disputed "wipe off the map" phrase is used, nor any of his other over the top speech's. If all we had was that single paragraph to judge his intentions by Cole might have a solid argument. But if you read his entire speech his intentions are quite clear. If you also note the number of times "death to Israel" has been uttered by Iranian officials it becomes even clearer. In the speech in question, the big A refers to elections in Israel/Palestine but he also says that Israelis will not be allowed to participate in them. here is a simple question. Does anyone here doubt that Iran would have no qualms about violently removing Israel from the face of the map? Hitch states that he believes that A is a puppet with no true power and that he does not think Iran will send nukes to Israel, at least not directly. But wouldn't it be more honest for Cole to examine the entire speech to get the context correct rather then just focus on one line. And wouldn't A's body of speech's give his readers a more accurate take on what his true feelings are?
By allen, at
Thu May 04, 12:12:00 AM:
anonymous,
"Allen, your friend is "borrowing" a famous line by WSC"
Thank you. Uncharacteristically, I prefer the borrowed version, especially when dealing with the matter at hand. I have no idea whether Professor Cole is ugly.
By Gordon Smith, at
Thu May 04, 12:42:00 PM:
Hitchens can use the private discussion group excerpts all he wants. But if he wants to be honest, he would say as much. Cole explains that the email group is intended to flesh out ideas, not to braodcast them.
Hitchens is dishonest. You guys seem to like dishonest. Tigerhawk has even argued in favor of it.
By Cardinalpark, at
Thu May 04, 03:38:00 PM:
The argument that Cole's communication had the rasonable expectation of privacy is silly and irrelevant. I am in no position to assess Hitchens's integrity, just his analysis versus Cole's. Hitchens wins hands down. Cole and Screwy's ad hominem attacks ("drunk" and "dishonest") are examples of the banruptcy of their argument. the beauty and wonder of written or spoken debate is that ignorance is ultimately made clear. Cole is intellectually banrupt, at least on this subject, and so is Screwy.
By , at
Thu May 04, 07:15:00 PM:
TH:
Cole wants the focus to be on his e-mail and Hitch's alleged alcholism. Hitch wants to focus on the idea's that Cole promotes. I know what I think is more important to the world.
By , at
Fri May 05, 04:34:00 AM:
Subject: Cole's ignorance of the Farsi language
Ahmadinejad, in his speech - link as provided by Cole - repeats Khomeini in agreement:
"this regime that has occupied Jerusalem must be erased from the slate of the ages (or the face of history)". ("in režime ešqâlgare qods bâyad az safheye ruzegâr mahv šavad")
In fact, this is as good and acceptable a political slogan in Farsi to erase a country or a people off the face of a map or time. Note the imperative 'must' ("bâyad") which demands an agent, and the context which is Ahmadinežâd addressing the nation on state television.
Again Cole in his "correction" on his blog makes a deliberate misrepresentation or a serious mistake. "bâyad mahv šavad" does not translate into "must [vanish from]" as Cole claims in his own defense - as this precludes an agent. Only when the object is capable of vanishing by itself, would it be acceptable to ascribe the meaning "must vanish from". In the speech, this Farsi idiom translates properly and commonly to "must be erased (wiped off)" - obviously not by itself, but by an outside force.
Furtermore, "safheye ruzegâr" (literarily "slate of the ages") has the meaning of "the face of history". The demand to erase Israel extends to wiping it off the face of history - an existential threat to the Jewish people.
This is very clearly a threat, and Cole's apologetics are due to his mediocrity in reading Farsi text, or worse, ideological hoodwink.
Therefore, Ahmadinežâd is referring to the complete annihilation of Israel. Further down Ahmadinežâd confirms: "The Islamic ummat (community) cannot allow its historic enemy to live in the heart of the Islamic realm, and its security be guaranteed."
Therefore, Juan Cole is wrong both in his quotation, and also in the translation of the Ahmadinežâd speech.
http://www.president.ir/farsi/ahmadinejad/speeches/1384/aban-84/840804sahyonizm.htm
Let us look at the Persian fluency of Juan Cole, our Shiite Islamist expert (or is it apologist?):
Cole writes: "the Occupation regime must end (ehtelal bayad az bayn berad)"
1- 'ehtelâl' is not even a proper word in Farsi. Its root in Arabic means 'solution' - but in Farsi this word, if there is such a thing in Arabic in the first place, is not used. So surely, Cole made a blunder here. He was trying to say "ešqâl" (occupation) or "režime ešqâli" (occupation regime), and he just invented the Farsi word.
2- 'bayad' ('must') is improperly spelled. There are 3 proper ways to write this word. 'bâyad', 'baayad', and 'bAyad'.
3- 'az bayn' ('out-of-existence') is incorrectly spelled. Correct spelling is 'az beyn'. In fact 'bayn' (arabic for in-between') and beyn (Farsi) are written identically in Farsi, but pronounced differently. Obviously Cole was mispronouncing in Arabic a written Farsi word.
4- In a speech the form of the verb to "go" used is full form "beravad" and not the short form "berad".
By Dawnfire82, at
Sat May 06, 03:10:00 PM:
No language translates precisely into any other language. Even closely related ones have differing connotations, proverbs, colloqialisms, etc. There is plenty of room to "spin" a translation. i.e. "to vanish" from "to be erased."
Heavens forbid that a translation undertaken by an ideologue be subjected to scrutiny.
By , at
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