Saturday, June 17, 2006
Juan Cole and argument by motive
Juan Cole snarked up a storm over the revelation that al Qaeda in Iraq was trying to provoke conflict between the United States and Iran:
Remember all those times Bush, Rice and Rumsfeld came out and said they suspected that Shiite Iran was somehow aiding the Sunni Arab insurgency? You remember how baffled I was at this bizarre allegation? You wonder whether they were being fed disinformation by a Zarqawi agent, and falling for it.
After they fell for the biggest whoppers of the 21st century, as retailed by Ahmad Chalabi, have Bush administration officials been gullibly swallowing an al-Qaeda black psy-ops operation intended to mire US troops in the Dasht-i Kavir? For people who think of themselves as tough as nails hardheaded realists, the Bushies seem awfully easy to fool.
American hawks tied to the Israeli Likud Party, such as Michael Ledeen and Michael Rubin, who are also trying to get up an American war on Iran, turn out to have the same goal as Zarqawi!
I'm not sure what "tied to the Israeli Likud Party" is supposed to mean -- that Ledeen and Rubin have friends who support Likud? -- but I do know that Michael Ledeen has never advocated war with Iran. He absolutely believes that Iran has been waging war on the United States directly and by proxy since 1979, and he also believes that we should be supporting Iranians who resist, or would resist, the regime of the Islamic Republic. There is no evidence, however, that Ledeen supports war with Iran, however extensive our moral or legal justification for war might be. Worried that I might have missed a call for war in Ledeen's voluminous writings, I confirmed his position by email this morning, something that Cole, who takes great umbrage when others (allegedly) mischaracterize his position, obviously did not do.
Cole would be vastly more persuasive if he did not mingle ad hominem attacks -- false or otherwise -- with his analysis. Unfortunately, Cole often impugns the motives of others rather than engaging them on the merits. When combined with his signature paranoia -- Cole believes that "there is some sort of Karl Rove-type campaign of disinformation out there in which I am being attacked on my strengths" -- it becomes very easy to write Juan Cole's opinions down to zero.
5 Comments:
By 
, at
Sat Jun 17, 08:12:00 PM:
This "Likud" reference is fairly common and the purpose is obvious, I should think.
"We're not anti-Israe, not us. We are with the nice, liberal, progressive Israelis who only want peace. It's those nasty Likudniks who are spoiling everything."
Cole seems to have failed to notice that the Likud isn't the ruling party any more. On the other hand, any day he'll be referring to people supposedly "tied to Kadima." Won't have quite the same resonance, though.
By , at
Sat Jun 17, 10:09:00 PM:
I dont quite understand these two points.
1. Ledeen "absolutely believes that Iran has been waging war on the United States directly and by proxy since 1979",
and 2. "Ledeen has never advocated war with Iran."
Whats going on here? I am a lib-close-to-pacifist myself, but if I were to conclude that a country was waging war against us, then I would have to go along with the notion of waging war right back.
Can it really be the case that Ledeen believes that we should not respond in kind when another nation is warring against us? I don't think you, or he, is making much sense here.
By , at
Sat Jun 17, 11:20:00 PM:
I'm not too surprised to see Juan Cole indulging in a classical logical fallacy in putting Michael Ledeen and Michael Rubin in league with Zarqawi (accuracy of the actual claim notwithstanding).
Of course, this approach could be profitably used on our dear professor with enlightening results. Let's try...
1) Juan Cole opposed the US invasion into Iraq. Saddam Hussein also wasn't too keen on the idea of having his dictatorship toppled. Turns out that Cole and Saddam Hussein had the same goal!
2) Juan Cole believes that Al Jazeera is an excellent source for news. Osama bin Laden makes sure that his video recordings always find their way onto Al Jazeera - he must think that the network is excellent too. Cole and Osama... peas in a pod!
By , at
Sun Jun 18, 12:03:00 AM:
My favorite thing about Cole's comment is that he pins the antiwar analysts like Marc Lynch - it has to be a legit letter to support Cole's claim. But then all the bad news in the letter must be true.
Or Cole's wrong, and it's disinformation, in which case conflict with Iran isn't something we're being led to by the jihadis.
I love forks in chess...
A.L.
By 
Judith, at
Sun Jun 18, 02:12:00 AM:
"I'm not sure what "tied to the Israeli Likud Party" is supposed to mean -- that Ledeen and Rubin have friends who support Likud?"
That's one of Cole's stock phrases. You could create a Cole rant by setting up a random phrase generator and stocking it with this kind of soundbite. It is also a standard trope of the anti-israel left.
