Wednesday, May 03, 2006
Juan Cole is ROCKIN - Let him know you Care!
Mr. Informed Comment who is the single best go-to resource on Middle East Military Madness, has been repeatedly slimed, maligned, smeared - - and always takes time to clear both himself and the facts in their historical context.
Today is no different: this time it is Christopher Hitchens and Slate that are violating journalistic ethics and basically warmongering.
Yet it is different in one way: Juan is FIRED UP.
After defending his position and noting how his rightwing opponents are way off base Juan lays out how Iran is being set up - - and how we can, must and will stop the war.He cites the call to foreign-policy sanity in this April 21 letter to the White House by dozens and dozens of Middle East scholars, experts, specialists and thinkers from around the world.
And he calls upon the American students on college campuses to rise and demonstrate, noting: "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!"
I have rarely if ever seen Juan Cole so fired up - - been reading him almost daily for several years. He has helped me make some sense out of the quagmire, and to look ahead toward what may or may not come next.
He closes with a warning: that each and every citizen who opposes what he calls the Perpetual War machine must be ready to take heaps of abuse. Take and resist.
And then:
"I don't care. Thus far and no farther."
Pretty stout call for a bespectacled history wonk.
Let him know you care. - - NOTE: Professor Cole has an extended discussion of the apparently inaccurate and volatile "Wipe Israel off the map" translation of the Iranian president's comment, which is what fueled the row with Hitchens.
UPDATED: In order to find the story at Juan Cole's Informed Comment blog, go here and scroll down to this headline: Hitchens the Hacker; And, Hitchens the Orientalist And, "We don't Want Your Stinking War!
Here's a sample:
We are not going to let you have a war against Iran.
So sit down and shut up, American Enterprise Institute, and Hudson Institute, and Washington Institute for Near East Policy, and American Heritage Institute, and this institue 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.
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