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An Open Letter to the Left on Libya

Sun, 27 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Informed Comment - By Juan Cole - Mar. 27 (Opinion) - I would like to urge the Left to learn to chew gum and walk at the same time. It is possible to reason our way through, on a case-by-case basis, to an ethical progressive position that supports the ordinary folk in their travails in places like Libya.

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King’s Nixonian Hearings against American Muslims

Thu, 10 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Informed Comment - By Juan - Mar. 10 (Opinion) - Rep. Peter T. King (R-NY)’s hearings on the alleged ‘radicalization’ of American Muslims are an affront to the brave Middle Eastern Muslims who have, during the past two months, thrown off American-backed tyrannies and are even now battling the minions of murderous dictator Muammar Qaddafi. His hearings contain the same premise deployed by Zine El [...]

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The Speech President Obama Should Give About the Iraq War (But Won’t)

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Informed Comment - By Juan Cole - Aug. 31 (Opinion) - Here is the speech that I wish President Obama would give about the Iraq War, but which neither he nor any other president ever will. Fellow Americans, and Iraqis who are watching this speech, I have come here this evening not to declare a victory or to mourn a defeat on the battlefield, but to apologize from the bottom of my heart for a series of illegal actions and grossly incompetent policies pursued by the government of the United States of America, in defiance of domestic US law, international treaty obligations, and both American and Iraqi public opinion.read more

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Why Pakistan needs the Separation of Religion and State

Sat, 29 May 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Informed Comment - By Juan Cole - May. 29 (Opinion) - The horrifying assault on the Ahmadi congregations underlines why Pakistan needs a separation of religion and state. The problem with using Islam as the state ideology (as the country’s founder, Muhammad Ali Jinnah clearly foresaw) is that there is no generic Islam.

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Pakistan Moves Further Toward Democracy; Could become a Role Model for Other Muslim states

Sat, 03 Apr 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Informed Comment - By Juan Cole - Apr. 03 (Opinion) - The Pakistani government on Friday tabled a proposed 18th amendment to the constitution , which if enacted will be an enormous advance toward democratization in the country. I was watching Bill Maher last week and Christopher Hitchens remarked on the Iraqi elections that they "didn?t used to happen" under Saddam Hussein. Likewise, free elections did not happen under Gen. Zia ul-Haq in 1980s Pakistan, or in 1999-2007 under Gen. Pervez Musharraf. And in the 1990s, presidents kept using the martial law amendments to the constitution of Gen. Zia to arbitrarily dismiss elected prime ministers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif. But US hawks and Neoconservatives are not celebrating this epochal bill in Pakistan. I ask myself why. I think it is ...

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Bombings in Swat, Punjab likely to backfire on Taliban

Sat, 13 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Informed Comment - By Juan Cole - Mar. 13 (Opinion) - The run-up to the Ides of March in Pakistan has been characterized by numerous horrific bombings, credit for which has been claimed by the Tehrik-i Taliban Pakistan (TTP) or Taliban Movement of Pakistan. After a string of five bombings in Lahore on Friday, on Saturday morning, a suicide bomber detonated his payload at a checkpoint station outside the city of Mingora in Swat, killing 10 persons , including two members of the security forces. Last summer, the Pakistani military expelled the Pakistani Taliban from Swat, before moving on to attack their bases and safe houses (or safe caves) in South Waziristan. On Friday, bombing attacks on a military cantonment and on Iqbal Town and Samnabad in Lahore left 50-60 persons dead and 120 wounded. Some of ...

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Secular National Iraqi List of Allawi reported to have surged in Sunni Arab Provinces

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Informed Comment - By Juan Cole - Mar. 08 (Opinion) - Sunday's vote for a new parliament in Iraq on Sunday could result in two possible geopolitical futures for that country.

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The Decline of the Israeli Right and the Increasing Desperation of the 'Anti-Semitism' Charge

Thu, 18 Feb 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Informed Comment - By Juan Cole - Feb. 18 (Opinion) - The great divide between liberal Jewish Americans and the Israeli Right has lurked as an issue since the Likud Party first challenged Labor dominance in the late 1970s. It is now coming to a boiling point, even as Israel's reputation in the world is sinking. As rightwing policies more visibly fail, the Likudniks are flailing around making fools of themselves by smearing critics of those policies as racists. (Anyone who knows how Likud supporters talk among themselves about Arabs and other outsiders can only be amused at their impudent hypocrisy in playing the race card.)

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Muharram Violence in Iraq, Iran, Pakistan

Sun, 27 Dec 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Informed Comment - By Juan Cole - Dec. 27 (News Analysis) - The background for the big news in Iraq, Iran and Pakistan on Saturday and Sunday is the Shiite mourning season. Saturday was the 9th of the month of Muharram and Sunday is the 10th. These ritual dates in the Shiite calendar commemorate the surrounding and then killing of Husayn b. Ali, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, at Karbala in Iraq in 680 by the armies of the Umayyad caliph Yazid. During Muharram Shiites tell the story of the passion of Imam Husayn, the martyr, which many feel is redemptive rather as Christians believe they are saved by the sacrifice made by Jesus.With the spread of Shiism in the past decades, Ashura is commemorated widely in the world. Abbas Djavadi remembers when these religious ceremonies, involving sermons, poetry, story-telling, public processions and in extreme cases bloody self-flagellation, were largely apolitical. But with the Islamic Revolution of 1979 in Iran and then decades later the rise of the Shiite crescent after the Bush administration overthrew secular Arab nationalism in Iraq and presided over the rise of fundamentalist Shiism, Ashura is highly politicized. It is politicized in two ways. It is a marker of Sunni-Shiite conflict, and it is an arena for contention over its meaning among competing factions of Shiites.In Iraq, hundreds of thousands of Shiite pilgrims walked to the holy city of Karbala under strict security. In recent years, Sunni Arab guerrillas have targeted Shiite processions with bombs. Even with good security and bomb-sniffing dogs this year, a few bombers targeted pilgrims in Baghdad on Saturday, killing a handful and wounding more. On Friday, pilgrims had been killed in East Baghdad and in Karbala. The guerrillas are targeting Shiite pilgrims to protest the Shiite take-over of Iraq under Washington's auspices.In the cities of Isfahan, Kermanshah and Shiraz in Iran, the political opposition used the 9th of Muharram processions to protest what they called the tyranny of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Some chanted against the very principle of clerical rule. They were cracked down on by police and paramilitary basij forces. pro-regime elements also interrupted the sermon of former president Mohammad Khatami. Sunday things are set for a clash between reformists and the regime.In Pakistan, the federal army was deployed throughout the country to protect Shiites on the 10th. The Pakistani Taliban against whom the current government is fighting are extremely anti-Shiite. A low-intensity bomb was set off at a Muharram procession in Karachi on Saturday, wounding 13 persons. Presumably the culprits were radical Sunni extremists.End/ (Not Continued)

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Top Ten Worst Things about the Bush Decade; Or, the Rise of the New Oligarchs

Tue, 22 Dec 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Informed Comment - By Juan Cole - Dec. 22 (Opinion) - By spring of 2000, Texas governor George W. Bush was wrapping up the Republican nomination for president, and he went on to dominate the rest of the decade. If Dickens proclaimed of the 1790s revolutionary era in France that it was the best of times and the worst of times, the reactionary Bush era was just the worst of times. I declare it the decade of the American oligarchs. Just as the end of the Cold War and the fall of the Soviet Union allowed the emergence of a class of lawless ?Oligarchs? in Russia, so Neoliberal tax policies and deregulation allowed the emergence of American equivalents. (For more on the analogy, see Michael Hudson .) Thus, we have a gutted fairness doctrine and the end of anti-trust concerns in ownership of mass media, ...

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Mahmoud Abbas Threatens to Step Down in Light of Ongoing Israeli Colonization of West Bank

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Informed Comment - By Juan Cole - Nov. 06 (News Analysis) - Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas says he wants to stand down and he declines to run in the upcoming Palestine Authority elections. The decision came in the wake of the US failure to convince the Israelis to halt colonization of the West Bank and Arab East Jerusalem. It also followed a series of embarrassing flip-flops by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who praised hard line right wing PM Netanyahu for his efforts in favor of the peace process. Even for a diplomatic statement, this tack is is a little embarrassing in its obsequiousness toward Netanyahu, who has undermined the peace process at every turn and rejects out of hand the US demand that he freeze settlements. Reactions of Arab allies of the US were sharp.

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What did Rawalpindi Militants Want?

Sun, 11 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Informed Comment - By Juan Cole - Oct. 11 (News Analysis) - A hostage standoff at Pakistani military HQ in Rawalpindi ended violently on Sunday morning when Pakistani troops stormed the compound where the militants had holed up with 25 hostages. Three of the hostages were killed in the course of the assault, along with two army troops and four militants. Earlier the militants, some dressed in Pakistani military uniforms, had driven up to the entrance. When they were nevertheless challenged, they opened fire, killing several Pakistani troops and two officers, one a brigadier, and some of them were killed. Others escaped, and managed to take hostages for a time. AP has video on the end of the hostage crisis at the military HQ. One of the hostage-takers is said to have been wearing a suicide bomb belt, ...

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Obama pwns Bush-Cheney on Iran; First day of Talks Yields Significant Confidence-Building Steps

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Informed Comment - By Juan Cole - Oct. 02 (Opinion) - For 8 years, Bush-Cheney practiced what I call "belligerent Ostrichism" toward Iran. They refused to talk to Tehran. They wanted to ratchet up sanctions on it. Bush sent 2 aircraft carriers to the Gulf to menace Iran. Bush?s spokesmen professed themselves afraid of Iran?s unarmed little speedboats in the Gulf. Aside from issuing threats to attack and destroy Iran the way they did Iraq, Bush-Cheney had nothing else to say on the matter. During the 8 years, Iran went from being able to enrich to .2% to being able to enrich to 3.8%, and increased its stock of centrifuges significantly. Bush-Cheney gesticulated and grimaced and fainted away at the horror of it all, but they accomplished diddly-squat. Barack Obama pwned Bush-Cheney in one day, and ...

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Conservative Hypocrisy on Race & Sotomayor

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Informed Comment - By Juan Cole - Jul. 15 (Opinion) - The tactic of congressional conservatives, of portraying Sonia Sotomayor as a reverse racist for her ?wise Latina? comment, has so many holes in it that you could make a Swiss cheese sandwich with it. First of all, her statement about the wisdom gained by members of oppressed and discriminated-against groups didn?t have anything to do with race. It had to do with belonging to oppressed and discriminated-against groups. The thesis that if you have that background and you overcome it, the experience builds character, is unexceptional. It would be true for poor whites in a wealthy non-white country. It isn?t about race as an essence but about the experience of being discriminated against on an ascriptive basis. And then there is the little ...

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Stealing the Iranian Election

Sun, 14 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Informed Comment - By Juan Cole - Jun. 14 (News Analysis) - The public demonstrations against the result don't appear to be that big. In the past decade, reformers have always backed down in Iran when challenged by hardliners, in part because no one wants to relive the horrible Great Terror of the 1980s after the revolution, when faction-fighting produced blood in the streets. Mousavi is still from that generation.

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Pakistani Troops Enter Mingora; India and Pakistan Sharing Intelligence

Sun, 24 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Informed Comment - By Juan Cole - May. 24 (News Report) - India and Pakistan are now sharing intelligence on extremists for the first time. Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh won a second term and his Congress Party much strengthened its majority in the Indian parliament in the recent elections. As a result, the PM has a free hand to negotiate with Pakistan if he so chooses, since his party can easily outvote the militant Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party. (BJP almost launched a war against Pakistan, which could have turned nuclear) when it was in power in 2002).

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Top Ten Ways the US is Turning Afghanistan into Iraq

Mon, 06 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Informed Comment - By Juan Cole - Apr. 06 (Opinion) - I can never get American audiences to concede that Afghan women had it way better in the 1980s, and that it has been downhill ever since, mainly because of US favoritism toward patriarchal and anti-progressive forces.

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Sunni Arab Refugees from Iraq Not Returning

Thu, 26 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Informed Comment - By Juan Cole - Mar. 26 (Opinion) - Many are traumatized, having seen horrific violence against neighbors, friends or family members. One fourth of the families applying for refugee aid reported having had a child kidnapped. Many have been personally threatened by militias who still control their old neighborhood. Sometimes the militias track them down in East Amman and threaten them again. Iraqi Sunnis do not feel safe returning to districts that are now largely Shiite. Mixed families feel that they no longer have a place to live safely. Most refugees have had their property confiscated. Many former Sunni neighborhoods in Baghdad are now ghost towns.

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Khamenei Adopts a Wait and See Attitude to Obama

Sun, 22 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Informed Comment - By Juan Cole - Mar. 22 (Opinion) - Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Saturday, "Of course, we have no prior experience of the new president of the American republic and of the government, and therefore we shall make our judgment based on his actions." The US corporate media mysteriously interpreted Khamenei's words as a rebuff to Obama, but in light of the phrase I just quoted, I can't understand how they reached that conclusion. Certainly, he did say repeatedly that Iran has had a pretty horrible experience with the United States, and that it would take more than some nice words to change Iranian minds about Washington. You could say that this was a grumpy old man response to Obama's call for engagement. But you can't call it a rebuff, since Khamenei explicitly says that he has no basis for making a judgment about the Obama administration as yet, and will respond to its actual concrete policies.

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And Happy Nowruz to You Too Mr. Obama!

Sat, 21 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Informed Comment - By Farideh Farhi - Mar. 21 (Opinion) - I must say that I am stunned by the tone and content of President Obama's message to Iran on the occasion of Iranian New Year or Nowruz. I am stunned because the message was great and on matters related to Iran I am not used to hearing what I like from Washington. So here are some quick thoughts.

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The End of Newspapers? Or is there a Journalism School Model?

Sun, 01 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Informed Comment - By Juan Cole - Mar. 01 (Opinion) - You wonder if the last front page article in the last newspaper will be about the demise of the newspaper? I especially regret the possibility that the San Francisco Chronicle might close, or become part of a single-owner print media monopoly in the Bay area. The Chronicle has been one of the papers I have regularly checked in on ever since newspapers started being available on the web. I'd be sad if it were gone. I attended a conference of editors of major foreign policy magazines in London a couple of years ago, and we had a presentation from a major UK newspaper. The editor said that he couldn't be sure of still being in business in five years. Their advertising in the print edition kept falling off, subscriptions and circulation were in a tailspin, and the internet was a monetary black hole. They had tried charging for internet access, and few readers ponied up. They had tried putting it up for free but trying to attract advertising. But the advertisers were not sure of the value of "hits" and "page views" and wouldn't advertise much online nor pay much for an ad (tell me about it). So basically the newspaper was entering a world in which there was no business model.

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Gaza War

Sun, 25 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Informed Comment - By Juan Cole - Jan. 25 (Opinion) - According to UNICEF, their preliminary estimate of the damage done by the Israeli military to Gaza infrastructure is $1.9 billion. Note that this is Gaza infrastructure, not Hamas infrastructure. So at least the war weakened Hamas's political control of Gaza, right? Not so much. So then, the Israeli military boasted that it destroyed 60% of the tunnels whereby Gazans smuggle food, medicine and other goods into Gaza (the Israelis say they bring in explosives for rocket-making as well; but since rockets can be made from simple materials and petroleum products, and since the rockets are so primitive, they can't be bringing in very good explosives). So at least, the Israeli war on the people of Gaza permanently reduced the capacity of those tunnels, right? Naw, the Gazans are working Caterpillar backhoes to rebuild the tunnels, already!

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Israel Should Stop the War and Let US Enjoy the Inauguration

Sat, 17 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Informed Comment - By Juan Cole - Jan. 17 (Opinion) - There are rumors that the Israeli government may declare a unilateral cease fire Saturday. They had better. Because if they ruin the Obama inauguration by splashing the bloody bodies of dead Palestinian children all over the press during the next few days, no Americans, even the most pro-Israeli, are going to forgive them. The war has left 1,140 Palestinians dead, over 300 children, and over 5,000 wounded including many women and children, as well as 13 Israelis (4 of them civilians killed by rocket fire). We pay for these wars, we provide the fighter jets, bombs, and tanks. And we don't want our money used for this sanguinary purpose in the first place; we have enough to be guilty about all on our own. And we especially don't want to hear a peep from over there while we swear in our first African-American president.

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Massive Protests in London, Barcelona

Sun, 11 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Informed Comment - By Juan Cole - Jan. 11 (News Report) - Some videoblogging for a snowy Sunday (where I am). CBC reports on Israeli military killing of civilians with Israeli army footage that Israeli television leaked. It shows the killing of a mother of two. There is touching footage of a young girl trying not to show the enemy her tears. Israeli soldiers appear to have delayed an ambulance from coming in time to save her. One of the Israeli soldiers says "I don't know what we are doing here. Purification maybe. It's dirty here. I don't know why a good Hebrew boy should be here so far from his home."

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Gaza 2008: Micro-Wars and Macro-Wars

Sun, 04 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Informed Comment - By Juan Cole - Jan. 04 (Opinion) - With regard to the Arab-Israeli conflict, we have entered the age of micro-wars. The first wars that Israel fought with its Arab neighbors were conventional struggles in which infantry, artillery, armor and air forces played central roles. Israel's enemies had few effective tools in the 1950s and 1960s. Abdel Nasser encouraged Palestinian resistance from Gaza in 1955, but it was more harassment than a serious military operation. The Egyptian, Jordanian and Syrian conventional armies were what Israel's leaders worried about. Jordan was no match for the Israelis and it had a history of secret agreements with the Zionist leaders, so its military was only a threat when, as in 1967, other Arab leaders convinced the Jordanian leadership to join in a collective effort.

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