Evaluating Dr. Cole's work

As can be seen from this entry at BuzzMachine, angry discussion regarding Juan Cole's attempts to justify his criticism of IraqTheModel continues. Many of the ideas expressed are elaborations (mostly better-written...) of some of the points I brought up in my own entry on the subject - to include a few better analyses of the polling data Professor Cole points to so vehemently.

This is the issue I have with folks like Dr. Cole. We're in Iraq now. If we leave, there will almost certainly be civil war (likely leading to a mass bloodletting of Sunnis at the hands of Kurds and Shiites). Other than weeping, gnashing his teeth, and muttering "woe is me" under his breath, what does he recommend we do to set the situation aright? We certainly need to look at what is going wrong there in order to decide upon corrective action...but how does his "insight" help develop solutions to problems there? It doesn't. He wants to play "I told you so" while people suffer and die. What sort of compassion is that?

That being said, some of the observations he has made (between his asides about right wing conspiracies) regarding the current situation in Iraq are very insightful. In this article from 10 December, he discusses the recent Sunni efforts to delay the vote by trumpeting the number of parties planning to boycott the January elections.

Here he elaborates on the planned boycotts and the continued Sunni resistance:

The point is that all these groups are tiny, whereas the really big important parties are revving up to win the elections.

In short, Al-Dhari is wrong that the guerrilla fighters have achieved much positive; he is wrong that cooperating with elections cannot result in independence; he is wrong that the boycott movement is significant outside the Sunni Arabs. The only thing he is right about is that the technical preparations for the elections are problematic.

I was at a public event on Thursday night and someone asked me why the Sunni Arabs didn't just take the best deal they could get. I replied that they think they are the real majority of the country, or that is the public pose (requiring them to invent a million Iranian Shiite infiltrators to explain all those extra Shiites). They think they can push the Americans around and maybe even push them out of the country. They think once the US is gone, they will have a better, not worse chance, at regaining something like their former political ascendence.

In other words, they seem to be living in a dangerous fantasy land.

On issues like these, we see Dr. Cole in his academic prime - a sad counterpoint to his fevered allusions to dark U.S. conspiracies.