# I pit Juan Cole **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [December 15, 2004, 2:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-juan-cole/279966 "2004-12-15T14:39:15Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![furt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/439d5e/32.png) [@furt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/furt)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2004, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-juan-cole/279966/21 "2004-12-16T18:05:18Z")
> [@annaplurabelle](#): > > I’m not singling out **furt** here, but IMO not everything is strictly a left v. right issue. Especially affairs of the Middle East. > > The “hard” left furt refers to says nothing about Cole’s placement on the _perpendicular_ political axis. Or yours, wherever that may be. True enough; I was being brief for the sake of simplicity and I have no idea what he thinks on a number of domestic-type issues. Perhaps I should have just said “harsh critic of the Bush Admin” and left it at that. > [@Squink](#): > > Obviously his membership in the herd right. Snigger. Speaking of not knowing what someone thinks on a number of issues… ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2004, 10:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-juan-cole/279966/22 "2004-12-16T22:30:22Z")
> [@Ryan\_Liam](#): > > What am getting at is not the notion that its wrong to use a dead person, even who may be friends, to support your argument. But this asshole used it to support his agenda on attacking Israel and to portray the Arabs there as the innocent people being oppressed by an imperialist racists and predujiced Westerners Israelis hellbent on destroying Arab culture and traditions OK, I see now: it’s OK to use the examples of friends, dead people, and dead friends as anecdotes to support one’s argument. But not _this_ argument, because you strongly dislike this argument. > [@](#): > > Which brings about a larger argument, why are people like Juan Cole so vocal about the injusticies of American and Israeli policies in general, but yet remain so silent on the injusticies countless Islamist terrorists have carried out? Where the disdain for them? Wheres the protesting? Wheres the accounts of this? I don’t see it in his site. OK, [here’s one I read there just last week](http://www.juancole.com/2004/12/rumsfeld-military-irrelevance-of.html): > [@](#): > > Guerrillas raided the [Samarra] police station for munitions and then blew it up. They killed a policeman and a child. Then they attacked US troops at various points in the city, detonating a car bomb near a US base and using machine gun fire on troops at an intersection. No word of US casualties. The Samarra police chief resigned earlier in the day because his house was attacked and his family feared for his safety (read: his wife made him stop working with the Americans.) Many police in Samarra were refusing to patrol, lest they be killed by the guerrillas as collaborators. The Samarra violence left at least 5 dead. I’m not going to do your searching for you: you’re the one who’s making the wild claims. But as a regular Informed Comment reader, I can say that on far more occasions than this, Dr. Cole has been brutally honest about the insurgents’ brutal behavior. He’s also quite honest about the damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t situations our soldiers often find themselves in. From later in that same post: > [@](#): > > If you are in a guerrilla war zone and a car comes speeding at you and doesn’t stop when so ordered, if you don’t shoot the driver then you risk it being a car bomber who will kill you and your men. Of course civilians got killed that way, but it isn’t clear that that is criminal as opposed to regrettable. But that some of the troops had a sadistic streak or thought all Arabs responsible for 9/11, etc., is also quite plausible. Those sadists aren’t typical of the troops, but we know they exist. Timothy McVeigh took delight in blowing Iraqis away, during the Gulf War. > > Rather than issuing a blanket denial, the US military would be better served by simply admitting that war is hell and civilians get killed in prosecuting it. The American public is adults. They should know the score, and they should know that if a country goes to war, it will kill a lot of innocent people. So he’s hardly the shrill, one-sided ‘America is always wrong, and the Arabs are saints’ sort of critic some people here have tried to portray him as. Best way to evaluate Dr. Cole, I think, is to go back and read what he was posting a year or two ago about Iraq, and see how it looks with the benefit of hindsight. Then do the same with what Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, etc. were saying about Iraq at the same time. Cole’s blog has archives going back to April 2002. Bush’s every public utterance is recorded at [whitehouse.gov](http://whitehouse.gov); so are many (possibly all; I haven’t checked) of Cheney’s. I’m sure there has to be an archive of Rummy’s speeches somewhere in DoD’s public webspace. ---
**Author:** ![Ryan\_Liam](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ryan_liam/32/3965_2.png) [@Ryan\_Liam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ryan_Liam)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2004, 3:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-juan-cole/279966/23 "2004-12-17T03:14:50Z")
> [@RedFury](#): > > I’ll post wherever the fuck I feel like doing so, thank you very much. Doesn’t mean I have to take ignorant insignificant cumstains such as yourself seriously. And I don’t. > > You’re one load your momma should’ve swallowed. Too bad for both of your parents she didn’t. Unlike yours, who drank the whole lot. > [@](#): > > And I don’t. Then fuck off then, its simple 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![annaplurabelle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/919ad9/32.png) [@annaplurabelle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/annaplurabelle)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2004, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-juan-cole/279966/24 "2004-12-17T16:30:29Z")
> [@furt](#): > > True enough; I was being brief for the sake of simplicity and I have no idea what he thinks on a number of domestic-type issues. Perhaps I should have just said “harsh critic of the Bush Admin” and left it at that. But that wouldn’t tell us much about Cole either: **SimonX** is a harsh critic of the Bush Admin. So is **Reeder**. What can we learn from that? Perhaps simplicity is the wrong goal. ---
**Author:** ![Ryan\_Liam](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ryan_liam/32/3965_2.png) [@Ryan\_Liam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ryan_Liam)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2004, 4:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-juan-cole/279966/25 "2004-12-17T16:33:49Z")
> **[IRAQ THE MODEL](http://iraqthemodel.blogspot.com/)** > > New points of view about the future of Iraq and the Middle East. Read that and you’ll understand why I pitted him alongside the other reason of using a persons death as ammunition to provide against Israeli expansionism. ---
**Author:** ![Who\_me\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/958977/32.png) [@Who\_me\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Who_me_1)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2004, 4:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-juan-cole/279966/26 "2004-12-17T16:39:28Z")
> [@Ryan\_Liam](#): > > Then don’t reply in my thread then Pissant. People reply to counter your asinine OP’s. We all know how you feel about the Middle East and Muslims. If you’ll notice in the top left corner of the page, we’re here to fight ignorance… you’re here to spread it. ---
**Author:** ![Sevastopol](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/cdc98d/32.png) [@Sevastopol](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sevastopol)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2004, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-juan-cole/279966/27 "2004-12-17T16:56:25Z")
In the abstract it is actually rather difficult to comprehend the difference between ‘trivial’ and ‘insignificant’. Between the 2 is a normally invisible membrane. Passage from triviality to insignificance is thereby imperceptible as a general rule. So accept my scorn, all who thought this thread useless. I shun and avoid you. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-juan-cole/279966.md?page=1)