OK, I’ve done some basic Internet searching, I’ve dug up actually very little about this “famous historian”… about the most depth in articles about him I got was this:
Dunno why they mix multi personality disorder with schizophrenia, but whatever. The other references just call him a “scholar.” None go into his politics or anything else, other than one where Saddam kidnapped one of his students who was writing a book about his book. But it seems there is some established conflict between these “Western Middle Eastern academics” and Al-Wardi.
Just curious, CMAR II, but what is your background (ethnicity, region, education, etc). I looked on your weblog, but it didn’t have much data. Not calling you into question, just want to get to know who I’m talking to and who is feeding me this news and history.
Well, I’m an American, so what would that look like? Most of the US would be absorbed into Canada; with Hawaii given independence; & the Southwest incorporated into Mexico; & maybe parts of the Southeast would be either independent or attached to, I dunno, the UK or South Africa or Brazil (nowhere makes much sense, really).
But carving up the USA doesn’t bother me. Maybe the more apt analogy would be carving up Missouri to incorporate it into other states. The north is basically like Iowa; the south more like northern Arkansas (which is to say, not like southern Arkansas) or Tennessee or Kentucky (but would stretch those states out in an unweildy way); the western border with Kansas could be moved east 100 miles, & the Mississippi towns folded into states on the other side. It could be done, with people still in states they felt ethnic familiarity with. The Yankees would be in Yankee states, & the hicks in hick states. But we would lose, well, Missouri. We have a proud heritage, such as it is: Mark Twain, Harry Truman, “I’m from Missouri & you’ve got to show me,” etc. Losing that wouldn’t sit well.
Abstract that to Iraq: There are serious concerns about changing a national border within which people once moved freely.
That said, I suspect Mosul could be split off from Iraq (albeit with serious difficulty) if not for Turkey’s objections to any support for a sovereign Kurdistan.
That’s a reasonable request. My refusal would also be reasonable. As I said earlier, Riverbend is welcome to tell as little of herself as she pleases, just as I am free to infer from what she says of herself and what – to me – she obviously leaves out. The same is true for me and you, respectively.
I don’t say anything about myself on my blog and I keep my name, location, and background a secret mostly out of principle. There was once a blog called Cry Me A Riverbend. The author was not careful about his identity and some thugs posted his name and address on another blog as a deliberate intimidation stunt. The original CMAR said “who needs this?” and quit. I started Cry Me A Riverbend II in answer to that. I chose to keep everything about me secret for that reason.
Now? I don’t know why I still keep it secret…I just do. Maybe I should rethink it. If Riverbend identifies herself, I definitely will identify myself.
I will say now that I’m not a Mid East scholar like Juan Cole (ho ho), nor am I Iraqi. I’m an interested layman. I live in the U.S. and I enjoy reading Iraqi blogs. I enjoy the Soldier blogs as well, although truthfully, not as much. I enjoy history, but my main interest right now is in the contemporary testimony of the Iraqi bloggers – whichever way they lean. My only relevant expertise per se is that I’ve followed Iraqi blogs a lot more closely than most people would want to and I take an interest in the opinions of experts and the well connected on Iraq. I try to follow both sides of the “Iraq Argument”, but my favorite pundits and journalists are those I agree with, naturally, but I prefer those who have come to their conclusion from a different perspective than I did (like Christopher Hitchens or George Packer) – people with whom I probably disagree about everything else in the world.
My blog is a record of what I’m reading and the thoughts that occur to me as I read. I can’t respond in the comments section of every blog (even if every site had one – Riverbend and Faiza don’t). My blog relieves some of the need I feel to respond to every blogger. I just do it once there. The posts I most enjoyed writing are the “summing up” posts – posts where I take everything I’ve read over some time and lay down some conclusions. Some examples of these are my recent one on Iraqi bloggers talking about the potential for civil war, and the one about Riverbend’s identity, and the one about the strange American blogger who does “Iraqi Blogger Central”.
I admit, Cry Me A Riverbend is kind of an “in your face” name for a blog. I probably wouldn’t have picked it myself, but I really didn’t pick it. I only picked up the flag. I used to feel obligated to fisk everything Riverbend wrote, but I don’t anymore. Anyway, so much of what she writes is the same: “We don’t have electricity”, “Allawi is a puppet”, “The elections are a farce”, “The American forces are criminal occupiers”. I consider Riverbend a propagandist in a way I don’t for, say, Faiza at A Family In Baghdad. I don’t agree with Faiza but I don’t consider her posts “untrue” from her point of view. It is human to complain. But it is also human to hope. Faiza portrays both sides of that nature. Riverbend posts practically nothing of what she hopes to see after the MNF pulls out, or to happen instead of the “farce” elections. So I consider her blog to be propaganda…contrived in that sense. Based on my alternate reading, I think her viewpoint (albeit interesting to me) should be taken with a grain of salt. (But I want to know what “Saddam’s orphans” think about Iraq too.) I have explained how I think she became a propagandist (based on what she has told me in her blog).
That will have to do for a bio and psychoanalysis for the time being.
Guess I’ll spend some time this weekend following up on your sources - not on a witch hunt, mind you, just to evaluate them - and the ones I use. I don’t follow the blog scene nearly as closely as you do, obviously, but I’ll at least listen to each one. Oddly enough, the blogs I do usually read I don’t agree with policy-wise, but I don’t think many would agree with me policy-wise on Iraq. It is somewhat counter-intuitive, but it is a philosophy I’ve developed over the past few years regarding lifestyle disparity around the world. The war was fought for all the wrong reasons it should have been fought for, it was executed absolutely horrendously, by the wrong people, and the lack of a plan has set back rebuilding Iraq for years. That I can not forgive. But, as they say, that is the situation we have to work with, and I guess I get proactive from there, instead of pulling out (with its ill effects either way).
lol, that’s quite a bit more than died in Hiroshima. CMAR II: I went straight to the source, who replied with speed and simplicity:
Apparently Dr. Cole is aware of the dentists you feature and dismisses them. I’m quite willing to believe that al-Wardi did not have access to the data in those archives, which I highly doubt were forged just for this occasion. While Juan Cole is a biased source, I find that his methodology is more sound, and his data more accurate. I suspect that the truth lies somewhere in between Fallujah being a pivitol rebellious city and it doing nothing, but I’ll buy that it was rebellious enough to be attacked by the British. The scope and scale of the attacks may be magnified under the eyeglass of historical perspective, but it is rooted in truth, and al-Wardi had - or was - an unreliable source. I believe the 2 professors with doctorates in Near/Middle Eastern History and Culture and their first hand documentation over the scant information I can find on al-Wardi and his oral history. I have no judgements about al-Wardi’s motivations or character, but I trust the British Army’s records over second hand oral history, as any reasonably-minded person would.
So, on that singular issue I hope we have some kind of settlement. That took most of the day out of me, so if you’ll excuse me, it is movie and bed time. I hope that you will find my assessment of the issue to be fair-handed, and that I am objective about the outcome (the historical event is of little to no personal value to me). I can say that I learned a lot today, and that I know more about the accuracy of certain sources, which allows me to draw sharper conclusions. I hope this has been similarly enlightening to you.
Oh Demorian, I’m aware that Dr. Fatfingers is aware of the Fadhil brothers.
Last December he got into a bit of tangle when taking off from a Martini Republic post that noted sinisterly that their “Internet Service Provider” was based in Abiline, TX (it was Blogger.com - a free site used worldwide including by ME). From there he went on to innuend that the Fadhil brothers were “blog trollers”, “blog agents provocateurs secretly working for a particular group or goal and deliberately attempting to spread disinformation”. This despite the fact that the brothers give their names, are explicity about their backgrounds, and post pictures of themselves. Then he compared them unfavorably to RIVERBEND (who of course – like me – provides NO information to her exact identity).
When he did this he also did something that is seen as a bit dishonest in the blogoshere: He was comparing Baghdad Burning to Iraq The Model, but he only provided a hyperlink to Baghdad Burning adding an extra hurdle for people to actually go to the brothers’ site to analyze whether what he was saying is true.
When the blogs rose up and proved Coles subtle slanders to be lies, at first he pretended the firestorm was because he said the Iraq the Model blog was “far outside the norm of Iraqi public opinion”, then he claimed “I did not actively make any allegations against IraqTheModel myself at all. In my own mind, I was merely drawing attention to Mailander’s entry on an informal, ‘Isn’t this interesting?’ basis.”
Now I see he is using ad hominen (“the dentists”) to back up his debate with the Ali Fadhil (who is actually a medical doctor). You admit that Cole is biased. Very good. The ability to assess POV will aid you a lot if you continue following blogs. But why would you say his methodology is superior to DOCTOR Ali Fadhil? He offered no documentation to back up his claim. He doesn’t even back up Dr. Rashid Khalidi’s initial point regarding a specific rebellion in Fallujeh to which current events are analogous. He only says “The rebelliousness of Fallujah was well known”.
It might be fine to trust British Army’s records over second hand oral history but he hasn’t identified those army records, let alone shown that they themselves were not second hand!
Finally, the point of Rashid Khalidi’s article was an ACTUAL battle AT Fallujeh which Iraqis well remember and that the Bush Administration had put its foot in it by not recognizing that history. He says “The Bush administration is not creating the world anew in the Middle East. It is waging a war in a place where history really matters.”
Here’s some problems. Dr. Ali Fadhil says that history DOES matter to Iraqis and that one of their premier historians is Dr. al-Wardi. Furthermore, Dr. Khalidi does not reference any particular British Army documents. Dr. Cole is not speaking from first hand knowlege in this regard, he is only referencing Dr. Khalidi so it makes no sense to refer to “the 2 professors with doctorates in Near/Middle Eastern History and Culture and their first hand documentation”. There is only one and he doesn’t offer any first-hand documentation. That means Dr. Cole himself is operating from SECOND hand documentation at best, but we can’t know it’s that good.
If you choose to believe Dr. Cole over Dr. Fadhil that’s your choice. But you haven’t done so because Cole has offered you any reason to trust him. For all I know al-Wardi is not a respected historian among Iraqis, but an Iraqi tells me he is. For all I know, there are reliable British Army documents that verify an actual history-turning battle waged by the British in Fallujah. But Cole has not offered those documents. In fact, his answer is evasive.
Hmmm…Rather than question the the veracity of these numbers as true or directly related to the sanctions, I have some other questions:
Were any of these children those babies whose bodies were dug up from mass graves being clutched by their mothers? Were these children dying as the UN skimmed from the Oil-For-Food program and helped Saddam siphon trainloads of cash from it? Couldn’t these children have been saved if Saddam would have just VERIFIED that he had destroyed his WMDs??
Air Power and Colonial Control:The Royal air Force, 1919-1939 by David E. Omissi ( 1990, Manchester University Press ). I’m afraid I don’t own a copy ( though I might pick it up as it looks interesting ).
Toby Dodge ( from whom I snagged the above reference ) in Inventing Iraq:* The Failure of Nation Building and a History Denied* ( 2003, Colombia University Press ) states that:
The first large-scale deployment of air power was against the Barkat and Sufran sections of the Bani Huchaim confederation at Samawah on the Euphrates.
This was in November, 1923.
The costs for these targeted villages were heavy. Flight Lieutenant Bowen, who was sent into the area to assess the damage, conservatively estimated that that approximately 100 men, women and children had been killed, and six villages destroyed, along with six horses, 71 cows and 530 sheep. This first foray into sustained aerial assault on the population of Iraq considerably undermined the ideological promotion of air policing as being humane.
So this is a possible contradiction to Dr. Khalidi’s assertion as to the heaviness of the bombing of Fallujah. On the other hand he may have been just using a bit of hyperbole. Air power *was used during the 1920 revolt and Dodge notes that Sir A. Haldane ( the British commander in Iraq during the revolt ) indicated that its use ( at least as a demonstreation of strength ) was one of the reasons revolt did not spread farther in the south. Dodge cites several British documents discussing its use in Kurdistan and the southern marshlands where British ground forces had difficulties operating. Now Fallujah isn’t explicitly mentioned ( he isn’t interested in cataloguing the course of the revolt in any detail ), but that doesn’t preclude that it was subject to an air raid or two.
If any are interested in digging through them I can list the original British documents Dodge cites that might be applicable. But it is likely that Omissi would be a better source for such.
Ali Fadhil (on authority from Dr. al-Wardi) does not deny that Fallujah was eventually part of the uprising but he denies that it was the center of it as Drs Cole and Khalidi imply. He also says it came late in the game. Your quote also seems to deny the validity the term “massive air power” per Dr. Khalidi.
On balance it seems that the day belongs to “the dentists” and the Drs are Phds of “Eggonyourface” for trying to make heroes out of those nests of werwolves in Fallujah. I’m working on a full post for this. I’ll link to it when I’m done.
Go ahead and post it. Who knows whether someone is reading this who has access to the documents.
“Massive air power” in 1920 isn’t exactly what it is later in aviation.
It looks like the dentists have no primary source, and the doctors do. You seem to take a lot of what they say as “implied” and twist their words a lot - and I am beginning to see a trend in your avoidance of actual historical evidence. Basically, I question your objectivity, your sources, your data, your methodology, your terminology, and thus your arguments.
Constant references to the people who actually have historical data as “Phds of Eggonyourface” supporting “the werewolves” does not make for a stronger argument in historical contexts.
In addition to this, it could be said that you are cherrypicking Dr. Cole and Dr. Khalidi’s record and comments. Perhaps you should back off from this issue (which you aren’t going to get) and find other instances where Dr. Cole and Dr. Khalidi are incorrect… but please bring proof. Not having a first hand cite in a debate is like bringing a knife to a gunfight.
I’ll list the Dodge cites late tonight or tomorrow ( my copy is at home and I am not ).
However I do have with me my copy of David Fromkin’s A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East ( 1989, Avon Books ). Although he doesn’t address the aerial attack issue, he does clarify the timeline of Leachman’s death and its centrality or lack thereof to the 1920 revolt.
He indicates the revolt started in June, 1920, probably catalyzed by attempts to levy taxes ( the whole area had been restless for awhile and Leachman had been specifically requisitioned from London to tamp out various violent brushfires that spring with mixed success). However Leachman wasn’t killed until August, 1920. Though Fallujah isn’t mentioned by name, Fromkin does basically back Khalidi’s account:
…Leachman, who left Baghdad on 11 August to attend a meeting with tribal allies at a station on the Euphrates, was tricked into sending away his armed escort - and then was shot in the back and killed by order of the tribal sheikh who was his host…The news of Leachman’s killing led to further tribal uprisings against the British along the Euphrates. Fresh uprisings occurred north and west of Baghdad. By mid-August a group of insurgents felt confident enough to eeclare a provisional Arab government.
Apparently Leachman also has a set of papers deposited at the Middle East Centre of St. Anthony’s College at Oxford.
At any rate the above would seem to contradict any assertion that Leachman’s death directly sparked the rebellion. On the other hand it does seem to have been a significant catalyst to its spread. So there you go - ammunition for both sides :).
Though personally I think this is a pretty trivial argument. Though he does seem to be prone to histrionics from time to time, I haven’t seen Cole make all that many obvious factual errors and he is part of a relatively small group of academic experts on the area. Then again I am not all that regular a reader of his blog, so what do I know.
In this case, the difference is irrelevant. They weren’t writing scholarly footnoted articles. They were writing short opinion pieces using “history” as their support.
They wrote their pieces during the Fallujah operation with specific angle in mind, and they misreprepresented the facts to better fit that angle.
So you are now saying any use of air power qualifies as “massive”?
Of course they do, and you are repeating Dr. Cole inaccurate ad hominem. Dr. Ali Fadhil is not a dentist as I already told you. He is a doctor of medicine.
Dr. Fadhil’s primary source is Dr. Ali al-Wardi. Now go back to those articles here and here. What were Khalidi and Cole’s primary source. What? That’s right.
They don’t name one.
Since you did not understand this when I told you before I’ll repeat it:
**Dr Fadhil identifies a scholarly source who actively investigated the matter to back up his version of events…Dr. Khalidi and Dr. Cole do not. **
For you to keep insisting they have cited sources when they have not is…well, I won’t go on.
Are you drawing and inference now? Careful, you wouldn’t want to twist my words.
Dr. Cole’s lack of objectivity does not seem to bother you.
I haven’t offered any sources but Cole, Khalidi, and Fadhil.
Dr. Fadhil is an Iraqi and he says it ain’t so.
Now this is why I use the word “imply”. I’m not going to say Khalidi said something he didn’t say. And he didn’t SAY this event happened in Fallujah. But if it didn’t, then he is guilty of misleading his readers because that is the obvious implication. Furthermore, Khalidi says that this event sparked a rebellion. This does not seem to be the case. It seems that Khalidi chooses to say it did in order to draw an (UNSTATED) analogy to the contractors killed in Fallujah early last year.
I’m worn out taking your by the hand.
We’re not going to settle the question of Fallujah’s involvment in the 1920 uprising here. Dr. Fadhil has quoted a source that discounts the PRIMARY upshot of Dr. Khalidi’s article. His own testimony further denies Khalidi’s claim that Dr. K’s description of the events surrounding the 1920 uprising are commonly held among Iraqis. In fact, he makes the assertion that Khalidi’s version is part Saddam propagandist history.
BTW here’s an article about a young scholar being “disapeared” under the Saddam regime after publishing a book about Dr. al-Wardi. Why do you think he did that?
Meanwhile, Dr. Cole is on record dodging your question.
Cole offers no data to counter Dr. Fadhil even when you specifically asked him to.
You don’t QUESTION my terminology, you disagree with it (lets call things what they are).
Constant? That’s one reference to Phds of Eggonyourface. Well, I guess, three now.
I already gave you an instance of Dr. Cole making unsubstantiated assertions about the Fadhil brothers which he did not retract and in a deceitful manner tried to distance himself from after it was clear he wrong.
I’d say his dodging your question was part of a pattern. And I’m no longer clear whether you are being deceived by Dr. Cole or whether you have chosen to fall in with him.
The problem with the poll you cite is that it is asking Arab nations with strong autocratic and theocratic traditions to comment on something they have little or no experience with: Democratic principles.
Here a link to the relevant quote from David E. Omissi’s Air Power and Colonial Control: The Royal Air Force, 1919–1939
It attempts to address the most important centers of the conflict and (after looking up the names) its seems that Fallujah is not among them.
The Sufran tribe in the Diwaniyah area seem to have been the central to this rebellion and btw they were not fans of Saddam as were the citizens of Fallujah
Samawa and Rumaitha were bombed and machine gunned these are not Fallujah
Basra seems to have been a problem as well (not Fallujah)
There may have been uprisings in Fallujah as well, but that’s hardly the point.
ET:The problem with the poll you cite is that it is asking Arab nations with strong autocratic and theocratic traditions to comment on something they have little or no experience with: Democratic principles.
Well, considering that these are the same nations that our Administration predicted would rapidly and willingly adopt a democratic government (in the case of Iraq), or be inspired to democracy by Iraq’s example, why shouldn’t we expect them to be able to answer a poll about democracy?
ET:Shame on you; I know you’re smarter than to listen (and worse yet: believe) anything that comes out af any politician’s mouth.
Well, I do think it’s fair to hold them to the statements they’ve made. If they say that we can produce, relatively easily and quickly, a “democracy domino effect” in the Middle East, and a recent poll shows that residents of the Middle East overwhelmingly believe that our efforts in that regard are producing less democracy rather than more, then I think our politicians have egg on their face and some explaining to do.
If, as you not unreasonably point out, the Middle East poll might be skewed by the fact that most of the respondents don’t have a lot of direct experience with democracy and hence don’t really understand it, then that undermines the claim that it should be relatively easy and quick to democratize the region. In which case, our politicians also have egg on their face and some explaining to do.
ET:Come to think of it, I’ve begun to wonder these past few years whether or not our own gov’t still recognizes “democratic principle(s).”
Point. All the more reason to hammer away on them if their assertions turn out to be lies. IMO just about the worst thing we can do for democracy—here or anywhere else—is to become indifferent or tolerant about our politicians feeding us bullshit, especially about such crucial matters as the motives or outcomes of starting a war.
If I lived in the Middle East and I received a steady stream of B.S. from my dictators and newspapers about the U.S.'s intentions…e.g. if I really had been lead to believe that Zionists really controlled U.S. foreign policy…then I would probably be skeptical about her intentions in Iraq and Afghanistan (did you forget that they also doubt our intentions there? Certain pundits began saying democracy there was doomed to failure even before November 2001!). I don’t know what Afghanistan will be like in 50 years, but its off to a good start.
If a democratic Iraq fails then Afghanistan will too. If it stands then Afghanistan will will probably stand simply because the terrorists have mostly left that country and chosen to live or die for Iraq. From the start of Dubya’s interventionist policy, we will have had three democratically free elections in Muslim Mid East countries where none had occured before. Libya, an obstinant supporter of terrorism and developer of WMDs has come out from the cold. Compared to what the opposition prophets had to say about remaking Afghanistan and Iraq, this has been a cake walk.
We shall see how long the other Muslim dictatorships keep their people under wraps by telling them that Iraq is “not really a democracy”. We shall see.
Well, it depends how loosely you define ‘democratic elections’ , doesn’t it? Any system of government forced upon a country by invading outsiders cannot be called ‘democratic’ IMO. The Afghan government has control of very little of the country - and there are 4 large areas of Iraq where voting will not take place this month [CNN news yesterday]. There are also a large number of Iraqis who are boycotting these so-called ‘democratic elections’ - and the USA has a say in who is allowed to run for office.
Hardly democracy!
As for your ‘cake walk’ comment - this is just plain offensive - given the number of people who were injured and killed in Afghanistan and Iraq. You really think things are better in these countries now than they were before Bushco. bombed them to bits? I think you’re deluding yourself.