Nail Yale’s Clint Taylor lets loose on Juan Cole, and in the process, I suspect, speaks for a number of conservatives who have come out against Yale’s desire to hire Professor Cole (myself included):
Yale’s free to hire Prof. Cole, and I’m free to complain about it. As I said in the entry below, I’m not qualified to evaluate his Middle Eastern Studies credentials. I am, however, qualified to evaluate him on the heartless jackass scale, on which he scores off the charts.
When journalist Steven Vincent was reporting from Iraq, he maintained a close working relationship with an Iraqi woman who served as his translator in Basra. They were careful only to meet in public and not to flout local customs with their professional relationship.
Then Steven Vincent was assassinated. Juan Cole’s comment on his death is preserved for posterity here, along with a scorching, devastating response from Steven Vincent’s widow, Lisa Vincent-Ramaci, to which I don’t believe Cole has ever responded, let alone apologized. Seriously, click on that link and read her response.
So here’s Cole’s reaction to his fellow American’s murder, emphasis mine:
“Was American journalist Steve Vincent killed in Basra as part of an honor killing? He was romantically involved with his Iraqi interpreter, who was shot 4 times. If her clan thought she was shaming them by appearing to be having an affair outside wedlock with an American male, they might well have decided to end it. In Mediterranean culture, a man’s honor tends to be wrought up with his ability to protect his womenfolk from seduction by strange men. Where a woman of the family sleeps around, it brings enormous shame on her father, brothers and cousins, and it is not unknown for them to kill her. These sentiments and this sort of behavior tend to be rural and to hold among the uneducated, but are not unknown in urban areas. Vincent did not know anything serious about Middle Eastern culture and was aggressive about criticizing what he could see of it on the surface, and if he was behaving in the way the Telegraph article describes, he was acting in an extremely dangerous manner.”
Hear that? Dude had it comin’. He was cheating on his wife, alleged Cole without any proof, he didn’t know anything “serious” about the Middle East—despite reporting from on the ground for months and writing a book about it as well as dozens of columns—and there is not the slightest trace of regret or sympathy emerging from that screed. It is condescending as well-as if Vincent had stepped into a lion’s cage and not into a society of humans who ought to know murder is wrong. NOT ONE WORD of condemnation for his killers. Oh well, that’s what you get when you go to Basra.
(You won’t catch Juan Cole making the same mistake as Steven Vincent and being “outspoken in his criticisms” of these people. Criticize the Neocons or the Likudnik Israelis and you get mean things written about you in the Wall Street Journal. Criticize Moqtada al-Sadr’s Shiite mafia, or the way of life it justifies, you get shot down in an alley.)
I can think of only one more boorish and reprehensible response to human suffering on a blog, and that’s Markos “Daily Kos” Moulitsas’ comment (scroll down, or do a control-f to find it, here) about the four Blackwater contractors—also Americans and family men—murdered, burned and hung from a bridge in Fallujah[…]
Professor Cole is still number two, so he’ll have to try harder to beat the Daily Kos. But with his repugnant speculations about Steven Vincent, he certainly dried up any sympathy I might have had for these “neocon” smears against him. It’s one thing to advocate policy forcefully, but this was just mean and heartless. While Yale is free to do as it likes with Juan Cole, I’ll be disgusted—though not surprised—if they appoint him.
On the lighter side, I still haven’t gotten an official response to the rumor I floated that John Kerry is George Soros’s butt boy. I posted that over a week ago in the public forum of a “blog,” so I’m assuming that it’s true. Fair enough? See? I’m catching on to this journalism business.
I don’t get it; what’s with the outrage over this? Cole didn’t say that anyone who sleeps with a Muslim woman deserves to get killed, only that it’s playing with fire. Similarly, if I warned my buddy not to mess with a notorious gangster’s girl, I wouldn’t be saying he would deserve what was coming to him, only that it might be predictable.
Meh. Maybe I’m missing something. But from what I can tell this is pretty thin.
Hmmm.
Maybe because there’s no FUCKING EVIDENCE he was sleeping with that woman you asshole.
RTFA: Read The Fucking Article.
sw: a response has been made.
No, it’s not thin. It would have been one thing to say simply that, and sufficient unto the day, I think, as well. But egregiously to insert these salacious details, to make it seem that this was just a garden-variety honor killing, and to have so little compassion for the widow, the man’s memory, and so little concern for the truth when he felt it conflicted with the plot-line of his little lefty morality play–that’s repugnant. When Jimmy Carter dies, much as I dislike the man, I’m not going to talk about what a wanker he was in public, much less publish a list of his dismal initiatives and self-serving interventions.
I liked the part where the widow asks if Cole had ever been to the middle east, or if he knew arabic.
And not one word of condemnation for the killers! He should included it in his blog template: killers are bad.
Cole’s calumny forced Vincent’s widow to defend the honor of her slain husband and his murdered interpretor. Cole’s writings here are beneath contempt, but all too typical of the arrogance of entrenched leftists.
Go to the site that has Mrs. Vincent’s commentary, and look at the comments to the post, especially toward the end.
Outrageous.
TV (Harry)
tw: shot. Eerie.
Classy. You kiss your mother with that mouth?
TV (Harry)
Does Juan Cole bugger goats ? I am just asking …
Is actus really Jeff’s sock puppet ? I am just asking …
Juan Cole provides a perfectly respectable daily commentary on Middle Eastern events, particularly in Iraq. Hardly a rant-fest, by any stretch.
If he tends to believe that Iraq is a mess of intrique and that Israeli politics are squirrelly, he’s in good company.
For some reason he seems to reduce his critics to a reflex emotionalism. I’d be interested in seeing a more fact-based, rational challenge of his positions.
Golly, I don’t see why a preeminent university such as Yale wold hire a white guy to teach Middle Eastern studies. I mean, all of his knowledge of the subject is derivative. Certainly if this were an African studies position, Yale wouldn’t be hiring a white guy. Where’s the diversity?
T/W: south. As in
“I wish I were in the land of cotton,
Old Times there are not forgotten,
Look away, look away, look away….”
Rotwang,
That’s just perfect. Do you find Mr. Cole’s perfectly reprehensible smear of Mr. Vincent to be perfectly respectable?
The man is an antisemitic pig.
Hot f**kin’ s**t, Rotwang, you read an entire post about a specific incident where Juan Cole makes unsubstantiated claims (without any fatcts) and it’s his opponents that are reflexively emotional?!
Took me 30 seconds to find this, Rotwang:
Cole Take-Down.
Martin Kramer has made debunking Cole something of a cottage industry for himself. I understand that it’s a “target rich” environment in which to work.
What I found most upsetting about Cole is how every single casualty and every single insurgent attack, no matter how small, gets posted on his site. He seems to scour the web for bad news so he can then run and post it on his blog. Frankly, I found it too ghoulish to continue reading him.
Pixy Misa, the guru of mu.nu, once remarked that for every blogger, there is an equal and opposite blogger. Where Arthur Chrenkoff gave us good news on Iraq, if you read Cole’s site, there is only negative news. No matter what the news is, it’s always bad. For all of Cole’s blogging about Iraq, he never once mentioned Arthur Chrenkoff’s “good news” series. Not once. It is as if the possibility of good news doesn’t even exist for Cole.
Try it yourself if you don’t believe me.
The effect of his site is corrosive. If the sky in Iraq were bright blue, Cole would find the one cloud in the sky and posit that there is an epic storm brewing, and it is due to a combination of American incompetence or the influence of the Likudniks on the administration.
I can’t imagine the mindset of a person who could produce such a site; utterly without humor, no ray of sunshine to penetrate the gloom. It’s like reading battery acid put down on paper.
I used to attack him, but found that I simply detested reading him so much that I don’t even bother any more. He’ll ruin your day—and not because you’ll find his arguments compelling, or the volume of negativity to be persuasive—my point of view is that we are in Iraq because we have no choice, and therefore it—and Juan Cole—does not do a damn bit of good to “accentuate the negative, and eliminate the positive”, to paraphrase the song.
We have no choice but to win this, so frankly, until Cole ponies up some suggestions that are useful, he’s not worth reading. There’s nothing good or useful there. Just a body count and bad news.
yeah, old dad, I bet you are not racist or bigotted in any way, so your use of the words ‘antisemitic pic’ really carry alot of weight.
oh wait, nevermind – that’s just your fake race card outrage so you can seem better than everyone else you hate.
please prove that cole is a racist, because your statement does not seem to do so. and please try harder than mr man-chowder wisdom did last time. the quote he provided as proof of cole’s ‘antisemitism’ didn’t really prove shit. please see my comment on that thread.
prozacula,
Antisemitism is not racism. Really, look it up.
And I didn’t call Mr. Cole a “pic.” I called him a pig, and I stand by that assessment.
If you were to bet that I was not a bigot or an antisemite, you would win. Congratulations.
As to the proof of Mr. Cole’s antisemitism, try reading his blog. I know you know the way. Go back under that rock.
Very upsetting for a university professor to do research and then organize and present the results. Those casualties should remain in disparate reports, lest we be upset.
It seems like some speech is just too offensive for the academy, or at least for some people’s vision of Yale.
Actus,
When a man tells you only the casualty figures, he is not “do[ing] research and organiz[ing] and presenting results.”
He’s giving you an IV drip of negativity designed to destroy your will to fight.
One could portray, for instance, Sherman’s march to the sea as a tally, day by day, of Union bodies, or a testament to Sherman’s incompetence, or the sad futility of war.
Was Sherman effective? Did the Union win the war? Was it right and proper that they won, even though one might disagree with Sherman’s tactics? Was Sherman better than a number of bad alternatives?
Certainly there’s more to the Iraq story than the drip drip drip of seditious commentary we’re being given in the media.
Scroll up, dumbass.
He’s tallying them and presenting them in one place. That takes work. research. Which is upsetting. Does he also have to tally all the good news and put it into one place? I’ve seen him put good news on his site.
Certainly. Like there’s also how one person can put these all in one place.
And sedition too. I like to say it out loud.
What’s important is that you ignore actus.
That is all.
Yeah, actus has identified the problem at Yale, all right: too many conservatives imposing their vision and disallowing Cole’s brand of speech.
TW: could – Could he be more obtuse?
I went to Cole’s site once. As described, it is repulsive. No “beautiful mind” there. I read somewhere that the guy has never even been to the Middle East!!
actus, so long as you limit Cole’s area of expertise to ’tallying’ then we’re on the same page.
You’d admit that Cole demonstrates a singular ability to draw faulty conclusions from his tallied results, right?
Well, ‘admit’ might be hoping for too much. Let’s say that you know in your heart of hearts that Cole is wrong; you just can’t bear to give that thought expression.
That’s okay.
We’ll bear it for you.
.
I don’t know much about his area of expertise. I subscribed to his RSS feed, but usually I skip it because its got too much detail for me to follow along.
I don’t know what conclusions he has drawn. The guy was upset at his collection, not his conclusion.
Benon Sevan! Where you been hiding?
tw: run
Man, that thing is good.
– Too bad actus won’t pose as Sevans generous aunt for just a few minutes as they casually approach the elevator…..
– The invisible car would match actus’ abilities at reading comphrehension…. Near the end, the TTP* , always shifts to the “I don’t know enough” prang, which gives any debater much appriciated knowledge, that he/she just wasted xx minutes of their breath….
*TTP – Typing Telephone Pole(tm)
To those who defend Cole’s scholarship, consider this: The man said one of Bin Laden’s motivations for launching 9/11 when he did was to make it a response to the battle at the Jenin refugee camp. Unfortunately for him, that the battle took place in April 2002.
Pointing this out is not nitpicking an innocent, honest mistake.
First, how the hell did he make that mistake? Isn’t this his life’s work, for Pete’s sake. 9/11 was the most significant world event since the fall of the Iron Curtain, and it directly involves his field of expertise. A person in his position should have a pretty solid idea of what led up to that day.
So we have a Middle East scholar coming up with ex posto facto rationales for a terrorist event he should have a damn solid understanding of. Given his other writings, this indicates a willingless, even a desire, to sound the “We Had It Coming” refrain, probably because on some level he believes that.
He really is a disgusting individual and the whole Vincent episode shows he is ful of hubris and devoid of basic decency.
– Escewing all the pretty prose, I’d tend just to chalk him up as a 24 carat Liberal prick. But then I like to keep things simple.
I have two large problems with Cole no one else has mentioned:
1. He repeatedly calls common terrorists “guerrillas” even when they are (e.g.) cutting the throats of barbers for shaving Muslims or firing mortars at markets packed with women and children. Words have meanings, and ‘guerrilla’ and ‘terrorist’ are fairly well-defined: calling a common terrorist who targets civilians a ‘guerrilla’, as if he were wearing a uniform and attacking soldiers, is deeply dishonest.
2. I have several times politely but firmly corrected Cole’s use of ‘guerrilla’ for terrorist in his comment section. He uses comment moderation, and none of my comments ever appeared. Approving only the comments that agree with the site-owner seems (again) deeply dishonest.
All right. I can see that selling you birds on Prof. Cole is going to be harder than teaching Roger Simon the basics of image composition and PhotoShop color controls.
“He really is a disgusting individual and the whole Vincent episode shows he is ful of hubris and devoid of basic decency.” T-Webb
Well, T-Webb, you had one factual criticism regarding the Jenin gaffe (in fact, about the only one that’s ever raised against Cole, judging from Google), and I give you credit for that. Then you detoured into wailing emotionalism.
I thought only libs do that.
Rot Wang
You are right, they do.
But you are being purposefully obtuse. Someone pointed out Martin Kramer’s site as a motherlode of Cole-isms just like the one noted.
Confusing the timeline of an incident in 2002 with that of 911 in 2001 is a pretty big boo boo. Don’t you agree, or are we to perpetually debate the meaning is “is”.
TW word: turn: one bad turn …
what/of. Just thought I’d add that.
Steven Vincent was killed in Basra, yet Juan Cole is citing “Mediterranean culture” as a potential source of conflict–holy shit!
I may not know much about culture in Basra, but I know enough about geography to know that Cole’s talking about the wrong gulf, here. If he gets something that basic wrong, what’s left to believe?
If all of us had to go about denouncing all the bad things in this world, things so obviously bad that it is a wonder some find it to be open to interpretation, we wouldn’t have much time to talk about the good things…wait a second, does this mean Conservatives are projecting when they say Liberal are always negative and angry?
I haven’t seen a post around here denouncing Saddam in some time, Jeff, have you switched your position and want him back in power?
For people like Fred, reading the thread is a bit on the difficult side.
Fred is just trying to deflect. Its worked so well for the Left these last six years. Look at all the power and reputation they have today. They will literally go to their graves convinced that Bush was wrong and that the American people are evil and stupid.
– No Fred – thats called “superlatively accurate observation”.
– “Deflection” means never having to say “I understand as Liberals, we’re eternally fucked”.
– Now wasn’t that fun?
– Or for those of us with less patience for the mentally moribund, you can just tell Liberals:
…”Jack on, jack-off”
Juan Cole is right-
Anybody that is killed in an honor killing pretty much deserved it, because they must have known the rules of the culture. This is especially true of any woman killed in an honor killing, because surely she would have grown up knowing the consequences of being seen with a man or disobeying daddy.
Is it so hard to just <i>respect the culture<i>?
ps. figures the guy is a wolverine.
Haven’t guerillas have used this sort of violence in the past?
Thats what nail yale boy says. Not juan cole.
Ann Arbor is a whore!
As a wolverine, I denounce your enmity of whores!
– Michies, as a group, aren’t so bad…. as long as OSU kicks their butts in feetsball….
Years ago, some grad school classmates and I were discussing the then-recent hire of a talented, notoriously nasty professor to a very prestigious position. Some naif wondered how the university could overlook his arrogance and abrasiveness. A friend of mine, pointing out that these can be helpful qualities in academia, imagined the hiring discussion:
“Wow, this guy’s a huge douchebag. We want him!”
Don’t know why I just thought of that….
I probably shouldn’t argue with ‘actus’, and I suspect that his objection is disingenuous, but, for those who might be misled by it:
It is possible to be a guerrilla or a regular soldier (and therefore legitimate) most of the time and perform acts of terrorism (totally illegitimate) now and then. For example: Lt. Calley was surely a proper soldier on most days of his military career, but he was certainly a terrorist and war criminal on at least one day at My Lai. Similarly, an Iraqi who tries to kill U.S. troops while wearing a uniform, not hiding behind civilians, and so on may be a ‘guerrilla’ and protected by the Geneva Convention. However, when he starts murdering barbers or firing mortars at civilian markets, he is acting as a terrorist and should be called one. Calling him a ‘guerrilla’, as Cole does, is contemptibly dishonest, even if he is a guerrilla most days of the week.
Of course, even those who target U.S. troops in Iraq do not generally wear uniforms, routinely hide behind civilians even when they’re not targeting them, and (in short) make a point of violating every provision of the Geneva Conventions. They are not really ‘guerrillas’ even when they’re not targeting barbers and housewives. Even less so, when they do.
Don’t forget to sign Juan’s petition: <a href=”http://www.petitiononline.com/mod_perl/signed.cgi?frdmspch&51″ target=”_blank”>
We understand…everyone gets weak on occassion.
Hopefully this will work.
Juan Cole Petition
You tell me what Cole meant, actus. You tell me what he is saying about understanding Midle Eastern culture and acting so dangerously you get killed in an honor killing. Feel free to use more than one sentence.
Wow, he’s in good company isn’t he?
Pretty amazing how people with so much knowledge, experience, and in such respected positions could be so profoundly foolish. Actually, it’s not all that amazing to me anymore. These people required hundreds of thousands of my families dollars to pretend to teach me for 4 years, and now I have a totally awesome piece of paper to show for it.
Being able to remember what you are supposed to should not be confused with intelligence.
Forbes  remember, this is Juan Cole, the professor who boasts of his Middle Eastern expertise and fluency in Arabic on his blog… but insists on addressing Arab conferences in English.
The worst of it is, Cole’s post-colonial guilt shtick is passe and discredited by recent events, only our elite universities are a little slow on the uptake.
Yale would be getting yesterday’s au courant, Said warmed over and stale already.
On behalf of the faculty of the University of Michigan, I would like to encourage Yale to hire Juan Cole as quickly as possible. (It is predicted that on the day Cole receives his Yale appointment, the average IQ of both faculties will rise by 10 points.)
TW: beyond, as in: It’s beyond insulting to be institutionally linked to this moron.
Finally, a move that I can support 110%.
but insists on addressing Arab conferences in English
To be fair, “Greetings, our Arab friends! Please spank me, I’m a bad boy” sounds much better in English.
That this guy was acting dangerously in a place where honor killings take place.
Honor killings are bad dude. Don’t you know that?
Yeah, and I’ve worn short skirts to the bar before, actus. Dangerous.
To be fair, I understand the arugment that people put themselves in dangerous situations. What I have a problem with is Cole’s utter refusal to condemn the murder, or the culture that condones it, in the same manner he condemns Vincent. Not only that, but he is creating the basis of the condemnation out of either rumor or innuendo.
In reality, all Cole is doing is using Vincent’s death to show off that he, Juan Cole, understands these people. Its repulsive.
In the interest of fairness (again), Juan Cole’s response to the letter by Vincent’s widow, along with commentary. As to those questioning the romatic relationship between Vincent and his translator, here are the first three paragraphs from the original article in the Telegraph that Cole is responding to:
We’ve known for a while that “professor” Cole hates America. Now it turns out that he’s a fire-breathing anti-semite as well. Perfect, I suppose for the school that recently tenured the Taliban’s spokesman.
Where does it end? With Michael Moore replacing Larry Summers? With Harvey Mansfield being replaced by Ward Churchilll? Where does the makeover of American academia into a Marxist/Islamist anti-Semitic, anti-America propaganda machine end?
As I said. Dr. Cole is clearly the superior culture understander. You would never catch him getting himself killed in Iraq. Now, tell me that girl shouldn’t have known better too.
Because rapists are bad people.
Uh, Llama School, did you bother to read Mrs. Vincent’s reply to Cole carefully? Because she said, quite plainly:
She also mentions her own later attempts to get the translator out of Iraq, which doesn’t seem like something she’d be likely to do if her husband had a “romantic relationship” with the woman.
Sorry…let me clarify. That should have read “As to those questioning the source for the romatic relationship between Vincent and his translator, see the Telegraph article”. Cole’s comments re: a romantic relationship were based on the Telegraph article linked above, which reported that Vincent and Weidi were engaged and that there was evidence of an honor killing (likely if they were in a romantic relationship). Cole never alleged he was cheating on his wife, nor were his comments in any way excusing this murder.
Well, LS, you might have some wiggle room when you say, “Cole never alleged he was cheating on his wife,” except for the fact that Cole himself said, “He was romantically involved with his Iraqi interpreter,” without saying anything like “According to a Telegraph article.”
In Cole’s defense, so to speak, he does sort of weasel around his previous statement by writing, ”If her clan thought she was shaming them by appearing to be having an affair outside wedlock with an American male, they might well have decided to end it,” but that’s a lot of innuendo, if you ask me.
I’m going to be a lot less charitable with your claim that Cole didn’t excuse Vincent’s murder, especially in light of his statement that, “if he was behaving in the way the Telegraph article describes, he was acting in an extremely dangerous manner.” That sounds an awful lot like, as MayBee said before “he was asking for it.” Not to mention the fact that he didn’t condemn the murderers at all.
In fact, he ends his response to Vincent’s widow (in which he goes out of his way to call his critics “wingnuts” and “ignorant Americans”–serious terms for a serious academic) by writing:
I’m almost surprised that he didn’t take the next step and blame Vincent outright.
The guy’s an asshole.
And so are all his defenders.
He can’t, you see here where the fault truly lay:
<blockquote>He was a defender of the Bush administration policies in Iraq, and he was killed in the course of reporting on Shiite religious parties’ and militias’ influence in Basra. But that influence was a direct result of Coalition policies!</blockquote
A quick question for Cole’s defenders: if a crazed lunatic were to kill the good professor, or one of his colleagues like Chief Churchill, will you say they should have known better than to provoke a bunch of war-mongering NRA wingnuts?
Anyone who defends Cole is a dishonest scumbag. That guy belongs in jail, not at Yale.
*That this guy was acting dangerously in a place where honor killings take place. *
Sigh. “Acting dangerously” = “hiring a female interpreter and being seen with her in public”. He was not having an affair. I assume the reason that all of the idiot commentators immediately come to that conclusion (despite the compelte lack of evidnece) is b/c its the ONLY ONLY ONLY ONLY thing that “justifies” the killing of Steve Vincent. The killing of Steve Vincent ultimately justifies the whole “Iraq is fucked” memme.
Quite honestly, coming down on the side of a culture which cannot force itself out of the dark ages is pathetic.
Killing Steve Vincent was wrong, period, no matter what he did/did not do and the “people” who killed him are barbarians.
TW Fear – I genuinely believe the left fear the islamists. I don’t. I own a 9mm and I’m a helluva accurate shot. Bring it on.
Matt Esq:
I am with you, there. I don’t fear the islamists either. I am locked and loaded to the teeth, as well. But the difference in the left’s viewpoint-there is NO THREAT from world-wide radical Islam. That is the idiocy of their position.
Rational people recognize the threat.
“Progressives” do not.
Cole’s defenders don’t, and won’t, take the tone of his speculation on Vincent’s death under consideration. It’s extremely cold and callous, and reads as though he the murder itself wasn’t unfortunate. He wouldn’t have raisedsuch bile among conservatives if he had written something a little more humane, along the lines of:
<i>The murder of journalist Steven Vincent is a terrible occurrence, and my condolences go to his wife and family. Based on what I’ve read, though, I wonder if this is more than the now standard violence perpetrated against journalists in this country. According to the Daily Telegraph, Vincent was planning on marrying his female translator. This raises the specter of an honor killing…<i>
Cole wouldn’t write something like that, however, since it tends to downplay the chaos in Iraq that he so loves to publicize. And, more to the point, such a style precludes him from taking cheap shots at a dead man (Vincent, a married man, was sleeping with his translator out of wedlock; he didn’t know the culture and was stupid for actling like he did.)
The guy basically turned a man’s murder into a chance to gossip and smear him, without a hint of sadness or regret about the loss of life.
That’s why I say he’s devoid of basic decency.
You don’t shit on the dead. That’s why Fred Phelps is an asshole and that’s why Cole is one, too.
Please finish this thought for me:
Prof. Juan Cole was a fekking asshole,
And a fekking asshole was he . . .
Please point to a single prediction Juan Cole has made about Iraq or anyplace else outside the faculty lounge that has come true.
And honor killings are terrible because they are based on innuendo.
IIRC, He predicted that the reason Sistani pushed bush to have elections was because the shiites would win big. And they did.
that’s what makes them terrible???!!
Um, I see there’s another person using the handle “Fred” on this thread. I’m the “Fred” that pointed out that Martin Kramer offers a wealth of Cole “gems” on his site. So, you know, I’m not the dick head “Fred” that commented later.
Damn. Now I’ll need a new nom de blog.
actus,
Wonderful satire!
The genius Cole predicts that the party with a huge majority will win the election.
God that’s brilliant.
I’d think that the killing part speaks for itself. But you never know these days.
His arguments against boycotts of israeli academics also have a bit of a prophetic tone, in the sense that he predicts its only useful at erasing internal israeli disagreement with Likud policies.
Ya know, I don’t really mind actus. He is reasonably polite, unlike almost all others on the other side politically that drop by here. While almost never agreeing with his positions, sometimes I can almost see where he’s coming from.
Having said that, I do believe he’s out of his league here. Kinda like the fourth best pitcher from the Toledo Mudhens in double a ball– facing the ‘27 Yankees. Ruth at the plate. Sitting dead red on a weak 72 mph fastbal. Points to the right field bleachers. The pitch….holy cow, he got all that one. Tape measure shot. As the Babe round the bases, actus glances nervously at the dugout. Gehrig due up next…..
Murderers Row, indeed.
The point is that it was not an honor killing. Cole, who knows—well, should know—that “religious fanatics” is too broad a categorization for the perpetrators of honor killings, engaged in completely UNinformed commentary when he repeated the baseless allegation floated by the Telegraph.
It wasn’t an honor killing. Those are committed by the families of the supposedly dishonored, not by strangers whose honor is not implicated. This is the point that Cole and his supporters refuse to address.
This was a political assassination. Every shred of evidence points to that. None points to an honor killing. In an honor killing, the female is the primary target. Cole knows this. He knows that if only one person survived the attack, it would be Vincent, not the woman. She survived.
Cole and his supporters are completely lacking in intellectual honesty.
“Maybe because there’s no FUCKING EVIDENCE he was sleeping with that woman you asshole. “
No evidence of a relationship?
http://www.laweekly.com/news/news/steven-vincents-final-days/363/
‘““There are two stories in Basra right now,†said an Iraqi correspondent in the city who asked that his name not be used. “One is that Steven was killed because there was a relationship between him and Nour. The other is that he was killed for writing an article accusing the Sadr office of kidnappings.†‘
and here:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/08/07/wirq107.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/08/07/ixworld.html
‘British officials hunting the killers of an American journalist in Basra are investigating the possibility that he may have been targeted over his relationship with his Iraqi translator, whom he had pledged to marry.’
‘The interpreter, Nour Weidi, who was shot four times in the attack, has told investigators from her hospital bed that Mr Vincent planned to marry her so she could settle in the United States.’
Jeff has a quote from Clint Taylor:
‘Juan Cole’s comment on his death is preserved for posterity here, along with a scorching, devastating response from Steven Vincent’s widow, Lisa Vincent-Ramaci, to which I don’t believe Cole has ever responded, let alone apologized.’
Except for, umm, here:
http://www.juancole.com/2005/08/steven-vincent-case-i-am-reposting.html
Do you guys do any, I mean any, research before mouthing off?
Leaving aside the bone-idleness of the poster and commenters here, Cole makes the non-unreasonable point that it looks a lot like an honor killing, and that Vincent was acting recklessly by trangressing against cultural taboos he didn’t understand or respect. You may admire him for being undaunted by those taboos. But it’s still reckless.
To give an analogy: I have a close relative who’s a Catholic in Northern Ireland. She has a drinking problem. She went to a loyalist bar, i.e. a bar frequented by supporters of Protestant paramilitaries. She was beaten badly by thugs from the pub who realized she was Catholic afterwards. Were those thugs wrong in beating her yes? Was she stupid and reckless in going to a loyalist pub? Yes. The wrongness of the thugs’ actions doesn’t mean she was not reckless in placing herself in harm’s way by breaking a taboo.
And I’d suggest those of you who have no experience in manuoevring in environments were walking down the wrong street, going into the wrong establishment, or saying the wrong thing too loudly can get you beaten or killed, to kindly STFU and listen to those of us who do.
“In an honor killing, the female is the primary target. Cole knows this. He knows that if only one person survived the attack, it would be Vincent, not the woman. She survived.”
They shot her four times. How do you know they didn’t leave her for dead?.
Oh, tough goy? Sorry, S & M doesn’t impress us here. We have actus, after all.
Point is Cole walked over a dead man’s grave and does it constantly with every coalition fatality; He’s a scumbag. Thus endeth the sermon.
I reiterate.
Primary target is the female.
Family does it.
Actual impugned honor.
None of the above is in evidence. You’re beaten, oik.
It’s gotta be tough defending a piece of crap like Cole. It’s just gotta be, if you have any intellectual honesty or sense of morality.
Yeah, nikkolai, or simply the slightest ability to wield Occam’s Razor.
Reporter reporting on gangland-style asssassinations is murdered in precisely the kind of gangland-style assasination he’s been investigating—Occam sez: He was rubbed out.
Possible honor killing in which no family members are implicated (note that the only way to get the family’s honor back is for the community at large to know that you have restored the honor personally), and where in fact the family approved of the relationship, and finally, the primary target actually survives—Occam sez: that would be an entirely new kind of honor killing.
As William of Occam would no doubt say were he alive today: “Avoid the needless multiplication of ontological entities in deriving an explanation, you fucking dishonest, morally bankrupt, intellectually vacant douchebags.”
EPIC.
“I reiterate.
Primary target is the female.
Family does it.
Actual impugned honor.
Again, from the Telegraph article:
“Staff at the Basra hotel where Mr Vincent had lived for three months say the couple’s relationship had drawn disapproval and warnings of retribution. “
Sounds like actual impugned honor to me.
“None of the above is in evidence. You’re beaten, oik. “
Saying something is so doesn’t make it so, friend.
“Primary target is the female.”
From the LA Weekly column:
‘His 31-year-old colleague Nouriya Itais Wadi, also known as Nour Al-Khal and often referred to as “Leyla†in Vincent’s writings, was *left for dead next to him*, shot four times.’
Did you bother reading through the thread before commenting?
Try here, for instance.
And why not use your name. Why enter the conversation with a big “I’m a dick here to spray piss all over the wingnuts” sign on your chest?
No, you’re right. IT WAS STEVE VINCENT’S FAULT.
What a load of douche-bags.
I guess the Hispanic kid in Texas who tried to kiss a white girl will be Cole’s next target, shouldn’t get involved in honor culture, he was just asking for it.
“Did you bother reading through the thread before commenting?
Try here, for instance.”
Yes I did. And I’d make the same comment as Llama School did right afterwards – it’s the appearance (and the account of Hotel staff suggest that others did read that a romantic relationship was going on: Vincent’s offer to marry Nour might actually have heightened that preception if it had become known), not the reality, of impropriety that matters. the same way that if I wear a “I love the Pope” t-shirt down the Shankill Road in Belfast, whether or not you’re actually Protestant or Catholic is irrelevant to the subsequent kicking.
BTW, Leyla means “dark beauty”, and is the female protagonist in a Middle Eastern “Romeo and Juliet” story. That’s probably why Juan Cole saw it as being significant.
Whose honor was impugned, fool?