{"id":662,"date":"2004-12-27T21:35:46","date_gmt":"2004-12-27T21:35:46","guid":{"rendered":"0"},"modified":"2006-09-28T12:08:56","modified_gmt":"2006-09-28T12:08:56","slug":"mutual_assured","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/?p=662","title":{"rendered":"Mutual Assured Climbdown"},"content":{"rendered":"

I need to note Juan Cole’s climbdown<\/a> on the Iraq-The-Model-Guys-are-CIA thing.<\/p>\n

So, anyway, I offer this posting as a clarification and also, as a retraction of the comment about the Abilene ISP and any unfounded implication of USG support for the IraqTheModel site. And I apologize to the Ali brothers for the error, and want to stress that I bear them no ill will. I am sorry I was abroad and unable to respond in detail before now.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s probably matched in gracelessness by my own climbdown<\/a> on calling him “pond scum”:<\/p>\n

First, let me back down – slightly – I do firmly believe that attitudes which dehumanize the ‘other’ are a critical part of totalitarian thinking.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I believe that Dr. Cole dehumanized Jones-Hoffman, but in truth, didn’t offer conclusive – or even significant – evidence for it. I still believe it, but I ‘get’ the point that it’s neither proven nor, probably, provable and so not a fit subject for discussion.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Then again, I can’t blame the whole thing on my mesmerizing power over the Internet…<\/p>\n

And, if I could take it back, I wouldn’t have linked at all. This is a matter in some ways of not knowing my own strength. Blogging is deceptively informal, sort of like a conversation rather than like formal writing. So it is natural to cross-link among friends and say, ‘Hey, check this out.’ But my weblog has come to be so widely read that this degree of informality is now a luxury I obviously cannot afford, and I will try to be more careful.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Actually, being thoughtful in what we write is a good thing no matter how many or few readers we may have.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I need to note Juan Cole’s climbdown on the Iraq-The-Model Guys are CIA thing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/662"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=662"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/662\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}