Jarvis has his own beef with Cole, over Prof. Cole’s ridiculous accusation that Mohammed, Omar & Ali of Iraq the Model are a CIA project. This isn’t about that. I don’t want this to become all Juan Cole-bashing all the time, but I just read something so horrible that I needed to blog it.
It wasn’t on Cole’s site – or rather, only part of it was.
Cole blogged the murder of U.S. Navy officer Kylan Jones-Hoffman in Iraq.Cole dismisses the murder with this comment:
The assassin said that he felt that Jones-Huffman “looked Jewish.” The fruits of hatred sowed in the Middle East by aggressive and expansionist Israeli policies in the West Bank and Gaza against the Palestinians and in south Lebanon against Shiites continue to be harvested by Americans.
And then adds this:
(Some readers have written to say that the Iraqi assassin’s association of all Jews with the misdeeds of the rightwing hawks in the Occupied Territories is outrageous. I, of course, entirely agree. It is the essence of bigotry to blame all members of a group for the actions of a few.)
Nice rhetorical dance; say it and then disavow responsibility. But that’s not what’s horrible. I sadly have just come to kinda expect this kind of thing from Cole.
It gets much worse.
Over on Smash’s site, he also comments on the murder – and on the recent trial and conviction of the murderer in an Iraqi court. Smash has a cause to be paying attention here – he was Jones-Hoffman’s roomate at Annapolis.
But then he points out that Cole does, too:
KYLAN didn’t support the decision to go to war in Iraq. But he believed that once begun, it was crucial for us to finish the job. He had a running email dialogue with anti-war University of Michigan professor Juan Cole, right up to a few days before his death.
Professor Cole had a personal correspondance with the murdered sailor, and didn’t fucking mention it.
He doesn’t have the simple decency to recognize – even in passing – the humanity of the murdered man. Why do that? It would get in the way of his ideologically sound point. Back in August, Kylan was a human being. Now he’s a token in Cole’s ideological game.
Cole is a true keeper of the totalitarian flame; with this latest, I have no trouble envisioning him ordering the camps being built. After all, those liquidated in them wouldn’t really be human anyway.
“Cole is a true keeper of the totalitarian flame; with this latest, I have no trouble envisioning him ordering the camps being built. After all, those liquidated in them wouldn’t really be human anyway.”
Yes.
When a human life exist only to serve a political cause, namely your own, then you are indeed keeping the flame bright and strong, so that mankind may yet be burned by it in time.
Worst Armed Liberal post ever (I hope). Cole says two different things that are not only compatible but both obviously true, A.L. turns this into a “rhetorical dance” and a disavowal of responsibility.
But “it gets much worse.” A.L. is angry with Cole for not mentioning that he had had an email correspondence with the murder victim. Some people might think that reticence to his credit; that he refrained from self-importantly suggesting that a notable feature of Jones-Huffman’s life was an email debate with the eminent professor Cole. But suppose A.L.’s right and it really just shows that Cole is a cold fish. It’s still inexcusable to jump from that to the conclusion that Cole is a “totalitarian” and to indulge in public fantasies about his building liquidation camps.
A.L. comes across as a smart guy less inclined to close reasoning than to intuition. This post should show him something about those intuitions; that they don’t suffice to keep his behaviour decent toward people he politically disagrees with.
Abu Frank: “Cole says two different things that are not only compatible but both obviously true …”
So it’s obviously true that if someone is murdered in the street – for the crime of “looking Jewish” – it’s Israel’s fault? Because that is exactly what Cole said, and I’ll do you the courtesy of assuming that you just failed to read it carefully. Do you suppose that if there are “rightwing hawks” in Israel it might be because there are so many people who like to kill Jews?
As for Cole’s other obvious truth: “It is the essence of bigotry to blame all members of a group for the actions of a few” – that’s like listening to Al Capone talk about how much he hates violence.
I think your “close reasoning” malfunctioned on you.
Abu – sorry you feel that way. But I’ll stand by my comments. Had Cole stood by his original point he’d be wrong – after all, the frenzy of Jew-hating whipped up by the Arab governments and media might just have had some role – but he wouldn’;t have been dancing. His dance comes from the ‘just sayin’ ” disavowal in the parenthetical addendum.
And some humanizing mention of Jones-Hoffman’s prior relationship with him would hardly have been ‘self-important’. This isn’t the assasination of a President, it’s just the murder of another person like you or me.
A.L.
“So it’s obviously true that if someone is murdered in the street – for the crime of “looking Jewish” – it’s Israel’s fault? Because that is exactly what Cole said,”
Only it’s not exactly what Cole said. What Cole said wasn’t a childish “it’s their fault,” but a grownup’s recognition of a connection, ( call it Karmic if you like. )
Geez, it’s as if Israel were sacred or something. Cole clearly has a beef with Israel, and given the things Israel has done the last 30 years it’s not hard to understand. And it doesn’t make the Palistinians saints to say so.
“He doesn’t have the simple decency to recognize – even in passing – the humanity of the murdered man”
You conclude this because Cole didn’t mention he had a correspondence? That’s ridiculous! There’s a dozen good reasons I can think of to not mention it, the first is that it’s irrelevant to the point Cole wants to make. It’s a blog, not a confessional.
Glen Wishard, I’ve read a lot of Juan Cole, and I’ve never noticed him blaming all Jews for the actions of the Israeli government.
Yowzers. Overreact much?
Glen Wishard:
So it’s obviously true that if someone is murdered in the street – for the crime of “looking Jewish” – it’s Israel’s fault? Because that is exactly what Cole said . . .
Blatant falsehood. Not a lie, because a lie is an attempt to deceive, and this is too brazen for that; it’s more a case of “Screw the truth, whatever we say goes.”
“It’s Israel’s fault” is “exactly what Cole said”? Strange then that he doesn’t use the word “fault”, or any synonym. You can’t make out your claim by honestly interpreting what he says; you can’t even make it out by twisting his words; so instead you put your words into his mouth.
To refute what Cole actually said — that America harvested “the fruits of hatred sowed . . . by . . . Israeli policies”, you’d need to show either that “Israeli policies” had not sown “fruits of hatred” (as Armed Liberal attempts to, in his comment above) or that the United States had not harvested them (i.e., that hatred of Israel didn’t cost the United States). These are both factual issues, requiring political not moral analysis; of course, since Cole’s statement was a factual not a moral proposition.
If you were sincerely interested in whose fault Cole considered the murder to be, you might note that he calls the Iraqi who actually shot Jones-Huffman an “assassin” (a highly complimentary word to the victim, incidently), and speaks of his being “brought to justice”. Enough to make someone think — who wasn’t consumed by partisan passion — he might consider the murder the murderer’s fault?
Abu Frank –
Let me get this straight. Juan Cole said that Jones-Huffman’s murder was the result of “hatred sowed in the Middle East by aggressive and expansionist Israeli policies” (his exact words). But because he doesn’t use the word “fault”, you’re calling me a brazen liar? More than that: you paraphrase me as saying “Screw the truth”?
Obviously you’re not comprehending me, or Juan Cole either. Cole’s use of the words “sowed” and “harvested” is a common metaphorical usage which clearly implies causal relationship and responsibility. “As ye sow, so shall ye reap.” If you don’t believe me, look it up in the Bible. But the meaning of what Cole wrote is very plain, and all can read it and judge for themselves.
You’re also very impressed with Cole’s use of the word “assassin”. I agree – thank God he didn’t say “activist”. But it’s all beside the point, because Cole isn’t interested in defending Huffman-Jones’ murderer (the word I would have used) – he’s only interested in laying the blame for the man’s death on Israel.
Really, if you’re going to focus so much on the isolated meaning of the words at the expense of the overall meaning of the sentence, then you can’t enjoy a pleasant drive through the forest because you’ll keep hitting the trees.
Archie –
If an African were to gun down a man on the streets of New Orleans, because he suspected him of having a French accent – are we supposed to attribute it to the Very Bad Karma of French Colonialism? No thanks, I’ll stick with my childish notions of right and wrong.
The killer appears to have volunteered his anti-Semetic justification with the expectation of mercy, if not pardon, recanting his confession only when he realized new “rules” were in place. Who created these rules or societal expectations? Right-wing likudniks? Since the killer was born and raised in a totalitarian society, I think there are far more likely suspects _if_ we want to “victimize” the killer as a thrall of greater geo-political forces.
A.L. mentioned some of the causes of anti-Semitism; we could all list more. Cole listed *one*: Israeli policies of hate. Upon demands for clarification, Cole narrowed his condemnation to some Israelis. Thus, we are assured that all jews are not responsible for anti-semitism, only some. Yech.
(1 of maybe 2)
Glen Wishard:
Juan Cole said that Jones-Huffman’s murder was the result of “hatred sowed in the Middle East by aggressive and expansionist Israeli policies” (his exact words).
Hey, we agree on that.
But because he doesn’t use the word “fault”, you’re calling me a brazen liar?
I specifically denied that you were lying. A liar pays the truth the tribute that hypocrisy pays to virtue; you exhibited your contempt for it.
Specifically, the wilful untruthfullness in your first post comes in with “exactly what he’s saying”. If you’d said “In my interpretation, Cole’s intention is to blame Israel”, that would presumably have been true; if you’d said “Cole blames Israel”, that would have been false but honest; it’s when you try to pass off your inept interpretation and “what Cole said” as “exactly” the same that the untruthfulness becomes wilful.
Cole’s use of the words “sowed” and “harvested” is a common metaphorical usage which clearly implies causal relationship and responsibility.
You’re taking care here to confuse two distinct matters, causal relationship and moral responsibility. In your first post you claimed that “it’s Israel’s fault” is “exactly what Cole said”. In your second post, you substitute “result” for “fault” and try to pass this off as the same position. Now here you run “causal relationship” and “responsibility” together. Naturally, since twisting the relationship between those two different things is precisely what this slander is about.
“As ye sow, so shall ye reap.” If you don’t believe me, look it up in the Bible.
Without claiming any Bible scholarship, I’d guess that in that particular instance, sowing and reaping could stand for either causal relationship or divine justice or both at once (with an implicit claim that the two are interrelated). It’s pretty clear Cole isn’t claiming that Jones-Huffman’s death is God’s punishment of Israel’s sins.
On the causal relation – moral responsibility nexus, more separately.
(2 of 2?)
It’s common ground that Cole intends to assert a causal relation between Israel’s actions and effects on the United States, including specifically Jones-Huffman’s death. So one might argue as follows: People (and states) are responsible for the consequences of their actions. So causal relation entails blame. So when Cole says that there is a causal relation, he’s at least implicitly blaming Israel. So when Jones-Huffman is “murdered in the street”, Cole thinks it’s Israel’s fault. This is perhaps the best defence for the Cole-basher’s position; though specious, it’s wrong.
Moral reponsibility is complex; the complexity provides opportunities for sophistry; the Cole-bashers exploit them.
Some observations:
* “Fault” or “blame” are mostly moral terms, but can occasionally be used without moral implications (“It was the fault of the rope”, “I blame the weather”, etc.)
* For the same outcome, several different people can be at fault, to different degrees, for different reasons.
* Blame can differ not only quantitatively (“more to blame”) but qualitatively. Specifically, there’s a qualitative difference between other kinds of responsibility and criminal culpability.
For example; somewhere in the O’Brian novels, there’s an episode where Aubrey and Maturin have to pass some highwayman-infested stretch of road, and Aubrey, knowing his friend’s negligence, insists on checking his pistols. Suppose that he’d neglected to do that, and Maturin’s death resulted. Then Aubrey surely would have blamed himself for his friend’s death. But there would have been two people more at fault, Maturin, for his own self-neglect, and far more than either, the highwayman who did the killing. And the criminal culpability of course would have been entirely upon the killer.
[In the book, as I recall, Maturin is carrying biological specimens where his pistols should be, so his friend’s care is in vain.]
OK, back to the Middle East. Cole asserts a causal connection; what follows morally? Something, but nothing much.
If Israel’s actions have some effect on its friends’ welfare (and it would be insane to deny any effect), then indeed Israel should take account of those effects in determining its actions. To the extent that it fails to do so, it is blameworthy. Does Israel take sufficient account? It’s hardly possible to say; this is a tiny matter compared to the other considerations involved.
In the post in question, Cole describes Israel’s actions in words (“aggressive”, “expansionist”) with relatively little moral loading, directed more to Arab-Israel contention than to moral blame. Elsewhere of course he uses harsher expressions. I assume for purposes of discussion he would support these charges (amongst many lesser ones): that the state of Israel frequently acts with wilful neglect of innocent Arab life, and that on on occasion it implicitly condones downright murder by its agents.
Now if Cole believes (to take the most notorious instance) that Mohammed al Durra was murdered by members of the IDF, and that the government of Israel condoned that murder, how much does that have to do with Jones-Huffman? If you believe that, then you blame the government of Israel for neither taking steps to punish the murderer nor making such amends as it could to the relatives of the victim. Why? First, and overwhelmingly, as a matter of moral responsibility toward the victim; second, still substantively, in Israel’s own interest, to lower rather than raise its neighbours’ hostility; a very negligible third, because that hostility might have some knock-on effects to Israel’s friends.
Was Israel thinking enough about the interests of the United States when it decided to pass the matter over? Who knows? Who cares?
Now consider the matter from the other direction. Suppose that Jones-Huffman’s murderer was motivated by Israel’s misconduct and the United States’ “knee-jerk support” (to borrow an expression from one of Cole’s other posts). Who then is to blame for the murder? First, and overwhelmingly, the murderer himself — who of course bears the sole criminal culpability; a distant second, but still substantively, the United States, if it failed to take prudent account of the consequences of that support; far back again, Israel, if it failed to take due account of the effects of its actions on the United States, amongst many weightier considerations.
So when Cole’s detractors accuse him of blaming Israel, what kind of blame are they talking about? At one extreme, blame could mean sole criminal culpability (and that’s the best sense I can make of Armed Liberal’s original post); at another, it could mean blame in some non-moral sense (like blaming hot weather for a rise in the murder rate). I take it that no one’s waxing indignant at Cole for imputing blame in the last sense; and that when Glen Wishard complains Cole says “it’s Israel’s fault”, he’s talking about some heavy moral responsibility; not the pale shadow of blame that causal connection in this case entails.
Now “pale shadow of blame” is my conclusion from my analysis. I don’t think anything in my analysis is particularly controversial; I think most reasonable people would come to similar conclusions. Still, it’s possible that Cole might come to quite different conclusions. What evidence is there that he does? None whatsovever.
So what do you have to do to get an indictment of Cole out of all this? Two possibilities. You can equivocate; saying “Cole blames Israel”, suppressing the modifying phrase “to some tiny degree”, and intending your readers to take it as “Cole blames Israel solely (or principally)”. Or you can fantasise; Cole asserts causal connection; this together with some other crazy premises that Cole nowhere upholds could imply that he holds Israel largely to blame; so let’s just say he does.
Oh, and then, when you’re done, remember to claim that that’s “exactly what Cole said”.
(3rd and hopefully last)
So (I claim) Cole is asserting causal connection not moral responsibility; and while the first can entail the second, in this case the moral responsibility involved is somewhere between non-existent and slight. It’s not plausible that Cole’s main purpose is to impute this slight degree of moral responsibility. What then is it?
In the background of his post, as Armed Liberal probably knows and Cole certainly does, is a long-running dispute in U.S. foreign policy; is the special relationship with Israel a strategic asset or a strategic liability? This of course feeds into the larger question, what the U.S.’s relation with Israel should be. If one admits that its a strategic liability, one can still argue that for its maintenance on other grounds; but of course it’s easier to to argue for maintenance if it’s a strategic asset.
For a long time U.S. support for Israel coexisted with a consensus in the U.S. policy community that the relation was a strategic liability. That consensus rested on the obvious considerations, first, that there were a lot more Arabs than Israelis, second, that they had oil. Through some combination of moral commitment and domestic political calculation (not to mention various benefits of the relation at a tactical level), the U.S. would/should remain Israel’s friend; but strategic considerations put limits on the friendship.
Since this strategic view, though obviously true, limited U.S. support for Israel, the Israel lobby in the U.S. was naturally concerned to overthrow it; first in their own minds, secondly in the broader policy community. The first presumably was no great task. The second was accomplished over time with considerable persistent effort, with the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) playing a leading role.
Whatout reading Cole’s mind, I guess his purpose is to use the trial of Jones-Huffman’s killer to uphold the obvious but contentious truth, that the special relationship costs the United States more than it benefits it. Further, and more remotely, I guess this feeds into a larger argument (not made in that particular post) that, for strategic and other reasons, U.S. support for Israel should be reduced and conditionalised.
What of Cole’s detractors? I’m willing to credit them with sincerity when they complain that Cole blames Israel; and it’s obvious on all sides that the U.S. relation with Israel is in some way at issue here. Many of them surely are aware of the strategic issue, though their complaints tend to obfuscate it.
Ultimately Cole’s detractors have to speak for their own intentions, but one consequence of their conduct is plain. Whatever their motives, the effect of their conduct is to shout down the strategic argument. To make the strategic argument, you have to assert a causal connection between Israel’s actions and harm to the United States; if you do that, the noise machine kicks into action and accuses you of “blaming Israel”; onlookers are encouraged to believe that you exculpate Arab murderers of U.S. citizens; the strategic argument gets howled down.
In defence of rational U.S. foreign policy, quite apart from defending a good man from a dirty smear, it’s necessary to take on the noise machine.
Armed Liberal,
I’m afraid I don’t follow.
1. Cole had a correspondence with Kylan.
2. In August, when Kylan was killed, Cole wrote this on his blog:
bq. Today I fulfilled my sad duty to Navy Lt. Kylan Jones-Huffman of putting up an archive of his email messages to me. Kylan was shot dead in al-Hilla while with the Marine expeditionary force on August 21. The archive is large (400 k) and so may load slowly for those with slow connections. I apologize in advance about that. The archive is at http://www.juancole.com/archives/kylan.htm
3. You have linked to this post of Coles, and you talk about it, so you are obviously aware of it.
4. On December 12, Cole posts again on the story, this time with news of the conviction of Kylan’s murderer. In this update, as it were, Cole talks about the killer, and in this post he does not refer to the fact that he used to know Kylan through their correspondence.
5. Because of this, you draw the conclusion that Cole is an especially heartless person. In fact, you go further, much further.
You call him “a true keeper of the totalitarian flame”. You say you have “no trouble envisioning him having the camps built.
That is to say, you are equating Professor Cole with a war criminal, such as, say, Hitler.
For not mentioning in an update, on a blog, that he knew Kylan – an update to a blogpost where he did, in fact, mention it, and expressed remorse at his death.
Right now, Armed Liberal, my impression of you has sunk so low, so low, the Mariana Trench is not deep enough to hold it.
I realize however that I may have made a mistake in understanding what you are trying to say. Although I can’t see how, I hope I’m wrong.
I’ll check back here in a day or so, and hope you might explain to me where I’ve been mistaken.
Regards,
All credit to Aaron who did what needed to be done.
Commenting on a post that’s slid off the main page is usually lame, but Aaron’s work creates a special situation.
So: expanding on Aaron’s finding: some more examples of Cole’s failure to recognize Jones-Huffman’s humanity:
2003-08-23: It is with great sadness that I report that a friend of Informed Comment, Naval Reserve Lt. Kylan Jones-Huffman (31), was killed Thursday near al-Hilla. . . [Details of the death and copies of several email messages between Jones-Huffman and Cole follow.] . . . I only knew Kylan from email exchanges. His death sent me to my knees like a kidney punch. . . .
2003-08-26: Today I fulfilled my sad duty to Navy Lt. Kylan Jones-Huffman of putting up an archive of his email messages to me. . .
2004-08-24: It’s been nearly a year since Naval Reserve Lt. Kylan Jones-Huffman was killed at al-Hilla in Iraq. . . He was a real American hero, and I regret that I only knew him by email correspondence–but even there the force of his powerful personality and deep humanity clearly came across. . . Please consider contributing in his memory to the Kylan and Heidi Jones-Huffman Middle Eastern History Fund at George Washington University. . . [eulogy follows]
2004-12-12: In the post that Armed Liberal complains of, Cole notes that “the . . . killer . . . has been brought to justice”, provides a link to a news article containing yet more high praise of Jones-Huffman — and then proceeds to make a point Armed Liberal dislikes. Whereon Armed Liberal accuses Cole of reducing Jones-Huffman to “a token in [his] ideological game”.
Question: If someone started a post exactly the same way as Cole’s last, then made a point that Armed Liberal liked, how many nanoseconds of outrage would Armed Liberal have exhibited?
Correction: There’s an error in the date and in the URL for Cole’s post on the Jones-Huffman prize. The right date is 2004-08-04. The direct link is broken, but the post is on Cole’s 2004-08 page; just search for “Huffman”.
This Juan guy definitely is pond scum, I fully agree. Some history professor.