I promised Kevin Drum that I’d leave Juan Cole alone until my irritation at his post on Kylan Jones-Hoffman subsided.
And I try to keep my promises, I really do.
But I just surfed over something else that I have to point out.
Professor Cole backpedaled from his non-accusation (“just sayin’, you know”) that the Iraq The Model brothers are CIA stooges to explain that what he really meant to say was this:
I drew attention to Martini Republic’s questions about the independence of IraqTheModel without actually expressing any opinion myself one way or another, except to say that they are out of the Iraqi mainstream. The dittoheads who read them and can look at the above polling figures and come to a different conclusion are just innumerate (if only they were also so illiterate as to be unable to figure out my email address).
One of them complained that this poll was done last April. Does anybody really think US favorability numbers are up since then?
An IRI poll in September found that Muqtada al-Sadr was just about as popular as Iyad Allawi (45% and 47% favorability respectively). And Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the clerical leader of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, trumped them all.
So I’m getting ready for bed, and I surf over to the IRI site, and here’s what they have to say:
Recent public opinion surveys conducted by IRI show Iraqis to be surprisingly optimistic about their future and much stronger supporters of democracy than many new reports would lead you to believe.
Over 51% of Iraqis polled felt that their country is headed in “the right direction,” up slightly from IRI’s May/June poll. More telling, the number who feel that things are heading in “the wrong direction” has dropped from 39% to 31% over the same time period.
Some of this confidence may be a result of wide public support for the Iraqi Interim Government. Prime Minister Allawi holds an enviable approval rating, with 66% rating him as either “very effective” or “somewhat effective.” Likewise, President al-Yawer enjoys the support of 60.6% of Iraqis polled who say that they “completely trust” or “somewhat trust” him.
In a stunning display of support for democracy and a strong rebuttal to critics of efforts to bring democratic reform to Iraq, 87% of Iraqis indicated that they plan to vote in January elections. Expanding on the theme, 77% said that “regular, fair elections” were the most important political right for the Iraqi people and 58% felt that Iraqi-style democracy was likely to succeed.
Help me out here, Professor…do you think we’re all idiots?
It is not surprising that a humanities teacher such as Cole would be as innumerate as he appears to be; embarrassing, but not surprising. Perhaps his defense as an historian is that he is perpetually living in the past. Keep on Cole, Drum is a reasonable person, he’ll understand.
“One of them complained that this poll was done last April. Does anybody really think US favorability numbers are up since then?”
Well, you know, without recourse to either my limited numerical or literacy skills, I’d fall back on simple experience. Hmmm. Has anything significant happened in Iraq between May and December? (My MUSICAL skills demand that I croon, in the background to this post, the reminder that “it’s a long long way, from May to December…” )
Let’s see. In April the Marines had just backed away from a confrontation in Fallujah.
In late December the Marines had scored a decisive victory over the Syrian, Iranian, Jordanian, and a few true “insurgent” Iraqi terrorists of Fallujah.
Hmm.
Maybe even an innumerate musician CAN “really” believe that opinions have changed, recently …
Why do you people waste time and energy on One More Idiot Teacher? The OMIT’s should be omitted from polite society. I suggest shrouding….
What a piece of work. Let me see if I understand:
Mr. Informed Comment decides that it’d be swell to “draw attention to” a silly, irresponsible, nutjob post charging sans evidence that the ItM guys are CIA agents, “without actually expressing any opinion” on it. Why? Well, apparently because he thinks (it’s unclear why) that this will help him establish the (dubiously relevant) point that “that they are out of the Iraqi mainstream”. Yeah I know that pointing to libelous baseless charges is a GREAT way to prove a point, as long as you don’t “actually express an opinion” on them. (That way you keep your hands clean. Um right?)
And let’s look at this “point” which Mr. Cole thinks is so all-important to establish that he cherry-picks whatever data’s at hand to prove it: That Omar and Mohammed are “out of the Iraqi mainstream”. Um, has he, or anyone else, ever established why we should care?
Ok let’s say that they’re not in the Iraqi mainstream. But we’d like them to be – they are the type of decent, liberal (as in liberty-loving) folk we’d like to encourage to flourish in Iraq. Cole’s got a problem with that why? Because he thinks they’re “out of the Iraqi mainstream”?
What’s the lesson there? Does Cole think that if he could somehow prove, mathematically, that the Iraqi mainstream consists of Islamofascist Beheaders, then we’d be required to pay attention to and encourage them, and read their blogs? I mean, on some level, even entering into this discussion is silly. Omar & Mohammed may or may not be in the “Iraqi mainstream”, however that is defined, but entering into some kind of painstaking bookkeeping exercise to figure that out is pointless; it’s their ideas which matter anyway. We want good ideas to flourish and bad ideas to recede.
Why doesn’t Cole understand that? Or is it that he simply can’t distinguish between the two, or refuses to?
The results you cite are from a poll conducted 7/24-8/2. The IRI’s most recent poll (9/24-10/4) shows 41.9% right direction, 45.3% wrong track (although a large majority still expect that their lives will be better in 1 year than they are today).
See http://www.iri.org/pub.asp?id=7676767887
Blixa (4:53pm),
>Why doesn’t Cole understand that?
One can safely assume that profs at UMich are pretty smart. Cole writes well, and is one of Time magizine’s go-to guys for Middle East expertcy.
I’m sure he understands the that that you enumerate*. Starting from the premise of Amerikkka eeevil, he comes easily to his accusations, and I-didn’t-quite-say-’em-non-accusations. Cole’s unwillingness to hyperlink his critics, and his, er, imaginative re-interpretation of his earlier post have already scratched him off my bookmarks list. But I’m sure he doesn’t want for like-minded readers.
* please assure the good professor that I’m not accusing either you or him of being enumerate, should you see him.
Sadly, one of the reason Cole is not simply ignored as a nutty wackjob in the singular is because he is not singular, but only an example of a far more broad and toxic mental pathology that has an iron grip on our halls of “Higher Learning”
Or at least it seems so.
However, at those times when you think an entire generaton is lost, you can sometimes come across things like this: http://www.classicalvalues.com/archives/001857.html
This fellow, whos writing Ive come to love, a Male kindred to Tammy Bruce, gives one hope that many freshly indoctrinated moonbats go thru a sort of rediscovery of logic and thinking for oneself once they leave the influence of those dreaming of the next indoctrinare purge of the impure.
It brings forth why I love NeoCons, the new conservatives, hated and demonised by the left because they have done the same thing that will get you Killed in the land of Islam, they left the leftist religion
The mullahs have the death penalty for renouncing Islam, and Marxists are also rather harsh on those that leave the leftist faith.
Read his treaties on what they call “thought” in the lands of campus groupthink.
It wont make you feel any better about all those postmodern marxist achademic impostors like Cole, but it might make you feel better for the poor kids that suffer the classrooms of such vermin, the ill effects might not be that lasting for many.
Pouncer
“In late December the Marines had scored a decisive victory over the Syrian, Iranian, Jordanian, and a few true “insurgent” Iraqi terrorists of Fallujah.”
What was the number of captured foriegners in Fallujah again? 20?
Which can only mean one of two things. Either there wasn’t the huge influx of foreigners into Fallujah as had been claimed. Or that the locals were just lousy at avoiding getting caught.
… Or foreign fighters aren’t as easy to distinguish as the Baathist remnants as many people like to make it out. You guys do know that there are Iraqis serving in al-Qaeda, right? So are they “foreign fighters” or not? And how do you tell the difference between an Iraqi or an Iranian Kurdish member of Ansar al-Islam?
A large number of Islamist (and the difference between Islamist and Baathist is pretty negligible these days) Arab fighters without passports is somewhat difficult to sort through. In the absence of any identification or distinguishing characteristics to the contrary, they get classified as “Iraqi” by the US military during the detention process.
And that’s just the detainees, what about the corpses?
Davebo
Brain gears stuck ? what about the ratio of killed vs captured compared to historic examples of taking a town?
Hint it does have a familiar with the Japanese who, like the Jihadis would fight to the death, feign death, everything and anything except be taken alive, even the kamakazi bombers and Jihadi human bombers are equally identical in every way That matter.
I blame utter ignorance of history for this typically leftist inability to understand the results of cause and effect, from their mountain of dead they created in quest for their holy leftist utopia, to the inability to understand why import Jihadi fanatics that entered the country to die killing the infadel might be taken alive in smaller numbers than the locals than is representaive of the actual ballance of numbers.
What this tells you is a diffference in willingness to die rather than be captured if you can filter out cases like simply finding his rifle empty and no bombvest handy to wisk him away to heavenly carnal bliss with the promised doe eyed babes.
If you want the answer you would need to count the dead, and those that chose tactical retreat before the cordon sealed the town, and that data might be usefull, but your captured census tells you nothing.
Look at how many Germans we captured vs those we killed compared to the Japanese, the numbers are amazing in the disparity.
But to use those numbers to estmate the size of the opposing forces would be utter folly.
Just as your attempt is also.
Raymond
No brain gear stuck at all. I’m just repeating what the US Marines said.
“Only a tiny percentage of the more than 1,000 insurgents detained by U.S. forces in the Iraqi city of Fallujah over the past week are foreigners, a Marine officer said Monday.
Col. Michael Regner, operations chief for the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, said in a conference call with reporters at the Defense Department that 1,052 people had been detained at last count.”
http://www.airforcetimes.com/story.php?f=1-292925-506971.php
You can “blame utter ignorance of history” on whatever you want I suppose. But the US Military can most likely determine the nationality of those killed as well as captured. And the mantra has been that Fallajuah has been a base station for foreign fighters.
Now I haven’t heard anything on that score. If you have some information to share I’d love to hear it.
You can question my ignorance of history but I’d have to comment on your determination to reach a conclusion and grasp at any straw, no matter how tenacious, that might support it.
But I wouldn’t insult you.
Armed Liberal,
Dr. Cole has been very careless more than once, and on occassion I have noticed him make some really dumb claims with figures. (Although I do not share your opinion that he is a nazi-like genocidal war criminal – for me this is a painful mockery of the victims of true holocausts).
Here however, it is possible he has not made a mistake. In his post (which you kindly reproduce) he makes reference to an IRI poll in September.
Your figures, at the link you provide, seem to be the latest. In my very brief reading of the report you link to, I found it states that :
bq. “polling is planned on at least a monthly basis as IRI continues its work in developing political parties in anticipation of the January elections and helping the Interim Government to be responsive to citizen’s needs.”
That it to say, Dr. Cole may have noted down an earlier, september poll, and when he posted he used those numbers. He in fact clearly states the poll was from September. If he hasnt checked the site again to provide the latest figures, he is guilty of carelessness in not providing the latest available information.
But what you seem to imply in your comment is that he was being willfully deceptive.
Who is being deceptive, Armed Liberal?
Have I misunderstood you? If so, I’ll be glad to learn of your correction.
No Aaron, it’s the other way around; Cole’s figures are more up-to-date than Armed Liberal’s. Cole cites the September-October survey, Armed Liberal the July-August survey.
Updating the figures Armed Liberal cites: between July-August and September-October, the fraction of Iraqis polled who felt their country is moving in the right direction fell from 51 per cent to 42 per cent; the fraction who felt it is moving in the wrong direction rose from 31 per cent to 45 per cent. The fraction rating Allawi as “very effective” or “somewhat effective” fell from 66 per cent to 46 per cent; the fraction rating him as “somewhat ineffective” or “very ineffective” rose from 18 per cent to 43 per cent. No figures on al Yawer in the new poll. The fraction intending to vote held up pretty well, from 87 per cent to 85.5 per cent. The question on the likely success of elections changed in wording without much change in numbers; in the new survey, 59 per cent thought Iraq would be ready to hold national elections by January 31.
On the question who was most to blame for the “difficult situation in Iraq”, 35 per cent blamed the occupiers (MNFI or USA), 40 per cent the insurgents (terrorists or armed supporters of the former regime).
Summary: Since the poll cited by Armed Liberal, Iraqis have soured on the Allawi government and the direction the country is heading, but still place high hopes in the expected national elections. They dislike both the occupiers and the insurgents, but they dislike the insurgents slightly more.
One thing you won’t find at the link above is the figures on support for Hakim, Allawi, Sadr etc. that Cole cites at Informed Comment. He explains their absence elsewhere, at antiwar.com (!): [IRI] have actively suppressed at their Web site slides Q27, which reveal the popularity and recognition ratings of major political figures. He also gives there a more complete list of the ratings.
Help us out here, Armed Liberal . . . do you think we’re all too lazy to follow your links?
[FWIW, on the other issues raised in the post: yes Cole was wrong to give so much credence to the Martini Republic’s suspicions; OTOH he’s right that IraqtheModel‘s views are atypical.]
Abu Frank,
Very sharp of you to notice, thank you. This rather puts Armed Liberal in an even more unfavorable light, doesn’t it?
Not only was he talking about a different poll than Professor Cole’s, it turns out it’s his poll that’s outdated, not Professor Cole’s. And yet he implies, without so much as a scintilla of humility that there might be an honest mistake, that it is Cole who’s being disingenous.
The sheer irony…
This episode has certainly drastically changed my view of this fellow, and his site. This post we’re talking about is bad, but I’d grant it might simply be an example of stupid carelessness in not checking one’s facts before making such serious charges (and implying that a professor is intentionally deceitful is a serious charge for an academic).
But far, far worse, was Animal Liberal’s astonishing claims on Kylan’s death: he is calling Cole a Treblinska-esque totalitarian murderer – because of the way Cole wrote an update on a personal blog. Worse, Mr. Danziger is actually wrong about Cole’s handling of the death on his blog. And he knew it when he was writing it, because he linked to Cole’s original post on Kylan.
This guy is so low… I almost don’t know what to say. He will continue to stir the cauldron of hate and vilification, I’m suppose, cheered on by the masses in the wingnut gallery.
I’m just glad I’m aware of his lack of credibility from this incident.
Pride goes before a fall. I might have taken the trouble to check out Armed Liberal’s IRI link, but I trusted him on Jones-Huffman. Aaron‘s done the due diligence I didn’t.
Aaron’s and my posts crossed; hence my redundant link to his Jones-Huffman post.
I don’t take any joy in Armed Liberal bashing; he’s probably the main reason I read this blog. I hope he’s just having a really bad week.
Abu, Aaron, sorry for not responding as your comments clearly require; I’m buried until Sunday, and won’t have time to sit and compose something meaningful until then.
…not ignoring you in any way.
A.L.
AL,
No problem. As I’ve said repeatedly, I hope I’ve been wrong in my estimation of how you’ve treated the facts in regards to Professor Cole in these two posts under discussion. And I’m sure Abu Frank shares that feeling.
I do confess however that right now it really seems to me that you have knowingly and quite intentionally attacked Dr. Cole in a particularly unjust fashion.
I await a correction of this view.
“And how do you tell the difference between an Iraqi or an Iranian Kurdish member of Ansar al-Islam?”
By their noses.
Heavens to Elizabeth. Aaron and Abu Frank have almost got me sobbing in my cornflakes over the plight of poor Dr. Cole.
I blame the U of M History Department’s hiring committee. If those golf-playing clowns had enough collective intelligence to power a 40-watt lightbulb, Cole would be working for Counterpunch and we wouldn’t be bothering with this conversation.
I take consolation in the IRI September polling data, though. (With some difficulty, since it’s in the clumsy form of Powerpoint, which is for U of M Business School graduates who like to look at big colorful pie graphs.)
From this data we learn, to our great relief, that Juan Cole at least does not represent Iraqi opinion, any more than I’m the President of the Berkeley City council.
Like Americans – like people everywhere, really – Iraqis are about evenly split on the inevitable stupid question: “Do you think the country is moving in the right direction?” But among the roughly half of Iraqis who think they’re going in the wrong direction, 62.6% blame the “Poor security situation.” A mere 16.7% blame “Presence of occupation forces.”
In fact, when asked how they would improve the security situation, the most popular answer is “Strengthen the IP” (33.70%).
To the question (#7) of who is most to blame for the current difficult situation in general, “The United States” was the least popular answer (a teensy 1.5%).
Troubles aside, 64% of Iraqis think that their lives will be better one year from now. Obviously, they don’t read “Informed Comment” or they would know that they’re all doomed.
Then there’s this question: Do you believe that the propect of civil war – widespread ethnic, sectarian or other armed struggle – is now:
Not Realistic 68.8% (!)
Unlikely 14.8%
Imminent 7.8% (!)
Don’t know 8.3%
Among that tiny Juanesque minority who think that Iraqis are only good for killing each other, 34% think the civil war will instigated by a neighboring state – Iran being by far the most popular candidate. Only 17.3% of those who fear civil war think the cause will be “Interference by non-neighboring states” (66.7% of those specifying the US, 22.2% Israel).
Iraqis show still more thumping good sense in the fact that 78.02% do not currently support any political party or movement, which makes Cole’s gleeful speculations about high levels of support for al-Sadr seem kind of silly.
What is Cole to do with these uppity Iraqis who make such a mess of his Chomskyism? After all he’s pretended to do for them!
Glenn Wishard,
Good of you to look at the IRI survey and gain some comfort from your interpretation. I’m sure many folks here would appreciate it (if they were still reading this).
In so far as you make reference to me, let me respond by pointing out that what is principally at issue on this thread is not so much how the Iraqis are doing or what they feel or what they think – that’s obviously important, but they’re simply not the subject of this thread.
The subject here is Armed Liberal‘s imputation that Cole was being disingenous in his reporting of the IRI data. AL did this by posting an IRI poll, and implying that, because it didn’t tally with Cole’s post, Cole must be lying (or less likely, careless).
Unfortunately for AL, it turns out his poll is outdated, and it was not the one Cole was talking about. Now, the only part of Cole’s original, very long post that AL takes issue with in his post is the Alawi – Sadr popularity figures. As Abu Frank points out, IRI appears to have removed the slide containing this data from the ppt. So, I don’t have the faintest clue what those figures are, but I do know that AL’s “objection” to Cole is baseless.
Now, AL might merely have been careless in his fact-checking, and not malicious in his methods (ie. I don’t think AL knowingly posted the wrong poll to make Cole look bad) although clearly he was malicious in his intentions (he wants to discredit Cole).
So in conclusion I think AL should either explain why Frank and I are mistaken in our objections to his post, or retract his post and apologize. For there’s the measure of a man, is what I say.
Meanwhile, I wish you, Glenn, all the best in your interpretive efforts. Perhaps you could get the kind souls here to start a thread on it – might make a good discussion. Certainly a quick reading suggests that for all your brag and bounce, you too could be more careful with your facts – since when does Cole believe “Iraqis are only good for killing each other” ? And your contention about Q7, that Iraqis least blame the US for the current difficult situation in general is not very ingenuous: there’s a category for “all the above” that secured 12%, and more importantly, the thing that is most blamed is something called MNFI. I’ve looked all over for a key, but they do a very bad job in the presentation of that poll. Judging from the slides containing MNFI, especially slide #25, it seems to me it might be some sort of abbreviation for multi-national forces, although obviously I could be greatly mistaken. If it is, your interpretation is really quite dishonest.
Google is your friend. “MNFI” (or MNF-I) is a recognized abbreviation for “Multi-National Force–Iraq”.