Juan Cole's Unbearable Lightness of Blogging

Vigilant Across the Bay points us to this breathtaking post from Juan Cole. The Michigan professor is terribly impressed by a conspiracy Website (Martini Republic), and cites it to suggest that the liberal Iraqi site, Iraq the Model (ITM), is a tool of Internet disinformation. Cole offers no facts whatsoever to buttress his appalling web of innuendo, but when it comes to challenging the integrity of those who disagree with you, innuendo will apparently do.

Like many Iraqis, the Fadhil brothers who post to ITM have been enjoying their new post-Baathist freedoms by expressing their opinions publicly and making their case for a liberal Iraq. Sometimes they've even challenged Juan Cole's own pretenses to expertise on what is going on in the country. This phenomenon seems to flummox Cole; the only explanation he seems to be able to come up with is to hint darkly that ITM is part of a nefarious Neocon plot.

The conspiracy site that so impresses Cole has long argued that ITM's authors are not really in Iraq at all (although reporters from USA Today and the BBC had no trouble finding them in Baghdad); the site even thinks that ITM's past praise of Adnan Pachachi is highly suspicious (although Pachachi is surely among the best-known, most experienced, and most respected Iraqis in public life). Now the site charges ITM with using a server suspiciously located in Abilene, Texas. The first commenter to the post involving the Texas server was none other than Ali of ITM, who said he and his brothers had signed up with Blogspot, and that he knew nothing about a server in Texas. Ali asked for more information on this compelling matter so he could respond to it.

Cole thinks the conspiracy site's febrile suspicions are "extremely important," even as he writes about ITM's pro-democracy posters in the context of trolling "agents provocateurs." That doesn't add much to the professor's stature, especially since he offers nothing to back up his odious insinuations concerning ITM and the "manipulation of public information by rightwing think tanks in collusion with corporate media."

Cole's case against ITM, drawn from the conspiracy site, is that ITM is "celebrated in the right-leaning weblogging world of the US, even though opinion polling shows that their views are far out of the mainstream of Iraqi opinion."

Across the Bay's response (linked above) is on target: "An Iraqi site, whose authors have formed a pro-democracy liberal Iraqi party, based in Iraq, living through the war and its dangers (esp. when Cole's favorite, Sadr, was bullying other Iraqis and when Jihadists are killing anyone pro-American, while Cole is sitting pontificating from his Michigan office) is not reflective of Iraqi opinion, which Juan Cole is supposedly an expert on!" (Tony at Across the Bay, who has been posting on Cole's often-bizarre, often-preposterous writings for some time, has much more to say on the matter; you owe it to yourself to read it all. IraqPundit is referenced in the post as another likely target of Cole's paranoid suspicions. In the meantime, ITM's Ali has responded to Cole, too.)

Cole also makes the eyebrow-raising observation that two of ITM's posters are "being feted in Washington, DC." Yeah. Actually, as has been reported, Omar and Mohammed were in the U.S. as part of an effort to gain publicity and support for a project to help set up more blogs by Iraqis who speak only Arabic.

Working with ITM on the project is an American organization described in the Boston Globe last December 22 as having helped "Marines give dental kits to families in Hillah and soccer jerseys to children in Wassit province," as well as musical instruments in Khurmal. The Globe reported that the group, Spirit of America, said it had then raised about $50,000.

Now, maybe there's something really nefarious going on here, but if so, let's hear what that nefarious thing is. Let's have something -- anything -- that resembles a fact that we can examine. The sort of aspersions Cole is casting are not "informed comment"; they're not even responsible comment. They're malevolent.

What disgusts me most is Cole's implication that Iraqis are unable to think and reason for themselves. If Iraqi blogs are supportive of liberalization (and most are), then Cole apparently believes that we must suspect a hidden hand somewhere. Enlightenment and independence of mind are to be defined by whether or not you agree with Juan Cole. If you don't, you lack integrity and honesty, and you may even be a hoax, a fraud, or an agent provocateur.

At long last, professor, have you no shame?