Go Juan

Juan Cole is majorly pissed off and he deserves to be.

I belong to a private email discussion group called Gulf2000. It has academics, journalists and policy makers on it. It has a strict rule that messages appearing there will not be forwarded off the list. It is run, edited and moderated by former National Security Council staffer for Carter and Reagan, Gary Sick, now a political scientist at Columbia University. The "no-forwarding" rule is his, and is intended to allow the participants to converse about controversial matters without worrying about being in trouble. Also, in an informal email discussion, ideas evolve, you make mistakes and they get corrected, etc. It is a rough, rough draft.

Hitchens somehow hacked into the site, or joined and lurked, or had a crony pass him things. And he has now made my private email messages the subject of an attack on me in Slate. (I am not linking to the article because it is highly unethical and Slate does not deserve any direct traffic from my site for it.) Moreover, he did not even have the decency to quote the final outcome of the discussions.

I'd like to take this opportunity to complain about the profoundly dishonest character of "attack journalism." Journalists are supposed to interview the subjects about which they write. Mr. Hitchens never contacted me about this piece. He never sought clarification of anything. He never asked permission to quote my private mail. Major journalists have a privileged position. Not just anyone can be published in Slate. Most academics could not get a gig there (I've never been asked to write for it). Hitchens is paid to publish there because he is a prominent journalist. But then he should behave like a journalist, not like a hired gun for the far Right, smearing hapless targets of his ire. That isn't journalism. For some reason it drives the Right absolutely crazy that I keep this little web log, and so they keep trotting out these clowns in amateurish sniping attacks. It is rather sad, that one person standing up to them puts them into such piranha-like frenzy.

The article that Hitchens decided to vomit up (and, given that he's a known drunk, I mean that literally) attacked Cole for his objection to saying that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called for "wiping Israel off the map." It's not only dirty but kind of unnecesary journalism for Hitchens, as Cole explains the same thing publicly right here:

President Ahmadinejad, it should be freely admitted, has, through his lack of diplomatic skills and his maladroitness, given his enemies important propaganda tools. Unlike his predecessor, Mohammad Khatami, Ahmadinejad is a Holocaust denier. He went to an anti-Zionist conference and quoted Ayatollah Khomeini, saying that the “Occupation regime” must “vanish.” This statement about Israel does not necessarily imply violence. After all, Ariel Sharon made the occupation regime in the Gaza Strip vanish. The quote was translated in the international press, however, as a wish that “Israel be wiped off the map,” and this inaccurate translation has now become a tag line for all newspaper articles written about Iran in Western newspapers.

Of course, Cole says it a little less specifically in the private email confab, so that became more ripe for attack.

I think Cole's being a little charitable toward Ahmadinejad (I think he's trying to say that the Khomeini quote is a metaphysical hope rather than a threat), but he clarifies in the private email:

I should again underline that I personally despise everything Ahmadinejad stands for, not to mention the odious Khomeini, who had personal friends of mine killed so thoroughly that we have never recovered their bodies. Nor do I agree that the Israelis have no legitimate claim on any part of Jerusalem. And, I am not exactly a pacifist but have a strong preference for peaceful social activism over violence, so needless to say I condemn the sort of terror attacks against innocent civilians (including Arab Israelis) that we saw last week. I have not seen any credible evidence, however, that such attacks are the doing of Ahmadinejad, and in my view they are mainly the result of the expropriation and displacement of the long-suffering Palestinian people. (again, charitable, but more a historian's search for root causes -ed.)

Of course, that didn't make Hitchens' story.

Cole also says what I've been saying for months:

As for the matter at issue, Ahmadinejad is a non-entity. The Iranian "president" is mostly powerless. The commander of the armed forces is the Supreme Jurisprudent, Ali Khamenei. Worrying about Ahmadinejad's antics is like worrying that the US military will act on the orders of the secretary of the interior. Ahmadinejad cannot declare war on anyone, or mobilize a military. So it doesn't matter what speeches he gives.

This is a trick. The Right knows that the word "President" has certain connotations over here, so when they highlight the Iranian President talking like a madman they know it will sound like a military threat. In fact it's just a blowhard without the power to back up anything he says. I've posed this to people on the Right and they literally don't know what to say. If the Iranian President was so important, Mohammed Khatami, the reformer who was President of Iran for 8 years, would have made a difference. He actually could have made some difference if we encouraged and supported him or the reform movement (which we are now coming to, all too late, because it supports our "spreading freedom" through warmaking strategy).

Hitchens owes Cole a major apology but I'm not holding my breath. Meanwhile the US Senate is passing a bill today that makes regime change the policy of the US government with regard to Iran. Deja frickin' vu.