UNINFORMED COMMENT

One of the most dishonest, defeatist commentators on Iraq these days is University of Michigan professor Juan Cole, who writes the "Informed Comment" blog.*

Cole appears to be among those who believe the Shiite Iraqis will ally with, or at any rate prove to be little better than, the Iranian theocrats. This morning, Cole ominously reported:

Al-Hayat has a long interview with an "informed Iraqi source" who is close to US officials in Iraq. He maintains that the US officials there were astounded that the United Iraqi Alliance did so well, and that they felt helpless and resigned as the process unfolded. He says that they are now asking privately if the US shed so much blood and treasure in Iraq to help fundamentalist Shiite allies of Iran take over Baghdad.

This is almost surely wrong, as many have argued, including reformed pessimist Tom Friedman. Why would the U.S. fear Ayatollah Ali Sistani's party controlling the country? Cole doesn't explain. Sistani is about as moderate an Islamic cleric as you could hope for in that country: he helped quash Al-Sadr's brief insurgency, and has encouraged a pluralistic democracy. And why would we be "astounded" at this electoral result? Either Cole or Al-Hayat's source is ill-informed — possibly both.

Elsewhere in the same post, Cole also writes:

Now, the United Iraqi Alliance has 51 percent of the seats, having attacted the religious Shiite vote ... which is enough to confirm the new government once a cabinet is selected

Uh, no. That's just factually wrong. The UIA actually got 48.1% — hence the haggling over who will be the next prime minister. And they only got that far with the help of Ahmed Chalabi's INC. And they'll still have to cut deals with the Kurds and others to assemble a ruling majority. Furthermore, Cole implies that Iyad Allawi is going to do something doubtlessly nefarious — his exact words: "some other purpose" — but doesn't even begin to hint at what.

I'd also like to point out that fully 31% of all seats held in the Iraqi parliament will be held by women. That's the highest in the Arab world, and stands in sharp contrast with the recent electoral traveshamockery next door in Saudi Arabia. And it should take quell the alarmism from this old Cole post. No, Iraq won't be exactly like the United States. But it won't be Iran, either.

P.S. — The funny thing is, Cole is willing to praise Iran when it suits him. His first post-election post inexplicably compared Iraq unfavorably with Iran's meaningless 1997 vote. Most anti-war bloggers simply ignored the Iraq election (Josh Marshall still hasn't mentioned it) but I can say this for Juan Cole: At least he was brave enough to let everyone know that he was "just appalled by the cheerleading tone of US news coverage" that day.

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* Cole is probably best known these days for accusing the pro-American Iraqi bloggers at Iraq the Model of being CIA stooges, for which the widely-read centrist blogger Jeff Jarvis slammed him as "pond scum."

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posted by WWB at 12:19 PM |