Sunday, July 16, 2006

Juan Cole watch (2)

An email sent to me from a friend references this post at Informed Conspiracy, titled "Juan Goes off his meds again" ... this time over Hezbollah. From the Yale professor:

"Israeli spokesmen are saying that they want to finish off Hizbullah. But you can't finish off a mass movement among 1.35 million people. Besides, there wouldn't be any Hizbullah if Israel had not invaded Lebanon in 1982 and occupied the south for twenty-two years. Israel's grabby occupation radicalized and helped mobilize the Lebanese Shiites. They aren't going to become less radical and less mobilized as a result of the current hamfisted Israeli assault."

And this:

"Americans have to understand that when Israel goes wild and bombs a civilian airport and civilian neighborhoods in Beirut, a lot of the world's Catholics (Lebanon is partially a Catholic country) and its 1.4 billion Muslims blame the United States for it. Israel is given billions every year by the United States, including sophisticated weaponry that is now being trained on the slums of south Beirut. It should also be remembered that Bin Laden said, at least, that he started thinking about hitting New York when he saw that 1982 Israeli destruction of the skyscrapers or 'towers' of Lebanon. How many future Bin Ladens are watching with horror and rage and feelings of revenge as Israel drops bombs on civilian tenement buildings? When will this blow back on Americans? (I mean blow back in other ways than an already painful further spike in petroleum prices)."


To my friend's note:
A number of points could be made here, not the least of which being that attributing Hezbollah's creation to Israel, as opposed to the IRGC who ACTUALLY CREATED IT is bizarre at best. That he takes bin Laden at his word as to his motivations behind the 9/11 attacks is also dubious given that he was denying that he was officially involved in them until October 2004. At least Juan managed to get his history right though, as last time he claimed that bin Laden launched 9/11 because of Israeli military intervention in Jenin.

Still waiting for any condemnation of Syria or Iran for 1) likely ordering the Hezbollah attack that kicked this off and 2) not ordering the immediate release of the Israelis in question. I won't hold my breath, since in Juan's world both Arabs and Persians are helpless and the first cause of all evils is always the Jews.

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