Author: Martin Kramer

Juan Cole’s noble enterprise

On By Martin Kramer

Professor Juan Cole, the blogging sensation, is at it again, claiming that he objected to the “terrible idea” of the Iraq war back in 2002 and 2003. Proof? “I can produce witnesses to my having said that if the UN Security Council did not authorize the war, I would protest it.” This new posting echoes one that Cole made last November, when he claimed to have “said repeatedly in 2002 and early 2003” that “it was a bad idea to invade Iraq.” Apparently it’s important to Cole, who’s an anti-war icon, to demonstrate that he opposed war from the get-go.

Tony Badran responded last autumn with a devastating posting, comprised of various quotes from Cole’s own weblog. Here are some of them. Cole, before the war (February 11, 2003): “I am an Arabist and happen to know something serious about Baathist Iraq, which paralyzes me from opposing a war for regime change in that country.” Cole, start of the war (March 19, 2003): “I remain convinced that, for all the concerns one might have about the aftermath, the removal of Saddam Hussein and the murderous Baath regime from power will be worth the sacrifices that are about to be made on all sides.” Cole, after the war (July 30, 2003): “I refused to come out against the war. I was against the way the war was pursued the innuendo, the exaggerations, the arrogant unilateralism. But I could not bring myself to be against the removal of that genocidal regime from power.” Some “terrible idea.”

But since Professor Cole still needs help with his memory, let me add this quote to the litany (April 1, 2003):

I hold on to the belief that the Baath regime in Iraq has been virtually genocidal (no one talks about the fate of the Marsh Arabs) and that having it removed cannot in the end be a bad thing. That’s what I tell anxious parents of our troops over there; it is a noble enterprise to remove the Baath, even if so many other justifications for the war are crumbling.

You’ve got the mise-en-scene? The much-titled expert reassures anxious parents of service personnel that their sons and daughters are risking their lives in a “noble enterprise.” Now read this passage, which Cole wrote over a year later (April 23, 2004):

I would not have been willing to risk my own life to dislodge Saddam Hussein from power. And, I would certainly not have been willing to see my son risk his.

So apparently the “noble enterprise” wasn’t that noble, at least in retrospect. For it’s only in retrospect that Cole came to see the “noble enterprise” as a “terrible idea.” Only in retrospect did a war to depose Saddam look to him like a “bad idea,” since at the time he thought it “cannot in the end be a bad thing.” When war began, he thought it would be “worth the sacrifices.” Only in retrospect did he decide it wasn’t even worth the risks.

Cole shows neither courage nor integrity in fudging his past position. While he flays others for selective memory and shifting their rationales, he commits precisely the same offenses. Would it damage his ego or his reputation for punditry to admit that the “noble enterprise” didn’t turn out quite like he expected? What’s he afraid of? After all, he wasn’t regarded as any great expert on Iraq going into the war. Even a true expert, Peter Sluglett, has admitted he overestimated U.S. chances of getting Iraq right: “Perhaps I was naive.” Why does Cole, an Iraq novice in comparison, insist on his own prescience?

Finally, there’s Cole’s claim that he was going to “protest” the war if it didn’t get a U.N. Security Council resolution. He says he’s got witnesses. Well, they’d better be good, because here is Cole on the record (February 4, 2003):

My own knowledge of the horrors Saddam has perpetrated makes it impossible for me to stand against the coming war, however worried I am about its aftermath. World order is not served by unilateral military action, to which I do object. But world order, human rights and international law are likewise not served by allowing a genocidal monster to remain in power.

That sounds like an overwhelming moral case for unilateral action, with apologies to the UN.

So that’s Juan Cole—the historian who can’t even get his own history straight. His “noble enterprise” belongs to the same category as President Bush’s “mission accomplished,” with this difference: President Bush may have been sincere. With Cole, you never know.

Ali Salem grounded

On By Martin Kramer

The other week, the Egyptian playwright Ali Salem was scheduled to come to Israel, to collect an honorary doctorate from Ben-Gurion University. He’s one of Egypt’s most famous humorists, who’s made bold to visit Israel time and again, and who wrote a best-selling book in Arabic about his first visit. After the Oslo agreement, he packed up his old car, drove from Cairo through Sinai to the border, and crossed into Israel. His account is an engaging tale of discovery, humor, and hope.

I was delighted at news of the honor, having played a small part in making Ali Salem better known in the world. I arranged for the publication of his book in English translation, and ran an excerpt in the Middle East Quarterly. The translation inspired the reworking of the book into a play, scheduled for production in Washington in the season after next. Ali himself spent a stretch of time at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, where we saw one another daily, and I paid tribute to him in one of my first postings on this site. His willingness to accept the honor conferred by Ben-Gurion University was just another example of his personal courage in the service of peace.

But in Egypt, only one man is allowed to show (or feign) courage, and only the top ranks of officialdom people innoculated long ago with the Nasserist antidote to Israel are licensed to interact with real Israelis. Egyptian authorities thus decided that this comic, awkward, and gentle man would pose a threat to the security of the great “republic” of Egypt, were he to collect his honorary degree in Israel. When he tried to cross the border into Israel by land, the authorities turned him away. So he went to the Cairo airport, but they wouldn’t let him board a flight either. This Kafka-esque predicament sounds like fine fodder for a satirical play. (In fact, the Washington theatrical production of his book will include the episode, according to its artistic director.)

Fouad Ajami once called this “the orphaned peace,” and so it remains. I first visited Egypt exactly thirty years ago, for a summer of Arabic study, and every time I’ve gone back, including last month, I’ve asked myself what Egypt would look like if it hadn’t laid down the burden of war. I’ve shuddered at the thought. But no one in Egypt is allowed to celebrate the peace. It remains a shameful accommodation to Egypt’s limitations. And this is Ali Salem’s offense: he has made a virtue of necessity. Those who’ve thrown him out of the writers’ union are armchair warriors, a lot like computer gamers, who do battle without paying any price in blood and treasure. Anti-normalization is a poor man’s war, and these are poor men. (Some are on display here, in a recent televised debate over normalization that included Ali Salem.) Ali has said that he is not angry over being grounded, just sad sad for Egypt, in which he has such pride. Of course, he is right.

To Ali Salem, doctor honoris causis, my congratulations.

Addendum. For more flavor of Ali Salem’s politics, see this essay for Time Magazine, and this NewsHour interview. And for his style of political humor, read this.

Koran, Qur’an, and orientalism

On By Martin Kramer

I’ve gotten used to reading calumnies against orientalists, so nothing much surprises me. But I was taken aback when I read this, in a press article about whether one should write Koran or Qur’an:

Jane I. Smith, Islamic studies professor and co-director of the Hartford (Conn.) Seminary’s Duncan Black Macdonald Center for the Study of Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations, said: “The more appropriate transliteration is Qur’an rather than Koran, Muhammad rather than Mohammad or Mohammed, and Muslims rather than Moslems. In each case, the less-desirable spelling is associated with Orientalism, which we all want to avoid.”

In the world of scholars, “Orientalism” refers to negative prejudicial attitudes people of the West hold about people of the East.

In the world of scholars, perhaps they’ve forgotten that orientalists were also scholars. And let there be no doubt: the scholars who first advocated and established the scientific transliteration of Arabic proudly called themselves orientalists. Orientalists were the first to prefer Qur’an to Koran, favoring philological exactitude over common and convenient usage. That’s why I too prefer Qur’an. Even so, the spelling Koran hasn’t any association with “negative prejudicial attitudes.” If it has, then why did Edward Said prefer it in his book Orientalism? Jane I. Smith is just blowing out nonsense, by suggesting there’s some political or moral virtue in a choice of spelling. In this case, there isn’t.

(As an aside, the spelling Koran was an advance on its medieval Latin predecessor, Alcoran. Europeans who didn’t know Arabic didn’t realize that “Al” simply meant “the,” and so they usually referred to “the Alcoran” or “L’Alcoran,” right into the eighteenth century. In English, George Sale’s influential translation of 1734 established Koran in preference to Alcoran. The title of that translation: The Koran, Commonly called The Alcoran of Mohammed.)

So, dear readers, you may safely write Koran, without being tainted by orientalism which, as Jane I. Smith ominously warns us, “we all want to avoid.” It’s not like dropping one down the toilet.

(But do see this parody: “Muslims Riot Over Spelling of ‘Koran’ in U.S. Media.”)