Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

He didn't have much choice since they hit only two restaurants before war broke out. He did cook in the hotel kitchen for his crew, and cover the mess served by the Navy ship that resuced them - mac and cheese and tuna noodle casserole.

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

I was at a party with a Lebanese friend the day before the kidnapping, and we seriously talked about getting a group together to go to Beirut because things were finally getting back to the way they were in the 70s when Beirut was known as the Paris of the Middle East. We were both shocked to shit the next day when the bombing started. It really seemed in the early spring/summer of 2006 that things were turning around there.

ETA: My Egyptian friend, the host of the party, always thought that it was too dangerous to show us around Alexandria, even though he still has a house there. He also figured that Mubarak would stick around in power for the rest of his lifetime.

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

Yummy.

I can understand that he might not have had much choice there. But the other night I watched two episodes -- one in Spain, where he ended up El Bulli after eating in the village where the chef came from and then eating on the beach with a fisherman and chef. The other in the Cal. desert, where he spent the first 10 minutes talking to a guy from Queens of the Stone Age about life and then I got bored and turned it off.

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

Mubarak's Egypt was an interesting place. Half police state, and half low-simmering rebellion.

The Egyptians I talked to before going told me that I would be perfectly safe in Cairo and in the tourist areas we would visit, and it certainly felt that way to me (aside from those trying to talk/harass their way into a crappy souvenir sale). There was an armed security person assigned to our tour group, and "tourist police" at every hotel and attraction, but it never really felt necessary and wandering around Cairo (not so easy to do for navigation reasons) and Aswan seemed perfectly fine.

We were told that the middle of the country (between Luxor and Cairo) was not that way, but did not go there or Alexandria.

what to take away from Iraq
 

Juan Cole:

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

Matt Yglesias : Tom Friedman :: me : Hank

Re: what to take away from Iraq
 

Wait, what? Why does the legality under International law imply anything about expectations of likely outcomes? Things that are legal under international law never result in chaos?

ETA: To put it differently, I do not think those who are using "to Iraqize" are primarily concerned about the niceties of international law.

Re: what to take away from Iraq
 

Dunno. I don't get what's he saying with the illegality stuff, but that wasn't the interesting point to me -- it was more about club and Hank's notion that Iraq was the beacon that guided Libyans.

eta: Agree with your eta.

Re: what to take away from Iraq
 

When I do read your blogs I get sad: the guy claims that in Arabic (lumping all Arabic countries and dialects together already highlighting his ignorance) there is a new word, "Iraquize." then the anchor asks the spokesman if there is danger of Libya becoming "Iraquized" and the spokesman has no idea what the word means.

Is there any standard at all in the blog world? like maybe requiring one not contradicting oneself for at least 4 or 5 sentences?

Inspirations are hard to point to. But we pried some people from under one thumb, and now a lot more people are prying themselves out from under others. You point to the very young rebels being motivated by a revolt in 1960 (is that the right year?) I suggest it might be the AJ coverage of elections going on presently.

I still will stick with my side, even after actually reading Mr. Cole's quite unbiased take.

Re: what to take away from Iraq
 

I never quote my own complaints to further complain about a stupid original post, but here goes: this cole guy has 10 things libya should do, and they are fucking stupid, or wishful, example "talk to norway about how an oil producer can stay a democracy!" They have to form a democracy first you fucking idiot.

but 10 is absolutely funny, like I'm looking for an Onion tag: "10 Once it gets on its feet socially and economically, Libya should go forward with bruited plans to get into solar and wind energy big time. Petroleum will always have value in petrochemicals, but burning it is bad for the earth because extra carbon in the atmosphere causes global warming, which will hit Libya especially hard."

Can you believe this board's valuable space is taken up by someone so myopic as to not feel a complete dick for having that thought, but to go ahead and have written that? published it? Motherfucker motherfucker motherfucker.

And the crazy thing is I do believe a lot of the "points" posted here to criticize Bush and how wrong we were in Iraq were from this imbecile.

Ty, you have young kids. You take time away from your family to read this? Motherfucker.

Re: what to take away from Iraq
 

Should the rebels turn out to be less than full-throated believers in democracy, can we count on you to stick by the conclusion? That is, should a different autocrat emerge from the current rebels, will you insist that it was free elections in Iraq that inspired him?

Re: what to take away from Iraq
 

sure. W's framing and control of the Iraqui body politic was instrumental in getting to elections and a functioning government. That was the hard part.

Of course, we may see windmill fields surrounding Tripoli soon, so don't get all pessimistic just yet.

Re: what to take away from Iraq
 

Inasmuch as I agreed with you, and because it wasn't germane to the conversation we were having the other day, I didn't quote that whole part of his post.

Hey, you're the one who sidetracked the conversation we were having to talk about stuff that you find find so pointless.

The only thing that I thought interesting and relevant about Cole's post was the suggestion about what Iraq's experience means to Arabs and Libyans. Clearly, you don't want to talk about that.

Re: what to take away from Iraq
 

some person who seems ignorant of Arabic, and also seems aggressively stupid takes the position that Iraq didn't motivate these rebellions. Okay. But help me, where do we go from there. He's an imbecile and you agree. How do we "talk" about his opinion on the genesis?

Re: what to take away from Iraq
 

Speaking of seeming ignorant, here's his bio:

So when he reports that Arab television commentators are using a word that suggests lessons drawn from Iraq, I find him credible, even if I don't agree with a bunch of other opinions he has. Unlike you and me, he watches Arab TV.

Perhaps you have some Arab or Libyan source who can shed light on such things. That would be interesting.

Re: what to take away from Iraq
 

1- everything in his bio, other than the U of M prof and the TV applies equally to you.

2- he said a TV guy asked the spokesperson for the rebels if libya getting Iraqifying (or whatever it was) worried him, and the rebel spokesman said "what does that mean." I'm taking the spokesman over some obvious idiot on the widespread extent of the world.

Re: what to take away from Iraq
 

Tyrone Slothrop is the mod of the Politics Board at Lawtalkers. For a decade, he has sought to put the relationship of the West and the Muslim world in historical context. He has written widely about Egypt, Iran, Iraq, and South Asia. He has commented extensively on al-Qaeda and the Taliban, the Iraq War, the politics of Pakistan and Afghanistan, and Iranian domestic struggles and foreign affairs. He has a regular blog. He continues to study and write about contemplamic movements, whether mainstream or radical, whether Sunni and Salafi or Shi`ite. Ty pretends he can comment on Arabic, Persian and Urdu issues and fakes that he reads some Turkish, knows both Middle Eastern and South Asian Islam.

Re: what to take away from Iraq
 

You said he doesn't speak Arabic, so I posted his bio and highlighted the part showing that you were wrong. I don't speak Arabic. I doubt you do either. Also, neither of us has a job where we watch a lot of Arab TV.

Re: what to take away from Iraq
 

But TY! He says Libya should convert to renewable energies and move away from oil as soon as possible because of global warming. As part of his Top Ten list for the new country we hope will emerge after the fighting stops!

I tend to agree with Hank that maybe you shouldn't cite this guy for much of anything. Doesn't matter how much your source knows if he is so easy to mock. A witness' credibility matters.

S_A_M

P.S. This leaves aside entirely the question of what weight the existence of a derogatory term about what has happened to Iraq since 2003 has on the question of whether that semi-functional semi-democracy was an inspiration for the Arab Spring.

I'd tend to think that the success in Tunisia -- coupled with the huge increase in the availability of media, social media, the Internet, Al Jazeera and other non-official "Arabic" news sources to the average citizen of these countries -- had a lot more to do with it than Iraq, but that's just a guess.

Re: what to take away from Iraq
 

that too. and it all shows not just that the source is easy to mock, it shows the source can't really look at facts and form conclusions, no matter how many credentials he has.

and Ty, I didn't say he doesn't speak Arabic. That is the kind of book learning I'm he can do. I said his statements implying Arabic is 1 united language shows he doesn't understand the language.

Re: what to take away from Iraq
 

Ty speaks Arabic, Persian, and Urdu and reads some Turkish?

Re: what to take away from Iraq
 

Except that he didn't imply that Arabic is "1 united language." At most, he implied that a single word was in common use across dialects, but even that inference is unnecessary when you remember that he was writing for an English-speaking audience for whom the details of regional dialectic differences are irrelevant. Given his apparent language skills, I think it's pretty obtuse to suggest that he doesn't understand that there are different kinds of Arabic (note I won't harp on the irony of you trying to minimize someone else's understanding of "the language").

As for what was quoted from the interview, you've really never heard anyone respond to a potentially insulting question/implication by saying, "I don't know what that means?" If, for example, I were to ask, "Hank, isn't it true that your practice is withering?" and you responded, "I don't know what you mean" should listeners conclude that Hank does not know what the word withering means? Or might they instead conclude that you were surprised and perhaps insulted by the question?

Finally, as to wind mills, Cole's probably right. It probably would be in Libya's self interest to cultivate alternative energy for it's own use so it can sell all its oil. They won't, but they probably should.

Sure, Cole's a lefty, perhaps an ideological one, so he thinks of global warming first. Maybe that's reason to doubt his political judgment, but I don't think that necessarily undermines his ability to convey what happened in a TV interview.

Re: what to take away from Iraq
 

I don't know about all that, but whenever Ty and I share a hookah at the coffee shop, it's always a delight to hear him do five or six stanzas of the Rime of the Ancient Mariner in Farsi.

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

What here isn't?

"I know shit. Here's my opinion."

"You don't know shit. I know better shit about the shit you think you know shit about. Here it is."

"Bullshit. That's substandard shit. Here's a bunch of shit dissecting why that shit's shit."

"You're shit."

"No, you're shit."

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

You left out where Hank calls someone stupid.

Re: what to take away from Iraq
 

2

Good times.

Re: what to take away from Iraq
 

My father had a lot more to do with conceiving me than my grandfather, but without my grandfather's work I don't think I'd have been conceived.

Re: what to take away from Iraq
 

Your father was "inspired" by watching TV coverage of your grandfather's... um... "elections?"

Re: what to take away from Iraq
 

no, but he told me he found a naked picture of grandma that grandpa kept hidden. Good ole dad said he would beat off to it regularly, always felt guilty but kept going back to it. See in those days you couldn't be picky about what porn you might use, you had to use what you could find.

Re: what to take away from Iraq
 

mfm?

Re: what to take away from Iraq
 

ask Atticus, he claims to have been there.

Wow
 

Cantor:
Yglesias

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

Steve Jobs, creator of the most valuable company on the planet - a Repbublican's wet dream right? Um, no:

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

Has anyone looked into whether he has unAmerican beliefs?

Obama's lack of leadership
 

Okay, I'm now convinced that re-appointing Bernanke is a glaring example. If he says the Fed's just fine with below target inflation and high unemployment, what's the point in having a Fed?

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

Whoa.

Krugman

eta: For Hank: The failures of economists.

I thought words have meaning, but maybe that's just pastry.
 

Is "lack of leadership" just a synonym for "mistake"?

Re: I thought words have meaning, but maybe that's just pastry.
 

From 2003-8 "mistake" was a synonym for "treasonous lie." usage may have changed?

Re: I thought words have meaning, but maybe that's just pastry.
 

Really? I don't think I ever recall anyone on the left crying "treason." That one is usually reserved to those who view themselves as more "patriotic" than thou, who are usually on the right.

Re: I thought words have meaning, but maybe that's just pastry.
 

Well, duh.

ETA: Although here I think it is a question of vision, and a question of willingness to take on a battle over the replacement, so yeah, I do think there is a leadership element to this particular mistake, even though I was mostly just joking about Club and Hank's Obama critique.