Juan Cole

The Israel Lobby And a Reply to Drezner Philip Weiss weighs in on the Mearsheimer and Walt paper on the Israel lobby at The Nation. It is a fine, searching, level-headed treatment. The big surprise: The influence of Leon Uris on American political science! Thanks to bloggers, by the way, for taking up the issue […]

Settling Iraq before it Blows Up A renewed debate on the possible partition of Iraq is emerging. Let’s get one thing out of the way. As for letting a civil war rage, deliberately, I don’t understand. Everyone is (rightly) complaining about world inaction on the genocide in the Sudan. But here you want to provoke […]

Racial McCarthyism on the Right The petition I set up to defend John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt from scurrilous charges of anti-Semitism (which is to say, racism) for daring write an academic paper on the Israel lobby, is percolating along, accumulating signatures from post-secondary teachers, as I had hoped. Academics from all over the country […]

Defending Bloggers from SLAPs It was bound to happen. “Blogger hit with Multi-Million Dollar Lawsuit.” Props to MBA for trying to help.

Guerrillas Kill 25 Sistani supports Gradual US Withdrawal Bombings and assassinations left some 25 persons dead in Iraq on Saturday, including 17 who just showed up in the street dead, with some showing signs of torture. 70 GIs have been killed in Iraq in the past month, and over 2400 have been killed since the […]

Susan Sarandon and Death Threats Susan Sarandon’s description of how alone and obviously afraid she felt as she received death threats and faced massive hostility from the public over her opposition in 2003 to the war is touching. ‘ In an interview to be shown on the Jonathan Dimbleby programme today, Sarandon recalled how she […]

IAEA Finds no Proof of Iranian Nuclear Weapons Program In its April 28 report, the International Atomic Energy Agency mentioned the UNSC mandate to Iran of last February: ‘ • re-establish full and sustained suspension of all enrichment related and reprocessing activities,including research and development, to be verified by the Agency; • reconsider the construction […]

Iraq VP Warns Bush against Iran Attack Ramadi Fighting Leads to Evacuation of One District Adil Abdul Mahdi, whom the Americans wanted for the prime minister of Iraq, warned Washington Friday not to attack Iran. “We will not allow anyone to attack anyone,” He said. (Since Iraqi politicians can’t keep bombs from going off all […]

Iraq and the Oil Crunch? Update: See Alan Richards’s reply at end Jim Krane of the Associate Press quotes analysts who seem to blame the high price of petroleum in part on the shambles in Iraq. Iraq could be exporting nearly 3 million barrels a day (bbd) if the guerrilla war was not resulting in […]