Juan Cole

Bin Laden’s Plan When I said that “He (OBL) knew what the likely US response would be, and had thought several steps ahead, as in chess” I was referring to September and October, when the al-Qaida propaganda machine clearly was way ahead of the United States. I personally also believe that al-Qaida assassinated Ahmad Shah […]

Bin Laden’s Intentions In his taped interview with Sheikh al-Harbi (or whoever it was), which was probably secretly taped without Usama’s knowledge by one of al-Harbi’s associates, Bin Ladin says that he was the most optimistic of the al-Qaida high command about the impact of the planes. However, he only thought that the floors above […]

International Law and the Building Iraq Campaign It is a mistake to believe that multilateralists accept “rhetoric, promises, and declarations (especially with regard to Iran and Iraq).” I know of few informed persons who would like to see the Saddam Hussein regime continue in power. I am not, however, the international community, and I am […]

The State Department vs. the Pentagon, and The Bush Doctrine I perceive one key difference between the Pentagon and State to be the former’s preference for unilateral action as opposed to the latter’s commitment to coalition building. Wolfowitz has been reported to believe that only the UK and Turkey are necessary as permanent allies in […]

Referendum Farce in Pakistan According to Dawn the Pakistani Supreme Court will take up the question of whether the presidential referendum that General Pervez Musharraf has called for April 30, 2002, is constitutional. Whatever the court decides (and its members will be under enormous pressure from the military to back it, as a recent high-level […]

Anti-Discrimination Laws Proposed in Morocco Ribat – Al-Sharq al-Awsat, 22 April 2002. This sort of news almost never gets reported in the West. Yesterday a gathering of Moroccan politicians, cultural figures, and journalists called for strong legislation against racial and religious discrimination in Morocco. They specifically mentioned the difficulties some of the country’s 6,000 Jews […]

Date: Fri, 15 Mar 2002 16:25:25 -0500 (EST) To: gulf2000 list Equal Opportunity Bigotry Date: Fri, 15 Mar 2002 16:23:12 -0500 From: Juan Cole Yes, I am outraged by Dr. al-Jalahma’s column, and by similarly outrageous pieces of gross bigotry that appear quite frequently in the Saudi press and the Arabic language press more generally. […]

Re: Editor Suggests “Nuking Mecca” From: Juan Cole Re: Lowry and Coulter One reason that Lowry’s (and earlier Coulter’s) remarks are alarming is that the political Right in the United States has a track record of actually getting into power and then implementing policies earlier thought bizarre by mainstream American society. Ronald Reagan was widely […]

Date: Fri, 5 Apr 2002 16:36:20 -0500 (EST) To: gulf2000 list Re: Oil and US politics From: Juan Cole . . . An irony occurs to me. The Saudis and OPEC did the U.S. a substantial favor after September 11 in not making further production cuts to offset the fall in petroleum prices caused by […]