THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume X, Issue # 15, January 16, 2008
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
JUAN COLE'S CROOKED TALES OF HORMUZ
By Winfield Myers
BIASED & UNRELIABLE ACADEMICS, NEWS MEDIA POLITICAL BIAS, & POLITICALLY SLANTED ACCOUNTS OF EVENTS IN
THE MIDDLE EAST -- THE BALEFUL CONSEQUENCES OF THE MEDIA'S RELIANCE ON JUAN COLE & OTHER MIDDLE EAST
STUDIES UNIVERSITY PROFESSORS OF HIS ILK TO EXPLAIN THE MIDDLE EAST TO AMERICANS: ENABLING WIDE
DISSEMINATION OF A DISTORTED & INACCURATE PICTURE OF THE MIDDLE EAST & OF UNITED STATES INVOLVEMENT IN
THE HIGHLY VOLATILE REGION
FULL STORY:
Writing in his well-trafficked blog on Friday, January 11, 2008, University of Michigan Middle East Studies Professor Juan
Cole illustrates the baleful consequences of the media's reliance on Cole and other Middle East Studies Professors of his
ilk to explain the Middle East to Americans: it makes possible the wide dissemination of a distorted, conspiracy-laden
picture of that highly volatile region.
For in just a few paragraphs, Cole proposed or implied:
The harassment of U.S. Navy vessels in the Straits of Hormuz
by Iranian patrol craft last Sunday was possibly a GOP
conspiracy;
At a New York Times blog, an "experienced former
naval officer" posted comments that further refuted the
Navy's story;
Suspicions voiced in the Iranian press that the videotape was
released just ahead of Bush's visit to the region in order to
pressure America's Arab allies "to make common cause with
Israel against Iran" should be taken seriously.
Let's take these in order:
1. GOP Fabrication: Cole's lead introduced the element of conspiracy to his post:
The Bush administration's assertion that five small Iranian boats confronted big, well-armed US ships in the Straits of
Hormuz and threatened to blow up the American vessels is looking more and more like a serious error, if not a
Republican Party fabrication.
So we're to believe that the Bush administration and GOP leadership worked with the top brass in the Navy to concoct
this story? Whatever emerges about how the videotape and audiotape were merged, in light of the USS Cole incident in
April, 2000, surely the approach of high speed craft from a hostile power toward U.S. Navy vessels should be taken as
a serious potential threat. That a prominent professor of Middle East Studies would resort to politicized speculation to
explain the event reveals a great deal about the shoddy nature of Cole's analytical methods.
2. NYT Blog: Cole selectively quoted only a single sentence a commenter who called himself "Former SWO" posted at
the Times's blog on January 9.
My first thought was that the "explode" comment might not have come from one of the Iranian craft, but some loser
monitoring the events at a shore facility.
Cole then added his own coda to the comment from "Former SWO":
This episode is just about the most pitiful thing I have seen since Bush came to power, and believe me I've seen plenty.
This leaves the impression that "Former SWO" helped to undermine the U.S. Navy's claim that the Iranians were the
aggressors.
Yet, this commenter, in fact, fully accepts the Navy's story that the Iranians were the aggressors; the only doubts he
expresses stem from the possibility that the word "explode" may have been uttered not by the Iranians, but by an
unknown party with no connection to the encounter. And that is something else entirely.
For example, here's the second paragraph of the comment by "Former SWO":
"I can tell you right now that this harassment episode is totally
believable; these ships no doubt were trying to interfere with
our ships' navigation through those waters, and really put
themselves in danger. The fact that our ships came close to
firing really helps me understand the immediacy of the
perceived threat."
"Former SWO" then spends three paragraphs detailing how the use of a common UHF frequency among shippers in the
Strait of Hormuz — a frequency that often carries "racial slurs" aimed at Filipinos who work in the area — may account
for the use of the word "explode" in the transmission that the U.S. Navy presented. That may indeed be the case, but it
by no means proves that the Iranians were not acting aggressively, as Cole claims.
In the final paragraph of his comment, "Former SWO" echoes the points he made near the beginning of his post:
"What I do want everybody to know is that those Navy crews
are doing their damned best out there, and, given the current
situation/previous experience with the USS Cole, would certainly
be justified in shooting at any small craft that makes aggressive
runs at them, especially after being warned."
Cole quoted selectively to turn the commentary by "Former SWO" from a defense of the main thrust of US Navy's story
— that the Iranians acted in a threatening manner that had to be taken seriously — into evidence that the Navy's story
was trumped up as part of, as he says in his blog, "a serious error, if not a Republican Party fabrication."
3. Believing the Iranian Press: Most Americans, whatever their political persuasion, would likely take the word of the US
Navy over that of a state press that acts as little more than a voice for the propaganda and conspiracy theories of Iran's
corrupt, theocratic regime. But Cole, like the old apologists for the Soviet Union, readily employs the propaganda of a
dictatorship to support his conspiracy theories against his own country.
Cole writes:
"The Iranian press is suspicious about the timing of the Pentagon
videotape, noting that it was released just as Bush was heading to
the Middle East to try to convince the Arab allies of the U.S.A. to
make common cause with Israel against Iran. The Gulf monarchies
in particular are very afraid of the Iranian Navy, and the Bush
administration video would have been useful for pushing the
Kuwaitis, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia into
agreeing with the Bush grand strategy of surrounding Iran and
then cutting it off."
He moves smoothly from noting the suspicions of the Iranian press in the first sentence, to the language of conspiracy
in the second, where he writes of "the Bush administration video" rather than of a "US Navy video."
But, if we agree with "Former SWO" quoted above, the threats from the Iranian vessels stemmed from their erratic
behavior in close proximity to American ships. Whatever emerges regarding the mixing of the audio and video
components of the tape, the threat was real, and yet Cole discounts it.
Cole is a former president of the Middle East Studies Association, the primary umbrella group for academics in the field.
That a Middle East Studies professor upon whom the press relies for insight into this key region can be so wrong-headed
in so many ways — and in a single blog post — bodes ill for efforts to supply the American public with accurate, reliable
information about the Middle East. Overt biases, a selective reading of sources to support preordained conclusions, an
eagerness to believe the press of foreign dictatorships over one's own Navy, and the reliance on crude conspiracy
theories will ensure only that consumers of media reports on the region are too often misinformed, and that academic
Middle East specialists are further discredited.
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
The News Media & Political Bias
The Middle East & the Problem of Iran
American Foreign Policy -- The Middle East
Islamism & Jihadism -- The Threat of Radical Islam
Page Three
Page Two
Page One
International Politics & World Disorder:
War & Peace in the Real World
Page Two
Page One
Islamist Terrorist Attacks on the U.S.A.
Osama bin Laden & the Islamist Declaration of War
Against the U.S.A. & Western Civilization
Islamist International Terrorism &
U.S. Intelligence Agencies
U.S. National Security Strategy
Winfield Myers, a graduate of Young Harris College and the University of Georgia and having attended Graduate School
at Tulane University and the University of Georgia, is Editor of a college guide (Choosing the Right College),
author of a pamphlet for parents and students (Asking the Right Questions in Choosing a College), and Director
of Campus Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum. Formerly, Myers was Managing Editor of The American
Enterprise, Chief Executive Officer of the Democracy Project, Editor of the ISI Study Guides to the Liberal Arts,
and Senior Editor of two Conservative periodicals, Campus and the Intercollegiate Review. He has taught
History at Tulane University, the University of Michigan, Xavier University of Louisiana, and the University of Georgia.
The foregoing article by Winfield Myers was originally published in Front Page Magazine, January 15, 2008, and
can be found on the Internet website
maintained by the Middle East Forum, a think tank which seeks to define and
promote American interests in the Middle East, defining U.S. interests to include fighting radical Islam, working for
Palestinian Arab acceptance of the State of Israel, improving the management of U.S. efforts to promote constitutional
democracy in the Middle East, reducing America's energy dependence on the Middle East, more robustly asserting U.S.
interests vis-à-vis Saudi Arabia, and countering the Iranian threat.
Republished with Permission of the Middle East Forum
Reprinted from the Middle East Forum News
mefnews@meforum.org (MEF NEWS)
January 15, 2008
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