The advantage of avoiding right-wing sites altogether is that I had no idea this was even on the radar. (so to speak)
Remember all the hubbub about how August 22 would be the day
Uh, no?
When it comes to "rationality," why is it that Bush is given a free pass but Ahmadinejad is taken at his "apocalyptic" word? After all, Bush demonstrably believes some weird shit that has nothing to do with reality, and he has access, not simply to a couple nuclear bombs, but enough to destroy all life on the planet multiple times over. You might think that Bush is objectively more dangerous -- oh, but he's rational. You can tell by his skin color.
right-wing sites
Right, like ABC News. And it was the headline on Drudge for some time yesterday.
I'd heard some of it, but hadn't realized that it was really being taken seriously.
I guess I have to give them points for taking their own crazy end-of-the-worldism and making it seem like, no, it's the other guy.
Gawd, you people are lazy, ogged. Maybe y'all will get together next year, huh?
Huh. So do you think there will be mass retractions and admissions that folks were wrong?
No, there will not be retractions; there will be doubling-down. This just proves that the Iranian menace is even wilier than we imagined. There's no telling when they'll strike!
Just read the comments to the ABC News link.
Hello imams? Please wear numbered jerseys so we can tell who is who. Thank you imams!
Is it possible, given how covert he has been, that ogged is the Hidden Imam?
Just read the comments to the ABC News link.
I like the commenter who noted: "On august 22, 565 there was supposedly a sighting of the lochness monster also. These things have been going on a long time."
I'm not sure how it fits together but it's an interesting data point.
I don't get the point of this rumor. They spread it all over the place even though it was totally insubtantial. Doesn't that mean that all the wingnuts who went to bed last night thinking they'd wake up in a new era of apocalypse, woke up instead to read about how Iran wants to negotiate? Doesn't this make Iran look way more reasonable, today, to anyone who believed the rumor?
I wouldn't be surprised if Iranian intelligence is behind DEBKA. Just saying.
Doesn't this make Iran look way more reasonable, today, to anyone who believed the rumor?
No, I think Felix is exactly right about this: to anyone who believed the rumor, the warnings were just "being safe" and the lack of action is evidence of wiliness.
Oy vey. There was one (weird) article by Bernard Lewis. That's the scandal. Who do you want a retraction from, Bill Kristol?
I'm not sure how to take that comment, baa.
In the worst possible light?
No, I just meant that this idea of a 22 August attack basically derived from one weird column by Bernard Lewis. Thus it's not really a big central tenet of right-wingism/neoconservitude/or amigo of Bush-dom.
No, I just meant that this idea of a 22 August attack basically derived from one weird column by Bernard Lewis
Isn't Lewis sort of a "leading Arab scholar" for you lot? (And it's not as if he's the only crazy one; did you see the Barone bit about the secret jihadists or whatever we're supposed to be?)
Thus it's not really a big central tenet of right-wingism/neoconservitude/or amigo of Bush-dom
And I wouldn't dream of saying that it was, amigo. But it's worthwhile to call attention to and discredit folks like Lewis and Robert Spencer, both of whom act like serious academics and scholars of Islam, but are basically hate and fear mongers. The result I hope for is that if someone who reads this site finds herself in an argument where someone cites Robert Spencer, then she can say, "the same Robert Spencer who..?"
(The Spencer case is kind of fascinating, because his argument is basically that the most radical jihadists have the only correct reading of Islam, and that's why we can't find any accommodation with Islam.)
I always thought that right wingers believe the world will end August 22, 2006, in kind of the same way that the hate Ted Kennedy or something -- it's an essential and integral part of their beliefs and characterizes literally everyone who's ever voted Republican.
I've only read Lewis' quasi-academic work. My understanding is that remains highly regarded. Is this not true? (I ask this seriously)
I've only read Lewis' quasi-academic work. My understanding is that remains highly regarded. Is this not true? (I ask this seriously)
I don't believe that's true, anymore. But I'm not in that field, so I have little reason to trust my sense on this. Does anyone have a sense of what the last four years have done to the reputations of academics who supported the Iraq where, in cases in which their support came from their expert knowledge? Are you shunned in the IR community for having backed this thing?
I think you're probably right, ogged. If there is some minor pro-Iran effect caused by Iran defying the expectations of a legion of warbloggers, it's probably entirely outweighed by the belief that Iran is constantly on the verge of unleashing an attack.
I just have such a hard time believing that being proven wrong over and over has no effect. I guess the world hasn't exactly gone out of its way to prove to me the applicability of 'The Boy Who Cried Wolf', though.
Just to be clear (and not saying this was your suggestion, SCMT), the Lewis scholarship in question (What Went Wrong, Crisis of Islam) is very little concerned with the Iraq war.
Just to be clear (and not saying this was your suggestion, SCMT), the Lewis scholarship in question
Right, I wasn't saying that. I just thought I'd seen some of Lewis's work getting pounded by seemingly knowledgeable people recently. (For some reason, I think DA pounded him in the comments here.) My sense is that the connection to Iraq is solely that events have caused people to focus on that area, and reconsider the work of pro-Iraq war folk. Again, found (and possibly misremembered) knowlege, so who knows?
I read "The Muslim Discovery of Europe", which was about the Ottoman and earlier Muslim empires and their relation to Europe, and I thought it was tendentious -- emphasizing Muslim incomprehension and closedness, soft-pedaling the more positive data I knew of.
I think I just had a Saiselgasm.
I never read any Lewis, but Col Lounsbury says his writings about medieval middle east are resepctable if flawed but when he writes about contemporary stuff, or even 19th century, not his area of expertise, he's full of shit.