Juan Cole

No God But God Max Rodenbeck makes odd statements and basic errors in his review of Reza Aslan’s “No God but God” on the struggle between moderates and extremists in the Muslim world. Rodenbeck writes: “Aslan’s wish to emphasize the tolerant, merciful side of Islam can lead to pitfalls. It is not particularly comforting to […]

43 Iraqis Dead in 2 Days Shiite Pilgrims Massacred Killings in Sinjar, Hilla Wire services report that the unconventional sectarian civil war in Iraq continued on Saturday. Guerrillas in Qaim executed 10 Shiite pilgrims originally from Diwaniyah returning from Syria. The shrine of Sayyidah Zaynab, the granddaughter of the Prophet Muhammad and the sister of […]

Military Analysts Who Lived in Aluminum Fairy Land Rewarded Two Army analysts who mistakenly claimed that aluminum tubing bought by Iraq was for centrifuges to enrich uranium received job performance awards during the past 3 years. When the specifications of the tubing were finally shown to the International Atomic Energy Commission in March of 2003, […]

Muqtada: All Factions Must Participate in Constitution-Making The Herald Sun reports that late on Friday, ‘ “A suicide bomber blew up his vehicle near a police patrol, killing seven people, including three policemen and wounding 24 civilians,” Lieutenant Mahmud al-Azzawi said. ‘ Guerrillas assassinated a major Sunni Arab tribal leader, Shaikh Sabhan Khalaf al-Juburi (al-Jibouri), […]

US Helicopter Shot Down, 2 Soldiers Dead PM Jaafari launches a Campaign around Baghdad Guerrillas shot down a US helicopter near Baqubah on Thursday, killing two US soldiers. Stephen Kamarow explains the reservations many Iraqis have about what strikes them as an indecisive leadership style in Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari. His Minister of Defense, Saadoun […]

Blog-Casting and the Future of Blog Advertising Carl Bialik of the WSJ has an article on attempts to count various things about web logs, including how many there are, how many Americans read them, how much they are linked to, and what their readership is. Many of these questions are driven by Madison Avenue (i.e. […]

Bombings and Assassinations Continue US Military Sweep in Haditha Thursday morning’s 70 minutes of mayhem began at 7:20 a.m. Baghdad time. Guerrillas detonated two bombs, and carried out two drive-by shootings and a stabbing in a little over an hour. A roadside bomb targeted a US convoy, wounding at least one civilian. A bomb in […]

Islamism versus Secularism in Iraq: A Debate I saw this debate on al-Jazeera (Doha) on Sunday in Arabic at 17:15 GMT, on 22 May 05. It was some of the best television discussion of Iraq I’ve ever seen, and the BBC World Monitoring has translated it now (May 24, 2005). The al-Jazeera anchor was quite […]

Sometimes You are Just Screwed Readers occasionally write me complaining that I do not offer any solutions to the problems in Iraq. Let me just step back from the daily train wreck news from the region to complain back that there aren’t any short-term, easy solutions to the problems in Iraq. The US military cannot […]