Well, your comment is certainly more likely to lead to a better understanding of the situation than comments such as Dr Peter Handley's. At least you make distinctions between and within factions.
I would like to ask, though, why you make no mention of government "shabiha" and why you use the term "religious war." First and foremost, what we are looking at in Syria is the prospect of civil war. The religious aspects are important but secondary. Imagine considering the American Civil War a "religious war" based upon the different church affiliations of the combatants and the different church positions on slavery.
Having said that, I would agree that to the extent the revolutionaries engage in sectarian violence they undermine their own cause of a more democratic Syria.
Your comment does not help anyone understand what propaganda might be on display in the Syrian uprising. A good place to begin when looking for propaganda is with institutions and to see who is aligning in an unqualified manner with an institutional point-of-view. The fact that Prof. Cole is not even speaking on an institutional point of view suggests that the label of propaganda is being sorely misplaced.
You may want to review the definition of the word propaganda. Prof. Cole is focusing on a specific subject: the political prospects, current and future, of Hezbollah given the stance it has taken on the Syrian uprising. Brutality by anti-government forces would be a subject for a different article. Also, the existence of brutality by anti-government forces would not suddenly absolve the Assad regime of its own brutality. Finally, as far as propaganda goes, mentioning only Christians killed in Homs while using terms like "jihadists" and "ultimatum" (as if everyone else in Homs issued it) sounds a whole lot more like propaganda than anything in Prof. Cole's article.
Personally, I don't think the two subject matters are in any way mutually exclusive. In fact, discoveries such as these can excite the public imagination in ways that lead to greater interest in science in general, and that can only be a good thing, especially given the anti-science dimension to climate change denial.
The fourth point you make contains a tinge of historical irony, doesn't it? Guess who else considered the Haqqani Network an authentic ally of its interests, once upon a time?
I imagine the foreign policy of the United States must leave many in the region dazed and confused. Trying to keep track of who we support and who we oppose from one decade to the next is hard enough for us Americans, let alone those whose villages are attacked by drone strikes and whose dictators (and even democratically elected leaders) are sometimes overthrown, sometimes not.
So we're worried about the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafis?Isn't the real concern still what role SCAF is playing in all of this and what its response will be to the elections results? My worry is not who wins these elections but whether or not SCAF will honor the will of the Egyptian people. I have to say, I don't have a whole lot of confidence in this regard.
Well, your comment is certainly more likely to lead to a better understanding of the situation than comments such as Dr Peter Handley's. At least you make distinctions between and within factions.
I would like to ask, though, why you make no mention of government "shabiha" and why you use the term "religious war." First and foremost, what we are looking at in Syria is the prospect of civil war. The religious aspects are important but secondary. Imagine considering the American Civil War a "religious war" based upon the different church affiliations of the combatants and the different church positions on slavery.
Having said that, I would agree that to the extent the revolutionaries engage in sectarian violence they undermine their own cause of a more democratic Syria.
Your comment does not help anyone understand what propaganda might be on display in the Syrian uprising. A good place to begin when looking for propaganda is with institutions and to see who is aligning in an unqualified manner with an institutional point-of-view. The fact that Prof. Cole is not even speaking on an institutional point of view suggests that the label of propaganda is being sorely misplaced.
You may want to review the definition of the word propaganda. Prof. Cole is focusing on a specific subject: the political prospects, current and future, of Hezbollah given the stance it has taken on the Syrian uprising. Brutality by anti-government forces would be a subject for a different article. Also, the existence of brutality by anti-government forces would not suddenly absolve the Assad regime of its own brutality. Finally, as far as propaganda goes, mentioning only Christians killed in Homs while using terms like "jihadists" and "ultimatum" (as if everyone else in Homs issued it) sounds a whole lot more like propaganda than anything in Prof. Cole's article.
Personally, I don't think the two subject matters are in any way mutually exclusive. In fact, discoveries such as these can excite the public imagination in ways that lead to greater interest in science in general, and that can only be a good thing, especially given the anti-science dimension to climate change denial.
The fourth point you make contains a tinge of historical irony, doesn't it? Guess who else considered the Haqqani Network an authentic ally of its interests, once upon a time?
I imagine the foreign policy of the United States must leave many in the region dazed and confused. Trying to keep track of who we support and who we oppose from one decade to the next is hard enough for us Americans, let alone those whose villages are attacked by drone strikes and whose dictators (and even democratically elected leaders) are sometimes overthrown, sometimes not.
So we're worried about the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafis?Isn't the real concern still what role SCAF is playing in all of this and what its response will be to the elections results? My worry is not who wins these elections but whether or not SCAF will honor the will of the Egyptian people. I have to say, I don't have a whole lot of confidence in this regard.