"Susan Rice had nothing whatsoever to do with Libya..."
Fine, but she climbed the policy nomenklatura ladder as a selfproclaimed expert on tropical Africa, whereas her extensive official record there -- on Nigeria, Congo/Rwanda, Ethiopia etc. -- is nothing for any progressive person to defend. Establishment connections plus fierce opportunism can't substitute for actual knowledge of the world plus a sense of justice. The latter two qualities are the hallmarks of Informed Comment in Juan Cole's own area of expertise, but Republican sliminess in itself does not amount to an argument in _favor_ of Susan Rice.
Hatchetman John V. Walsh (in the CounterPunch hit piece of August 30th) even urged Democracy Now to purge you as a fellow "travel"-er. Hegel has gotta be laughing at that particular piece of dialectically recycled McCarthyism.
Thanks for this reasonable summary. Another progressive with Arabist credentials who has written cogently about the matter is Gilbert Achcar. It's amazing to hear certain opportunistic arguments against UNSC 1973, such as that Libya is "tribal" (right out of the colonial handbook) or that we should wait for negotiations by the African Union (the Gaddafi-funded dictators' club which as we speak continues to cover for Abidjan's Gbagbo). The so-called Left has to outgrow the manichean good vs. evil mindset which informed geopolitics in the cold war; history is fundamentally an open process which must allow for novel events of which the Arab spring is surely one. Gradually the Ottoman aftermath is being excavated--mostly though regrettably not entirely with people's bare hands--and new social forms are being built. Sooner or later this "wind of change" will reach Saudi Arabia and Palestine, and as that happens we need to be intelligently critical of the government which we supposedly elect, but whose establishment remains captive of Big Oil and The Lobby.
And please note with apprehension the viciously racist rhetoric in Mr. Rand's victory speech in that Kentucky country club. Mugabe and Morales are of course polar opposites when it comes to democracy, and neither has exactly gotten any slack from Washington DC, but Paul tied them both to Obama from the fact that the three of them attended the climate summit in Copenhagen. I wonder why? McCarthyism meets Gone With the Wind.
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"Susan Rice had nothing whatsoever to do with Libya..."
Fine, but she climbed the policy nomenklatura ladder as a selfproclaimed expert on tropical Africa, whereas her extensive official record there -- on Nigeria, Congo/Rwanda, Ethiopia etc. -- is nothing for any progressive person to defend. Establishment connections plus fierce opportunism can't substitute for actual knowledge of the world plus a sense of justice. The latter two qualities are the hallmarks of Informed Comment in Juan Cole's own area of expertise, but Republican sliminess in itself does not amount to an argument in _favor_ of Susan Rice.
Hatchetman John V. Walsh (in the CounterPunch hit piece of August 30th) even urged Democracy Now to purge you as a fellow "travel"-er. Hegel has gotta be laughing at that particular piece of dialectically recycled McCarthyism.
Thanks for this reasonable summary. Another progressive with Arabist credentials who has written cogently about the matter is Gilbert Achcar. It's amazing to hear certain opportunistic arguments against UNSC 1973, such as that Libya is "tribal" (right out of the colonial handbook) or that we should wait for negotiations by the African Union (the Gaddafi-funded dictators' club which as we speak continues to cover for Abidjan's Gbagbo). The so-called Left has to outgrow the manichean good vs. evil mindset which informed geopolitics in the cold war; history is fundamentally an open process which must allow for novel events of which the Arab spring is surely one. Gradually the Ottoman aftermath is being excavated--mostly though regrettably not entirely with people's bare hands--and new social forms are being built. Sooner or later this "wind of change" will reach Saudi Arabia and Palestine, and as that happens we need to be intelligently critical of the government which we supposedly elect, but whose establishment remains captive of Big Oil and The Lobby.
And please note with apprehension the viciously racist rhetoric in Mr. Rand's victory speech in that Kentucky country club. Mugabe and Morales are of course polar opposites when it comes to democracy, and neither has exactly gotten any slack from Washington DC, but Paul tied them both to Obama from the fact that the three of them attended the climate summit in Copenhagen. I wonder why? McCarthyism meets Gone With the Wind.