Juan Cole:

“The credibility of the US in the Middle East as a broker is finished, kaput, nada, zero. And the problem is that there is no other credible broker.

You know, my colleague Rashid Khalidi of Columbia University got slammed by the Neocons for having predicted that the Arab street would come out during the Gulf War and threaten the region with instability. Actually, there were huge demonstrations, especially in North Africa. But his critics pointed out that there were no real changes as a result. The power of the urban crowd in the Middle East cannot be sneezed at (see: the Islamic Revolution in Iran, 1978-79). But it is true that most governments in the Middle East have muddled through even if they have been associated with unpopular US or Israeli policies.

Rashid was right, though, about the danger of doing things that cause anger to fester in large numbers of people. And, it occurs to me that the very inability of those huge crowds to change anything (or even to go to the streets in most countries of the region, given the controls put in place by the secret police) gave rise to the frustrations that eventuated in the wave of terrorism we are now seeing. That is, the Arab street has not so much admitted defeat as ramified, into radical social movements with a religious cast, and (on the part of a small number of the really angry and frustrated) into terrorist cells.” —Informed Consent

I have been tracking the phenomenon by which the social censorship after 9-11 of any comments suggesting that the US was anything other than an innocent victim is finally showing its age. Vigilante arbiters of public opinion scoured the media for anyone hinting at what, for me was and is as plain as the noses on our faces — that the US with its cocky, arrogant swagger and disdain for world consensus has engendered the hatred that came back at us in spades on 9-11. And the Bush administration’s prosecution of the WoT® has continued to fulfill the prophecy. Although Cole is careful here to place his comments only in the context of the current Iraqi Intifada and the Bush endorsement of Sharon’s unilateral ‘solution’ to the Palestinian conflict (“Sharon and Bush just painted big red targets on us all”), it is clear he is joining the ranks of those uttering the forbidden thought.