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March 29, 2007

The same old conspiracy theories about Iraq the Model

When the brothers who write Iraq the Model came to the US in December 2004, as guests of Spirit of America, I tracked their tour via all the many blogposts written about them.

It is gratifying to see President Bush quote them in his recent speech, but it's not surprising, since he met them when they were here (provoking another controversy) and has probably been checking in at their blog ever since. (Given how efforts to reconstruct Iraq have moved backwards and forwards for the past two and a half years, their conversation with the President has some poignancy.)

But many who fancy themselves human rights advocates pick their causes based on which ones the Bush administration supports: whoever Bush encourages, they disparage. Bush is the center of their universe, not human rights, and like the pre-Kepler astronomers, they must invent ever more elaborate and fanciful orbits to keep their solar system coherent.

So when the brothers came to the US, conspiracy theories proliferated, led by Juan Cole. I kept track of it all here. (A compendium of Juan Cole's conspiracy theorizing and factual impairment here.) These theories even reached the NYTimes resulting in an irresponsible article by an inexperienced and careless reporter. Even the brother who left the blog (over concerns about the meeting with the President) was offended by the bad journalism and the patronizing attempts by Cole & Co. to use the controversy for their own political agenda. (The recently-deceased journalist Cathy Siepp met the brothers in LA, and knew a few of the conspiracy-mongers personally, whom she fisked with relish.)

Now the same people revert to the same assumptions: If Bush advocates it, it must be tainted or false. If a person of a leftist-approved "oppressed group" (dark-skinned, poor, in a part of the world ruled at some point by Western powers) is optimistic or approves the efforts of our government (however flawed they may be), they must work for the CIA. Or be deluded, needing instruction from smug white Americans.

The brothers respond.

Of ocurse their point of view is not the only one, probably not even the majority one. But there are 25 million people in Iraq. They are not stamped out with a cookie cutter, they are individuals. Just as in the West, there are many points of view in Iraq, among these the desire for a classical liberal Western-style democracy. But to the conspiracy-mongers, that is the one point of view which cannot be sincere and must not be encouraged.

Judith | 03/29/07 at 03:00 PM | Categories: - Iraq

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Tracked on March 29, 2007 05:26 PM

Comments

jojo | March 29, 2007 07:05 PM

papertiger | March 29, 2007 11:16 PM

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