This morning I went to my favorite website — I need humor in the early hours, and David Horowitz’s Frontpage never fails to deliver, albeit unintentionally — and was definitely not disappointed by the screaming headline above David Horowitz’s “blog”:
“Saddam Hussein website comes to the defense of Juan Cole and Justin Raimondo and attacks us“!
Hey, I thought, Saddam Hussein has a website? Wow! They sure are getting lenient in Iraqi prisons these days! But on reading further, it turns out that Saddam ain’t bloggin’ — it’s those Eye-talians!:
“A website devoted to attacking the American ‘occupation’ of Iraq and hosted improbably by Italians supporting Iraq’s incarcerated former dictator (it solemnly posts “special reports on the trial of President Saddam Hussein”) has sprung to the defense of Professor Juan Cole whose sympathies for America’s Islamist enemies has been subjected to withering scrutiny by FrontPage writer, Professor Steven Plaut.”
Watch out, dude: I wouldn’t mess with those Eye-talians! Those guys are friggin’ …. dangerous! What with all that pasta, and tomato sauce — not to mention pesto sauce. Nary a cheese-dog to be found — where will the anti-American subversion end? Luckily we have the “withering” analysis of Little Stevie Wondrous Plaut, who’s so pro-American that he packed his bags and moved to Israel where he spends his time denouncing the American peace initiative and defending the extremist-terrorist followers of the late Meir Kahane. Oh, so “withering”!
And there’s more, as Horowitz breathlessly relates:
“The Saddam site uruknet.info reposts Kurt Nimmo’s response to Plaut’s prior evisceration of Nimmo himself for similar raging sympathies for the enemy: ‘Steve ‘Pinnochio Plaut Is In Need of Seriouus [sic] Therapy.’ Nimmo has apparently been consulting Ahmad al-Qloushi’s professor in how to deal with arguments you can’t handle. Nimmo’s article begins ‘It is comforting to read articles by Juan Cole and Justin Raimondo…’ and descends into further inanity from there. Readers of FrontPage can enjoy and profit from Plaut’s latest Cole extravaganza in today’s issue.”
It really is a great compliment — which I’m sure the hateful Horowitz didn’t intend — to be grouped with Professor Cole of the University of Michigan, a scholar and head of the Middle East Studies Association. Cole’s nuanced analysis, leavened with his characteristic gentleness and plain old common sense, is a bit different from my own shall we say angular style, but it’s interesting how obsessed the War Party is with both of us. I humbly suggest that’s because we’re so effective, each in his own way: Antiwar.com has managed to build up a huge audience, and Professor Cole is regularly featured on such programs as PBS’s “News Hour” and cited in newspaper accounts of events in the Middle East.
This has truly been a banner week or two: Antiwar.com has been attacked by all the right neocon nut-jobs! First it was the Trotskyite-turned-Sufi Stephen Schwartz, defender of Uzbekistan’s scary dictatorship — then it was State Department “libertarian” Tom Palmer, whose upcoming trip to Iraq on behalf of the newly-installed colonial government is no doubt going to prove a milestone for those who want to blend Shi’ite theocracy with the insights of Friedrich Hayek, and now the frothy-mouthed Horowitz/Plaut duo.
A wacko, a weirdo, and a couple of wing-dings: by their enemies shall ye know them. We must be doing something right….
Thank you very much. Very informative.,