I've gotten a good deal of E-mail of late asking me why I continue to blogroll Juan Cole given some of the Counterpunch style excesses of his animus towards George Bush (not to mention large swaths of the Bush Administration generally).
I haven't replied to those correspondents as a) I don't really buy into de-linking campaigns and b) I'm behind on E-mail generally. So let me just say here that I keep him on because I respect his regional expertise and evident passion about developments in the Middle East. This, however, I found quite beyond the pale:
The history of alcoholism and possibly other drug use is a key issue because it not only speaks to Bush's character as an addictive personality, but may tell us something about his erratic and alarming actions as president. His explosive temper probably provoked the disastrous siege of Fallujah last spring, killing 600 Iraqis, most of them women and children, in revenge for the deaths of 4 civilian mercenaries, one of them a South African. (Newsweek reported that Bush commanded his cabinet, "Let heads roll!") That temper is only one problem. Bush has a sadistic streak. He clearly enjoyed, as governor, watching executions. His delight in killing people became a campaign issue in 2000 when he seemed, in one debate, to enjoy the prospect of executing wrong-doers a little too much. He has clearly gone on enjoying killing people on a large scale in Iraq. Drug abuse can affect the ability of the person to feel deep emotions like empathy. Two decades of pickling his nervous system in various highly toxic substances have left Bush damaged goods. Even for those who later abstain, "visual-spatial abilities, abstraction, problem solving, and short-term memory, are the slowest to recover." That he managed to get on the wagon (though with that pretzel incident, you wonder how firmly) is laudable. But he suffers the severe effects of the aftermath, and we are all suffering along with him now, since he is the most powerful man in the world. [emphasis added]
"He has clearly gone on enjoying killing people on a large scale in Iraq"?
Think about that statement for a second or two. How offensively unmoored from any evidentiary support or rational appraisal! Cole does himself no favors engaging in such hateful screeds and rank hyperbole.
By the way, Cole's link that discusses some of the negative long-term impacts of alcohol abuse includes the below information too (which Cole doesn't mention):
Despite the grim realities described above, the situation is not hopeless: With abstinence there is functional and structural recovery...Predictably cognitive functions and motor coordination improve, at least partially, within 3 or 4 weeks of abstinence; cerebral atrophy reverses after the first few months of sobriety.
Indications of structural pathology often disappear completely with long-term abstinence.
Hyper-excitability of the central nervous system persists during the first several months of sobriety and then normalizes.
Frontal lobe blood flow continues to increase with abstinence, returning to approximately normal levels within 4 years.
In general, skills that require novel, complex, and rapid information processing take longest to recover. New verbal learning is among the first to recover. Visual-spatial abilities, abstraction, problem solving, and short-term memory, are the slowest to recover. There may be persistent impairment in these domains, particularly among older alcoholics [over 40]. However, even this population may show considerable recovery with prolonged abstinence.
I'm not a medical professional or expert in such things (and Cole certainly isn't either). But I do have common sense and am happy to try to be judicial in considering such matters. Bush quit drinking when he was 40. He hasn't had a drink in around 15 years. Does anyone seriously think a bottle (nay, hundreds of them) of Jack Daniels imbibed circa. 1985 impacts war room cabinet decisions with regard to Fallujah a score or so years later?
Of course not.
But, more apropos, should a prominent academic be suggesting that Bush's previous history of heavy drinking is a contributing factor in Bush's alleged gleeful massacring of Iraqis on a "large scale"? Is that serious, professional discourse?
No, it's not. Not by a long shot, I fear. It will earn Cole some appreciative high-fives amidst the Ann Arbor, Berkeley and Cambridge sets--but does his reputation no favors in more sober circles.