I find Juan Cole's blog extremely useful and have a very very high opinion of Cole. However, Idon't always agree with him. For me, disagreement with Juan Cole is so rare that it sticks in my mind and bothers me.

Just now, before opening his blog, I was puzzled as to why we disagree about the Iraqi 3 man presidency, which is designed to protect ethnic and religious minorities from possible tyranny of the Shi'ite Arab majority. Like Cole, I would have proposed a bicameral parliament with an upper house which over represented small population gorvernates. In fact, I used the "ask Sistani" link to ask Sistani if that would be ok with him (he didn't answer). However, the presidency seems to be another means to the same end. It even sounds more democratic since the 2 sub presidents are the 1st and 2nd runner up in the vote (in parliament).

Cole thinks that an executive made of a 2 person presidency and a prime minister would be unwieldy. I'm not sure given the role of the president in a parliamentary republic. The president in a parliamentary republic acts like a constitutional monarch. The main choice of the president or monarch is who to propose to parliament as prime minister. This is a very important role if the parliament is highly divided. Another role is partly ceremonial and symbolic. representing the unity, or in this case the diversity, of the country. That is the president has great powers which are to be used very vrey rarely, basically only when the constitution is threatened. A 3 person presidency which can only act if unanimous seems to me to be exactly the right body to act very rarely. I don't want to go overboard, but it seems to me that the 3 person presidency is an excellent institution suited to Iraq and many other countries. My only regret is that I didin't think of it.

Anyway, the fact that I am troubled by the fact that Cole disagrees shows how much I respect him.

The patient reader will have guessed that I am about to disagree with Cole in a less obsequious way.
I think his interpretation of the recent poll of British moslems is marred by dishonest special pleading. Cole notes that "The two most sensational findings are that about 12% of British Muslims say they support the attack on the US of September 11 (and think further such attacks could be justified) and that 47 % of them said that if they were Palestinians they would consider becoming suicide bombers. " but argues that this is consistent with the title of his post "British Muslims Abandoning Labor;
In Poll Show Mainstream European Attitudes."

The example of mainstream Europeans with mixed opinions about 9/11 is a poll of Italians. I didn't notice the poll when it was published and I am amazed and suspicious of the results. I live in Italy and I certainly didn't notice any ambivilance in the reaction to 9/11.

Still I am willing to accept Cole's argument that 12% twisted sickos is about average for any population. I am less convinced by his argument that many UK moslems don't know what happened on September 11th, which seems to me totally incredible and is unsupported by any evidence.

My main objection is to his argument about the more shocking 47% result. I actually object strongly because he describes the result in two contradictory ways. : "47 % of them said that if they were Palestinians they would consider becoming suicide bombers. " when presenting it and "the poll found that 47% could imagine themselves becoming suicide bombers if they were Palestinians" when analysing and downplaying it. "Consider" and "imagine" are different words with different meanings. In this case, the substitution of "imagine" for "consider" changes the meaning of the question substantially. There is no justifucation for substituting "imagine" for "consider". I think it is dishonest to do so.

The phrasing "And almost half said they might consider becoming a suicide bomber if they lived as a Palestinian" is from an article by James Lyons to which cole links.
I did not find the word "imagine" in the news stories to which Cole links.

Now I was interested and somewhat sympathetic to Cole's argument that hypothetical questions can be trick questions. To understand the poll, as presented by Cole, one has to understand what "were" means. This is not like understanding the difference between "consider" and "imagine". In particular, how am I to guess what I would consider doing if I were a Palistinian. This is not imagining what I would do under certain circumstances but also imainging what sort of person I would be if I were a different person.

The interpretation of the poll would be much simpler if the pollsters had used the idiom "would you consider becoming a suicide bomber if you were in a Palistinians shoes". That is, the question should make clear that it is asking what the actual polled non Palistinian person would do under the circumstances of being a stateless person in the occupied territories.

Here again there is, I'm sorry to say, a question of simple honesty. The question as presented by Lyons does not include the word "were" but rather "lived as" which is much much clearer. I can't find the exact phrasing of the question, but I assume that Cole's understanding of the question is based on Lyons' article so he should have quoted Lyon's paraphrase of the pollsters instead of paraphasing it further.

Still, I agree that it is possible that some respondents interpreted the question as "what would you do if you were transported into the womb of a Palistinian woman in say 1970 then born and bred a Palistiniam" which seemst to me roughly equivilant to "do you think most Palistinians consider becoming suicide bombers". By the way my answer to that question is no.

I think it is much more reasonable to interpret the question as "what would you do if you were transported to the occupied territories and deprived of UK citizenship". That is the question that a reasonable Pollster would ask, and, I think it was, by far, the most common interpretation of the not perfectly clear question.

Anyway this question, what does were mean, is a hard question and, although I don't agree with Cole, I don't consider his argument dishonest.

I guess mainly I am very very disturbed by the "consider" to "imagine" shift.