Informed Citizens

A comment on the last post (from "Anonymous") cited Informed Comment, where Juan Cole offers daily information on and analysis of what's happening in Iraq and its vicinity. Cole is a professor of Modern Middle East and South Asian History at the University of Michigan and an internationally recognized expert on Islamic history, culture, and society. He speaks and reads Arabic, Persian, and Urdu, and thus one of the many virtues of Informed Comment is that Cole is able to tell us what the Arabic, Iranian, and Pakistani Press are writing about the debacle in Iraq.

President Bush and his henchmen like to say that Americans are pessimistic about this war, now entering its fifth year, because they don't know what's really going on in Iraq. This is one instance where I have to admit they are partly right. If you read Cole and other conscientious sources, you'll see that in fact everything in Iraq is much worse than the mainstream media are telling us. American and other western journalists are, for the most part, justifiably nervous about leaving the Green Zone and are unable to learn the on-the-ground realities in Anbar Province, the slums of Baghdad, and other places where insurgent and sectarian violence rages.

One of the responsibilities of citizens in a democracy is that they make an effort to inform themselves about current events. This is especially challenging in the modern United States where so much of the media, particularly radio and TV, is controlled by corporate interests. Fox News, for example, is little more than an outlet for White House propaganda; other media, obsessed with missing white girls and misbehaving celebrities, are little better. But the internet is full of useful information and analysis. It's our duty as citizens to find these sources, read them, and think about them. Informed Comment is a good place to start.