A couple days ago I tried to preempt inevitable moves by the Left which seek to deny Bush credit for Lebanon. The post was built around a quote from Druze leader Walid Jumblatt to the effect that Lebanon's democratic resistance to Syria is being inspired by Iraq. Celebrity Leftist blogger Juan Cole, reading the same quote, has a post this morning in which he announces to the world that he remains unconvinced:

I don't think Bush had anything much to do with the current Lebanese national movement except at the margins... Jumblatt has a long history of anti-Israeli and anti-American sentiment that makes his sudden conversion to neoconism likely a mirage.

My problem with Cole isn't so much that he's wrong-minded, and I don't necessarily think he's disingenuous. I think that his ideology has so over-determined the way that he reads news that he could rationalize anything to deny Bush credit. What does bother me is that the way that he writes and argues is explicitly done in order to shut down debate: he frequently pulls the expertise card, and his readers then do the argumentative equivalent of putting their hands over their ears and shouting "I can't hear you" whenever someone tries to call them on what they somehow shamelessly refer to as facts...