Michael Rubin snipes at Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi from the Corner:

Since Rashid Khalidi has, by his close friendship to Senator Obama, returned to prominence, it may be worth revisiting the quality of Khalidi’s scholarship and how he subordinates scholarly integrity to polemic.[...]

Khalidi’s influence upon Obama might subordinate basic human rights to the virulent form of Arab nationalism that led to the Anfal.

First, Khalidi hasn’t “returned to prominence,” he is prominent by virtue of being one of the leading Middle East scholars in the United States.

Second, the idea that Rubin would accuse anyone of “subordinat[ing] scholarly integrity to polemic” is pretty funny, given that Rubin himself formerly worked in the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans, helping Doug Feith shape dubiously-sourced intelligence into dishonest arguments for a disastrous war, and now edits the Middle East Quarterly, helping right-wing polemicist Daniel Pipes warn Americans about the Islamic terrorists lurking underneath their beds.

Third, Rubin’s lazy and baseless slander of Khalidi — suggesting that Khalidi somehow espouses an ideology sympathetic to Saddam Hussein’s 1986-89 genocide against the Kurds — is really contemptible, degenerate stuff. (Those kinds of unsubstantiated insinuations might have flown in Feith’s shop, pal, but not out here in the world.) In reality, Khalidi is a big supporter of human rights. The real problem, at least as Rubin and assorted Corner nuts are concerned, is that Khalidi is also a supporter of human rights for Palestinians.

I understand Rubin’s hostility toward Khalidi, though. Rashid Khalidi is a highly regarded academic whose work is taken seriously, whereas Michael Rubin is a second-tier neocon hack known for having served as one of Doug Feith’s oompa-loompas. That’s got to sting a little.

Robert Kagan, a leading member of John McCain’s war cabinet, recently gave an interview to Der Spiegel in which he was asked about the Bush administration’s decision to invade Iraq:

SPIEGEL: Isn’t it true that Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld took advantage of the outrage over the 9/11 terrorist attacks to strike Iraq? Is it even possible anymore to deny that the war was based on manipulation, exaggeration and flat-out lies?

Kagan: That’s absurd.

SPIEGEL: It’s a commonly held view…

Kagan: The Bush administration’s intelligence on Iraq was the same as the Clinton administration’s, the German government’s and the French government’s before the war. We now know that Saddam wanted the world to believe he had weapons of mass destruction — and the world did. [...]

In retrospect, we have to admit that Washington could have waited a while longer. That’s a different question. But I think it’s about time we moved beyond this silly conversation and these absurd conspiracy theories.

This is ridiculous. It is now simply no longer a matter of serious dispute that the Bush administration manipulated, exaggerated and lied about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s regime in order to build public support for an invasion. It’s fine to argue that the Bush administration’s intelligence on Iraq was the same as the Clinton administration’s, the German government’s and the French government’s, but the much more relevant point is that the Clinton administration, the German government and the French government didn’t spin that intelligence into a justification to attempt to reorder the Middle East.

As the decision to invade Iraq will continue to produce numerous unintended consequences that future American leaders will have to face, the manner in which that decision was taken and sold to the American people will continue to be relevant. We can “move beyond this silly conversation” when people like Robert Kagan cease pretending that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Feith, et al were arguing in good faith about the need to invade Iraq, and stop dismissing the overwhelming evidence of their dishonesty as “conspiracy theories.”