A friend picked up my earlier post questioning a Persian translation by Michael Rubin and offered character notes for the novelist who finally puts the neocons in a story:
He has the conscience of a propagandist. Though his scholarly writings deal
with Iran, he is said to have close ties and deep interests in Kurdistan. Does
he know the languages he interprets, or possess any actual intimate knowledge
outside the Strategy Circuit of the Muslim nations he lays plans for the U.S. to
attack?
One's impression has been that if there are twelve active and energetic
persons–men of unquiet minds–working full time in pursuit of U.S. bombing of
Iran, or U.S. approval of Israeli bombing, Rubin is one of them; but–not yet
one of the better known. It is worth something to bring into the light of day
the political character of such a person.
The Right Web article as usual is precise and well-written and catches a great
many relevant facts.
Here is another digest of some value.
A young career; still in his thirties; but already overstimulated; he does not
pause to think.
One of his side-lights has been a Campus Watch style of reporting on Columbia
and Yale. He led the outside wing of a campaign against the appointment of Juan
Cole at Yale in 2006 which together with inside help defeated that appointment.
Incidentally, his place at the National Review is only one of many indications
of that magazine's complete loss of separate identity from the neoconservative
Commentary and The Weekly Standard.
A little league Richard Perle during the run-up to Iraq (just two years out of
graduate school but already a full-time propagandist); now by his lesser-known
status he bears at least one appropriate qualification for larger tasks: the
neoconservatives never quit, as Jim Lobe recognizes, but they can't
afford to throw exactly the same talent at the next war they want to
cause–Perle, the Kagan brothers, Kristol, Brooks. Rubin is less clever, he
gets into scrapes, but he will do the work.
