Juan Cole
Juan Cole
John Ricardo I. "Juan" Coleis an American academic and commentator on the modern Middle East and South Asia. He is Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan. Since 2002, he has written a weblog, Informed Commentwhich is also syndicated on Truthdig.com...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionEducator
CountryUnited States of America
reality political world
Mr. Bush, I don't recognize the world you paint. I find your speech a form of sheer propaganda, having almost no relationship to reality. ...You can't 'stay the course' because you don't have a course.
people east arab-israeli-conflict
Public interest in most of the Middle East was slight at that time; the Arab-Israeli conflict was all that people were interested in and that was not my specialty.
taken thinking wings
I think that there's been an unfortunate tendency for right wing think tanks to dominate these discussions. They often produce very shoddy studies and policy recommendations, which are nevertheless taken very seriously.
classroom partisan-politics partisans
Partisan politics has no place in the classroom.
pigs use administration
I argued that the Bush administration, and the Coalition officials more recently, didn't understand Iraqi society. They thought it was a blank slate, that they could use Iraqis as guinea pigs.
past exit news
My main expertise is in the past, but if I have to extrapolate into the future, I would say: no good news any time soon and an obvious exit strategy is not apparent to me.
years world muslim-world
I lived in the Muslim world for 10 years.
country tricky propositions
Administering another country is always a very tricky proposition.
iraq income united-states
Did you know that they introduced the 15 percent flat tax on individual and corporate income in Iraq? Something that some politicians very much wanted to push in the United States without success but in Iraq they do it.
strong character law
An occupying power has no right to make significant alterations in the character of the occupied society, to change the laws all around, without a strong security reason and so forth.
believe law iraq
I believe that the American administration of Iraq has been arrogant, has pursued policies that are illegal in international law and has been ignorant and incompetent. I said this very forthrightly to the senators.
war iraq administration
I also argued before the war that the administration was underestimating Arab nationalism and Iraqi nationalism, that it was not going to be as easy to rule Iraq as they thought.
thinking important debate
I think it's really unfortunate that academics have been sidelined in most important policy debates.
party class academic
It's not proper for a professor to go before a class and promote one party or another. That's not academic scholarship.