Juan Cole American Quotations

Unlike a lot of American specialists in the Middle East, who did one Fulbright year and now find their language is rusty, I kept up my Arabic.

I speak Urdu quite a lot, too, and I read a lot of Persian.

But September 11 marked a big change in the sense that the public was suddenly interested, and as a professor at a public university I felt a responsibility to respond to all of the inquiries about the Islamic world.

Take the decision in early March to arrest Muqtada al-Sadr. It was made apparently without knowledge or understanding of the nature of his movement or how widespread it is.

I just don't understand under what circumstances other nations will be willing to be drawn into what looks increasingly like a major quagmire.

For instance, I was a little surprised that the Shiites didn't rise up against Saddam and the Baath party across most of the country when the Americans moved in March and April of 2003.

I don't think there are many allies in NATO who are going to be eager to send lots of troops to Iraq after seeing what happened to American troops.