Juan Cole American Educator 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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.