Juan Cole Quotes

You can’t undo a thousand years of history by sending military troops into a country.

I regret that on my arrival in Mesopotamia I was too much occupied with military matters, and too ill-informed regarding the political problem….[We had] a scratch and somewhat incongruous team of administrators with the majority possessing little exact knowledge of the people they were called upon to monitor

Washington seems to think that they will be welcomed with open arms in Iraq, but that they shouldn’t count on it. It is foolish to think of creating a modern democracy in an artificial country with a divided society like Iraq. Do you realize that, by invading Iraq, they might yet precipitate a civil war.

The west has a great deal to answer for in the Middle East, from Britain's belated empire-building after the First World War to the US and British policy that condemns modern Iraq to the material and social squalor of a half-century ago.

We go in to liberate Cuba, but Cuba still isn't free; we don't really think through what we'll do after the initial treaty is signed, but we're still occupying. There's chaos and torture and finally an outcry.

People make mistakes. And one of the mistakes that the United States consistently made was that it could intervene and somehow adjust people's governments, especially in the Middle East.

The Bush Administration went into the Middle East thinking it was spreading democracy. Instead they spread sectarianism.

Iraq is not about oil.

Some anti-Americanism derives simply from our being a colossus that bestrides the earth. But much anti-Americanism derives from the role U.S. political, economic and military power has played in denying such freedoms to others.

We also can't try to take over and rebuild every country that falls into crisis. That's not leadership; that's a recipe for quagmire, spilling American blood and treasure that ultimately weakens us. It's the lesson of Vietnam, of Iraq - and we should have learned it by now.

But, if you believe we should go around the world overturning regimes to make little United States, I don't agree with that, because I don't think we're capable of doing that.

For eight years, you had the Bush administration with a very interventionist policy, driving into world affairs, driving primarily into the Islamic world, army first or fist first.

Iraq is just a symbol of the attitude of western democracies to the rest of the world.

After installing friendly leaders in Iran and Guatemala, the United States lost interest in promoting democracy in either country.

People are constantly applying double standards. Take the United States, for example. Washington wants the whole world to admire the country for its democracy. Then the government sends out its army, in the name of this democracy, and leaves behind the kind of chaos we see in Iraq.

We have become a crusader state or a missionary democracy. I think the two are interchangeable.

I don't think it's the job of the United States to build democracies from whole cloth. That's Wilsonianism to me of the most crazy kind.

If you go into a country, then you’re going to have to do something about it, and that is hard–harder than invading.

Perhaps we have already intervened too much in the affairs of other peoples.

We should not act as if we were an imperialist power, willy-nilly moving into capitals in that part of the world, taking down governments.

The scorn of our formidable neighbor who does not know us is our America’s greatest danger …. Through ignorance it might even come to lay hands on us. Once it does know us, it will remove it’s hands out of respect.

You simply cannot conquer a people who don’t want to be conquered

A U.S. invasion of Iraq could turn the whole region into a cauldron, and thus destroy the war on terrorism. A military campaign very likely would have to be followed by a large-scale, long-term military occupation.

Is it worth the sacrifice so that little girls can go to school? Or are we simply doing the bidding of the neo-imperialist Americans? Why can’t we bring the soldiers home and just build the schools?

Between 1945 and 2005 the United States has attempted to overthrow more than 40 foreign governments, and to crush more than 30 populist-nationalist movements…