Juan Cole

Cole, Juan Filmography

• Play in Full Screen Rethink Afghanistan

  2009, role: actor , character name: Himself - Author

Famous quotes by Juan Cole:

"The question is how you reduce the number of bases [the terrorists have] and the size of the sea in which they swim. What something like the Iraq war does is increase the number of bases you have to deal with and the sea they have to swim in."

"... will play the role of rejection in the new Iraq. They are going to demand that all the controversial points in the constitution be addressed right away."

"This thing is an enormous fiasco, ... really undermines its legitimacy, and this result guarantees the guerrilla war will go on."

"They began to see some advantages to federalism - one of them being that the parties would control the resources."

"This vote is sort of a national vote of confidence for that leadership."

"My gut tells me the letter is a forgery."

"A U.S. withdrawal would not cause the Sunnis suddenly to want to give up their major demands; indeed, they might well be emboldened to hit the Shiites harder."

"I just cannot understand this sort of argument."

"They are like lobbyists. They're spreading the money around, so whoever wins owes them."

"['The size of the sea' But others say the debate is important because it can determine whether actions are taken that help stem the violence - or make matters worse.] The question is how you reduce the number of bases [the terrorists have] and the size of the sea in which they swim, ... What something like the Iraq war does is increase the number of bases you have to deal with and the sea they have to swim in."

"It's not proper for a professor to go before a class and promote one party or another. That's not academic scholarship."

"Administering another country is always a very tricky proposition."

"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."

"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 think it's really unfortunate that academics have been sidelined in most important policy debates."

"I don't accept the argument of people like David Horowitz that the government should impose some sort of predetermined political balance on academic research."

"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."

"Partisan politics has no place in the classroom."

"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."

"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."