"If you put your politicians up for sale, as the US does (alone in this among industrialized democracies), then someone will buy them--and it won’t be you; you can’t afford them."
"To the extent that the (ISIS's) advance is a series of urban revolts against the government of PM Nouri al-Maliki, the US would end up bombing ordinary city folk. For the US to be bombing Sunni towns all these years later on behalf of Mr. al-Maliki would be to invite terrorism against the US."
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Source: Source: collider.com
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More quotes by Juan Cole
"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."
"Administering another country is always a very tricky proposition."
"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."
"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."
"It's not proper for a professor to go before a class and promote one party or another. That's not academic scholarship."