Iraqi scholar offers insight into crisis

Recent insurgent activities in Iraq were discussed as Iraqi
scholar Dr. Juan Cole gave a talk entitled “Shiite Islam and
Politics in Post-Baathist Iraq” in Bunche Hall on
Wednesday.

The talk was part of the 10-week seminar series on Iraq
sponsored by the Center for Near Eastern Studies.

Cole received his doctorate from UCLA and is now a professor of
history at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He specializes in
Islamic movements and is often interviewed by the media for his
analysis.

Cole lived in Muslim communities in Africa and pre-civil war
Beirut when his father served in the military, which piqued his
interest in his area of study.

Cole gave background history on the political movements in the
last several decades in Iraq, emphasizing that rooted factions in
post-Baath Iraq have no long-term goals of democracy.

In discussion, Ann Kerr, the Fulbright program director at UCLA,
asked if Iraqi experts were consulted by the government before the
Iraq invasion.

A year-long academic project on post-Baath Iraq was undertaken,
Cole said, but the expert conducting the project was stopped by
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld from going with the Iraqi
operations team.

“So the one person who would have seriously known what to
do with Iraq didn’t go,” Cole said.

He added that there is a firm impression that Rumsfeld was being
coerced into the decision. Cole hinted that Vice President Dick
Cheney and others have a more ideological plan for Iraq and wanted
to go ahead with that, regardless of success or failure.

The Iraqi crisis has had a turn for the worse in the last
week.

Cole is “increasingly pessimistic” about the
situation in Iraq. He does not think the planned June 30 handover
of sovereignty will change anything.

“It’s always the case that political crises can be
resolved, but the parties have to learn to compromise and learn to
trade horses, and if they can do that, they can work into a
resolution. If they can’t … often it results in
bloodshed,” Cole said.

There are currently 10 U.S. fighting divisions in Iraq. Cole
surmises that half of the United States’ fighting troops are
in Iraq.

“People say “˜just send more troops.’ Well, we
don’t have any troops to send,” Cole said.

It is likely that a draft of American citizens will be
implemented in the future to resolve the problem in Iraq, Cole
said.

If the president wants to implement the draft and has a majority
in Congress, a draft can become reality.

He added that a draft can’t be brought up until after the
presidential elections this November.

Cole drew several parallels between Vietnam and Iraq.

In both cases, the United States had a weak government going
into the conflict and had to deal with guerrilla warfare , Cole
said.

It has been revealed that some U.S.-allied South Vietnam
fighters were secret sympathizers with the VietCong in the north
and passed along secret information from the United States.
Similarly, Cole suspects the reinstituted Iraqi police, of whom
many of whom are Sunni sympathizers, are doing the same.

Cole warns that this generation of American young adults could
be known as the Iraqi generation.

Cole maintains a Web blog where he posts analyses of up-to-date
happenings concerning Iraq.

Fluent in Arabic, Persian, Urdu, and able to read Turkish, Cole
reads Iraqi and other area newspapers daily to keep up with events.
He also keeps correspondence with friends in Iraq from whom he
receives updates.

Cole spoke to a full room yesterday filled with students and
professors alike.

“This is a real test of America ““ whether they are
really liberating Iraqis from totalitarian rule or if they have
agenda behind this occupation,” said Mun’im Sirry, a
Fulbright graduate student in Islamic studies about the conflict in
Iraq.