By Juan Cole From a talk I gave at the University of Michigan in late 2002, publised at the beginning of 2003. It is often alleged by hawks that no one saw these things coming. Some of us did. Costs of War The regional costs of a US war on Iraq are potentially great: The […]
Who are Iraq’s Sunni Arabs and What did we Do to them?
By Juan Cole The two great branches of Islam coexist in Iraq across linguistic and ethnic groups. There are Sunni Arabs and Shiite Arabs, Sunni Kurds and (a tiny minority of) Shiite Kurds. Arabs are a linguistic group, speaking a Semitic language. Kurds speak and Indo-European language related to English. Sunnism and Shiism as we […]
Mass Sunni Uprising in Iraq: Sectarian Blowback of 2003 U.S. Invasion (Cole on Democracy Now!)
I appeared on Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now! to discuss the situation in Iraq Transcript: AARON MATÉ: President Obama has announced plans to deploy about 275 U.S. military forces back to Iraq. In a letter to congressional leaders, Obama wrote, quote, “This force is deploying for the purpose of protecting U.S. citizens and property, if necessary, […]
Don’t Trust the Bombers on Iraq: “Shock and Awe” Never Works
By Juan Cole In March of 2003, we were treated to an intensive bombardment of Iraq, which the Bush White House propagandists termed “Shock and Awe.” As usual, the US Air Force practically promised us that if only they could throw down all their fancy munitions on the target country from the air, why, you […]
7 Myths about the Radical Sunni Advance in Iraq
By Juan Cole Already in the past week and a half, many assertions are becoming commonplace in the inside-the-Beltway echo chamber about Iraq’s current crisis that are poorly grounded in knowledge of the country. Here are some sudden truisms that should be rethought. 1. “The Sunni radicals of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria […]
Blair-Bush & Iraq: It’s not just the quagmire but the Lawbreaking & Deception
By Juan Cole Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair is complaining that he is unfairly blamed for causing the current mess in Iraq and that if Saddam had still been in power it would be just as unstable. He is, perhaps deliberately, missing the point. His invasion of Iraq was illegal and based on deception […]
Iraq: Radical Shiite Militia fights Sunni Extremists as US Carrier reaches Gulf
By Juan Cole Saturday was a day of militia pushback against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria [ISIS]. In a sign of growing polarization on both the Sunni and the Shiite sides, the best fighters on the Shiite side against Sunni al-Qaeda wannabes. When the worst elements of two communities go at one another, […]
Enter the Ayatollah: Sistani calls on Iraqis to enlist in Fight against “Terrorists”
Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, spiritual leader of most Iraqi Shiites, intervened forcefully in Iraqi politics on Thursday and Friday, giving his support to the national army and urging Iraqi men to volunteer to enlist and to fight the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). He termed the hyper-Sunni group, which has taken over the […]
The Second Iran-Iraq War and the American Switch
Iran has decided to intervene directly in Iraq and has already sent fighters to the front, according to the Wall Street Journal, based on Iranian sources. It is alleged that Iranian special forces have helped the Iraqi army push back in Tikrit, the birth place of Saddam Hussein that was overrun earlier this week by […]
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