Juan Cole says, "We have no idea why we're in Iraq"

This, from one of the leading experts on the Middle East, as he began a talk last night in Palo Alto sponsored by the Peninsula Peace and Justice Center. Before the usual audience for this sort of thing (bunch of graying ex-Vietnam protesters like myself), Cole offered his analysis of why the Bush administration has taken us into "this mess" and what he thinks should now be done. He sees the decision to invade as having been influenced by a number of forces:

1. The Defense Department's drive to create and control "the architecture of oil security" (policing the Gulf region so that oil will continue to flow to the US)

2. Cheney's tenure at Halliburton, leading him and others to contemplate the appealing possibility of direct ownership of oil fields in the Middle East (something that has not been possible since all such fields were nationalized in the early 1970s)

3. The desire of evangelicals to open the Middle East as a mission field, leading to (as they imagined) massive numbers of religious conversions

4. The desire of the neocons and "rightwing American Jews who are close to Likud and Ariel Sharon" to create alliances with the Sunnis that would somehow stabilize Israel's position.

Since all of this has gone massively wrong, says Cole, the question is, what next? His proposal is to withdraw foreign (mostly US) ground troops, but carefully so as not to create a sort of vacuum in which a real civil war ensues. He would have the US pursue a counter-insurgency strategy and keep "Special Ops" and the air force in the country. He thinks we cannot leave until the Iraqi army is ready, which he acknowledges would take 5-8 years.

There was lots of discussion about how to get out. In this audience, there was nobody speaking up for "staying the course," and there was a lot of hostility to his proposals. One man challenged Cole to show how his proposals differ from Nixon's "Vietnamization" course in that conflict. Cole responded that the two situations are quite different, and he courteously held his ground in the face of the questioner's increasing agitation. I was struck, as I am so often in these situations, by the inability of "liberals" of my generation to listen to any argument with which we do not already agree. This is a serious defect that I recognize in myself with almost as much regret as that which I feel when I see it in others.

Much of what Cole had to say is contained in a two-part interview he did with Tom Engelhardt, and for these you may visit here. Still, if you have a chance to see him in person, do so. He has a very low-key style and a dry wit that made the evening entertaining if not enjoyable because of the gravity of the subject.