MIDDLE EAST ANALYST & HISTORIAN JUAN COLE ON U.S. WAR PLANS AGAINST IRAN, TURKEY AND HIS NEW BOOK "NAPOLEON’S EGYPT: INVADING THE MIDDLE EAST"
Juan Cole interviewed by Amy Goodman
ZNet, MA
tionID=22&ItemID=14118
Oct 24 2007
AMY GOODMAN: President Bush has asked Congress for another $46 billion
to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The request brings this
year’s total to more than $196 billion, by far the highest amount
since the 9/11 attacks. If the trend continues, war funding could top
$1 trillion by the time Bush leaves office. By some measures, that
amount would exceed the cost of the Korean and Vietnam wars combined.
The record-high request comes as the drumbeat continues for opening a
new war with Iran. Vice President Dick Cheney warned Sunday that Iran
faces "serious consequences" over its nuclear program and alleged role
in Iraq. His comments came days after President Bush spoke for the
first time of "World War III" if Iran obtains the knowledge necessary
to make a nuclear weapon. And the threat has been bipartisan: the
three leading Democratic presidential candidates — Hillary Clinton,
Barack Obama and John Edwards — have all declared that no option is
off the table to stop Iran’s nuclear program.
Juan Cole is a professor of history at the University of Michigan. He
runs an analytic website called "Informed Comment," where he provides
a daily roundup of news and events in Iraq and elsewhere in the Arab
world. In his new book, Juan Cole steps back from his widely regarded
analysis of contemporary politics to chronicle the first Western
invasion of the Middle East since the Crusades. Napoleon’s Egypt:
Invading the Middle East is a history of France’s 1798 invasion of
Egypt, a conquest the still has repercussions today.
Juan Cole joins us now from Ann Arbor, Michigan. Welcome to Democracy
Now!, Professor Cole.
JUAN COLE: Thanks so much, Amy.
AMY GOODMAN: It’s great to have you with us. Before we go back
in time, can you talk about this latest news, the latest threats
against Iran? How serious are they? Do you think a US war with Iran
is imminent?
JUAN COLE: Well, I think the Cheney camp in the Bush administration
very much would like to bomb the nuclear research facilities, which,
as far as we know, are civilian facilities near Esfahan. And what has
been leaked from their office is that they’ve talked about various
stratagems for getting up such an attack and that they have been
blocked so far by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and by Secretary
of State Condi Rice.
AMY GOODMAN: And what about the shifting rationale? I mean, we saw in
the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq, Saddam Hussein had weapons of
mass destruction — or was it Saddam Hussein was a tyrant? — that
didn’t fly with the US, so they went with WMD, and Saddam Hussein
didn’t have WMD. We hear about the nuclear issue, and then we hear
about the shifting rationale, that the American people see it as too
similar to the missing WMD in Iraq, so that the rationale would be
that Iranian soldiers are fighting in Iraq and killing US soldiers.
JUAN COLE: Well, the most disheartening thing for the Cheney war camp
must be that a recent poll shows that they’ve actually managed to
convince the vast majority of Americans that Iran is trying to get
a nuclear bomb and that Iran is actively killing US troops in Iraq.
Neither thing is actually in evidence. They’re possible, but it hasn’t
been proven. But most Americans have accepted this story. And yet,
78% of Americans say that they don’t want a US attack on Iran.
So, so far, all of the rationales that they have trotted out and
trumpeted through the media for attacking Iran have not been sufficient
to convince the American people that action is necessary.
AMY GOODMAN: Professor Cole, I want to ask you about Iranian President
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s visit to the US last month. He spoke at Columbia
University in a highly contested address. Many who criticized Columbia
for hosting the event later praised Columbia President Lee Bollinger
for his harsh introduction to Ahmadinejad.
LEE BOLLINGER: Frankly — I close with this comment — frankly and in
all candor, Mr. President, I doubt that you will have the intellectual
courage to answer these questions. But your avoiding them will, in
itself, be meaningful to us. I do expect you to exhibit the fanatical
mindset that characterizes so much of what you say and do.
Fortunately, I am told by experts on your country that this
only further undermines your position in Iran, with all the many
goodhearted intelligent citizens there. A year ago, I am reliably
told, your preposterous and belligerent statements in this country —
was at one of the meetings of the Council on Foreign Relations — so
embarrassed sensible Iranian citizens that this led to your party’s
defeat in the December mayoral elections. May this do that and more.
I am only a professor — I am only a professor who is also a university
president. And today I feel all the weight of the modern civilized
world yearning to express the revulsion at what you stand for. I only
wish I could do better. Thank you.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s Columbia University President Lee Bollinger.
Professor Cole, your response?
JUAN COLE: Well, my own analysis is that Bollinger solved a problem
that he had, which was that his — one of his deans had invited
Ahmadinejad the previous year to speak at Columbia, and Bollinger
had shot that down. His faculty were angry at him for suppressing
this man’s freedom of speech in the United States. And so, I think
he felt he had to extend the invitation this year.
On the other hand, he wants to rebuild the area around Columbia
University. He wants to put a new theater district up there. He needs
the help of the New York real estate community, many of whom are
warm supporters of Israel and who would be offended by Ahmadinejad’s
invitation. So I think he solved the problem by inviting Ahmadinejad,
and so mollifying his faculty, and then attacking Ahmadinejad, and
so mollifying his real estate backers.
AMY GOODMAN: What about Ahmadinejad’s power in Iran?
JUAN COLE: Well, Ahmadinejad is a ceremonial president. He is a little
bit more active, has stronger links to the Iranian Revolutionary
Guards Corps than his predecessor, Mohammad Khatami, who, by the
way — the previous president of Iran — has upbraided Ahmadinejad
for his comments regarding Holocaust denial. So Ahmadinejad is —
he is not commander-in-chief of the armed forces.
He can’t order anybody to kill anybody. He can’t launch a war. He
can’t launch missiles. Those powers are vested in the Supreme
Jurisprudent, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Ahmadinejad can, you know,
cut the ribbons and open bridges and things like that. So the American
right’s fascination with him is entirely misplaced, and it’s because
he’s a quirky character and he has objectionable views, and so it’s
easy to use him to demonize Iran.
AMY GOODMAN: Let me ask you about General Petraeus’s report. General
Petraeus spoke before Congress last month. He accused Iran of waging
a proxy war inside Iraq.
GEN. DAVID PETRAEUS: In the past six months, we have also targeted Shia
militia extremists, capturing a number of senior leaders and fighters,
as well as the deputy commander of Lebanese Hezbollah Department 2800,
the organization created to support the training, arming, funding
and, in some cases, direction of the militia extremists by the Iranian
Republican Guard Corps Quds Force. These elements have assassinated and
kidnapped Iraqi governmental leaders, killed and wounded our soldiers
with advanced explosive devices provided by Iran and indiscriminately
rocketed civilians in the international zone and elsewhere. It is
increasingly apparent to both coalition and Iraqi leaders that Iran,
through the use of the Quds Force, seeks to turn the Iraqi special
groups into a Hezbollah-like force to serve its interests and fight
a proxy war against the Iraqi state and coalition forces in Iraq.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s General Petraeus testifying before Congress.
Professor Cole, your response?
JUAN COLE: Well, the whole story doesn’t make much sense to me. The
main backers of Iran in Iraq are the Supreme Council for Islamic
Revolution in Iraq, which was formed in Iran at the suggestion
of Ayatollah Khomeini by Iraqi Shiite expatriates, and has a
paramilitary, the Badr Corps, which is trained by the Iranian
Revolutionary Guards. The Badr Corps and the Supreme Council are
America’s closest allies among the Shiites of Iraq.
I think this is really a jealous girlfriend story. I think the US
wants the fundamentalist Shiite parties and militias for itself,
doesn’t want to have to compete with Iran for their affection for
clientelage, and so is slamming Iran as a way of driving a wedge
between them. All of the Iranian personnel that have been kidnapped
by the United States, detained by the United States, have been found
in territory of US allies — Abdul-Aziz Al-Hakim, the leader of the
Supreme Council, or up in Irbil among our Kurdish allies. So the idea
that the Iranians are building up rogue units of the nativist Mahdi
Army, who are slum kids in Iraq, don’t like Iran — I don’t know —
doesn’t strike me as very likely. And I think that the US military is
getting bad intelligence on these things from some of its contacts,
including the cult-like terrorist organization, the Mujahideen-e-Khalq,
which Saddam used against Iran and which the Pentagon is still using
against Iran.
AMY GOODMAN: And the fact that there are more Saudi fighters in Iraq
than Iranian, but that is almost never raised, either in the press
or by the administration?
JUAN COLE: To my knowledge, the United States has never captured
any Iranian with arms. There were 136 foreign detainees, the last we
knew. There are 24,000 Iraqi ones. And the 136 contain no Iranians
at all. 45% of them, earlier in the summer, were Saudis. I think
that proportion has changed, but it’s such a small number. But, in
any case, there is no proof of any actual Iranian military activity
inside Iraq whatsoever.
AMY GOODMAN: Finally, on the issue of Iran, the resignation of the
nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, what is the significance of this?
JUAN COLE: Well, it’s very bad news. In many ways, it’s a sign that
President Ahmadinejad, who does have the power to appoint ambassadors
and some of the diplomatic corps in conjunction with the approval
of the Supreme Leader Khamenei, is gradually putting his people into
place. Larijani was a very experienced diplomat, well liked among his
European interlocutors, and is being replaced by someone of far less
experience who, however, is close to Ahmadinejad. So, it’s cronyism.
I think it’s a very bad move on Iran’s part and probably worsens their
posture with regard to these negotiations over their nuclear program.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to break. When we come back to Professor Cole,
we’re going to talk about Turkey, Iraq and what the invading army
of Napoleon in Egypt has to do with today. This is Democracy Now!,
democracynow.org. Juan Cole’s book is called Napoleon’s Egypt.
Stay with us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: Our guest is Professor Juan Cole, professor of history,
University of Michigan. He’s joining us from Ann Arbor from the
campus. He runs an analytical website called "Informed Comment,"
and has written a new book called Napoleon’s Egypt: Invading the
Middle East.
Let’s go today’s top story: tension remaining high on the Turkish-Iraq
border, following the killing of seventeen Turkish troops by Kurdish
militants over the weekend. How significant is this?
JUAN COLE: Well, it’s extremely significant. I mean, imagine
what would happen in this country if a guerrilla group based in a
neighboring country came over the border and killed seventeen US
troops. That would be a war. And the Kurdish guerrilla movement,
the Kurdish Workers Party, based now in Iraq, but originally from
Eastern Anatolia, from the Turkish regions, is conducting a guerrilla
war against the Turkish military. It is being given safe harbor by
Kurdish politicians on the Iraqi side.
And, in essence, the United States has created this situation in
which a NATO ally — people forget Turkey fought alongside the United
States in Korea; it’s got troops in Afghanistan — a NATO ally of the
United States is being attacked and its troops killed by a terrorist
organization, so designated by the State Department, that essentially
has US auspices. The US is responsible for security in Iraq.
AMY GOODMAN: And how connected is the US to the PKK, or is it at all?
JUAN COLE: Well, the United States doesn’t like the PKK and doesn’t
have much connection to it, but the United States has allied with the
Iraqi Kurdish leaders, who are the most reliable allies of the United
States in Iraq: Massoud Barzani and Jalal Talabani. And Barzani,
in particular, it seems to me, just de facto, is giving harbor to,
giving haven to, these PKK guerrillas. So the United States needs
Barzani and needs his support. He’s doing an oil deal with Hunt Oil,
which is close to the Bush administration. His Peshmurga paramilitary
is the backbone of the most effective fires of the new Iraqi army.
They do security details in other cities like Mosul and Kirkuk. So
the US really desperately depends on the Kurdistan Regional Authority
and its paramilitary and can’t afford to alienate Barzani. And since
Barzani is — behind the scenes seems to kind of like the PKK and
does — giving them a haven, the US is politically complicit in
these attacks.
AMY GOODMAN: What is the deal with Hunt Oil?
JUAN COLE: Well, Hunt Oil, which is, I think, losing its bids in Yemen,
is desperate for a new field to develop, and they are exploring a
partnership with the Kurdistan Regional Authority in northern Iraq.
AMY GOODMAN: And the issue of the US Congress taking a vote within
one of its committees, Foreign Relations Committee, that Turkey was
involved in a genocide against the Armenians, the significance of
that vote, though it’s expected to fail at a congressional level
with the whole Congress voting, and how it has played in Turkey,
leading to the parliament vote to invade northern Iraq?
JUAN COLE: Well, I really here would underline that, as a historian,
I think it’s important that everybody understand the horrible things
that were done to the Armenians during World War I. On the other
hand, it’s my duty also to try to understand the Turkish contemporary
response, which is that the United States has made enormous trouble
for this close ally. Turkey has put itself out over the last decades
to help the United States. It was an ally in the Cold War. It was an
ally in the Gulf War.
And in return, the United States seems to have told Turkey,
"Drop dead," I mean, they invaded Iraq against Turkish advice. They
have unleashed Shiite fundamentalism, Sunni fundamentalism, Kurdish
separatism on Turkey’s doorstep. There is now a resurgence of the PKK
and terrorism against Turkish citizens. And now, on top of all this
trouble the United States is making for the Turks, the US Congress
was set to condemn the Ottoman government of Turkey, the predecessor
government to the present one, for this genocide against the Armenians.
So, the Turks are hurt and confused. In Bill Clinton’s last year, 56%
of the Turkish public thought well of the United States. That number
is down to 9%. So it’s not entirely clear what motive the United States
has in so alienating a country that has been a valued and close ally.
AMY GOODMAN: The question of history informing what’s happening today
— Professor Cole, you’ve just written a book, Napoleon’s Egypt:
Invading the Middle East. Give us the context of that time and how
that has parallels to today.
JUAN COLE: Well, in a way, it’s a remarkable story. The young French
republic, having made this revolution and proclaimed the rights of
man, was under attack by a number of foreign enemies, monarchies,
that opposed the republican principle, among them England. And the
British had naval superiority in the Mediterranean. They had a building
colony in India, where they had won a war with the French.
The French were kicked out of India by the British.
And so, Napoleon Bonaparte, at the time when he was still a general —
hadn’t come to power — came up with this idea of a strike at Ottoman
Egypt as a way of creating a French Mediterranean, of blocking British
naval superiority and of threatening the British colony in India. And
so, he convinced the French government to fund this massive expedition,
50,000 men, and he went off to Egypt — of course, easily conquered
it. It was a small country compared to France. But then, the British
sank his fleet or chased it away, and the French soldiers were trapped
in Egypt, and they faced repeated insurgencies and attrition.
Bonaparte had proclaimed that he was going to liberate the Egyptians
from tyranny, that he was going to install a democratic government.
His officers expressed confidence in their memoirs that the Egyptians
would be grateful for this bestowal of liberty by a Western power.
And so, there are many resonances to today’s quagmire in Iraq.
AMY GOODMAN: The graffiti of French soldiers still seen on the
pyramids?
JUAN COLE: Well, it was an expedition that deeply marked modern
Egypt. It was the time when the Rosetta Stone was discovered,
although not deciphered until much later, that allowed the recovery
of ancient Egyptian civilization. But it was also a very brutal
occupation. Bonaparte, if a village rebelled, would order it burned,
its men killed. And he did this over and over again. The letters are
very clear about the brutality of the policy. It was a take-no-prisoner
kind of policy in many instances. And even his own officers began to
complain that Bonaparte was increasingly acting like the old French
monarchy in an arbitrary way or like an Oriental potentate. And
Bonaparte himself attempted to fool the Egyptians into thinking that
Enlightenment French Deism, which rejects the Trinity and was opposed
to the Pope and the Roman Catholic hierarchy, was essentially a form
of Islam, so the Egyptians shouldn’t mind so much being ruled by
the French.
AMY GOODMAN: What about how the role of women changed under Napoleon —
Egyptian women?
JUAN COLE: Well, under Napoleon, many restrictions on women were
lifted. The Egyptian male chroniclers complained bitterly that
the French started going out with women, they appeared publicly,
they went to dances together. From an Egyptian Muslim point of view,
this was licentiousness and libertinism. But they do admit that the
women themselves became intrigued with this new freedom of movement,
that they were walking in the streets and laughing and unveiled. And
the male chroniclers were fit to be tied by this change. But, it
should be remembered, most Egyptian women were peasants, They were
not much affected by French policy. And a lot of Egyptian women were
victimized by the French, either as mistresses or even as slaves. The
French bought women as slaves and used them that way. So it was a
mixed picture.
AMY GOODMAN: What, Juan Cole, caused the French eventually to leave
Egypt?
JUAN COLE: Well, Bonaparte himself tried to break out of his box,
once the fleet was destroyed, by taking Syria, but he couldn’t succeed
in that. The Ottoman forces fought him off, and he therefore slipped
out of Egypt after about a year. And he had done propaganda back in
France that his victories were glorious. So he came back and used his
Egyptian so-called victory as a platform for making a coup and coming
to power as First Consul. But his troops were stuck in Egypt. He kind
of abandoned them for another two years. Ultimately, the British and
the Ottomans made an alliance, and the British gave naval support
to an Ottoman expeditionary force that defeated the French. And the
soldiers were transported back to France on Egyptian — I’m sorry,
on British vessels in a rather humiliating way.
AMY GOODMAN: How long was the occupation?
JUAN COLE: Three years.
AMY GOODMAN: What about parallels to today? Do you see parallels to
how the US would leave?
JUAN COLE: Well, no, because in that time it was a multi-polar world
and France had lots of enemies, including the British and the Russians,
who could ally with the Ottomans, and the local Muslim forces found
Western Christian allies against the French. In our day, it’s a
unipolar world; there’s only one superpower. There’s no other country
that would be willing to help the Iraqi guerrilla movement against
the United States in an open sort of way. And so, the United States,
in some ways, is in a much better position than the French were.
But it still faces many of the same problems: lack of legitimacy, the
rejection of a Muslim people ruled by essentially a Christian nation,
an ongoing attrition and insurgency, volunteers coming from Mecca,
which happened also against the French. So the United States’s position
in Iraq is tenuous. It’s not as tenuous as the French position had
been in Egypt, but it just goes to show that the course of Western
colonialism in the Middle East doesn’t flow smoothly.
AMY GOODMAN: Do you see the war expanding?
JUAN COLE: The Iraq war could expand very easily. I mean, we
don’t know, of course, the future, but now we begin to see that
the Kurdish separatism in northern Iraq is causing severe tensions
and possibly military conflict with Turkey. There’s a possibility
of increased Sunni volunteers, if the Shiites were to massacre any
large number of Sunni Arabs. It especially seems likely that the US
will gradually draw down troops in the next two and three years. If
it leaves behind it substantial instability and there are massacres,
it could draw in the neighbors. You could have a proxy war. And these
things are dangerous to the world economy, because the Persian Gulf
is the source of a very substantial amount of the world’s energy,
and that energy production could be interrupted by such a guerrilla
war. So it’s a very, very dangerous situation.
AMY GOODMAN: And the news from Lebanon that a high-ranking leader of
Hezbollah has warned the United States not to set up any military bases
inside Lebanon, Hezbollah saying it would consider such move a hostile
act, and the US increasing their military assistance to Lebanon to
$270 million, more than five times the amount they provided a year ago?
JUAN COLE: Well, to tell you the truth, Amy, I think the idea
of putting a US military base in Lebanon, which is an unstable
country and has a very large Shiite militia, is a brain-dead idea,
and I can’t imagine that the Lebanese government itself will be so
stupid as to go forward with this. And up until recently, of course,
Hezbollah, which opposes this plan and which has a substantial number
of deputies in the Lebanese parliament, was part of a national unity
government. That’s broken down for the moment. It may come back. It
seems to me that the politics of that move would be awfully fraught.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you very much for being with us, Juan
Cole, professor of history, University of Michigan. Thanks for joining
us from Ann Arbor. His blog is called "Informed Comment." His new
book is Napoleon’s Egypt: Invading the Middle East.
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?Sec