I had the opportunity to hear Juan Cole last night at the Peninsula Peace and Justice meeting in Palo Alto. Lucid, informed, polite, some of what he said was what people wanted to hear, some was not. US troops should be start coming out of Iraq in a phased withdrawal; enough weapons should be close enough to intervene in case of wide spread ethnic massacres.

Call for Withdrawal: Juan Cole

[By the way, Cole will be at Stanford, Room 203 in the History Corner just off othe Quad, at 4:15 today, Wednesday.]

As it happens Tom Englehardt of the Nation and Tom Dispatch has also been talking to Cole and has two lengthy pieces about that conversation.

Juan Cole: The first thing I should say is I’m not under any illusion that it matters a great deal what I think on the subject.

TD: [Laughs.] Neither of us is exactly capable of withdrawing American troops from Iraq. I’m endlessly aware of this when people call for one plan or another. I think, wait a minute…

JC: [Laughs.] When you’re talking about the debates I hold with my readers and the way I put up critiques of my position, what academic life has to offer is open debate and being honest about your sources, about how you come to a conclusion. The whole point of my blog is to attempt to represent the life of the mind in a public forum. I view what I do as different from politics where you want to stay on message, stay on point. You want to put out an image, a position and stick to it. You make fun of your opponent for waffling or being indecisive. But what serious thinker hasn’t gone back and forth? You’d have to be crazy if you didn’t consider other options than the one you initially started out with or if, over time, experience didn’t sometimes cause you to take a different position.

You know, Whitman said: “Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.” That’s the American spirit, so I’m happy to debate these things, reveal my thinking, and let the world see how one intellectual concerned with the Middle East deals with the array of information that’s coming at us over time.

Well, I’m now really worried about what the outcome in Iraq might mean for the Middle East, for the United States, and for the world. I’m really, really worried and I can think up some nightmare scenarios…

Tomdispatch Interview: Juan Cole on Withdrawal from Iraq