Politics & Power Quote by Juan Cole

The most revealing word here is "surprised" - a small admission that exposes how badly the Iraq War was narrated in real time. Cole isn't making a moral claim so much as confessing a mismatch between expectation and social reality: if a dictator falls, the oppressed majority will naturally surge forward. That assumption, widespread in Washington and in plenty of commentary, treated sectarian identity as a political trigger you could pull on command.

Cole's intent is diagnostic. He's pointing to the gap between outsider models of "liberation" and the lived calculus of Iraqis in 2003. The Shiite population had deep grievances against Saddam, yes, but uprising isn't just a feeling; it's an organizational problem under conditions of terror, surveillance, and uncertainty. After years of state violence and the brutal memory of the crushed 1991 revolt, not rising up can read less like apathy and more like rational risk management: Who will protect you if the Americans don't stay? Who fills the vacuum if they do?

The subtext doubles as an indictment of American confidence. "When the Americans moved" frames the invasion as the decisive clock that should have started Iraqi politics ticking in a predictable direction. But Iraq wasn't a lab. The Baath state's collapse didn't automatically translate into coherent popular action; it produced fragmentation, waiting, hedging, and local power bargaining.

Context matters: March-April 2003 was the opening act, before insurgency metastasized and before Shiite parties fully consolidated leverage. Cole is capturing that brief, uncanny moment when even informed observers learned how flimsy the invasion's behavioral predictions really were.