Leadership Quote by Howard Coble

There’s a quiet sleight of hand in Howard Coble’s phrasing: the sentence pretends to be sympathetic to Iraqis while turning their fear into an alibi for outside force. By opening with “I am told,” he sidesteps ownership of the claim, outsourcing authority to unnamed sources. It’s the rhetorical equivalent of washing your hands before you touch the doorknob: the statement can travel politically even if its evidentiary footing is thin.

The core move is moral triangulation. Coble acknowledges a real dynamic under dictatorships - collective opposition doesn’t easily translate into collective action when the regime has perfected surveillance, torture, and exemplary punishment. But he frames that reality to produce a particular conclusion: if people are “unwilling” or “incapable,” intervention becomes not just permissible but implicitly necessary. The Iraqis’ terror is recognized, then repurposed as justification.

Notice the pairing of “unwilling” with “incapable.” Fear can make action impossible; calling it unwillingness smuggles in a hint of blame, as if the oppressed are failing a test of courage. That tension reveals the political intent: to soften the ethical shock of regime change by narrating it as reluctant rescue, not strategic choice.

Context matters. In the post-9/11 environment and during the run-up to and aftermath of the Iraq War, American officials and lawmakers routinely leaned on the “they wanted him gone” argument to reconcile liberation rhetoric with the messy reality of invasion. Coble’s quote functions less as analysis of Iraqi society than as a moral permission slip for American power.