[Triple Word Score]

Fantastic Find!

This is a great article.

[SJackson]

If you'd like to be on or off this middle east/political ping list, please FR mail me.

[prairiebreeze]

Good article.

[G L Tirebiter]

bump

[Rummyfan]

Hearing this claim "one too many times," Mr. Lewis says, he politely shot back, "Excuse me, but you've got your history wrong. The Turks got rid of the Crusaders. The British got rid of the Turks. The Jews got rid of the British. I wonder who is coming here next."

Touche for Mr Lewis. We could a lot worse than following his advice as to the Middle East.

[Publius6961]

"Excuse me, but you've got your history wrong. The Turks got rid of the Crusaders. The British got rid of the Turks. The Jews got rid of the British. I wonder who is coming here next."

Mr Lewis is an Islamist. He truly has boundless knowledge and admiration for Islam, but he is an honest man.
He is loath to make statements like that one (I have never heard one on tape). I have read most of his books.

Of course, historically, he is spot on, but has never "lost it" that way in print, that I know of.
Islam, as a combination culture/political system/imperialist movement is truly hopeless. It never gets wiser, just finds better weapons.

[azhenfud]

"Mr. Lewis is also close to government circles in Israel and Turkey -- non-Arab lands he describes as the only successful modern states in the region. He warmly praises Kemal Attaturk, who made Turkey a secular republic after World War I by suppressing Islam. (He has also said the Ottoman Turks' killing of up to 1.5 million Armenians in 1915 wasn't genocide but the brutal byproduct of war. It was a stance for which a French court convicted Mr. Lewis in 1995 under France's Holocaust-denial statute, imposing a token penalty.) Israeli experts say Mr. Lewis's contacts with Turkish generals and politicians helped cement Israeli-Turkish military ties in the 1990s."

A Middle-Eastern friend of mine said if anyone from President Bush's intelligence agencies had known as much about Al Queida, Iraq, and Saddam Hussein as they had claimed, they would understand why Hussein was a ruthless dictator and why Al Queida could not effectually operate in/from Iraq. He said that they too would realize why Saddam would never outrightly state to the world he had no WMD's was the fear of losing control of Iraq to organizations like Al Queida. It was not that there was any commendable intention on Saddam's behalf, but that Saddam relished and protected his power and control more than he had respect for Islamic clerics.

My friend said Al Queida insists "Allah" has given it the sole and total responsibility to rule, to execute judgement, and/or wage war (or terror). He said a basic understanding of the greed of Hussein as a dictator and the control Al Queida's religious zealots demand, made the two like an oil and water mix. Saddam would never have given Al Queida control of Iraq and acted only as a "figurehead"; Al Queida would never allow a dictator to have as much control over a people as Saddam had. He said the pre-war differences between Afghanistan and Iraq rule should have been an indication to that fact.

He also said as horrible as it seems from a Western POV, for Saddam to have kept his power intact within the country, many of those killing fields were a necessity. Iraq cannot be fully understood based on Western standards. It just doesn't work.

America's intelligence failure in this area could resultantly have a negative/opposite effect from our intentions because there is no longer the ruthless controlling body in Iraq to resist the insurgence of Al Queida terror cells. Their main target is Westerners (Americans) and now Iraq is full of American targets. Al Queida's history has demonstrated the only muzzle it fears is the iron glove of retribution taken upon the relatives of conspirators - which America nor our allies will engage in. Any form of Western democracy will take years, most possibly decades, for the Iraqi people to accomplish, even with Allied America's continued help. Currently, only complete marshal law will be effective in Iraq and will be until a formidable governing body, an effective police force, and a loyal citizenry is established. But it will not be formed under Western influence until the people of Iraq are ready to do it for themselves. The "killing fields" of the Middle East proves this.

I'm not saying his is a totally right POV, but I'm guilty of having viewed Iraq from Western eyes, myself..

[Hemingway's Ghost]

Fascinating---thanks for the post.

[NordP]

Wow, this was interesting. I sure hope many read it. THANKS for posting!!!!!

[dennisw]

ping

[Fee]

The only complaint I have, is GWB needs a large Army to match the Foreign Policy adopted by his administration.

[steve-b]

How successful it is at remolding Iraq and the rest of the Mideast could have a huge impact on what sort of superpower America will be for decades to come: bold and assertive -- or inward, defensive and cut off.

Most important: Will it succeed sufficiently to convince future would-be terrorists that their options are 1)to do nothing and see their great-grandchildren half Americanized, or 2)to fight and (if they survive) see their children nine-tenths Americanized?

[SuziQ]

Bernard Lewis bump for later reading!

[gridlock]

A central Lewis theme is that Muslims have had a chip on their shoulders since 1683, when the Ottomans failed for the second time to sack Christian Vienna. "Islam has been on the defensive" ever since, Mr. Lewis wrote in a 1990 essay called "The Roots of Muslim Rage," where he described a "clash of civilizations," a concept later popularized by Harvard political scientist Samuel Huntington. For 300 years, Mr. Lewis says, Muslims have watched in horror and humiliation as the Christian civilizations of Europe and North America have overshadowed them militarily, economically and culturally

'A date that ought to be among the most famous in history'

Today we are accustomed to think of the Mohammedan world as something backward and stagnant, in all material affairs at least. We cannot imagine a great Mohammedan fleet made up of modern ironclads and submarines, or a great modern Mohammedan army fully equipped with modern artillery, flying power and the rest. But not so very long ago, (less than a hundred years before the Declaration of Independence), the Mohammedan Government centred at Constantinople had better artillery and better army equipment of every kind than had we Christians in the West. The last effort they made to destroy Christendom was contemporary with the end of the reign of Charles II in England and of his brother James and of the usurper William III. It failed during the last years of the seventeenth century, only just over two hundred years ago. Vienna, as we saw, was almost taken and only saved by the Christian army under the command of the King of Poland on a date that ought to be among the most famous in history- September 11, 1683.

Hilaire Belloc, The Great Heresies, Chapter Four.

[Piranha]

I remember listening to NPR one day last year and they had on a professor who was listing useful books to read in order to understand the mind of the modern Muslim.

One caller asked about Bernard Lewis. The guest smirked and said that Lewis isn't held in high regard in academic circles.

I'm delighted that he has become one of the intellectual lights of this administration. One more reason why it is so important to the US that George Bush win a second term.

[BayouCoyote]

BUMP!

[highlander_UW]

bump

[DoctorMichael]

'......In the Mideast, the font of the terrorism threat, America has but two choices, "both disagreeable," Mr. Lewis has written: "Get tough or get out."......'

[Valin]

A couple of links
In Depth: Bernard Lewis
http://www.booktv.org/indepth/index.asp?schedid=185&segid=3421
Note: 3hr. interview with Dr. Lewis

Islam and Democracy? What a strange question!
by Mohamed Elmasry
(Thursday 22 January 2004)

---

"If the Lewis and Pipes group were to ask me -- an unlikely scenario -- I would have to respond that theirs is a racist and dangerous ideology, based on twisted dogma and chopped logic."
http://usa.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/4196/
Note: you might want to have a heafty bag handy.

[fatidic]

Interesting article and feel somewhat relieved that President Bush has taken Lewis seriously. But, can someone then explain why our President entertained Islamic terrorist-tied Muslims on many occasions in the White House. Was he just being political or was he still naive about Islam? He has since stopped this practice, thankfully, as far as I know.