Posted on 06/26/2007 6:11:33 AM PDT by Valin
Dear Career Counselor:
I am in bad shape. I cannot get a job or support myself. I want to be rich and famous and powerful but I have no idea what to do. Can you suggest a powerful, prestigious, high-paying field where I need do no study or training? Signed, Destitute and Dumb.
Dear D&D: I’m so glad you wrote me as I have the perfect solution: become an expert on the Middle East and Islam. It’s easy, painless (for you, though many others will pay for it with their lives), and profitable. Just look at these examples:
Stephen Mearsheimer and John Walt. Sure they were tenured professors but they hadn’t produced anything of note in years. Then they had an idea. Write a paper attacking the power of the Jewish lobby. Years of study? Intensive research? Nah. A few hours by a grad student on the internet. Result: Fame, a huge book contract, invitations to speak, largely respectful media coverage! Within months.
Or how about Bob Leiken. A washed-up Latin American expert, former Marxist revolutionary. The left hated him because he was an instrument of Oliver North in supporting the Nicaraguan Contras. Even North made fun of him. He had to sell his house and move his family into an apartment. Things looked dim. And then, presto! A grant from Smith-Richardson, another grant from the CIA, two articles in Foreign Affairs, a contract with Oxford University Press. All this within about a year. Invited to brief the State Department. Why? Because he decided to be an instant Middle East expert. Did he take courses, learn languages, spend hours reading texts? Nope. Just sat in a room with some radical Islamists. They told him they were moderates. He wrote it down. And like the great language expert, the rival of Henry Higgins, who in “My Fair Lady” proclaims that the flowerseller Eliza Doolittle is a Hungarian princess of royal blood, Leiken proclaims that the radical Islamists are really moderates who the United States can engage. Wow says Condi Rice. Do tell, asks the State Department. Has he read their extremist statements in Arabic? Nope, who needs Arabic. How about the translations and academic papers on the subject? Waste of time. Study of Koranic and Islamic sources? That’s for wimps and suckers. All you have to do is talk to them and then you know. Because hardline supporters of terrorism who cheer the murder of people by kidnappers and suicide bombers wouldn’t lie to you, would they?
Or how about Mary Habeck? A military historian, lost her job at Yale. Hey, why is everyone else having all the fun! I’ll be an expert on the Middle East and on Islam too! So she loaded up the truck and took a brief trip to Iraq. Next thing you know she’s got a book, testifies to Congress, is briefing Hilary Clinton, and being consulted by the great and powerful. Does she know anything about Islam? She thinks that jihad is an inner struggle, not having much to do with smiting infidels and conquering lands. But what’s the difference? If you don’t want to do so you don’t have to see the dead bodies produced by your advice.
So what are you waiting for? How could you NOT decide to be a Middle East expert or a sage about Islam? You’d have to be crazy not to do it. Operators are standing by.
By the way, all of the above is completely true—and other examples could be cited. But if not cast in the form of a satire, who’d believe it?
-----------------------------------------
Prof. Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, Interdisciplinary university. His new book is The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan).
Damn, I need grad students working for me. Interns are generally too dumb.
Either it's a way to marginalize ME nutcases, or we're got our head in the sand...
Heh, I knew these Islamics once...
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probably wasn’t meant to be funny but made me laugh
Well, Geeeez.
Clinton thought they were OK for some tasks.
Hmmm? Multi tasking?
“By the way, all of the above is completely true—and other examples could be cited. But if not cast in the form of a satire, who’d believe it?”
It was meant to be funny. Good satire or any comedy needs an element of truth in order to be funny
“By the way, all of the above is completely true....”
Nicaragua: Bob Leiken Exposes Exposers
Bob Leiken’s much-awaited book on media coverage of the Nicaraguan conflict will be out soon. (”Why Nicaragua Vanished,” Rowman and Littlefield, 263 pp.) Washington Post columnist Robert Kagan calls it “a masterpiece of serious scholarship, sound reasoning and lucid writing.” Harvard’s Harvey Mansfield says it “will open your eyes to a parade of media stereotypes. Though not an angry book, it will make a reasonable person angry.” http://www.socialdemocrats.org/Notesonline3-12-03email.html#Leiken
Al Jazeera enters the AIPAC Debate
Programs like this still tend to lack the depth of the sort of report compiled by Stephen Mearsheimer and John Walt or Michael Massing’s extended analysis of this report for The New York Review, but it is always nice to compare such informal data points with the more scholarly ones. Summaries of the three comments have now been posted at Al Jazeera English
http://therehearsalstudio.blogspot.com/search/label/AIPAC
Knowing the Enemy By Mary Habeck
Who is the enemy, and what is this thing called “jihadism” that everyone has been talking about? Jihadism is a modern word, not something from the Koran. Jihadis, or jihadists, call themselves salafi jihadi or salafiyya jihadiyya (-iyya in Arabic is equivalent to -ism). When I first saw the term in early 2002, I thought it perfectly described the people we’re fighting and that the ideal name for the conflict we’re involved in might be a war on jihadis, or war on jihadism. However, the root of jihadism is “jihad,” which is actually a good word within Islam.
http://www.aijac.org.au/review/2006/31-12/essay31-12.htm
I know a guy who wrote a novel in his spare time that was loosely based on afghanistan tribal warfare. He essentially knew NOTHING about Islam, arabs, taliban, afghanistan, etc. He just made things up that sounded halfway plausible in order to make the novel readable. Suddenly he was considered an expert on terrorism and the middle east in general and wound up on all of these morning talk shows during his book tour being asked questions as if he actually knew what was going on in the middle east. He faked his way through the interviews by throwing out some names of terrorists and places and mentoning a few well-known events in recent history about the region. Fooled everyone.
Damn! I could put on a burka and with my trusty laptop interview a few islamic women and become a Middle East expert on women.
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