He is a professor at Oklahoma University and is Director: Center for Middle East Studies.
He is very knowledgeable about the region.
Saudi Arabia is the farthest thing from an ally, it is a sworn enemy of Christiandom... and S.A. finances by the BILLIONS the infiltration of enemy forces and preachers and mosques into USA, European nations, and more. Not to mention the 9.11 attacks on USA
but if the new prince is seriously going to clean up the IslamoNazi kindgom.... then he’s worth a try....
perhaps he’d like to finance the repatriation of his Muslim Arab compatriots back to Arabia, too (from Syria, Israel, etc... where they’re in danger or else making trouble for other peoples)... This would prove his peaceful intentions
Very sensible and informative.
“The United States would ensure that the Levant looks toward Europe, rather than Asia, in the future. “
]IMHO this is a futile goal. China has the money for nation-building and benefits from it. We don’t.
Slow and steady wins the race. Let’s see how any reformation initiatives go with the KSA.
Thanks for posting this. Very informative.
If you'd like to be on or off, please FR mail me.
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Why is the world's most-quoted Syria expert a flack for Bashar al-Assad?
by James Kirchick September 3, 2011
NOW Lebanon
http://www.nowlebanon.com/NewsArticleDetails.aspx?ID=307545&MID=0&PID=0
Time and again, Joshua Landis, director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma and a favorite media source on Syria, has been wrong.
September 05, 2012
In Story on Internal Syrian Strike, NYT’s Israel Obsession Endures
http://blog.camera.org/archives/2012/09/in_story_on_internal_syrian_st_1.html
As excellently detailed by Jamie Kirchick, he claimed that “Western accounts of the protest movement in Syria have been exaggerated”; he argued that “el-Assad himself seems to have been shocked by the level of violence used by Syria’s security forces,” as if the strong-handed ruler was totally unaware of the activities of the forces which were under the thumb of his very own brother; and he attacked critics of Vogue’s embarrassing paean to Bashar Assad and his wife Asma.
Regarding Landis’ unfortunate take on the Vogue fiasco, Kirchick wrote: “As with nearly everthing he writes, Landis was parroting the Syrian regime, in this case, its attempts to rouse populist anger against Israel as a means of distracting attention from its own failings.”
The New York Times, which has quoted or cited Landis on Syria five times this year, has taken a liking to the professor. In an important story about vitriolic anti-Alawite hatred harbored by Syria’s Sunni child refugees in Jordan, David Kirkpatrick relies on the oft-cited and oft-erroneous professor to falsely smear Israel with a gratuitous swipe. He writes:
The roots of the animosity toward the Alawites from members of Syria’s Sunni Muslim majority, who make up about 75 percent of the population, run deep into history. During the 19th-century Ottoman Empire, the two groups lived in separate communities, and the Sunni majority so thoroughly marginalized Alawites that they were not even allowed to testify in court until after World War I.
Then, in a pattern repeated across the region, said Joshua Landis, a Syria scholar at the University of Oklahoma, French colonialists collaborated with the Alawite minority to control the conquered Syrian population — as colonialists did with Christians in Lebanon, Jews in Palestine and Sunni Muslims in Iraq. After Syria’s independence from France, the military eventually took control of the country, putting Alawites in top government positions, much to the resentment of the Sunni majority.
How exactly did the Zionists collaborate with British to control the conquered Palestinian Arab population? Can the professor provide even one tiny example about how the British colluded with the new Israeli leadership to control Palestinian Arabs?