On October 22-24, 2009, the Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa (ASMEA) held its second annual conference, entitled “The Middle East and Africa: Historic Connections and Strategic Bridges.” At the welcoming reception on the first night, Vice President Peter Pham announced the creation of the new, refereed journal, The Journal of the Middle East and Africa, to be released early in 2010. The subjects for the journal—as a reflection of the unique approach of the association—will fall within a broad range of geography, encourage multi- and inter-disciplinary perspectives, and will not shy away from offering scholarship that will have policy-relevance as well as academic merit. As much as we value high quality scholarship at ASMEA, we also believe it is imperative to share such scholarship with elements of the government—and anyone else for that matter—who seek a deeper understanding of the issues in our regions.

ASMEA has made tremendous strides in just two years from its founding. For its first annual conference, it had 19 presentations, two roundtables, and a keynote speech by the association’s co-founder, Bernard Lewis. Lewis and Fouad Ajami co-founded ASMEA to defend free inquiry, expand the boundaries of scholarship, and respond to the growing need for a comprehensive, multi-disciplinary approach to studying the cultures, histories, and issues of the Middle East and Africa. It was therefore fitting that in his speech, Lewis examined the threat to the freedom of scholarly inquiry and the prospects for improving the discipline. As a result that conference, Praeger Security International will soon release ASMEA’s first edited book, entitled Political Islam from Muhammad to Ahmadinejad, in November 2009. The book is based on many of the presentations given at that conference, edited by ASMEA’s Treasurer, Joe Skelly.

For its second conference, ASMEA accepted over 50 presentations from over 100 submissions, with some 42 universities represented on three continents. We also had three special presentations. Ambassador John Bolton, Dr. Gerard Prunier, and Isabella Ginor and Gideon Remez made up the roster for the special presentations on topics ranging from the UN in Africa, to racism in the Sudan, to evaluating the sources of interpretations of Soviet involvement in the Middle East from 1967 to 1973. We also had our first cooperative effort with Marine Corps University, in which professors from MCU held their own unique panel of presentations on teaching about this region.

Bernard Lewis gave the keynote speech for the conference. In fact, it is probably fair to say that he, again, stole the show with his lunchtime presentation on “The Iranian Difference.”

The presentations were as diverse in their subject and disciplinary perspectives as is the membership of ASMEA. Members of ASMEA are citizens from 46 different countries, have established a presence on over 350 university campuses in 38 different countries. Members with Ph.D.’s have them in 41 different academic disciplines. All the academic papers that were given at this conference are in the running for selection for ASMEA’s new journal. We welcome submissions from others, as well.

In my view, the energy, excitement, and enthusiasm for this new community of scholars was palpable at this conference. Anecdotally, many people made exceptionally favorable comments on the conference. Several members of MESH were also present, and I would appreciate their evaluation of the conference as well.

We will soon post the video of Lewis’ new talk on ASMEA’s website and list the papers that were presented. Look for announcements of our new journal’s publication. And start planning now to attend next year’s conference.

Summer is upon us, and MESH has asked its members to recommend books for summer reading. (For more information on a book, or to place an order with Amazon through the MESH bookstore, click on the book title or cover.) And now that you have other reading, MESH takes our first vacation since we launched back in December 2007. Action will resume on August 10.

Daniel Byman :: Kill Khalid by Australian journalist Paul McGeough (New Press, 2009) offers a riveting account of the bungled Israeli assassination attempt against Khalid Mishal in Amman in 1997. McGeough also explores the rise of Hamas and the emergence of Mishal as one of its leaders. Kill Khalid is extremely readable and draws heavily on interviews of many of the key figures. McGeough also provides an interesting account of Hamas after its victory over Fatah in elections in 2006. I would have liked more on Hamas’ rise inside the West Bank and Gaza before 2006, and the focus on Mishal means that several other key players do not receive enough attention. But these criticisms are simply a desire to have an already long book be even longer. McGeough’s occasional sympathy for Hamas will annoy some readers, but it would be a shame if this turns them off the book completely, as he offers plenty of interesting stories and provocative thoughts about a group that is not well understood in the United States.

.

Mark T. Clark :: Isabella Ginor and Gideon Remez propose a provocative thesis in their book, Foxbats over Dimona: The Soviets’ Nuclear Gamble in the Six-Day War (Yale University Press, 2007). They propose that, contrary to conventional historiography, the Soviets provoked the 1967 Six-Day War between Israel and Egypt in order to destroy Israel’s nascent nuclear program. The conventional wisdom holds that while the Soviets may have carelessly provoked the war (by baselessly charging the Israelis with preparing for war against Syria and Egypt), they nonetheless acted to constrain their Arab clients once war began. Ginor and Remez demonstrate conclusively that this interpretation has more to do with holding to certain assumptions than in attending to all the details that have become available through careful research, interviews, some archival work, and unintended admissions by Soviet officials and participants in the war. The authors are continuing their research beyond the book and will present their latest findings at ASMEA’s annual conference in October 2009. But you will have to read this book first.

.

Michael Doran :: My favorite recent book on the Middle East is not on the Middle East at all: Peter Rodman, Presidential Command (Knopf, 2009). Although it is a study of U.S. national security policy making, it is highly relevant to students of the Middle East, not least because it presents an original interpretation of Bush 43’s Middle East policies—one that is considerably at odds with the reigning narrative. Let me revise that last sentence: “an original and critical interpretation….” Rodman was no cheerleader. The entire book is rewarding, but, if nothing else, read the Bush 43 chapter—personally, I found it riveting. Fair warning: the book does have a dispassionate, academic quality that makes it less than ideal as fun, beach entertainment. It is, however, essential reading. Rodman, who was a member of MESH, died unexpectedly last year. He was a special man. In his honor, be sure to read the eulogy by Kissinger at the beginning.

.

Adam Garfinkle :: Lawrence Rosen, a Princeton anthropologist (also a lawyer and an early MacArthur “genius” awardee), has a “big idea” in his newest book, Varieties of Muslim Experience (University of Chicago Press, 2008). The idea concerns the intensely personal, relational nature of what he calls Islamo-Arab society. The metaphor that holds it all together is that of the arabesque. Rosen tries to illustrate the workings of this big idea with regard to politics, law, science, terrorism, portraiture, how we understand Ibn Khaldun, and more.

Some of these applications have appeared in Rosen’s earlier work, and some of his attempts at interpreting the big idea are more persuasive (to me, anyway) than others. Still, despite the occasional repetition and the density of the some of the writing, this is worth a look. If you take a social anthropological approach to the Middle East as the beginning of wisdom, as I have done now for several decades, you will have more patience for Rosen’s kind of writing and way of thinking than if you have limited yourself to IR/poli-sci-fi kinds of writing. So this book is not for everyone, but it is stimulating. It provides new ways to support arguments some of us make on related but different grounds (about the fit between Arab political culture and political pluralism, for example). Above all, perhaps, it really does traffic in a big idea, which, for anthropologists these days, if not for other social scientists, is depressingly rare.

Ah, but will it hold your attention at the beach or at poolside? If you’re worried it might not, maybe bring along Tom Robbins’ new one, B is for Beer, just in case.

.

Michael Horowitz :: Assaf Moghadam’s book, The Globalization of Martyrdom: Al Qaeda, Salafi Jihad, and the Diffusion of Suicide Attacks (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), is an excellent read. Moghadam is a leading expert in the study of Al Qaeda and suicide attacks and his expertise shines through. He discusses the rise and spread of suicide terrorism, and specifically looks at how the Salafi Jihad movement has spearheaded the spread of suicide terror tactics. Well-researched and argued, this book deserves a close read by all scholars interested in questions of terrorism, Al Qaeda, and the way globalization is influencing the trajectory of terrorist groups.

.

Josef Joffe :: “Two states” between the Jordan and the Mediterranean are back en vogue, what with Obama demanding it, and Netanyahu grudgingly conceding it. Dividing up a beach towel, which this slice of 50 miles essentially amounts to, would be hard enough for two friends. It is, unless the Lord intervenes, impossible between two foes. There is only one alternative that is worse: a “one-state solution.” Benny Morris, in his book One State, Two States (Yale University Press, 2009), tells us why, in all the gloomy and bloody details—quotes, facts, and all.

The Israelis, who made the horrible mistake of settling “Judea” and “Samaria” post-1967, have finally come around to “two states” in principle. The Arabs have not, or as Morris puts it: The “Palestinian Arab nationalist movement, from inception and ever since, has consistently regarded Palestine as innately, completely, inalienably and legitimately ‘Arab’ and Muslim and has aspired to establish in it a sovereign state under its rule covering all of the country’s territory.” So, it’s not just Tulkarm, but Tel Aviv, too. There is no place here for the Jews, and that, as Morris adds, Arabs believe “in the deepest fibers of their being.” Could this ever change? It has—but that happened in another country which was once fiercely irredentist. Germans have yielded Alsace-Lorraine and those lands that are now Polish, Russian and Czech not just in writing, but also in their hearts. But then look at all the “intervening variables:” Cold War, nuclear weapons, European integration, population transfers numbering 9 million, and, above all, a liberal-democratic polity where Hitler once ruled. This is how you change a zero-sum into a non-zero sum game. Morris makes for melancholy summer reading, but he cuts skillfully through layers of wishful thinking and sloppy analysis to lay bare the core of the Hundred Years War. Germans and French have fought over Alsace-Lorraine a lot longer—since Louis XIV.

.

Mark N. Katz :: Former CIA analyst Emile Nakhleh lays out a strong case for how the United States not only should, but could improve relations with the Muslim world in A Necessary Engagement: Reinventing America’s Relations with the Muslim World (Princeton University Press, 2008). In 162 pages, he points out that radical Islamism is a minority phenomenon within the Muslim world, and argues that the U.S. must recognize this in order to isolate it. The most interesting—and controversial—part of the book are his ten recommendations for guiding future American foreign policy toward the Muslim world. I assigned this book as a text for my “War on Terror” seminar earlier this summer, and it proved highly successful in engaging the interest of my students as well as provoking discussion and debate over his policy recommendations in particular. As my students showed, not everyone will agree with these. But Nakhleh’s book is an excellent starting point for how to reorient American foreign policy away from a narrow focus of how to defeat radical Islam to a more effective approach that seeks to discredit it.

.

Walter Laqueur :: Christopher Caldwell is a columnist of the Financial Times. There have been several dozen books in various languages about the political, cultural, and social changes taking place in Europe (and about to occur in the years to come), but Caldwell’s Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam, and the West (Doubleday, 2009) is still useful, based on wide reading and shrewd observation. This levelheaded book has its weaknesses, it is far better informed about European reactions to Muslim immigration than on European Islam and the differences within Muslim communities and between various countries. But it still deserves to be read in view of the great resistance in Europe to accept the fact that important changes have taken place, and confusion over what to do about it.

.

Michael Mandelbaum :: The subtitle of Michael B. Oren’s Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East, 1776 to the Present (Norton, 2007)—a compelling, smoothly written history based on prodigious research—announces one of its themes: the connection between the world’s strongest country and the world’s most turbulent region is an old one. It dates back, in fact, to the earliest years of the republic: the war with the Barbary pirates in the latter part of the 18th century and the outset of the 19th counts as the first war waged by the independent United States. (The war was won, but only after years of setbacks—perhaps a portent for our own time.) For their chronic naivete about the Middle East, therefore, Americans have no good excuse.

The book’s title expresses another of its principal themes. The American encounter with the region has had three distinct although overlapping sources. Power, of course, is the principal moving force of international affairs, and as the United States has grown stronger over the decades its entanglement in the Middle East, as in other parts of the world, has deepened. Because Americans have always been religiously inclined people, the Holy Land has held a special attraction for them. The commitment of American Protestants to the return of the Jews to their ancestral homeland goes back, for example, to the 18th century. And Americans have consistently held beliefs about the region based on their own wishes and hopes rather than on the realities of the societies there. If one of the bases of recent American policy in the Middle East—the belief in Arab democracy—turns out to be a fantasy, it will have a long pedigree.

One other theme from this rich account deserves mention. For religious, self-interested, and altruistic reasons Americans have tried, for more than two hundred years, to do good in the land of the Bible, the pyramids, and the mosque. More often than is commonly realized, as Oren documents, they have succeeded. The low public standing of the United States among most Middle Easterners (Israelis conspicuously excepted) for the last six decades therefore provides powerful supporting evidence for the proposition that no good deed goes unpunished.

For those interested in these three themes, and in putting the occupation of Iraq, the confrontation with Iran, and the sputtering but apparently immortal Arab-Israeli peace process in their proper historical context, Power, Faith, and Fantasy is the book to read.

.

Joshua Muravchik :: Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali (Free Press, 2007) is simply a great work of literature. How she does it, I cannot imagine since, as we learn in the book, English is apparently her sixth language, and they are disparate ones. Move over, Joseph Conrad. The prose is beautiful. The recounting of her childhood and coming of age in Somalia and other Third World venues is gripping. No less so, her flight to the West and her encounter with, and gradual assimilation of, its culture. Hirsi Ali is a significant political figure, but never mind the politics. This is a magnificent tale of human growth and triumph.

.

Michael Reynolds :: Summer reading and Tolstoy are mutually exclusive, but I urge readers to make an exception for Tolstoy’s Hadji Murat (Dodo Press edition, 2009), and not because Tolstoy was an Orientalist (he studied Oriental languages at Kazan University). Hadji Murat is a short and fast-paced novel set in the Great Caucasus War which Russia waged against the Avars, Chechens, Lezgis, Circassians and other mountain peoples of the North Caucasus in the 19th century. Drawing on his own experiences fighting in the Caucasus, Tolstoy illustrates an empire at war with tribal peoples.

The novel’s namesake and central character is an Avar notable trapped between an Imperial Russian Army seeking to subdue the mountaineers and an Islamic resistance movement led by Imam Shamil, who grimly seeks to upend traditional mountaineer society in the name of religion. As a classic work of literature, Hadji Murat explores universal themes, including the dynamics that drive men to fight and sacrifice their lives. It reveals, among other things, the complexity of modern insurgencies, where bureaucracies clash with clan structures, trust is impossible, and religious, ethnic, and family ties all compete for the loyalties of individuals, with often fatal consequences.

.

Philip Carl Salzman :: Amir Taheri, executive editor-in-chief of Iran’s Kayhan newspaper prior to the “Islamic revolution,” and now living in the West, is an unalloyed opponent of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The Persian Night: Iran Under the Khomeinist Revolution (Encounter Books, 2009), written for a popular audience in clear prose, doesn’t mince words in its rejection of the current regime. The Islamic Republic’s claims to Islamic purity are debunked; its insistence on world conquest exposed; and its brutality to its own people denounced. Taheri cites widespread internal clerical opposition to the regime, including quotes from ayatollahs that the Islamic Republic is “a conspiracy against God and believers,” and “the rule of the corrupt, by the corrupt, for the corrupt.” The entire sordid history of the Islamic Republic is recounted in detail and assessed. Taheri makes a strong case that the Iranian people deserve better. In sum, a lively read by a knowledgeable partisan.

.

Raymond Tanter :: Alireza Jafarzadeh’s The Iran Threat: President Ahmadinejad and the Coming Nuclear Crisis (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007) charts a unique path among commentary on Iran by directly linking the Iranian regime’s ideology with its quest for nuclear weapons. Jafarzadeh’s knowledge of Iran’s nuclear program is expansive: In August 2002, as spokesman for the National Council of Resistance of Iran, he revealed the existence of the Natanz uranium enrichment facility, where the Iranian regime had clandestinely built cavernous centrifuge enrichment halls. In The Iran Threat, Jafarzadeh examines the rise of President Ahmadinejad and the corresponding Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) control of Iran’s nuclear program. As the IRGC and its clerical ally Ayatollah Khamenei consolidate power following the fraudulent re-election of Ahmadinejad in June, it is worth revisiting Jafarzadeh’s incisive work on the Iranian president’s background and the ideology that underpins his domestic and international policies.

Iran is already posing new challenges to the Obama administration. Two recent developments in its nuclear and ballistic missile programs are worth mentioning.

First, The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) released a recent report on Iranian nuclear activities. The Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), a Washington-based think tank, analyzed the IAEA report. Three important findings emerge:

1. Iran has dramatically increased its installation of centrifuges to some 5,400;
2. Iran is manufacturing fuel rods for the Arak heavy water reactor and continues to refuse IAEA inspection; and
3. Iran has accumulated more than 1,000 kilograms of low enriched uranium (LEU) in the form of uranium hexafluoride (UF6).

Iran maintains some 4,000 centrifuges enriching uranium, but has added another 1,400 centrifuges, totaling some 5,400. Iran has yet to use the new centrifuges to enrich uranium, but could do so quickly. More importantly, Iran has produced about 209 kilograms (30 percent) more low-enriched uranium in the form of uranium hexafluoride (UF6) than would have been expected based on the November 2008 IAEA report. This amount equals approximately 700 kilograms of low-enriched uranium, enough for the production of weapon-grade uranium for a single nuclear weapon. As the ISIS report shows, Iran has achieved “breakout capability,” although it would have to make a decision to further enrich its LEU stockpile.

Second, on February 2, Iran successfully launched a small satellite into low-earth orbit. The satellite is very small, weighing approximately 27 kilograms or 60 pounds. The highly elliptical orbit of the satellite allowed it to pass over the United States a number of times transmitting radio signals. While some analysts downplayed the military significance of this achievement, there remains cause for concern for states outside the range of Iran’s Shahab series rockets. As noted in this report:

An intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) accelerates a warhead to velocities of approximately 7km/sec. By comparison, a space launch vehicle must accelerate a satellite to around 8km/sec. For a given payload, it would require more thrust to put an object into orbit than to deliver it over intercontinental distance, but it is slightly easier to put a very small object into low earth orbit than it is to accelerate a larger payload to a slightly lower velocity. The weight of the Iranian satellite (some 27kg) is considerably less than that of a nuclear warhead or other weapon of mass destruction. Iran therefore likely has some improvements to make before demonstrating true ICBM capability.

Iran continues methodically marching towards nuclear-armed missile capabilities that can threaten states in its region with nuclear weapons, and perhaps beyond. These events have occurred just as the Obama administration has made diplomatic overtures to the Iranian leadership. It seems that Iran may not give Obama time for diplomacy to work.

.

Jon Alterman :: For those who despair reading still more about the Middle East but who find it frivolous to read something that has nothing to do with Semites at all, Shalom Auslander’s Foreskin’s Lament is the answer. Auslander’s book is a hilarious romp through his adolescence in an Orthodox Jewish community in Monsey, New York. Shoplifting, sexual aids, and premarital sex all make unlikely appearances in this book. The battle running through the book is the way in which the author’s deep religiosity plays off against his rather lax observance. Auslander believes fervently in a God who is endlessly tormenting him and punishing him for his excesses, and he just as fervently feels he should tell God to stick it. Auslander’s eye for hypocrisy, his impatience with religious pieties, and his underlying outrageousness make this book laugh-out-loud funny, page after page. One can only hope the names in this book were changed to protect the innocent.

.

Daniel Byman :: God’s Crucible: Islam and the Making of Europe, 570-1215, by David Levering Lewis, is a quirky and wide-ranging book, covering the period of Islam’s rise and spread. Unlike most histories of this period, Lewis is superb not only at detailing the struggles within the Arab world and Muslim community, but also at placing Islam’s rise in context: we learn about imperial politics and dynamics that weakened Byzantium and the Sassanid empires and allowed the new religion to flourish and about Islam’s competition with parts of Christian Europe (in particular the Franks). Much of the book focuses on Spain, where Islam flourished as Muslims and Christians traded with, taught, and warred against each other.

Lewis’ writing is colorful yet clear, and he is an excellent storyteller. Scholars may note that there are large parts of the story that he doesn’t cover or mentions only briefly (Byzantium, in my view, gets short shrift, particularly in the centuries after Islam’s birth), but such gaps are inevitable for a book that covers such a vast period and region.

.

Mark T. Clark :: Sean Naylor’s Not a Good Day to Die: The Untold Story of Operation Anaconda is a good book for the holidays. Naylor, a war correspondent for the Army Times, narrates the U.S. military operation in March 2002 against the Taliban and remnants of Al Qaeda in the Shahikot Valley in Afghanistan. It was the largest military operation in Afghanistan after the action against the Taliban and Al Qaeda at Tora Bora.

The well-written book is riveting for many reasons. First, it helps the reader understand the kinds of challenges the United States faces in fighting in Afghanistan; second, it shows some of the problems the United States has encountered while trying to avoid the mistakes of the Soviet Union; third, it reveals some early problems with Rumsfeld’s transformation plans; fourth, Naylor’s account demonstrates the difficulties of coordinating such a large operation with conventional and special operations forces in conjunction with CIA operatives and indigenous fighters. And fifth, it promises to help the reader anticipate some of the concerns we may have when the Obama administration shifts U.S. focus away from Iraq and towards the renewed conflict in Afghanistan.

.

Steven A. Cook :: I recommend Amin Maalouf’s wonderful book about his family, Origins. The first 75-125 pages are a bit of a slog, but once over that hump, Maalouf’s work hums along as he traces the arc of his family’s history from Lebanon to the United States to Cuba to France and back to Cuba. Largely because Maalouf is a writer of historical fiction, the book captures all the complexities of identity without the post-modernist jargon that often clouds the issue.

One of the most poignant moments early on in the book is Maalouf’s discovery of a trunk filled with, among other items, his grandfather’s correspondence. Maalouf’s meticulous, yet also vaguely frantic efforts to organize the contents of the trunk represent the ambivalence of the assimilated émigré. He is content in the Parisian world of letters, but there is an inextricable pull to the ancestral village in the mountains that hang over Beirut. The scene launches Maalouf on a journey to understand not only his grandfather’s life, but also to comprehend the powerful nature of that force that connects him and his relatives to this place. The device for this meditation on identity and one’s place in the globalizing world is the tension between the lives of Boutros, Maalouf’s grandfather, and his brother Gebrayel who ventured from Lebanon in the late 19th century bound for New York City and ultimately Havana.

.

Mark N. Katz :: I love travel narratives, and since this is a recommendation for holiday reading, I’d like to call attention to one of my favorite Middle East travel narratives: Eric Hansen’s Motoring with Mohammed: Journeys to Yemen and the Red Sea. Yemen is frequently in the news, and the news from there never seems to be good. Yet as visitors to Yemen (including myself) have discovered, there is much that is friendly and attractive about this country that is little known not only to Westerners, but also to other Arabs.

In this book, Hansen conveys a strong sense of the country’s rugged beauty and individualism. Though many outside Yemen fear the rise of radical Islam there, Hansen’s descriptions of two widespread Yemeni customs—chewing qat (a mildly narcotic leaf) and carrying arms—suggest that this is not a country that Al Qaeda or other puritanical Islamist movements will find easy to dominate. Hansen, though, also discusses Yemen’s many problems—which have largely grown worse since his book was published. More than anything else, Motoring with Mohammed provides a clear, understandable introduction to a country whose politics so often appear to be neither clear nor understandable.

.

Martin Kramer :: The Institut du monde arabe in Paris is hosting a splendid show on Bonaparte in Egypt through March 19. I saw it, and couldn’t resist the sumptuously illustrated catalogue, Bonaparte et l’Égypte: feu et lumières. It’s the next best thing to being there, and a perfect souvenir or gift if you do get there over the holidays. Not only are all the exhibits shown and explained, but there are background essays by leading experts, including Henry Laurens on Egypt and the French Enlightenment, André Raymond on Mamluk Egypt, Abdul-Karim Rafeq on Bonaparte’s Syrian expedition, and more. Despite its title, the exhibition covers Franco-Egyptian relations right up to the digging of the Suez Canal. There’s lots to captivate, from a panoramic painting of the Battle of the Pyramids to a special bookcase designed to hold the Description de l’Égypte, on loan from the National Assembly. Safe to predict that two hundred years hence, our descendants won’t be celebrating the cultural legacy of the invasion of Iraq. That’s what makes the French great—even (and all too often) in defeat.

.

Walter Laqueur :: Read The Yacoubian Building, a fascinating, astonishingly outspoken bestseller about the life of the dwellers of a well known building in Central Cairo dealing with the radicalization of Egyptian youth, the fate of the old elite, homosexuality, corruption and a great many other topics. The novel, written by a Chicago-trained Egyptian dentist, inspired a movie by the same name, as well as a television series (I liked the movie even better than the book).

Also to be looked at (even if your Hebrew is a little rusty) is David Kroyanker’s new book about the (Jerusalem) German Colony. The author, architect and historian of architecture and Jerusalem, has dealt earlier on with half a dozen other sections of Jerusalem. This book, heavily illustrated and well researched, covers the history of this part of Jerusalem since the first Templars arrived from southwest Germany in mid-19th century. About every other house gets a write-up or illustration. Both a coffee table book and a serious study of wide interest.

.

Michael Mandelbaum :: The Foreigner’s Gift by Fouad Ajami, the most insightful book on the American encounter with Iraq, has three cardinal virtues. First, it takes the measure of the people of Iraq as no other book has done, because unlike almost all other Iraq books, this one is written by a native speaker of Arabic with a deep familiarity with the history and culture of the Middle East, who visited the country frequently and traveled widely in it after 2003. Second, as the book’s subtitle—The Americans, the Arabs, and the Iraqis in Iraq—indicates, the book deals in depth with the third party to the post-2003 events, describing how the rest of the Arab world worked to thwart the plans and crush the hopes of the other two. Third, the book is elegantly, often lyrically written. Anyone interested in the Middle East will find The Foreigner’s Gift a pleasure to read even as he or she will come to understand better both the frustrations and tragedies since 2003 and the more recent hopes for better days in Iraq.

.

Michael Reynolds :: The best books for the holidays are ones that are accessible to a general reader yet manage to inform and open new vistas. My recommendation, the Chechen doctor Khassan Baiev’s memoir of life and war in Chechnya, The Oath: A Surgeon Under Fire is more than just accessible, informative, and stimulating. It is one of the most powerful stories I have read, and was written by one of the most extraordinary men I have ever met.

The book’s title refers to Baiev’s determination during the wars of Chechnya to fulfill his Hippocratic obligation to treat all wounded and sick, Chechen fighters and Russian servicemen alike. Baiev’s loyalty to his profession’s code led both sides eventually to identify him as a traitor and seek retribution, forcing Baiev to flee Chechnya in 2000. Fortunately, he was able to find asylum in the United States, where he put his story to paper.

Baiev’s description of the laceration of Chechen society by war, radical Islamism, and crime in the years between 1994 and 2000 is exceptional in its intimacy, but the book offers more than a recounting of conflict in Chechnya. Through the story of his childhood and life in the former Soviet Union, Baiev allows the reader to see the Chechens, who more commonly are either celebrated cartoonishly as die hard opponents of Russian imperialism or pilloried wholesale as terrorists and gangsters, as people. Baiev’s witness of human savagery unsettles at the core, yet his own example of courage inspires and offers hope.

.

Tamara Cofman Wittes :: Orientalists: Western Artists in Arabia, the Sahara, Persia and India, by Kristian Davies, is beautifully produced, with many full-color plates and wonderful details of some great Orientalist paintings. But more importantly, Davies helps us understand how and why Western artists became fascinated with these “exotic” parts of the world, through a narrative that is mercifully free of academic aridity and political jaundice. His fresh approach resonates with his pure aesthetic enjoyment of the subject, and his delight at peeking into the worlds (the real world, and the ones in the artists’ minds) that the paintings portray.

One of the more pressing problems facing the new administration of Barack Obama will be dealing with the incipient Iranian nuclear program. During the primaries and election, Obama only said that we will need a robust international effort to stop the program. Broadly speaking, however, he seems inclined towards nuclear disarmament, opposed to nuclear deterrence, and disinclined to use conventional military force. Given the repeated failure of diplomatic efforts to halt Iran’s program, it is difficult to predict the types of proposals the new administration may consider. However, at least one has been proffered.

The first of presumably many new proposals was made recently by David Albright and Andrea Scheel of the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS). In their publication, Albright and Scheel fret that countries in the “conflict-prone” region of the Middle East are planning the addition of at least 12-13 new civil nuclear power reactors and that such countries may acquire, through reprocessing, enough plutonium for as many as 1,700 nuclear weapons by 2020. The authors note that many countries could pursue nuclear weapons development “[b]ecause of growing insecurity in the Middle East resulting from Iran’s nuclear progress in defiance of United Nations Security Council demands…”

The authors believe that the next administration must take the lead in getting all the other Nuclear Supplier Group (NSG) countries to condition the sale of nuclear reactors on the requirement that recipient states agree to greater transparency of their nuclear power programs. The NSG countries should “insist on adequate international inspections of these countries, including the adoption of the Additional Protocol, and develop mechanisms to remove spent fuel from the region.” The Additional Protocol to the Safeguards Agreement, monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency, is designed to provide more intrusive inspections of a country’s nuclear program.

The authors note that “[t]raditional safeguards are not adequate to detect countries conducting secret plutonium separation or enrichment efforts.” Several states of the Middle East, including Algeria, Iraq, Iran, Libya and Syria, avoided detection on clandestine nuclear programs while adhering to traditional inspections by the IAEA. So at first blush, their proposals may seem to appear sensible.

Yet while the authors seem to recognize some of the underlying problems, their solution(s) simply ignore them. In this technically competent but politically naïve piece, the authors acknowledge the following: Iran’s nuclear program is the impetus for the other states in the Middle East to pursue nuclear weapons, yet no new effort to enforce existing sanctions or regimes is proposed. Iran suspended its compliance with the Protocol in 1996, and the authors have no answer to Iran’s actions. To top it off, Russia—a principal NSG country—continues to construct the Bushehr reactor despite Iran’s actions. Egypt announced in 2007 that it will not sign the Protocol, but Russia has not attempted to prevent its firms from bidding on a nuclear reactor at El Dabaa. In each case, the political will to build nuclear weapons or support the building of the infrastructure necessary for these weapons is simply ignored. A new “norm” that ignores the failure of more fundamental norms of nonproliferation seems unlikely to work any better.

But the authors go further. The authors exhort the incoming Obama administration to make it a key priority to persuade Israel to join in negotiating a universal treaty that bans the production of plutonium and highly enriched uranium. In the interim, they argue, the Obama administration should press Israel to suspend any production of fissile materials for nuclear weapons.

If it strikes the reader as odd that the authors do not recommend any actions against the recalcitrant state, Iran, but do against a state, Israel, that is not a member of the Nonproliferation Treaty, there may be a reason. As Stephen Walt argued years ago in his book, The Origins of Alliances (before he flip-flopped on all his work about how states behave under the influence of domestic actors), of all the states in the world, only the United States had some measure of control over Israel’s behavior, some means to influence the course of their actions. The United States had no comparable influence with other states, and neither did the Soviet Union over its erstwhile allies in the Middle East. The authors want success only where it can be had, with Israel, but not where the thornier problem of political will resides, with Iran.

Solutions that push for universal norms, while ignoring political realities, will produce illogical prescriptions. The central problem of Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons remains unaddressed by the authors’ proposals, and ignores the more troubling concern with Russia’s irresponsible actions as a principal NSG country.

Other strategies are available, strategies that do not require force. A strategy of targeting Iranian banking practices has been shown to be an effective “sanction” on Iranian behavior, cited in a recent article. Other “smart sanctions” may be available to the new administration, including targeting Iran’s reliance on importing gasoline.

The ISIS proposal is probably the first of many proposed “solutions” to come that address the problem of nuclear proliferation in the Middle East. It won’t be the last. One can hope, however, that the new administration will heed wiser counsel to address the tougher problem of dealing with Iran’s drive towards nuclear weapons. In this case, wiser counsel may focus on policies that address the source of the problem, and not the symptoms.

MESH members’ answers have appeared in installments throughout the week (Tuesday, Wednesday, and yesterday). Today’s responses, the last in the series, come from Steven A. Cook, Mark T. Clark, and Jon Alterman.

.

Steven A. Cook:: George Bush’s Middle East report card:

Effort: B
Willingness to Listen: F
Cognitive Issues: F
Grasp of Abstract Issues: F
Recognition of Complex Problems: F
Group Interaction: D

Overall Grade: D-

Comments:

George and his friends have demonstrated strong views about the Middle East, but precious little grasp of the region’s history, politics, and culture. While the President et al. have made a strong effort, their unwillingness to listen and insistence that their views were superior to all others accentuated their knowledge deficit. As a result, not only have they not achieved their goals in the region (democracy in Iraq, a Palestinian state living side by side in peace with Israel, OBL “dead or alive,” the end of the Asad regime in Syria, Egypt leading the region in freedom, ending the U.S. addiction to oil, draining the swamp of extremists, getting Hezbollah to “stop this s***,” and disarming Iran), but in most cases Washington’s approach has produced precisely the opposite of the desired effect.

Many of George’s friends argue that things are better in Iraq these days. This is certainly true, but nobody is quite sure what will happen in Iraq. There are still a variety of issues that can undermine the progress of the last year. In addition, George’s grade suffered because he was unable to think through the consequences of his actions. The invasion of Iraq did get rid of an awful regime that was a menace to the region, but created an opportunity for another awful regime to be even more of a menace to the region.

I have to give some credit to the President for speaking out forcefully about democracy and freedom in the Arab world. A lot of people there did not like it (at least publicly), but it did have a salutary effect on the dominant discourse in the region. Arab leaders have had a very hard time changing the subject from reform and political transformation since the “forward strategy of freedom” was articulated in November 2003.

Still, the rest of this effort to promote change was either poorly conceived (see Al-Hurra), or old ideas wrapped up with a new bow (see MEPI). The administration’s diplomatic tin ear did not help (see Rice, Condoleezza “birth pangs of the new Middle East” or Hughes, Karen “Saudi women should drive, Middle East tour 2006″). Once again, deficits in grasping abstract issues, in group interaction, and in willingness to listen forced the administration to virtually abandon the freedom agenda once the situation in Iraq deteriorated and Islamists scored electoral gains in Egypt and Lebanon as well as a victory in Palestine. This resulted in a return of the state throughout the region, but particularly in Egypt. It turns out Cairo did not lead the region in freedom but rather repression, as the Mubarak regime used almost every coercive instrument at its disposal to undermine, intimidate, and destroy its opponents.

George does not generally avoid conflict, but he exhibited a demonstrable unwillingness to deal with the Arab-Israeli problem. He did get involved from time to time, but only reluctantly and for reasons that often had little to do with finding a resolution to the conflict. Moreover, when the President did get involved, he failed to grasp the complexities of the issue, resulting in cavalier commitments about the establishment of a Palestinian state by the end of his term. Indeed, while actively discouraging Israel from exploring peace talks with Syria, the administration’s problem with abstract issues resulted in the belief that negotiations between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas—two weak and wounded leaders—held “special promise.”

I am afraid that despite a lot of effort, exorbitant resources, and a not insignificant amount of blood, Middle East policy over the last seven and one-half years is a D-.

.

Mark T. Clark :: On the broadest level, I agree with John Lewis Gaddis’s assessment of what may become George W. Bush’s legacy in an article found here. Comparing previous presidential legacies, he points out that many of the arguments that now rage over Bush’s policies will, as with the majority of policies of previous presidents, fade into the background.

Importantly, though, Gaddis believes that in Bush’s “Second inaugural” the president laid out a vision—a transformation, if you will—of the U.S. approach to international politics regarding the promotion of democracy in the world, including the Middle East. He proposed promoting democracy with the “ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world.” Gaddis adds:

If the Bush Doctrine was meant in that sense—if ending tyranny is now to be the objective of the United States in world affairs—then this would amount to a course correction away from the 20th-century idea of promoting democracy as a solution for all the world’s problems, and back toward an older concept of seeking to liberate people so they can solve their own problems. It could be a navigational beacon for the future that reflects more accurately where we started and who we’ve been.

I believe Bush will have a second, narrower legacy as well, one that will serve U.S. interests in the future. In the proving grounds of the Middle East and Southwest Asia, Bush has restored the belief that the United States can fight and win an insurgency. We could win a conventional conflict, as in Iraq in 1991, but after Vietnam, it became conventional wisdom that insurgencies were virtually impossible to win. Lebanon in 1983 and Somali in 1993 only confirmed that view. The rapid defeat of the Taliban in Afghanistan after 9/11 began to change that perspective. That war, of course, is not yet finished, but there are signs that it may settle soon.

Iraq, however, may come to cement this view. The initial success of rapidly defeating Saddam’s ragged army was overtaken by the unexpected insurgency, fueled by sectarian strife and outside support. Despite mounting problems, Bush insisted on pursuing the “surge” against opposition by many of his generals and members of Congress. The surge restored the fundamentally important element in a new, stable government: security for its citizens.

In other areas of the Middle East, he will have a mixed legacy. It will be unaffected by the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict. If it was difficult to get resolution with the Palestinian Authority, it became impossible with a government split between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas. The one stain on his legacy in the Middle East may be the Iranian nuclear program. Giving Europe the lead to negotiate with Iran failed to net any gains. And, as the Europeans are learning, the Iranians are not serious about a diplomatic solution. They want a nuclear weapons program. Anything short of military intervention may never have worked. But given the administration’s preoccupation with Afghanistan and Iraq, it had no serious cards to play against the Iranians.

Excepting the last point, we are better off than we were eight years ago.

.

Jon Alterman :: The United States is far worse off in the Middle East than it was eight years ago. There is an easy way to tell this is so: those whom the Bush administration has most avidly sought to weaken and isolate are stronger than they were, while the United States and the secular liberals that the Bush administration sought to nurture are weaker.

While the world does not miss Saddam Hussein, the governments of Iran and Syria did not cower after his fall. To the contrary, by acts of omission and commission they helped deepen Iraq’s agony despite the presence of more than 100,000 U.S. troops intended in part to intimidate them. Their allies, Hezbollah and Hamas, have also seen their fortunes rise, despite U.S. insistence on their isolation. Hezbollah’s influence in Lebanon has increased, and it now has veto power over the government. Hamas not only won an election that the Bush administration pressed forward, but it now controls territory of its own.

Although the Bush administration denied it vehemently at the time, the invasion of Iraq was always a roll of the dice, and a trillion dollars in, it remains unclear how those dice will land. Given the intelligence information available in 2002-2003, one could make a plausible argument for going in, but it is impossible to either justify or excuse the rank incompetence that characterized the first years of the occupation (which, in the best-case-scenario reasoning that underlay the military planning, was only supposed to last 90 days). Driven by hubris and a belief that with the events of September 11, “everything had changed,” officials were selected for loyalty over experience, with predictable results. Saddam’s fetish of loyalty had destroyed Iraq the first time; the Bush administration’s fetish of loyalty helped destroy it a second.

Bloodied in Iraq, the United States has far less pull in the region than it had a decade ago. In the Gulf, friendly governments actively undermine the Bush administration’s policy and engage in energetic diplomacy among Palestinians and Lebanese to make up for the administration’s shortfall. While these governments remain reliant on U.S. arms, they actively seek to balance U.S. influence with that of other outside powers such as France and China, and they seek to assuage the Iranians out of fear that the United States cannot protect them.

The bright spot is that there has been a good deal of progress on counterterrorism, especially in the last several years. A series of attacks within the Arab world persuaded governments that the problem is not merely a Western one, and their security services are both better prepared and better informed than a decade ago. Their newfound skills have helped decrease the number of attacks against civilian targets around the globe, and deeper intelligence cooperation has helped protect U.S. civilian lives.

Yet, much of the progress in counterterrorism has come at a cost. In 2003, the Bush administration appeared convinced that the brutality and ineptitude of Middle Eastern governments were principal drivers of terrorism; by 2007, it was clear that regional governments were the U.S. government’s chief allies. The U.S. government went suddenly from seeking to reform the status quo to zealously supporting it, and abruptly abandoned a wide range of opposition figures who had taken risks out of confidence in U.S. backing.

While there have been a series of U.S. missteps in the region, what has not happened is as important as what has. After the death of Yasser Arafat, the United States had an unprecedented opportunity to move forward on Arab-Israeli peace issues. A new Palestinian president came into office with broad support and legitimacy, and a record of speaking hard truths to Palestinians in Arabic. Yet, the opportunity to build up Mahmoud Abbas as a credible peacemaker was lost, in part out of an ambition ceaselessly to wring yet one more concession out of him.

The setbacks that the United States has suffered in the Middle East are reversible, but it will take years of effort to bring the United States back to the same level of regional influence enjoyed in 2000. The Bush administration has little of which to be proud.

With that in mind, MESH devotes this week to a roundtable of its members on the theme “The First 100 Days.” MESH members have been asked these questions: What priorities should the next administration set for immediate attention in the Middle East? What should it put (or leave) on the back burner? Is there anything a new president should do or say right out of the gate? And if a president asked you to peer into your crystal ball and predict the next Middle East crisis likely to sideswipe him, what would your prediction be?

MESH members’ answers will appear in installments throughout the week. (Read the whole series here.) We begin with responses from Daniel Byman, Mark T. Clark, and Hillel Fradkin.

.

Daniel Byman :: The change in administration will offer no relief on the challenges of Iran’s nuclear program, counter-insurgency and state-building in Iraq, and the need to revive Israeli-Palestinian negotiations and keep the Syria-Israel talks moving. Several possible threats also loom and may force themselves upon a new administration’s agenda. In addition, the new administration should undertake several new initiatives to address issues neglected by the Bush administration.

One area of neglect is the challenge of Iraq’s refugees. The over two million Iraqi refugees could destabilize several neighboring states and play a role in sustaining or increasing conflict in Iraq itself. Given the mismanagement of the occupation, the United States also has a moral responsibility to assist those devastated by the civil strife. Vastly increasing the number of refugees the United States itself accepts is one step, but so too is aiding allies like Jordan that are bearing much of the weight of the refugee problem.

A vital area—and perhaps the most important medium-term issue—is the need for a new and comprehensive Pakistan policy. Pakistan is the nerve center for Al Qaeda and the insurgency in Afghanistan. In addition, with a new but weak democratic government in place, Pakistan’s relationship with the United States has fundamentally changed. In addition, the Bush administration often neglected policy toward Pakistan (as opposed to counterterrorism operations related to Pakistan) despite its obvious importance to U.S. national security. A new administration should initiate a comprehensive review of Pakistan policy and ensure that it is implemented across the bureaucracies.

It is easy to say that a new crisis is likely to emerge from the Middle East, but those who offer specific predictions about the region usually look back at their prognostications with embarrassment. However, a number of new crises could easily arise from the Middle East region and be the first high-profile foreign policy test of a new administration. They include:

1. A major terrorist attack on a U.S. facility overseas or even the U.S. homeland based out of tribal parts of Pakistan. The Bush administration reportedly has authorized U.S. forces to strike directly into Pakistan without Islamabad’s permission, but a major terrorist attack would put considerable pressure on the U.S.-Pakistan relationship and the new government there.
2. A sustained Israeli operation in Gaza. Should rocket attacks from Gaza resume to the point where they threaten Israeli cities outside the Sderot area, or should a rocket strike in that area kill a large number of Israelis, political pressure to respond militarily will be immense. Because Israeli leaders want to avoid a repeat of the Lebanon War in 2006 and worry that Hamas is using its control over Gaza to build up a Hezbollah-like military, they will face pressure to reoccupy parts of Gaza—a move that many U.S. allies around the world, and all U.S. Arab allies, would loudly criticize.
3. The Awakening Councils rebel. Iraq has made progress in part because the United States has successfully partnered with a wide range of local Sunni tribal and militia groups—many of which oppose the Shi’a-dominated government of Nuri al-Maliki. As the Maliki government tries to consolidate power, it is seeking to disarm these groups. This effort may succeed, but it is also possible that some militias will not go gently and Baghdad will not be able to coerce them or, in so doing, fuels the sectarian fires that appear to be diminishing. The United States may find itself caught between its warring partners.

.

Mark T. Clark:: Biggest issue. The Iranian nuclear program will remain the single most important item on the new president’s agenda. The window of opportunity to halt the Iranian quest for a nuclear bomb is closing rapidly. Within that window, the possibility that Israel may preempt the nascent Iranian program increases daily. Robert O. Freedman has shown the growing disparity between the U.S. and Israeli perspectives on the need to strike key nodes of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, and I can find no reason to disagree with him. Chuck Freilich may be correct that Iran may still be dissuadable diplomatically, but the time necessary for diplomacy to work may be rapidly drawing to a close. Depending on what the next president says at inauguration, the Israelis may feel compelled to act, with or without U.S. help.

Biggest problem. The single biggest problem for the United States will be its strategic inflexibility in the Middle East. Although U.S. “surge” forces in Iraq will be reduced soon, the need to spend time and attention on Afghanistan will continue to constrain U.S. military power. While a mini-surge in Afghanistan may help slow down neo-Taliban advances, it cannot solve some of the more intractable problems of governance in that country, which I discussed here. We may need to remain in Afghanistan for some time to come.

Biggest unknown variable. The biggest unknown variable will be the actions—or inaction—of Hezbollah in Lebanon against Israel. Also, I cannot discount an Iranian-supported alliance between Hezbollah and Hamas starting a two-front war to deter—or counter—a planned or executed Israeli strike on the Iranian nuclear program.

Biggest back burner issue. The “Israeli-Palestinian” dispute should remain on the backburner, at least until the Palestinians form a more coherent and peaceable government.

Biggest geopolitical surprise. Russia’s traditional interest in the Middle East may be on the rise. After invading parts of Georgia, Russia may be more confident about its relative power, despite international opposition. Although only Syria supported the Russian action, Russia’s willingness to sell missile and air defense programs to Iran and its opposition to stronger sanctions may indicate a willingness to increase its footprint in the Middle East while circumscribing U.S. options. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Russia and Iran announce some kind of entente cordiale, all in the name of “peace” and as a means to gain more leverage over other states in the region.

First speech. The next president should address the Iranian nuclear program and the need for greater U.S. strategic flexibility in the region. What he says, and how he says it, will set the tone for the next four years.

.

Hillel Fradkin :: Under almost any plausible scenario, the new administration’s first 100 days will be dominated by issues of the Greater Middle East. The two most obvious and somewhat related ones are the war in Iraq and the challenge, threat and question of Iran. But the issue of the war in Afghanistan and relations with Pakistan is coming more and more to the fore. This points to one striking and relatively new general feature of our engagement in the Middle East: the center of gravity of our concerns has shifted markedly eastward. The main thing which tends to push our concerns in the opposite direction is the aggressive efforts of Iran through proxies in Syria, Lebanon and Palestine. As this has happened in a somewhat ad hoc way, it is unclear whether American strategy has been rethought to take this shift fully into account. This might be one of the first steps that a new administration might have to take.

As for Iraq, our primary concern will be the continued improvement in the security situation and progress on the political front—including the question of local and regional elections and their impact on the developing Iraqi political dynamic. This is not only important for our efforts in Iraq but in the way we are perceived in the region generally as a future actor. Prior to the recent success—and partially as a result of American domestic politics—our resolve to stay engaged had come into question, encouraging foes and discouraging allies. This was destined to add to the difficulties of any new administration. This dynamic has now been partially interrupted by the decision that was taken to remain committed to Iraq and the success which that has produced. But it will be important for either a McCain or Obama administration to affirm this recent success and declare American resolve to build upon it. This will be especially true of an Obama administration, which will otherwise buy itself several months of trouble as nations in the region test the limits of his and our resolve. Obama’s recent statements seem to indicate a growing appreciation of this fact.

As urgent as our Iraqi concerns will be, our concerns with Iran may well be even more urgent. This is because the main existing approaches—the diplomatic initiative launched in 2003 and led by the EU 3 and the sanctions initiative at the UN—are now clearly at a dead end. At the same time—and despite the misleading NIE of November 2007—Iran has continued the vigorous pursuit of nuclear-weapon and related capacities such as advanced missile technology.

The new administration will have to address two questions: Should it entertain very much more forceful measures—including military action—to prevent Iran from achieving a nuclear weapon? If not, and if it is therefore necessary to accept the eventuality of an Iranian nuclear capacity, what will be the consequences for American interests in the region and how must it restructure its policies to address them? Given the dramatic change in the strategic situation that a nuclear Iran would effect, a reconsideration of our strategy and tactics will have to be especially wide-ranging. It may be advisable and even necessary for a new administration to announce a wholesale review of our policy towards Iran.

There are two particularly troubling possible developments which might present the new administration with its first “crises” in the region. The first would be a major initiative by Iran to stir up trouble through proxies—either on the Iraqi front or with regard to Lebanon and Israel. The other would concern Pakistan and could entail either a serious deterioration in Pakistani-U.S. relations or Pakistani civil disorder or both. It is likely in any event that the question of Pakistan will demand immediate attention.

The issue least likely to demand such attention is the Israeli-Palestinian question. This is at least partially a reflection of the shift in the center of gravity from the Persian Gulf eastward, as noted above.

With August fast approaching, MESH has asked its members to recommend a book for summer reading. (For more information on a book, or to place an order with Amazon through the MESH bookstore, click on the book title or cover.)

.

Daniel Byman :: Yaroslav Trofimov’s The Siege of Mecca: The Forgotten Uprising in Islam’s Holiest Shrine and the Birth of al-Qaeda (Doubleday, 2007), is a fast-paced, informative, and tight book about how Saudi zealots took over the Grand Mosque in Mecca in 1979. Trofimov appears to have excellent access to some sources that others have not tapped, and he sheds light on an event that has long been known but not well understood in the West. We learn a tremendous amount not only about the bloody combat in the holy shrine itself, but also about Saudi ineptitude and the motivations of the zealots. The only annoying thing about the book is that the author repeatedly stretches to make links to Al Qaeda that are at best weak and at times rather fanciful. My guess is an editor pushed him to have a “9/11 link” even though the rest of the text is gripping and illuminating without tying it to Bin Ladin and Al Qaeda.

.

J. Scott Carpenter :: Summer reading should be stimulating, informative, and, most crucially, fun. Robin Wright’s new book, Dreams and Shadows: The Future of the Middle East, while flawed, fits the bill. Wright whisks the reader from Morocco to Iran introducing us to the men and women engaged in the contest for the soul of the region, the dreams and shadows of her title. For a region associated with autocrats and suicide bombers, the reformers she introduces are like a breath of mountain air. Their dreams are our own. But like haze on a hot summer day, those dreams are threatened by men of dark vision such as Iran’s Ahmadinejad, Hamas’ Mishal and Hezbollah’s Nasrallah, all of whom Wright lets speak for themselves. She’s an optimist in the end, but be fair-warned, she is also partisan and ambiguous about U.S. power to shape the region (the chapter on Iraq is best avoided). Still, there’s more right than wrong here. (Penguin, 2008.)

.

Mark T. Clark :: Antonio Giustozzi’s Koran, Kalashnikov, and Laptop: The Neo-Taliban Insurgency in Afghanistan (Columbia University Press, 2007) traces the emergence of the neo-Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan after the defeat of the Taliban in late 2001. He notes how the Taliban have become more flexible in interpreting Sharia, using innovative guerrilla and terrorist strategies as well as technology in their quest for power. He shows that neo-Taliban successes have stemmed from three things. First, the Taliban have exploited the political weaknesses of Afghanistan’s new government, especially between central and local arms. Second, they have adopted new strategies and tactics in fighting the Afghan army, its militias and its “foreign” supporters. And third, the insurgents have confronted an inconsistent and ineffective counter-insurgency strategy against them. When Giustozzi pieces together the recent history, he is at his strongest; when he interprets elements of strategy, he is at his weakest. The work is worth reading, if only to understand some of the recent “successes” the insurgency has scored and anticipate some counters we may soon employ.

.

Steven A. Cook :: When I saw Aaron David Miller at the Council on Foreign Relations shortly after his book was published, he told me that it would make me “laugh and cry.” The author knows his work, as I found myself cackling in between moments of great despair while making my way through Miller’s terrific account of his time working the Arab-Israeli account. I can pile the number of Arab-Israeli conflict books ceiling-high in my office, but what makes The Much Too Promised Land different is its sobering and thus refreshing examination of American policy. Miller, it seems, has lost patience with Arabs, Israelis, and the follies of American policymakers who have been led down the garden path of the peace process by visions of the Nobel prize. I hope the next team that takes on the unforgiving task of managing the Arab-Israeli conflict learns the lessons that Miller has taught us. (Random House, 2008.)
.

Adam Garfinkle :: About 28 years ago, a Chicago publisher called Nelson-Hall put out The Last Crusade: A Negotiator’s Middle East Handbook, by William R. Brown. The book is an analysis of Henry Kissinger’s step-by-step diplomatic odyssey from Kilometer 101 to the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty, written by a U.S. official who was along for much of the ride. As far as I can tell, the book was not widely reviewed (perhaps because of its unfortunate title; who knows?). Foreign Affairs just squibbed it, with the then doyen of the Middle East section, John C. Campbell, devoting two whole sentences to Brown’s effort. But the second sentence was this: “Brown’s background in public service is largely in the Arab field, and his analysis of Arab perceptions is particularly apt.”

Damn right it was. Before political correctness made it uncomfortable for State Department Arabists even to believe what they saw with their own eyes, let alone to write about it, Brown evinced a knack for keen insight, honest analysis and crisp prose. Consider, for just one out of dozens of examples, this remark: “The Arab perceives a single community of faith and language that contrasts sharply with our emphasis on competing but mutually adjusting political factions. In the West, politics has a flavor of controlled conflict that the Arab regards as destructive to community…. In the Middle East the purpose of political institutions is to facilitate the constant unfolding or revelation of a popular consensus. According to the liberal democratic norms of the West, political institutions are dedicated to enacting the wishes of a tolerant majority.”

The Last Crusade is not in print—hasn’t been for decades—but copies are available through Amazon. It’s fun to locate Brown’s more general conclusions, distilled out of the dense diplomatic interactions of the Kissingerian era, and throw them into the headwinds of today’s Middle Eastern storms to see how they fly. On the whole, they fly pretty well.

.

Michael Horowitz :: While it is a bit older, I would like to encourage people that have not already done so to go out and purchase a copy of The Age of Sacred Terror by Dan Benjamin and Steve Simon (Random House, 2002). The book remains one of the best descriptions of Al Qaeda in the period up until 9/11. The rich historical detail, supplemented by the insights Benjamin and Simon gained from working on terrorism and Al Qaeda-related issues as National Security Staff members during the Clinton administration, provides a great deal of important information. They describe both the inner workings of Al Qaeda from its genesis through 9/11 and the efforts by the United States government to respond. Whether as an introductory text for advanced undergraduates interested in terrorism issues or a handy reference tool for more advanced scholars, The Age of Sacred Terror significantly contributes to our understanding of Al Qaeda.

.

Raymond Ibrahim :: One of the most informative books I’ve read on Sunni Islam’s notions of international affairs—the whens, whys, whats, and hows, of warfare and peace—is appropriately titled War and Peace in the Law of Islam (reprint, The Lawbook Exchange, 2006), by the late Johns Hopkins professor, Majid Khadduri, himself a former Baghdadi jurist. What especially makes this book valuable is that the earliest edition was originally written in 1941—that is, some decades before the reign of political correctness infiltrated academia, stifling the sort of conclusions that Khadduri makes (e.g., that jihad is an eternal obligation). Indeed, though Khadduri was a well-respected scholar and never accused of having any “anti-Arab/Islam” agendas (he was, after all, an Arab and a Muslim), the straightforward assertions he makes in this book, if made today by another scholar, are liable to classify the latter as an “Islamophobe.”

.

Josef Joffe :: Weighing in at about 3 pounds, and numbering almost 800 pages, Michael B. Oren’s Power, Faith and Fantasy: America in the Middle East 1776 to the Present (Norton, 2007) is not exactly beach-time reading. But the book should be on the shelf of anybody who takes a serious interest in the history of America’s involvement in the Arab/Muslim world. Even before the Constitution was written in 1787, the fledgling republic was already embroiled in conflict—when, in 1784, a Boston ship was seized by Moroccan pirates. In fact, that conflict was one reason for the constitutional convention in Philadelphia: how to create national institutions (like a navy) that would deal with the brigands of North Africa. Remember Ronald Reagan’s airstrike against Qadhafi in 1986, in retaliation against a terror attack against U.S. soldiers in Berlin? A haunting precedent is Tripoli’s declaration of war on the United States in 1801. So America’s entanglement in the Middle East is as old as the republic itself, and this is why Oren’s book makes for such important and instructive reading in these breathless, indeed, a-historical times. As a side-benefit, this book will dispense once and for all with the myth of isolationism. As Oren shows, the United States was embroiled in world politics from day one.

.

Martin Kramer :: It being summer, I finally found time to read Mohsin Hamid’s novella, The Reluctant Fundamentalist (Harcourt, 2007). What leads (or drives) young Muslim men to terrorism, and “why do they hate us”? Hamid has given us a thesis in the guise of a thriller that takes the reader on an odyssey from Princeton’s campus to a high-powered valuation firm in midtown Manhattan to the alleys of Lahore. A young Pakistani comes to America, rises rapidly, finds a semblance of love, ignores contradictions—and then tumbles into the great divide. All of this he narrates to a mysterious American in an unforgettable voice, and anticipation of the climax will keep you hanging to the end. The thesis: America has its own unique way of inspiring self-loathing in others, even those it embraces—and it comes back to haunt us. (Think Sayyid Qutb and Edward Said.) There is a very different way to tell this story, but Hamid tells his version grippingly.

.

Walter Laqueur :: I have been reading Iu. N. Golubchikov and R.A. Mnatsakanian, Islamizatsiia Rossii: Trevozhnye stsenarii budushchego (Islamization of Russia: Alarming Future Scenarios) (Veche, 2005). This book deals with problems widely ignored in the West (and also by the Russian leadership, overwhelmed and preoccupied by the good fortune of oil and gas royalties). The difficulties facing Russia differ in some ways from those confronting Western Europe, but in the longer run are even more formidable. Like some Russian experts, I believe it doubtful that Russia will be able to hold on for very long to the Northern Caucasus—to mention only one problem.
.

Bernard Lewis :: The Ottoman Empire was the longest-lived regional regime in the Middle East since antiquity; it was also the most recent, and left enduring traces. Şükrü Hanioğlu’s A Brief History of the Late Ottoman Empire (Princeton University Press, 2008) is a major contribution to the better understanding of the region. His account is based on intimate knowledge of the Ottoman archives, as well as of many other sources, both internal and external. Concerned with trends more than events, this book illuminates the ideas and movements that shaped the course of history.

Two processes of change are of particular relevance. One is that of identity and loyalty, variously determined by faith, place, and blood; another is the theory and practice of government, evolving from authoritarian to democratic and/or dictatorial. Some of the words in later use, notably “constitution” and “revolution,” acquire special resonance against the late Ottoman background. All this is of obvious relevance to the better understanding of the present-day Middle East.

.

Walter Reich :: What Makes a Terrorist: Economics and the Roots of Terrorism, by Alan B. Krueger (Princeton University Press, 2007) is a necessary and superb book. It demolishes the myth that poverty breeds terrorism, especially Islamist terrorism. To be sure, this myth was demolished many times before Krueger’s book appeared. But probably because it’s such a simple and widely-embraced explanation in the realm of ordinary crime—one that, moreover, suggests a simple solution (in this case, some kind of anti-poverty program in the Muslim world)—it was a myth that refused to die. World leaders such as Bill Clinton and Shimon Peres, as well as a panoply of other high government officials, theologians, journalists, intellectuals and Middle East specialists, all of whom should have known better, repeatedly resurrected this myth. Krueger’s demolition of the myth is probably the most effective and sustained one to date. I’m sure, though, that, like so many characters in contemporary action movies and video games, “poverty breeds terrorism” will prove impervious to Krueger’s on-target bullets and will rise again and yet again. The argument that the gang member in West Side Story sarcastically cites to explain his criminal behavior—that he became depraved because he’d been deprived—will, quite seriously and foolishly, continue to be applied to the depravities of terrorism. As it happens, I discovered the book only when asked to review it; my full review is here.

.

Michael Reynolds :: Although for much of the 20th century most people regarded the Caucasus as an exotic borderland of Russia, it has been an essential part of the Middle East from the dawn of history. Its peoples are bound to those of the Middle East by language, culture, religion and civilization. Today the Caucasus is again an inextricable part of the politics of the Middle East. It is also a fiendishly complicated region. It boasts a truly mind-boggling variety of ethnicities and linguistic groups (fascination with that diversity is not a modern preoccupation: astonished Arab invaders in the seventh century dubbed the Caucasus jabal al-lusun, “the mountain of languages”). It is the site of not only some of the oldest lands of Islam, but also the most ancient living Christian civilizations in the world, the Georgian and Armenian. In more recent centuries, Persian, Turkish, and Russian civilization have all indelibly stamped the Caucasus (and each in turn has been stamped by the Caucasus) as they jockeyed and struggled for dominance. The contemporary Caucasus remains in important ways unchanged: polyglot, culturally rich, and riven by often bitter internal and external rivalries.

However intimidating the complexity of the Caucasus may be, greenhorn and old hand alike will benefit from Charles King’s The Ghost of Freedom: A History of the Caucasus (Oxford University Press, 2008). In a single volume, King manages to pull off the seemingly impossible task of presenting a portrait of the region as a whole, and one that is wonderfully written as it simultaneously informs, entertains, challenges, and stimulates.

.

Philip Carl Salzman :: An academic colleague said to me that, before Israel, Muslims and Jews rubbed along well enough. Enmity toward Jews, he felt, stemmed from Jewish (colonial) immigration to Palestine. Some specialists have recently made a case that Muslim anti-Semitism flowered under the ideological ministrations of the Nazis. The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism: From Sacred Texts to Solemn History by Andrew Bostom (Prometheus Books, 2008), a compendium largely of original texts from the Quran forward, makes a different case: The most extreme prejudicial animus against Jews is integral to Islamic thought and deed from Muhammad, and is honored by his many successors through the centuries with determination and energy. Introduced by Bostom’s 174-page overview, this collection of documents, of Muslims speaking for themselves, and observers reporting historical events, is extensive and convincing, illuminating and distressing, and will break through the many pious obfuscations that often pass for Western commentary on Islam.

.

Robert Satloff :: Arab principals rarely write their memoirs, and such books are even rarer in English. Americans and Israelis live in a tell-all culture; theirs is a world largely without secrets anymore. By contrast, Arab leaders, ministers, courtiers, and hangers-on may speak in whispers but they rarely put their tales in print. The exceptions—like memoirs by Sadat and King Hussein—are mainly stylized versions of history written to burnish images, not to explain politics or policy. In this light, The Arab Center, Marwan Muasher’s memoir of his public service, is wonderfully refreshing—even beyond its often fascinating content and its courageous call for moderation in a region that knows too little of it. The “center” of the title refers to a political center, neither Islamist right nor Nasserist left, but it is a subtle reference to the fact that Muasher—Jordan’s first ambassador to Israel, an ambassador to Washington, a foreign minister and a deputy prime minister—had a center-aisle seat throughout a turbulent period in Jordanian and wider Middle East politics. That inside look iinto a largely closed world is reason enough to commend this thoughtful book. (Yale University Press, 2008.)

.

Tamara Cofman Wittes :: Every year, my students, my cousins, and random strangers ask me to recommend a single book that provides a good introduction to the contemporary Middle East. Very few of those asking are willing wade through something as edifying as Albert Hourani’s A History of the Arab Peoples. Let me recommend, as an alternative for the general reader, a delightful memoir by the scholar R. Stephen Humphreys entitled Between Memory and Desire: The Middle East in a Troubled Age (2d ed., University of California Press, 2005). Personal, readable, and thoughtful, Humphreys’s essays hit all the key issues (Islamism, demographics, oil curse, etc.) while weaving in history and personal narrative.

.

Michael Young :: I highly recommend Bernard Rougier’s Everyday Jihad (Harvard University Press, 2007) about the development of militant Islam in the Ain al-Hilweh refugee camp next to the Lebanese city of Sidon. Rougier’s thesis is that trans-national militant Islam is now so dominant in the camp that “a considerable part of the population has freed itself from the national Palestinian framework and is no longer governed by a nationalist universe.” The thesis is debatable, and I happen to disagree. But Rougier was one of the first to document the rise of Salafist groups in the camp—groups that have indeed come to play a central role in the politics of Ain al-Hilweh. My quibble is whether Palestinians have psychologically freed themselves from the preeminence of a nationalist universe—whether Peshawar can ever count for more than Jerusalem or Haifa.

Rougier’s merit is to constantly come back to Lebanon and investigate on the ground. Indeed he did research for his book inside Ain al-Hilweh. He knows the Salafists well, understands the value of reportage, and speaks and reads Arabic fluently. Everyday Jihad is a fine example of a type of research on Lebanon sorely lacking, with so many scholars manacled to a desk, or a prepaid ideology. The country is much more interesting when the scholar is also a sociologist and a journalist. Rougier shows why.

Comments are limited to MESH members and invitees.

MESH has invited a number of responses to this question: Assuming the United States decides than Iran must be stopped, and that only military action can stop it, should the United States delegate Israel to conduct the necessary military operations? Or should the United States undertake the operations itself, and insist that Israel stay on the sidelines (as it did during the two Iraq wars)?

Josef Joffe begins, followed in the comments by Mark T. Clark, Mark N. Katz, Stephen Peter Rosen, Martin Kramer, and Chuck Freilich.

From Josef Joffe

Israel’s well-publicized war game in the Eastern Mediterranean was a classical signaling stratagem. The message to the European Union and the United States is: “Unless you get serious about real sanctions, we’ll go the Samson route. We’ll throw some 100 F-15s and F-16s against the Iranians, and we don’t care what they do to the rest of the Middle East. Whatever they do, escalation dominance is ours because we have the nukes and they don’t. And our threat would be credible because our existence is at stake.”

This Schellingesque game (”if you don’t do what we want, we’ll lose control over ourselves and take the plunge”) makes perfect sense for the Israelis, being the only nation on earth that is existentially threatened by the Khomeinists. It also makes some sense for the United States to have Israel strain against its chain in order to soften up Iran. But it does not make sense to “delegate” Israel or to let it strike on its own. Here is why.

The basic problem is the divergence of interest once you go beyond the shared loathing of the Tehran regime and the common U.S.-Israeli abhorrence of Iranian nukes. Since these threaten Israel’s existence, other items like oil fields in Saudi Arabia, tanker traffic in the Gulf or terror in Iraq are logically secondary concerns. For the United States, on the other hand, these “secondary” concerns are primary ones. In the war in Iraq, it matters a great deal how the Iranians would respond on that front line. Forget the Mahdi Army; even Moqtada Sadr is not a flunky for the “Supreme Leader.” But how about a straightforward lunge of the Revolutionary Guards into the Basra province—oil wells and all?

For the world’s economic Number One, it matters whether burning oil fields and sinking tankers add up to short-term oil prices of $300 or $400 per barrel. So Israeli and U.S. interests on these “secondary” items are not alike, whence two conclusions follow.

First, the global power can’t “delegate” to its “continental sword” in the Middle East. If you’re in on the crash, you want to be in on the take-off. The idea that the United States could pretend non-involvement is absurd. At a minimum, the United States would have to give overflight permission for Iraq as the Israelis would hardly fly around the Arabian Peninsula to strike Iran from the sea. To permit is to condone, and to condone is to be in cahoots. “Who, me?” is not an American option in this highest-stakes game. As predestined target of retaliation, the United States would want to be in the cockpit ab initio—especially since this has to be done right the first time round.

Hence the second and properly strategic reason why the United States can’t outsource this act of pro-active de-proliferation. This would not be a one-afternoon cakewalk as against Iraq’s Osirak reactor in 1981. This would have to be a massive and sustained air campaign the Israeli air force could not prosecute (though it is larger than the German or French air forces). And it would have to be flanked by a serious naval engagement, which only the United States can mount.

The war, given those crucial American “secondary” interests, would have to consist of three parts.

• One, lasting, say, a week or even two, would take out all of Iran’s air defenses. The drill is well-known, it has been executed twice over Iraq and once over Serbia. But remember: we could never detect, let alone destroy, all of Saddam’s mobile missile launchers.
• The second campaign would have to proceed almost simultaneously. Its purpose would be the elimination of all Iranian assets—naval or air—that could threaten tanker traffic in the Gulf. This is where the U.S. Navy comes in. Before that first cruise missile is launched against Bandar Abbas, the United States would want to establish an intimidating (or shall we say: terrorizing?) presence in the Gulf so as to sharpen Iranian risk assessments.
• The third campaign would be launched consecutively against those nuclear targets proper. This author does not believe that we don’t know where all of these targets are; the Israelis for sure know the addresses and ZIP codes. But some of them are hardened, and others are located within cities. So the bombing will have to be smart, surgical and repetitive. Again, it is better to think in terms of weeks rather than days.

The Israeli air force cannot stage such a three-pronged campaign. Nor would it have to because even $300 oil pales in significance to national survival. For the United States as the global power, however, Iranian retaliation in Iraq or against oil assets matters greatly. Therefore, these threats would have to be eliminated along with the Bushehr reactors and the enrichment and reprocessing plants.

Hence, it is either a real war or none at all. Israel cannot be “delegated.” Nor should it be.

Comments are limited to MESH members and invitees.

At the recent inaugural conference for the Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa (ASMEA), presenter LTC Joseph Myers made an interesting point that deserves further elaboration: that, though military studies have traditionally valued and absorbed the texts of classical war doctrine—such as Clausewitz’s On War, Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, even the exploits of Alexander the Great as recorded in Arrian and Plutarch—Islamic war doctrine, which is just as if not more textually grounded, is totally ignored.

As recent as 2006, former top Pentagon official William Gawthrop lamented that “the senior Service colleges of the Department of Defense had not incorporated into their curriculum a systematic study of Muhammad as a military or political leader. As a consequence, we still do not have an in-depth understanding of the war-fighting doctrine laid down by Muhammad, how it might be applied today by an increasing number of Islamic groups, or how it might be countered.”

This is more ironic when one considers that, while classical military theories (Clausewitz, Sun Tzu, Machiavelli, et al.) are still studied, the argument can be made that they have little practical value for today’s much changed landscape of warfare and diplomacy. Whatever validity this argument may have, it certainly cannot be applied to Islam’s doctrines of war; by having a “theological” quality, that is, by being grounded in a religion whose “divine” precepts transcend time and space, and are thus believed to be immutable, Islam’s war doctrines are considered applicable today no less than yesterday. So while one can argue that learning how Alexander maneuvered his cavalry at the Battle of Guagamela in 331 BC is both academic and anachronistic, the same cannot be said of Islam, particularly the exploits and stratagems of its prophet Muhammad—his “war sunna”—which still serve as an example to modern day jihadists.

For instance, based on the words and deeds of Muhammad, most schools of Islamic jurisprudence agree that the following are all legitimate during war against the infidel: the indiscriminate use of missile weaponry, even if women and children are present (catapults in Muhammad’s 7th century, hijacked planes or WMD by analogy today); the need to always deceive the enemy and even break formal treaties whenever possible (see Sahih Muslim 15: 4057); and that the only function of the peace treaty, or hudna, is to give the Islamic armies time to regroup for a renewed offensive, and should, in theory, last no more than ten years.

Quranic verses 3:28 and 16:106, as well as Muhammad’s famous assertion, “War is deceit,” have all led to the formulation of a number of doctrines of dissimulation—the most notorious among them being the doctrine of taqiyya, which permits Muslims to lie and dissemble whenever they are under the authority of the infidel. Deception has such a prominent role that renowned Muslim scholar Ibn al-Arabi declares: “[I]n the Hadith, practicing deceit in war is well demonstrated. Indeed, its need is more stressed than [the need for] courage” (The Al Qaeda Reader, 142).

Aside from ignoring these well documented Islamist strategies, more troubling is the fact that the Defense Department does not seem to appreciate Islam’s more “eternal” doctrines—such as the Abode of War versus the Abode of Islam dichotomy, which in essence maintains that Islam must always be in a state of animosity vis-à-vis the infidel world and, whenever possible, must wage wars until all infidel territory has been brought under Islamic rule. In fact, this dichotomy of hostility is unambiguously codified under Islam’s worldview and is deemed a fard kifaya—that is, an obligation on the entire Muslim body that can only be fulfilled as long as some Muslims, say, “jihadists,” actively uphold it.

Yet despite all these problematic—but revealing—doctrines, despite the fact that a quick perusal of Islamist websites and books demonstrate time and time again that current and would-be jihadists constantly quote, and thus take seriously, these doctrinal aspects of war, apparently the senior governmental leaders charged with defending America do not.

Why? Because the “Whisperers”—Walid Phares’ all too apt epithet for many Middle East/Islamic scholars, or, more appropriately, apologists—have made anathema anyone who dares imply that there may be some sort of connection between Islamic doctrine and modern-day Islamist terrorism, such as in the recent Steven Coughlin debacle. This is a long and all too well known tale for those in the field (see Martin Kramer’s Ivory Towers on Sand: the Failure of Middle Eastern Studies in America).

But consider for a moment: though there are today many Middle East studies departments, one will be sorely pressed to find any courses dealing with the most pivotal and relevant topics of today—such as Islamic jurisprudence and what it has to say about jihad or the concept of Abode of Islam versus the Abode of War—no doubt due to the fact that these topics possess troubling international implications and are best buried. Instead, the would-be student will be inundated with courses dealing with the evils of “Orientalism” and colonialism, gender studies, and civil society.

The greater irony—when one talks about Islam and the West, ironies often abound—is that, on the very same day of the ASMEA conference, which also contained a forthright address by premiere Islamic scholar Bernard Lewis (“It seems to me a dangerous situation in which any kind of scholarly discussion of Islam is, to say the least, dangerous”), the State Department announced that it had adopted the recommendations of a memo stating that the government should not call Al Qaeda-type radicals “jihadis,” “mujahidin,” or to incorporate any other Arabic word of Islamic connotation (“caliphate,” “Islamo-fascism,” “Salafi,” “Wahhabi,” and “Ummah” are also out).

Alas, far from taking the most basic and simple advice regarding warfare—Sun Tzu’s ancient dictum, “Know thy enemy”—the U.S. government is having difficulties even acknowledging its enemy.

Comments are limited to MESH members and invitees.