Read The Strong Horse: Power, Politics, and the Clash of Arab Civilizations Online
Authors: Lee Smith
Nonetheless, the reality is that foreign powers cannot impose political solutions in the Middle East, not for long anyway. This runs counter to the received wisdom of the Western policy-making establishment, which holds that there are no military solutions but only political solutions. For foreign powers, the reverse may be true. The Ottomans, for instance, pursued their interests through their deputies, collected their taxes and tribute, and interfered with internal Arab dynamics rarely, and when they did, it was with a swift and heavy hand. Politics is the public reckoning of how men conduct their lives with their neighbors. Only the Arabs can make the decisions that will lead to political solutions, as in Iraq with the Sunni tribes; as with the two Arab states, Egypt and Jordan, that have made peace with Israel; and as with Arab nationalism, an Arab political solution that keeps the feuding tribes from destroying each other.
The Americans tried a political solution, democracy, and that, along with 9/11, revealed the region’s politics for what they truly are. At least the problems of the Middle East are now being fought out where they belong, not in lower Manhattan, but in the region itself, where the Americans, as long as they have the will to stay, should understand that he who punishes enemies and rewards friends, forbids evil and enjoins good, is entitled to rule, and no other. There is no alternative, not yet anyway, to the strong horse.
Notes
1.
G. R. Hawting,
The First Dynasty of Islam: The Umayyad Caliphate
A.D.
661–750
(Carbondale, Ill., 1987).
Chapter 1: The Strong Horse2.
Leo Strauss,
What Is Political Philosophy? and Other Studies
(Chicago, 1988).
1.
A. J. Arberry,
The Seven Odes: The First Chapter in Arabic Literature
(London, 1957).
Chapter 2: “An Arab Regardless of His Own Wishes”2.
Alan Jones,
Early Arabic Poetry, Volume II: Select Odes
(Oxford, 1996).
1.
Edward Said,
Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts Determine How We See the Rest of the World
(New York, 1981).
2.
Robert Irwin,
For Lust of Knowing
(London, 2006).
3.
Ibid.
4.
Adeed Dawisha,
Arab Nationalism in the Twentieth Century: From Triumph to Despair
(Princeton, N.J., 2003).
5.
Elie Kedourie,
Islam in the Modern World
(New York, 1980).
6.
Joshua M. Landis,
faculty-staff.ou.edu/L/Joshua.M.Landis-1/syriablog/2004/07/is-bathism-secular.htm
.
7.
Edward Said, “The Phony Islamist Threat,”
New York Times Magazine
, Nov. 21, 1993.
Chapter 3: “No Voice Louder Than the Cry of Battle”8.
Dawisha,
Arab Nationalism in the Twentieth Century
.
1.
Michael S. Doran,
Pan-Arabism Before Nasser
(New York, 1999).
2.
Miles Copeland was Nasser’s handler during the 1950s, a story he tells in great detail in Miles Copeland,
The Game of Nations: The Amorality of Power Politics
(New York, 1970).
Chapter 4: The Muslim Reformation4.
Thomas L. McPhail,
Global Communication: Theories, Stakeholders, and Trends
, 2nd ed. (New York, 2005).
2.
Reynold Nicholson,
A Literary History of the Arabs
(Cambridge, U.K., 1953).
3.
Bernard Lewis,
The Arabs in History
, 6th ed. (New York, 2002).
4.
For instance, the
sira
, Muhammad’s biography, is drawn from an account composed more than a hundred years after the Prophet’s death, a text that is only available in another author’s edition published some fifty years later.
5.
Kristina Nelson,
The Art of Reciting the Qur’an
(Austin, Tex., 1985), is a lively sociology of Egyptian reciters and their audiences.
6.
Ernest Gellner,
Postmodernism, Reason, and Religion
(New York, 1992).
Chapter 5: “The Regime Made Us Violent”7.
Elie Kedourie,
Afghani and ‘Abduh: An Essay on Religious Unbelief and Political Activism in Modern Islam
(1966; London, 1997).
1.
Lawrence Wright, “The Man Behind bin Laden: How an Egyptian Doctor Became a Master of Terror,”
The New Yorker
, Sept. 16, 2002.
2.
Nadav Safran,
Egypt in Search of Political Community
(Cambridge, Mass., 1961).
3.
Albert Hourani,
Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age, 1798–1939
(New York, 1962).
4.
Hamid Enayat,
Modern Islamic Political Thought
(London, 1982).
5.
Johannes J. G. Jansen,
The Dual Nature of Islamic Fundamentalism
(Ithaca, N.Y., 1997).
Chapter 6: Bin Laden, the Father of Arab Democracy6.
Cf. Paul Berman’s excellent discussion of Qutb in
Terror and Liberalism
(New York, 2003).
1.
Elie Kedourie,
Politics in the Middle East
(Oxford, 1992).
2.
For the illiteracy rate, see
www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/5309.htm
.
3.
Miles Copeland,
The Game of Nations: The Amorality of Power Politics
(New York, 1970).
5.
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/08/AR2005090800151.html
.
6.
Peter W. Rodman,
More Precious Than Peace: The Cold War and the Struggle for the Third World
(New York, 1994) and nn. 77, 78. Eisenhower said this in 1967 to Richard Nixon and to Israel’s ambassador Avraham Harman,
www.meforum.org/article/420
.
7.
Bob Woodward,
Plan of Attack
(New York, 2004).
8.
Eli Lake, “How the Outbreak of War on 9/11 Rattled Gadhafi, Other Tyrants,”
New York Sun
, April 6, 2006,
www.nysun.com/article/30504
.
9.
Al Mussawar
, June 2002.
10.
Richard Perle, “Ambushed on the Potomac,”
National Interest
, Jan.-Feb. 2008. For an overview of when, and how, the freedom agenda kicked in, see Douglas Feith,
War and Decision: Inside the Pentagon at the Dawn of the War on Terrorism
(New York, 2008).
11.
“President Bush Presses for Peace in the Middle East,”
www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/05/20030509-11.html
.
12.
“President Bush Discusses Freedom in Iraq and Middle East,” remarks by the president at the twentieth anniversary of the National Endowment for Democracy, Nov. 6, 2003,
www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/11/20031106-2.html
.
13.
Steven R. Weisman, “Rice Acknowledges Surprise over Hamas: Many Were Caught Off Guard, She Says,”
International Herald Tribune
, Jan. 30, 2006,
www.iht.com/articles/2006/01/30/news/rice.php
.
15.
“Al-Zawahiri: U.S. Talking to Wrong People in Iraq, Urges ‘Holy War’ Against Israel,” Associated Press, Dec. 20, 2006,
www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,237678,00.html
.
16.
Cf. Milton Viorst, “Fundamentalism in Power: Sudan’s Islamic Experiment,”
Foreign Affairs
, May/June 1995,
www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/50969/milton-viorst/fundamentalism-in-power-sudans-islamic-experiment
.
17.
Peter W. Rodman, “Policy Brief: Don’t Destabilize Algiers,”
Middle East Quarterly
, Dec. 1996,
www.meforum.org/article/420
.
Chapter 7: The Schizophrenic Gulf18.
The Georgetown professors John Esposito and John O. Voll and the former CIA analyst Graham Fuller were among the most enthusiastic advocates of Islamist democracy.
1.
For instance, see Hugh Miles,
Al-Jazeera: The Inside Story of the Arab News Channel That Is Challenging the West
(New York, 2005); and Marc Lynch,
Voices of the New Arab Public: Iraq, Al-Jazeera, and Middle East Politics Today
(New York, 2006).
2.
Cf. Qaradawi’s judicious advice concerning “how to give up masturbation” on his Web site,
www.IslamOnline.net
:
www.islamonline.net/servlet/Satellite?pagename=IslamOnline-English-Ask_Scholar/FatwaE/FatwaE&cid=1119503543914
.
3.
Jimmy Carter, State of the Union address, Jan. 23, 1980,
www.jimmycarterlibrary.org/documents/speeches/su80jec.phtml
.
4.
Also known as the “Reagan Corollary” to the Carter Doctrine. Cf. Edward J. Marolda and Robert John Schneller,
Shield and Sword: The United States Navy and the Persian Gulf War
(Annapolis, Md., 2001).
5.
Martin Kramer, “America’s Interests: A Bedside Briefing,” paper presented at the Harvard University symposium “After Bush: America’s Agenda in the Middle East,” Sept. 23, 2008.
Chapter 8: The Battle of Ideas6.
Kenneth Pollack,
A Path Out of the Desert: A Grand Strategy for America in the Middle East
(New York, 2008).
1.
Taha Hussein,
The Future of Culture in Egypt
(Washington, D.C., 1954).
2.
Taha Hussein,
The Days
(Cairo, 1997).
3.
Ibid.
5.
Qasim Amin,
The Liberation of Women and the New Woman: Two Documents in the History of Egyptian Feminism
, translated by Samiha Sidhom Peterson (Cairo, 2004).
6.
Ibid.
7.
Ian Buruma and Timothy Garton Ash engaged in a lively debate with Paul Berman and Pascal Bruckner about the comparative relevance of the Islamist
thinker Tariq Ramadan versus Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somali-born Dutch parliamentarian whose sharp criticism of Islam and Europe’s Muslim community brought her under fire from the European left. Cf. Paul Berman’s article in the
New Republic:
“Who’s Afraid of Tariq Ramadan? The Islamist, the Journalist, and the Defense of Liberalism,” June 4, 2007.
Chapter 9: “Your Children or Your Guns”8.
Lewis Awad,
The Literature of Ideas in Egypt: Part One
(Atlanta, 1986).
1.
Miles Copeland,
The Game of Nations: The Amorality of Power Politics
(New York, 1970).
2.
Egypt’s Copts are believed to number anywhere between four and twelve million out of eighty million Egyptians.
3.
Dennis Ross,
The Missing Peace: The Inside Story of the Fight for Middle East Peace
(New York, 2004).
4.
Donna Abi Nasr, “Hezbollah, al-Qaida Mirror Islamic Split,” Associated Press, June 24, 2006,
www.lebanonwire.com/0606MLN/06062423AP.asp
.
5.
Heinz Halm,
Shi’ism
, 2nd ed. (New York, 2004).
6.
Consider, for instance, the opinion of the CIA’s John Brennan: “It would not be foolhardy, however, for the United States to tolerate, and even to encourage, greater assimilation of Hezbollah into Lebanon’s political system, a process that is subject to Iranian influence … The best hope for maintaining this trend and for reducing the influence of violent extremists within the organization as well as the influence of extremist Iranian officials who view Hezbollah primarily as a pawn of Tehran is to increase Hezbollah’s stake in Lebanon’s struggling democratic processes.” John Brennan, “The Conundrum of Iran: Strengthening Moderates Without Acquiescing to Belligerence,”
Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science
618, no. 1 (2008). It is unclear why the author saw Hezbollah worthy of a larger part in Lebanon’s democratic processes in an article published two months after the party attempted a coup against the government and overran the western sector of Beirut, leaving a trail of blood in its wake.