THE REMEDIAL SPECTATOR: A War on Terror Primer

...Yet KSM is the true 9/11 mastermind—the individual who conceived and organized the attacks...

...Like the medieval French, they have massaged the contemporary foe into a form with which they are familiar...

...The Arab people are unable to accept facts with the speed and flexibility required by serious situations,” Patai writes, “but are forced to 4 2 T H e a M e R I c a n s P e c T a T o R M a R c H 2 0 0 8 l a u R I e M y l R o I e We focus on the jihadis’ propaganda...

...It lends itself to rhythmic, rhyming cadences, promoting a love of the language for the sound of words as much as their meaning...

...Islamism” is a radical form of a religion, albeit a political one, while fascism and communism were modern ideational constructions that supported the domestic rule of major European powers and their aggressive expansion...

...With the qualified exception of Turkey, liberal constitutionalism never established firm roots...

...This is said to be Israeli issues, if that—define America’s present enemy freedom was the secret source” of Western success, “the Aladdin’s lamp with which the East might conjure up the genie of progress...

...It includes a lengthy introduction, as well as key texts that she selected and translated...

...Patai’s understandings are grounded in his experiences with Palestinians in pre-1948 Jerusalem...

...From the beginnings of Western penetration of dominance of the West was religious militancy—in India, in the early 17th century, whence it stimulated similar movements in the Arabian Peninsula, most notably Wahhabism...

...In his seminal article, “The Return of Islam,” Bernard Lewis lamented the failure of Westerners— over centuries—to understand Islam in its own terms...

...Eloquence” among Arabs “is related to exaggeration, which is not meant to be taken literally, but which only serves the purpose of effect...

...fail to consider the overblown style of Arab rhetoric...

...The categories that now dominate U.S...

...Many homes belonging to those who would return, however, remained occupied by other refugees...

...But the military reformers, intending “to open a sluice gate… admitted a flood,” because armies could not be reformed without wholesale changes in society...

...The books and articles described above will help the thoughtful reader better understand the broad challenges that America faces in the Middle East...

...U.S...

...An Egyptian army manual issued in 1965, as Egypt fought for dominance in Yemen, stated: “We must always maintain that our military duty in the Yemen is a jihad for God.… Our duty is the holy war for God...

...T H e R e M e d I a l s P e c T a T o R A War on Terror Primer The key writings all pre-date 9/11… by decades...

...Either Bush chose the wrong target in launching a war against Saddam Hussein’s secular regime or this is a very flawed definition of the enemy—promulgated while the United States is engaged in its most serious military campaign in three decades...

...soil...

...Citing a medieval French epic that depicts Muslims as worshipping a trinity—Mohammed and two devils—Lewis wrote, “We are amused by medieval man unable to conceive of religion or indeed of anything else except in his own image,” before explaining that the problem persists...

...Rather, President George W. Bush just paid a major visit there...

...One initial Muslim response was to try to replicate the European army, “a simple matter, so it seemed, of training and equipment...

...A much later wave of Islamic extremism included the founding of the Muslim Brotherhood in 1928...

...Many of today’s pundits—few of whom paid serious attention before 9/11 to the Middle East beyond Arab4 0 T H e a M e R I c a n s P e c T a T o R M a R c H 2 0 0 8 l a u R I e M y l R o I e World War II, and communism, the enemy in the Cold War...

...Isn’t it time our policymakers and pundits had a look...

...They also illustrate why rhetoric about “Islamofascism” and “World War IV” adds little that is useful to our foreign policy deliberations about the Muslim world and may well contribute to dangerous, ill-informed decision-making...

...In the 17th century, however, the Ottomans, the foremost Muslim power, were turned back outside Vienna...

...We focus on the jihadis’ propaganda...

...That was achieved after World War II with the assistance of the United States, which naively saw European colonialism as the problem...

...i.e., the KSM group comes from Baluchistan...

...Another Muslim response to the increasi e e b e v ha t h g u o h f o s t n e m e v o l i i r d n n a c ’ s i w e L d r r m a l Is r e d o m o k o b he o most n author n itative, C is on B C e ise n , a and lyrica s l the t w a orld o of g Is na lam m … the most cha t racteristic, signi n fi n g - temporary feel...

...That crucial point raises the possibility that the KSM group may represent something quite different from al Qaeda—such as a hostile state—which could have penetrated and used the organization...

...USA, Ret...

...The consequences are farreaching, particularly for a people unaccustomed to self-government and the responsibility it entails...

...A long- standing existential crisis exists in Muslim societies, an “envious rancor,” because a once successful civilization, whose power was long seen as proof of God’s favor, exists in a state Row...

...Americans might be surprised to learn that Osama bin Laden represents nothing terribly new...

...It analyzes a reported as news by Western journalists...

...He concluded, “The torment does not seem likely to end soon...

...As De Atkine notes, underscoring the book’s contemporary relevance, traditional cultures change slowly...

...Haim is the widow of Elie Kedourie, whose work is discussed below...

...By contrast, Edward Jay Epstein, a respected author on intelligence matters, is far more accurate in presenting key facts...

...Sylvia Haim’s Arab Nationalism: An Anthology made a similar point...

...Yet the United States is not at war with that country...

...Rather, a longstanding existential crisis exists in Muslim societies, an “envious rancor,” because a once successful civilization, whose power was long seen as proof of God’s favor, exists in a state of decrepitude, for which there is no evident solution...

...Almost all the books were published in more than one edition over more than one decade...

...The ending of foreign rule, when it came,” however, “did not solve, but merely revealed the fundamental, social, and political problems of the Arab lands,” Lewis writes...

...The same range of cultural issues that contribute to the dys- might be said of the al Qaeda proclamations posted functionality of modern Arab societies...

...Honor,” a broad term encompassing generosity, hospitality, courage, and virility, is the pre-eminent virtue in a hierarchical, male- dominated society...

...They also help explain certain actions of the new Iraqi government, like the bus convoys it arranged last November to bring refugees back from Syria, as security improved with the “surge...

...They suggest that, perhaps, there is not so much new about the region, the 9/11 attacks notwithstanding, and they underscore the superficiality of much post-9/11 literature, which often reinforces new dogmas that obscure an enduring puzzle: How did one man, with a relatively small organization, in a primitive, faraway country, manage to carry out the single most lethal attack ever on U.S...

...With that in mind, here is a brief essay on some essential writings about Islam that help explain what Islam (including its radical component) is and what it is not...

...Rather, because of the deeply religious nature of society, millenarian politics—radical Islam or its “mirror image,” a revanchist Arab nationalism—repeatedly prevailed...

...Yet Kedourie was a brilliant icon o clast, and he knowledgeably analyzed a complex history with which most Americans are unfamiliar...

...THatherleigh Press in 2007—is the work of the tions,” which, as De Atkine observes, “are du r a l c e d e t i s - b e w d n a s e h c e e p s i Scribner in 1973 and most recently by gents’ “bombast va e s b e e h T he ArAb Mind—first published by Charles the gran s d g o estu r re c . tions also apply to the Iraqi insu a r ly - - late anthropologist, Raphael Patai...

...And we often misstate the most basic facts...

...Nor is it the consequence of petrodollars pouring into Wahhabi hands—before the 1973 oil embargo and five fold increase in oil prices, Saudi Arabia was not wealthy...

...These are particularly relevant questions as studies on captured al Qaeda documents are now emerging—two by West Point’s Combating Terror ism Center, “Cracks in the Foundation” and “Al Qaida’s (Mis)Adventures in the Horn of Africa,” and a third by the Wall Street Journal ’s does not know the most basic facts about 9/11 and whose breezy book betrays little awareness of the long-standing challenges to political reform in the Middle East...

...To the extent that “Islamism,” particularly as it is manifest among the Sunni militants of al Qaeda, might be said to underlie the rule of any contemporary regime, it would be Saudi Arabia...

...Overlooked are crucial differences...

...Elie Kedourie was more pessimistic...

...Subsequently, the notion emerged that “political the successor ideology to fascism, the enemy in as “Islamism” or “Islamofascism...

...The Arab] is dominated by the concept of shame and the fear of shame more than he adheres to reality and objectivity...

...Not every individual has these characteristics, but they are a prominent tendency in Arab societies...

...The consequences are far- reaching, particularly for a people unaccustomed to selfgovernment and the responsibility it entails...

...Further setbacks followed, and in 1699, they were compelled for the first time to sign a treaty whose terms were dictated by a victorious foe...

...Why should we take advice about a supposed “World War” from someone who misstate the most basic facts...

...As De Atkine notes, Patai’s insights into Arab culture help explain “Baghdad Bob,” Saddam’s information minister, who was still announcing victories as Baghdad fell in April 2003...

...do not ask how they manage languages by a host of translation services...

...Congenerosity, hospitality, courage, and virility, is the pre-eminent virtue in a hierarchical, male- dominated society...

...He described those efforts as “a tormented endeavor to discard the old ways, which have ceased to satisfy and to replace them with something modern, eyecatching and attractive...

...Kedourie passed away unexpectedly the year this book was published, at the age of 66...

...Norman Podhoretz’s World War IV calls bin Laden the 9/11 mastermind and fails to mention Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (KSM) even once...

...The two to the web and breathlessly rendered into Western hide shortcomings and failures to order to preserve appearances...

...Arab societies, Patai explains, are formity to the group—of which the family is the most basic unit—prevails over individualism...

...even as we ignore the reports that suggest the jihadis may not be all that competent...

...M a R c H 2 0 0 8 T H e a M e R I c a n s P e c T a T o R 4 1 T H e R e M e d I a l s P e c T a T o R Despite many, deep-seated difficulties, Lewis believes democracy is possible for Muslims...

...by Laurie Mylroie Alfred sloan said in his memoir about his creation of General Motors, “A problem well defined is a problem half solved...

...Islam is the most deeply held identity of the Muslim masses, Lewis noted, and the idea of separating religion from politics is a Christian notion alien to Islam...

...Alternative structures —including a variety of possible forms of state support—are scarcely explored...

...Saddam’s regime used Baluch fighters in its war with Iran...

...fail to consider the overblown style of Arab rhetoric...

...Without them, we’d have no idea whom or what we are fighting...

...ernment for Muslims, far more tolerant than its successor regimes...

...Born and raised in Iraq, Kedourie probably will be judged to have been on the wrong side of history—he believed the Otto man Empire was the best possible form of gov“Honor,” a broad term encompassing “shame” rather than “guilt” societies...

...The present wave of hostility,” Lewis wrote over 40 years ago, “is due to the crisis of a civilization,” reacting against “alien forces that have dominated, dislocated, and transformed it...

...As a conservative colleague complains, “There is no there, there...

...They all report that the documents they examined reveal that al Qaeda was nowhere near as capable as generally believed...

...Egyptian president Gamal Abdul Nasser was the paladin of “secular” Arab nationalism, but as Lewis observed, “Even in Nasserist Egypt, Islam continued to provide a main focus of loyalty...

...Do Islamic militants really operate entirely, or almost entirely, on their own...

...These propensities are reinforced by the Arabic language...

...The resulting 19thcentury wave of constitutionalism eventually failed, giving way to an angry nationalism whose focus was independence...

...As this review suGGests, the Middle East is a vast, violent, and largely dysfunctional region—and has been for three centuries...

...do not ask how they manage to carry off their more spectacular attacks...

...M a R c H 2 0 0 8 T H e a M e R I c a n s P e c T a T o R 4 3...

...Patai is in fact citing an Egyptian intellectual...

...authorities repeatedly describe him as such and also say that his nephew masterminded the 1993 World Trade Center bombing...

...First published in 1964, it has a startlingly con- TThe Middle East and the West (Harper & Islamic...

...Indeed, what should we make of words presented with little context from a culture that understands language differently than we do...

...laurie Mylroie, an adjunct scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, is the author of Study of Revenge: The First World Trade Center Attack and Saddam Hussein’s War Against America (AEI Press...

...Are we encouraging the very sentiment we seek to quash, by making Islamic radicalism more appealing to chronically disaffected Muslim youth by regularly gushing over what is essentially enemy propaganda...

...Lthe result of Israel’s retention of territories o n s t . e s a e o s a est d n l s I ew a is m m a ake t s h C e l W ear t h hat n th o e n en c m u ity b I et i w een t captured in 1967, its founding, or even of large-scale Jewish immigration to Palestine—because it predates all of them...

...Without serious, careful consideration of such points, it is hard to know just whom the United States should be at war with or how that war should be pursued...

...Kill them wherever you come upon them and drive them from the places from which they drove you’ [Koran, ii, 191...

...Those defeats proved prelude to total military collapse a century later, when French forces occupied Egypt, heralding yet further European conquests in the Muslim heartland...

...From its inception and for the next millennia, Islam was a successful, conquering religion...

...Neither the communist nor fascist analogy is appropriate, because there is no equivalent of the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany behind the ideology that defines the enemy for so many...

...to carry off their more spectacular attacks...

...even as we ignore the reports that suggest the jihadis may not be all that competent...

...of decrepitude, for which there is no evident solution...

...thinking about the area are dubious...

...In Politics in the Middle East (Oxford University Press, 1992), Kedourie reviewed nearly two centuries of attempts at political reform in the Ottoman Empire, later Turkey, Iran, and several Arab states...

...Haim’s Arab Nationalism was first published in 1962 and last published in 1976, University of California Press...

...Lewis’s keen insight into how the West chronically misunderstands Muslim societies—published in the January 1976 issue of Commentary—is as relevant now as when it first appeared...

...Epstein notes that the “KSM group,” consisting of KSM and four nephews, began to attack the United States with the 1993 assault on the World Trade Center and did not join with bin Laden until 1996...

...officials soon put a halt to the move, which failed to take into account the likely consequences of most recent editions carry an insightful foreword by Norvell De Atkine (Col...

...And we often Alan Cullison, “Inside Al Qaeda’s Hard Drive,” Atlantic Monthly, September 2004...

...We do not know how, or even if, the intervening years would have changed his views, but they are a useful caution against some of today’s more far-reaching expectations for political reform in Muslim societies...