It is no exaggeration to say that Bernard Lewis is the most influential writer on Middle Eastern history and politics in the United States today. Not only has he authored more than two dozen books on the Middle East, he trained large numbers of two subsequent generations of historians of the region. Lewis is a public figure of the first order, publishing widely read articles on Middle Eastern politics. He is perhaps the only scholar of the Middle East to be well-known outside the field — most academics would be hard pressed to name another historian of the Middle East or the Islamic world, excepting colleagues at their own university. This is ironic, since, as we will see, his interpretation of Islamic history is essentialist and ahistorical. Furthermore, Lewis is greatly respected in US policymaking circles. His opinions on policy matters have been sought by governments run by both major American political parties, and by all reports have been especially heeded by the administration of George W. Bush. An August 29 op-ed by Lewis in the Wall Street Journal concisely states positions which are articles of faith for the Bush administration’s neo-conservatives — notably that the problems of post-war Iraq are caused by anti-American fascist or Islamist forces seeking to defeat Western Christendom, and that the Westernized former banker Ahmad Chalabi and his Iraqi National Congress are the best candidates to govern a stable Iraq in the future.
If liberals and the left are united behind anything in our allegedly post-ideological age, it is that human rights and humanitarian considerations must always trump realpolitik. The left opposed the punishing economic sanctions endured by Iraqi civilians from 1991 to 2003, despite the sanctions’ undoubted success in “containing” the former Iraqi regime. The Bush administration, unable so far to detect a single spore of anthrax in Iraq, is now selling the invasion retroactively as a “humanitarian intervention,” mostly to well-deserved hoots of derision from left-liberals.
On July 31, 2003, the UN Security Council voted to "support strongly" former Secretary of State James Baker's proposals for resolving the Western Sahara dispute, the last Africa file remaining open at the UN Decolonization Committee. Baker has been the personal envoy of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan since 1997, charged with making progress in the 1991 Settlement Plan for the Western Sahara even after Annan had damned it as a "zero-sum game," while also pursuing alternatives.
On a sweltering Washington sidewalk on July 17, a handful of protesters berated the stream of bespectacled wonks entering the “stink tank” known as the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) — famous worldwide as the home of former Pentagon official Richard Perle and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. In the air-conditioned comfort inside, the lusty strains of “Rule Britannia” welcomed a capacity crowd to AEI’s version of a summertime idyll. We were assembled to hear two vaunted thinkers of the new, new world order debate the proposition that America is, and should be, an empire.
As the Bush administration struggles with occupying Iraq, the anti-war movement is in the midst of intense self-evaluation. For all of the movement’s success in raising doubts about and opposition to the March 2003 invasion, as of July George W. Bush’s war is still popular among Americans. The war caused thousands of Iraqi civilian deaths, and Iraqis may be dying for years to come due to widespread use of cluster bombs and depleted uranium munitions. While some local Kurdish and Shi‘i leaders have cautiously decided to work with the occupation regime, the inability of US forces to restore law, order or public services, along with the imperial style of US viceroy L. Paul Bremer, have led to increasing opposition to the occupation among ordinary Iraqis. Yet sentiment among Americans, amidst concerns over post-war casualties and the missing weapons of mass destruction, still supports (albeit cautiously) the invasion and occupation of Iraq.
When Washington cites examples of the potential for reform and democracy in the Arab world, Jordan is one of the first countries mentioned. For the first time since 1997, Jordanians went to the polls last month to vote for parliament, and by most accounts the elections went smoothly. Voter turnout topped 52 percent and stability was maintained, with a clear majority of the seats going to pro-government candidates. Islamists, though they later questioned the outcome, added credibility to the process by taking part in the elections rather than boycotting them. In the end they captured only 17 out of 110 seats, far fewer than expected. Jordanian women took a step forward, with six parliamentary spots specially set aside for females.
Following President Bush’s meeting with Israeli and Palestinian leaders in Aqaba, Jordan, the Middle East peace process is once again officially underway. To maximize the diplomatic momentum developed thus far, rhetoric must translate into concrete improvements on the ground and all sides will need to address issues that are at the heart of the conflict.
From the moment Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon used the word “occupation” to describe Israel’s relationship to the Palestinians, many began questioning whether the time is ripe for a resolution of this decades-long conflict. His call for an end to “occupation” has nonetheless prompted a false sense of hope among many.
Reluctantly, some American officials recently began to use a new word when talking about our presence in Iraq: occupation. Even though the Bush administration worked hard to keep this word out of our national vocabulary before and during the war, it has nonetheless started to appear in press briefings and news reports.
At long last, many are realizing that President Bush misled the public about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. But unlike the vigorous questioning of Prime Minister Tony Blair in Britain on the same issue, our long overdue debate about Saddam Hussein’s presumed illicit arsenal is missing the point.
Before the war, the question was not primarily about whether Iraq retained proscribed weapons from its old stockpiles. Many at the United Nations, and many American anti-war commentators, assumed that it did. Remnants of the stockpiles may still be found.
The Palestinian Legislative Council's approval of the cabinet of newly appointed Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas on April 29, 2003 completed a political drama with two enactments: one received with cheers by the international community and the other watched warily by a sober audience at home.
