The Iraq War and Arab specialists in the US government

Stephen Schwartz says "Anybody who thinks Paul D. Wolfowitz, a former U.S. ambassador to Indonesia and astute observer of Islam, does not have knowledge of the details, is just wrong. Wolfowitz brought Bernard Lewis in to brief Rumsfeld. Is Lewis an ignoramus? And please spare me the argument that you have eaten sheep's eyes in Riyadh and ridden on a camel in Yemen to understand the Arabs. Some cultures and political developments are better understood on their margins -- viz., the examples of Orwell in Spain, not Moscow".

RH: Indonesia is not the Arab world, and I find no evidence that Wolowitz is an astute observer of Islam, and more particularly of the Arab world. His critics are more concerned with the aggressive agenda he and the neo-cons in the Pentagon are pushing. That, agenda may or may not be good. As for Bernard Lewis, I was surprised recently that he was denounced by a panel of Palestinians. About his scholarship, the record is impressive. On the Arabs and Islam, he has written The Origins of Ismailism, British Contributions to Arabic Studies, Handbook of Diplomatic and Political Arabic, The Arabs in History, Race and Color in Islam, Islam in History, Islamic Civilization, Islam from the Prophet Mohammed to the Capture of Constantinople, The World of Islam Population and Revenue in the Towns of Palestine in the Sixteenth Century, The Muslim Discovery of Europe, The Jews oF Islam, The Political Language of Islam, The Shaping of the Modern Middle East, Christians, Muslims and Jews in the Age of Discovery. He recently has written some more popular works on the Middle East. I have omitted from this list his books on Turkey. It is an extraordinary corpus of scholarship.

The problem seems to be that he is Jewish and is viewed as giving a slight Jewish twist to history. He is generally regarded as being associated with Jews. He married and divorced Ruth Oppenhejm. Jewish institutions have showered him with honors, among them the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the University ofn Tel-Aviv, the University of Haifa, Hebrew Union College, Yeshiva University, and Bar-Ilan University. He has spent so much time receiving honorary degrees and giving lectures that I wonder how he was able to write so much. He is on the same wave-length as Woñfowitz. I wonder if Ed Jajko has any comment on this.

Stephen's satirical remark about living in Arab countries is uncovincing. I know from my own experience that one has to live in a country for a long time and to speak its language to get to know a country from the inside. That is why I have such respect for the expertise in the Arab world of Miles Seeley and forJaqui White's experience in Saudi Arabia.

Orwell satirized the Soviet Union, but he did not understand it. His biographer, Bernard Crick, admits this. His judgment has been questioned; he was against the war with Nazi Germany. Satire is fun and can make a point, but it is not ptoof of knowledge and understanding. Montesquieu was never in Iran, and his Lettres Persanes do not show any real knowledge of that country. "The Gondoliers" is fun, but it shows no profound knowledge of Venice. Mark Twain was never in the Court of King Arthur and his account of it is scarcely a monument of scholarship. I write all this with some feeling. The US government recognized the need for language and area experts. Stanford and other universities set up such programs, only tohave them destroyed by university politics. This takes us back to the starting point of this discussion. I note in the group of Americans involved in the Iraq war an almost total absence of Arab specialists.

Ronald Hilton - 7/5/03