I met a Saudi billionaire today

Today I met a Saudi billionaire at a barbecue. My father was discussing Al Qaeda and wondered what the people who detonate car bombs in Iraqi marketplaces believe they are achieving. The Saudi replied by asking "who is Al Qaeda?" He asked where they are and why don't they show their faces. He claimed that no Arab militia could be so organized and concluded that Israel must be behind these bombings.

Bernard Lewis

It was only recently that I learned how influential Bernard Lewis has been in shaping western perceptions (and misperceptions) of Islam and the Middle East. Lewis has been lauded by many as a great historian and until recently I assumed this was the truth - I have read only excerpts of his work. During the flight to London (yes I'm in London) I started reading Ali Allawi's book The Occupation of Iraq: Winning the War, Losing the Peace, which I got for my father. It has been a great read so far. In the prologue Allawi writes:

Bernard Lewis studied at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London, specialising in Islamic history. Lewis developed a particular slant on Islam's encounter with modernity that ran counter to the then prevailing wisdom. The conventional view was that the political oppressiveness, social inequalities and economic backwardness in the Middle East were mainly because of the legacy of western imperialism and the west's incessant interferance in the area's affairs. Lewis, however, postulated that the Islamic world's problems were mainly of its own making, driven by a congenital inability of Islamic civilisation to accomodate to its diminished status in the world. 'The Roots of Muslim Rage', the title of Bernard Lewis's now classic essay, was ultimately linked to the failure of Islamic civilisation to accept that it had been relegated to a secondary status by the manifest political and technological superiority of the west. This was even more galling, for this new world was dominated by Islam's historic rival, Christendom. Without this acknowledgement, Muslim societies were unable to rejuvenate themselves and adjust to modernity. Lewis wrote that 'This is no less than a clash of civilisations - the perhaps irrational but surely historic reaction of an ancient rival against our Judeo-Christian heritage, our secular present, and the worldwide expansion of both.'

Lewis's band of admirers grew perceptibly in the 1980s and 1990s and, with the advent of the Bush administration, joined up with the other strands of the 'Alternative Discourse' to dominate Middle East policymaking. Lewis himself put on the mantle of the 'public intellectual', appearing on numerous TV shows, and mentoring and advising all manner of officials in the post 9/11 Bush administration. The 'Lewis doctrine' became official policy all the more so as Lewis was an enthusiastic advocate of using force to efffect change. The invasion of Iraq could now be given a scholarly sheen, carrying the imprimatur of the 'most influential post-war historian of Islam and the Middle East', as Lewis was called by one of his academic followers. The grand scheme of dragging the Middle East, kicking and screaming, into the democratic and secular future designed for it by the 'best and brightest' of the new Washington, would now begin in earnest. Iraq was in the right place and it was the right time to start the make-over of the region. Lewis and Strauss were profound influences, in deep and subtle ways, on the nexus of advisers, policymakers and war-planners that pushed the USA into invading Iraq.

Allawi goes on to say that the Bush team should have read 'other, more cautionary narratives', including the works of Ali al Wardi and The Unanticipated Consequences of Purposive Social Action by sociologist Robert Merton. Allawi asserts that Washington ignored what was happening inside Iraq before the war and that war planners knew very little about Iraq before the invasion.

I'm glad prosecutors want the death penalty in this case. While the US seeks to punish Americans who rape and murder Iraqis (which doesn't happen often), Al Qaeda continues to mass murder Iraqis on a daily basis without punishment.

Death penalty sought in Iraqi slayings

LOUISVILLE, Ky. - Federal prosecutors filed notice Tuesday that they will seek the death penalty if former soldier Steven D. Green is convicted of killing an Iraqi family and raping a 14-year-old girl.

Soldiers from 5th IA said al Qaeda had cut the heads off the children. Had al Qaeda murdered the children in front of their parents? Maybe it had been the other way around: maybe they had murdered the parents in front of the children. Maybe they had forced the father to dig the graves of his children. (Thanks RhusLancia)

Latest Anti-Terror Ad

This is the latest Iraqi anti-terrorism ad, which I saw yesterday on Al Arabiya. I find it strange that Al Arabiya is funded by the Saudi government, and yet they continue to broadcast these ads, while Al Jazeera no longer airs them.

In the video an Iraqi is kidnapped by terrorists and asked at gunpoint if he is Sunni or Shi'i. "I am Iraqi" he finally answers.

Arab intervention!  What a joke!  The Arabs have already intervened via Al Qaeda.  Iraq does not need Arabs to 'intervene' further! (Thanks Anand)

Sunni politician calls for U.N. and Arab intervention to solve Iraq crisis

The Associated Press

Published: July 1, 2007

BAGHDAD: A Sunni legislator who says he's joining the "resistance" called Sunday for Arab and international intervention to rebuild Iraq's political system from scratch.

Abdul-Nasser al-Janabi said he made a mistake when he decided to run for parliament in 2005. He spoke to The Associated Press in Jordan, where he announced this weekend that he was quitting parliament to support the insurgency.

"I feel that I've become a target for the Iraqi government which is now, along with its security forces, targeting each and every Iraqi who opposes them and who tells the truth," al-Janabi said. [Iraqis who oppose the government by supporting terrorists SHOULD be targeted, imo]

"We support intervention by all the Arab nations and the United Nations in a direct manner so we can return to the square one with the political process," al-Janabi said.

He added that he backs any effort aimed at "solving the political dilemma in Iraq and also to call for the withdrawal of the occupation forces and to change the existing government and parliament."

Al-Janabi announced he was leaving parliament Saturday — one day after his Iraqi Accordance Front announced it was suspending participation in Cabinet meetings to protest the way Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki handled legal proceedings against one of their Sunni colleagues.

Sunnis are also angry over last month's vote by the Shiite-dominated parliament to remove the speaker, Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, a Sunni Arab. [This is the guy who was fired for assaulting other MPs and believes that the mass murder of Iraqis "were the fault of Jews, Israelis, and Zionists..."]

"I call upon all Islamists to withdraw from this political process after it has become clear enough that we have been rendered into axes for the occupation," al-Janabi said. "We should withdraw and work against this project. We should work so that Iraq wouldn't be sold to the foreigners and neighboring countries."

Al-Janabi said he believed the only way to rid the country of the U.S. presence was "the military and resistance solution."

Earlier this year, government officials alleged that al-Janabi had ties to the insurgents and would be charged. But the government suspended an investigation under pressure from Sunni politicians.

Let's start blaming the murderers, please!

Ever since I first read Ali's post Arab Wein Wo Tanboora Wein! I have thought about the Iraqis who constantly attack the current Iraqi government for failing to provide security while not mentioning a word about the bombers who are actually RESPONSIBLE for the mass murder of Iraqis on a daily basis. I just left this comment for that post:

Ali, I can't help but say the following. I know we're supposed to be polite here and I apologize in advance if this comment offends you or anybody else. But I must get it off my shoulders.

I have noticed that many Iraqis have been blaming the Iraqi government for failing to provide security while not mentioning a word about the bombers who mass murder Iraqis. In this post, you have used a popular Iraqi idiom to slam the Iraqi government for not reacting properly to the murder of Rahim al-Maliki. I am with you on this, and I agree that the Iraqi govt has not done enough to provide security for all Iraqis. They seem to sit comfortably in the Green Zone while ordinary Iraqis are murdered on a daily basis. But I think that this idiom, '3arab wain w 6anboora wain' applies equally, if not more so, to the Iraqis who constantly attack the current Iraqi govt without mentioning a single word about the salafi khewat el GA7BA [brothers of whores] who mass murder Iraqis like this. I'm sick of hearing Iraqis who expect the Iraqi govt to wave some magic wand that will prevent these salafi scum from wearing explosives and detonating them among our beloved Iraqis like Rahim al-Mailiki. At least mention a word about these murderous moronic "Muslims" before, or after slamming the Iraqi govt.

Was that too much? Am I mean? Ali seems to be a cool cat, but I had to do that to feel relieved.