Bernard Lewis is a hack. He has, in the past ten years or so, developed a reputation not dissimilar to that of the sort of embarrasing uncle who shows up at family gaterhings and farts at the dinner table, then laughs.
ican711nm wrote:MacNamara if correctly quoted is wrong again.
Bush did not act unilaterally. Bush acted without the support of three countries proven to have had vested interests in keeping Hussein in power despite his continuing murder of thousands of Iraqies. Those three countries are well known to the US public now: France, Germany, and Russia. Russia and France are both capable of vetoing UN support for anything they do not support. Absence of their support is not proof of the absence of
multilateralism.
I always wonder, why all the other countries, which didn't support Bush, are obviously forgotten.
hobitbob wrote:Bernard Lewis is a hack.
Your
broadway humor is enjoyable but not informative.
Even more enjoyable is your presumption of an ability to accurately assess the competence of any one, including yourself.
Yeah,
the US acted in coordination with the vigilante posse it put together, those nations that wanted in on the action, those that wanted a piece of Iraqi ass.
It seems our ass is being kicked pretty bad; only 635 Americans dead - so far. "Bring em on!"
Some reviews of Lewis:
Review of Bernard Lewis' "What Went Wrong: Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response"
Quote:Review of Bernard Lewis' "What Went Wrong: Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response"
Juan Cole, Global Dialogue, 27 January 2003
Bernard Lewis. What Went Wrong: Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. 172 pp. Index to p. 180. Hard covers, $23.
Bernard Lewis's What Went Wrong? is a very bad book from a usually very good author. How a profoundly learned and highly respected historian, whose career spans some sixty years, could produce such a hodgepodge of muddled thinking, inaccurate assertions and one-sided punditry is a profound mystery. While I cannot hope to resolve the puzzle, I can explain why I come to this conclusion.
Lewis never defines his terms, and he paints with a brush so broad that he may as well have brought a broom to the easel. He begins by speaking of the "Islamic world," and of "what went wrong" with it. He contrasts this culture region to "the West," and implies that things went right with the latter. But what does he mean by the "Islamic world?" He seldom speaks of the Muslims of the Indian subcontinent, who form a very substantial proportion of the whole. Malaysia and Indonesia are never instanced. He seems to mean "the Muslim Middle East," but if so he would have been better advised to say so. With regard to the Middle East, what does he mean by the question "what went wrong?" Does he mean to ask about economic underdevelopment? About lack of democracy? About a failure to contribute to scientific and technological advances? About ethnocentrism? All of these themes are mentioned in passing, but none is formulated as a research design. If "what went wrong" was mainly economic, political and scientific, then why pose the question with regard to a religious category? Lewis straightforwardly says that Islam in and of itself cannot be blamed for what went wrong (whatever that was). Since Islam is not the independent variable in his explanation, why make "the Islamic world" the unit of analysis? Discerning exactly what Lewis is attempting to explain, and what he thinks the variables are that might explain it, is like trying to nail jelly to the wall.
Lewis has a tendency to lump things under a broad rubric together that are actually diverse and perhaps not much related to one another. Speaking of classical "Islam," presumably about 632-1258, Lewis says that the "armies" of "Islam" "at the very same time, were invading Europe and Africa, India and China" (p. 6). Here he makes it sound as though "Islam" was a single unit with a unified military. Later, (p. 12) he actually speaks of the Crusaders' successes impressing "Muslim war departments," as if medieval institutions were so reified. In fact, Moroccan Berbers fighting in Spain are highly unlikely even to have known about the Turkic raids down into India. Nor is it clear that those Turks were motivated primarily by Islam (pastoralists have been invading India from Central Asia for millennia). Moreover, tribal alliances across religious boundaries bring into question the firmness of the military boundaries suggested by speaking of "Islam." Even the early Ottoman conquests in Anatolia were accomplished in part through alliances with Christians. Finally, much of the advance of Islam occurred quite peacefully, through Sufi missionary work for example.
Serge Schmemann, in a review in the NY Times, writes that Lewis's latest book on the Muslim world is a disappointment, too filled with generalizations and unsubstantiated speculations (such as the theory that the absence of polyphonic music--music made up of multiple voices--in the Muslim world is related to its inability to modernize).
Quote:Review of WHAT WENT WRONG?
Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response.
By Bernard Lewis.
Illustrated. 180 pp. New York: Oxford University Press. $23.
One of the first and most troubling questions to arise after Sept. 11 was whether Osama bin Laden represented a fanatical aberration of an otherwise humane and tolerant faith or whether he was the cutting edge of a dangerous and swelling sentiment in Islam. The question revealed a considerable ignorance about Islam in America and placed a high premium on those few with genuine expertise in the field.
Bernard Lewis, an 85-year-old retired professor of Near Eastern studies at Princeton and a wartime British intelligence officer (he describes it as a period when he was "otherwise engaged"), was among those who came to the fore. His books were sought out; his essays in The New Yorker and The Atlantic Monthly were widely cited; he appeared on "Meet the Press" and "Charlie Rose." So it is not surprising that a new book by Mr. Lewis with the enticing title "What Went Wrong?" would raise high expectations.
The title is certainly provocative, suggesting as a starting point a general agreement that something has gone amiss in the Islamic civilization, at least in its reaction to the impact of the Judeo-Christian West. But this has been Mr. Lewis's basic premise for some time. His fundamental argument is that Muslims became accustomed in the early centuries of their history to perceiving themselves as the bearers of the final and true faith, and so never came to understand or accept the Christian civilization of Western Europe that he maintains has surpassed and humbled them.
The shock of Western ascendancy has led, in our time, to two responses: emulating the West and its secular culture or returning to the fundamentals of the faith ?- the path whose most extreme manifestation is Mr. bin Laden. This, Mr. Lewis wrote in 1990 in a celebrated essay in The Atlantic Monthly (which introduced the catch phrase the political scientist Samuel P. Huntington then made famous) "is no less than a clash of civilizations ?- 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."
"What Went Wrong?" explores the various aspects and consequences of this cultural collision ?- military, social, cultural, governmental ?- usually with the conclusion that even in those rare instances when Islam overcame its fundamental resistance to learning from the infidel, it was for a specific and limited purpose, generally military.
In other words, Westernization, even when it happened, did not lead to modernization. Simply agreeing to send students to Europe, Mr. Lewis writes, was a radical act: "It is difficult for a Westerner to appreciate the magnitude of this change, in a society accustomed to despise the infidel barbarians beyond the frontiers of civilization. Even traveling abroad was suspect; the idea of studying under infidel teachers was inconceivable."
Not surprisingly, assertions like that have attracted no little controversy. Mr. Lewis has been accused of too Eurocentric an approach, of creating a justification for European imperialism, of taking too narrow a view of Islam. There is no doubt that he eschews relativism, from the title of his book to affirmations like this: "By all the standards that matter in the modern world ?- economic development and job creation, literacy and educational and scientific achievement, political freedom and respect for human rights ?- what was once a mighty civilization has indeed fallen low."
But such certainty only raises expectations that "What Went Wrong?" will take the case forward. Unfortunately, the volume is in fact a few steps behind. In the preface, Mr. Lewis acknowledges that the book was already in page proof on Sept. 11, so it does not deal with the terrorist attacks. But the more important disclosure is reserved for the Afterword, where Mr. Lewis confirms what the reader already suspects, that the book is really a compilation of lectures and articles dating from 1980 to 1999.
That does not mean that they are uninformative or uninteresting. There are fascinating riffs on the profound and fateful differences between the cultures of Islam and Christendom, from fundamental differences in the understanding of relations between church and state to more subtle contrasts in perception of time, literature, authority and identity.
"For traditional Muslims," Mr. Lewis writes, "the converse of tyranny was not liberty but justice. Justice in this context meant essentially two things, that the ruler was there by right and not by usurpation, and that he governed according to God's law, or at least according to recognizable moral and legal principles."
In his chapter "Time, Space and Modernity," Mr. Lewis advances the provocative notion that one of the central elements of Western progress is the prevalence of poly phony ?- not only as many voices proceeding harmoniously in music, but also as a capacity for complex interaction in sports, literature, science and ultimately politics. In Islamic civilization, he argues, the long absence of a precise measurement of time has precluded this critical synchronization.
These are certainly intriguing concepts to chew on as we seek to comprehend the world from which the suicide pilots came to do us such extraordinary damage. But they do not quite satisfy expectations. For one thing, this slim, 180-page volume never really overcomes the feel of old lectures. There is a lot of repetition, a lot of reference to old texts and a lot of generalization of the sort that may be acceptable in a lecture but is frustrating in a book whose title promises convincing answers to the riddles of Sept. 11.
It is especially difficult to accept that so vast and complex a portion of the world could be reduced to a fairly homogeneous historic force. Mr. Lewis often seems to treat the Ottoman Empire as a template for the entire Muslim civilization, drawing broad conclusions about all Muslims from Turkish examples even as he writes elsewhere of the ancient differences and great rivalries among Turks, Persians, Arabs and other Islamic nations.
Similarly, some of Mr. Lewis's conclusions simply long for more evidence, like the civilizing role of polyphony. Is its absence really all that great a handicap? And if it is, why did it not afflict Far Eastern nations with different musical or organizational traditions? It's an enticing notion, but not convincing.
Lewis' early work is masterful. His recent work is less useful. When ideology overtakes scholarship (like has happened with Huntington) then the result is useless.
Walter Hinteler wrote: I always wonder, why all the other countries, which didn't support Bush, are obviously forgotten.
First, "all the other countries, which didn't support Bush", are
NOT obviously forgotten.
Second, all the countries that do support Bush are not forgotten either. Thus, Bush acted
multilaterally.
It is clear that some are confused about the meaning of multilateralism.
www.m-w.com :
Quote:Main Entry: mul·ti·lat·er·al
Pronunciation: "m&l-ti-'la-t(&-)r&l, -"tI-
Function: adjective
1 : having many sides
2 : involving or participated in by more than two nations or parties <multilateral agreements>
- mul·ti·lat·er·al·ism /-'la-t(&-)r&-"li-z&m/ noun
- mul·ti·lat·er·al·ist /-list/ noun
- mul·ti·lat·er·al·ly adverb
One thing is for damn sure; Lewis has great imagination.
ican711nm wrote:Walter Hinteler wrote: I always wonder, why all the other countries, which didn't support Bush, are obviously forgotten.
First, "all the other countries, which didn't support Bush", are
NOT obviously forgotten.
Second, all the countries that do support Bush are not forgotten either. Thus, Bush acted
multilaterally.
It is clear that some are confused about the meaning of multilateralism.
YOU wrotr that "Bush acted without the support of three countries proven to have had vested interests in keeping Hussein in power despite his continuing murder of thousands of Iraqies".
And
I was only referring to that.
Since I had 7 years Latin in school, I do know what multilateralism means.
Of course, rocket doggy has shown that he has difficulty inderstanding the definitions of many words.
Does everybody remember the arm twisting and Bullying Bush had to do to get his pathetic "coalition" together?
Yeah, even offered billions to Turkey.
And George says 'bring em on'
When is his turn in the barrel?
Warzer Jaff for The New York Times
A shopkeeper in Najaf, Iraq, sells perfume, but like an increasing number of Iraqis he is prepared for trouble with a Kalashnikov rifle.
Anti-U.S. Outrage Unites a Growing Iraqi Resistance
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
Published: April 11, 2004
AGHDAD, Iraq, April 10 ?- Moneer Munthir is ready to kill Americans.
For months, he has been struggling to control an explosion of miserable feelings: humiliation, fear, anger, depression.
"But in the last two weeks, these feelings blow up inside me," said Mr. Munthir, a 35-year-old laborer. "The Americans are attacking Shiite and Sunni at the same time. They have crossed a line. I had to get a gun."
Ahmed, a 29-year-old man with elegant fingers and honey-colored eyes, has been planting bombs inside dead dogs and leaving them on the highway. He and a team of helpers have been especially busy recently.
"We start work after 11 p.m.," Ahmed said. "Our group is small, just friends, and we don't even have a name."
Khalif Juma, a 26-year-old vegetable seller, said he and his cousins bought a crate of Kalashnikov rifles last week.
"To be honest, we weren't like this before," he said. "But we're religious people, and our leader has been threatened. We would be ashamed to stay in our houses with our wives at a time like this."
A new surge of Iraqi resistance is sweeping up thousands of people, Shiite and Sunni, in a loose coalition united by overwhelming anti-Americanism. On March 31, insurgents in Falluja ambushed four civilian contractors and mutilated their bodies, and the fiery words of Moktada al-Sadr, the young radical Shiite cleric, a few days later prompted violent uprisings in four cities.
In Baghdad, Kufa, Najaf, Baquba and Falluja, interviews with Sunnis and Shiites alike show a new corps of men, and a few women, who have resolved to join the resistance. They also reveal a generation of young people inured to violence and hankering to join in the fighting.
There is no way to estimate the size of the mushrooming insurgent force, but demonstrations in several cities by armed and angry people indicate that it probably runs in the tens of thousands. Many people said they did not consider themselves full-time freedom fighters or mujahedeen; they have jobs in vegetable shops, offices, garages and schools.
But when the time comes, they say, they line up behind their leaders ?- with guns.
"I'm in my shop right now but if anything happens, I'll close up and take my weapon and join them," Mr. Juma said. "I'm ready."
Several people described a loose command structure. Mr. Juma said he supported Mr. Sadr but is not part of his militia, the Mahdi Army. He said he received instructions from an imam at a mosque near Kufa.
American officials have announced an arrest warrant for Mr. Sadr, who had entrenched himself in his hometown, Kufa, in southern Iraq, last weekend, then disappeared.
Many Iraqis have weapons, in part because the American-led occupiers have often failed to protect them from looters and other criminals. Now, people are taking their guns into the streets.
Ala Muhammad is a 24-year-old mechanic in Baghdad. He likes to work on trucks.
The other day, when trouble broke out in the predominantly Shiite neighborhood of Khadamiya, he dashed home from work, grabbed a clip for his Kalashnikov and took it out front.
"If the Americans come this way, we will fight them," Mr. Muhammad said. "I'm going to defend my house, my street, my land, my religion."
He stood on the sidewalk in sweat pants, without shoes.
"I like to fight barefoot," he said.
Mr. Muhammad said he recently joined the Mahdi Army. And while some of his neighbors watched him admiringly as he strapped on an ammunition belt and gulped down a glass of water before a battle started, others scowled.
"Many of these young men are just criminals," said Adil Hassan, a contractor. "We don't want them. We don't want their guns. The problem is, more and more are coming."
A whole generation of Iraqi youth is coming of age in the bitter heart of the resistance. When the four American security consultants were ambushed and killed in Falluja, it was a mob of boys that set the bodies on fire and dragged two to a bridge where they hung them over the Euphrates River.
Soran Karim, a 16-year-old with thick, man-size hands, said killing Americans was not just a good thing.
"It is the best thing," said Soran, outside a Falluja school. "They are infidels, they are aggressive, they are hunting our people."
His friend spoke up.
"We just want to play football ?- or marbles," said Omar Hadi, 12. "But the soldiers don't let us go out."
Another boy, Suhail Najim, 13, added: "We may be scared of their weapons. But we're not scared of them."
---------------------------------------------------
Anti-U.S. Outrage Unites a Growing Iraqi Resistance
Published: April 11, 2004
(Page 2 of 2)
A few days after the contractors were killed, United States marines invaded Falluja, 35 miles west of Baghdad, in a major offensive to wipe out the insurgents behind the attack. So far, more than 300 people have been killed.
Before the fall of Saddam Hussein a year ago, young men in this city were told they were the vanguard, the elite, top prospects for top jobs because of their tribal connections and Sunni alliances. Now, they are adrift, subject to the most aggressive American tactics and the full brunt of occupation.
Like the angry youth of the West Bank and Gaza, Iraqi children are increasingly surrounded by music, images, leaflets and praise for fighters. "The men of Falluja are men for hard tasks," sings Sabah al-Jenabi, a popular Iraqi performer, in a song that made the rounds even before the killing of the contractors. "They paralyzed America with rocket-propelled grenades. The men of Islam will fight the Americans like leaderless soldiers. We'll drag Bush's corpse through the dirt."
Abdul Razak al-Muaimy, a 32-year-old laborer, said: "I train my son to kill Americans. That is one reason I am grateful to Saddam Hussein. All Iraqis know how to use weapons."
Like so many other parents, Mr. Muaimy said American soldiers had humiliated him in front of his children.
"They searched my house," he said. "They kicked my Koran. They speak to me so poorly in front of my children. It's not that I encourage my son to hate Americans. It's not that I make him want to join the resistance. Americans do that for me."
Mr. Muaimy said his 10-year-old son did not take part in the violence against the contractors. But, because of all the miseries he knew Americans had brought, he would have.
"He said: `Dad, it was exactly like what they did to us. They burned our women, they burned our children, they burned our men.' My son said this time we killed and burned four of their dead but hopefully one day we will kill and burn them all.
"Just imagine, he is only 10, and he says that."
Mr. Muaimy shook his head, more than a little sad.
"My son is just like a piece of white paper, ready for anything to be written on it. He receives everything. It stays in his memory."
Iraqi employees of The Times's Baghdad bureau contributed reporting for this article.
edgarblythe wrote:Does everybody remember the arm twisting and Bullying Bush had to do to get his pathetic "coalition" together?
By my count the "coalition is not pathetic at all.
Collectively; they represent roughly a quarter of the planet's countries and a quarter of the planet's citizens. So the anti-war crowd explains this away as they are not the important countries. What then constitutes an important country? Must not be money because collectively the coalition also represents about
2 thirds of the planet's wealth by GDP. How partisan do you have to be in your views before you can define these statistics as pathetic, and our actions as Unilateral? That argument just doesn't add up.
Every major race, religion, ethnicity in the world is represented along with nations from every continent on the globe. Unilateral is a pretty silly definition in light of the facts.
Bill, you are aware that the "coalitiopn" only exists because the member nations were paid by the US to be members. Contrast this with the coalition involved in GWI and explain to me, then how you can make the statement:
Quote:Every major race, religion, ethnicity in the world is represented along with nations from every continent on the globe. Unilateral is a pretty silly definition in light of the facts.
For your benefit, I am including (yet another) link to a list of coalition members.
Who are the current coalition members?
Let me add that this list, the official list from the US government, is innaccurate, since it lists Turkey as a member (the list was likely compiled before the people of Turkey showed the Bush administration that as a democracy they had no duty to endorse an act of imperialism).
Bob, did you happen to read the last few lines of the link you provided?
"Collectively; they represent roughly a quarter of the planet's countries and a quarter of the planet's citizens."
Challange----because some governments obligated their nations resources does not necessarily indicate that their citizens followed suit with support.
I did. I took them with a large grain of salt. I also noted that Turkey was on the list, which says a lot about the honesty of the administation and people who believe them.
Now, some homework for you, frat-boy... exactly what is each "member" contributing, and how much were they compensated for their participation?
I get your point Dys, and concede that in the model I used, the citizens were represented by virtue of their countries participation.
hobitbob wrote: I did. I took them with a large grain of salt. I also noted that Turkey was on the list, which says a lot about the honesty of the administation and people who believe them.?
On the date of the release of that list, the US still anticipated Turkey's cooperation... Effectively nullifying my inference of your implications.
hobitbob wrote:Now, some homework for you, frat-boy...
You were off to a pretty good start Bob... why resort to petty insults?
hobitbob wrote:... exactly what is each "member" contributing, and how much were they compensated for their participation?
This is a better argument, Bob... but not one that cancels out the
FACT that this was not a unilateral action nor a "pathetic coalition"... which are the two points I was arguing against. I don't feel like indulging your point obscuring tactics at this time. My original point still stands
and your source confirms it.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Quote:MORE QUESTIONS FOR THOSE ON THE LEFT
Ican, I am looking for time to answer this. It is easier to ask questions than formulate answers, of course, but this would not be a difficult test as long as one is not looking for absolutes but reasonable thoughts.
