Was Osama Right?

[BT]

Islamists always believed the U.S. was weak. Recent political trends won't change their view.

BY BERNARD LEWIS
Wednesday, May 16, 2007 12:01 a.m.

During the Cold War, two things came to be known and generally recognized in the Middle East concerning the two rival superpowers. If you did anything to annoy the Russians, punishment would be swift and dire. If you said or did anything against the Americans, not only would there be no punishment; there might even be some possibility of reward, as the usual anxious procession of diplomats and politicians, journalists and scholars and miscellaneous others came with their usual pleading inquiries: "What have we done to offend you? What can we do to put it right?"
A few examples may suffice. During the troubles in Lebanon in the 1970s and '80s, there were many attacks on American installations and individuals--notably the attack on the Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983, followed by a prompt withdrawal, and a whole series of kidnappings of Americans, both official and private, as well as of Europeans. There was only one attack on Soviet citizens, when one diplomat was killed and several others kidnapped. The Soviet response through their local agents was swift, and directed against the family of the leader of the kidnappers. The kidnapped Russians were promptly released, and after that there were no attacks on Soviet citizens or installations throughout the period of the Lebanese troubles.





These different responses evoked different treatment. While American policies, institutions and individuals were subject to unremitting criticism and sometimes deadly attack, the Soviets were immune. Their retention of the vast, largely Muslim colonial empire accumulated by the czars in Asia passed unnoticed, as did their propaganda and sometimes action against Muslim beliefs and institutions.
Most remarkable of all was the response of the Arab and other Muslim countries to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979. Washington's handling of the Tehran hostage crisis assured the Soviets that they had nothing to fear from the U.S. They already knew that they need not worry about the Arab and other Muslim governments. The Soviets already ruled--or misruled--half a dozen Muslim countries in Asia, without arousing any opposition or criticism. Initially, their decision and action to invade and conquer Afghanistan and install a puppet regime in Kabul went almost unresisted. After weeks of debate, the U.N. General Assembly finally was persuaded to pass a resolution "strongly deploring the recent armed intervention in Afghanistan." The words "condemn" and "aggression" were not used, and the source of the "intervention" was not named. Even this anodyne resolution was too much for some of the Arab states. South Yemen voted no; Algeria and Syria abstained; Libya was absent; the nonvoting PLO observer to the Assembly even made a speech defending the Soviets.

One might have expected that the recently established Organization of the Islamic Conference would take a tougher line. It did not. After a month of negotiation and manipulation, the organization finally held a meeting in Pakistan to discuss the Afghan question. Two of the Arab states, South Yemen and Syria, boycotted the meeting. The representative of the PLO, a full member of this organization, was present, but abstained from voting on a resolution critical of the Soviet action; the Libyan delegate went further, and used this occasion to denounce the U.S.

The Muslim willingness to submit to Soviet authority, though widespread, was not unanimous. The Afghan people, who had successfully defied the British Empire in its prime, found a way to resist the Soviet invaders. An organization known as the Taliban (literally, "the students") began to organize resistance and even guerilla warfare against the Soviet occupiers and their puppets. For this, they were able to attract some support from the Muslim world--some grants of money, and growing numbers of volunteers to fight in the Holy War against the infidel conqueror. Notable among these was a group led by a Saudi of Yemeni origin called Osama bin Laden.

To accomplish their purpose, they did not disdain to turn to the U.S. for help, which they got. In the Muslim perception there has been, since the time of the Prophet, an ongoing struggle between the two world religions, Christendom and Islam, for the privilege and opportunity to bring salvation to the rest of humankind, removing whatever obstacles there might be in their path. For a long time, the main enemy was seen, with some plausibility, as being the West, and some Muslims were, naturally enough, willing to accept what help they could get against that enemy. This explains the widespread support in the Arab countries and in some other places first for the Third Reich and, after its collapse, for the Soviet Union. These were the main enemies of the West, and therefore natural allies.

Now the situation had changed. The more immediate, more dangerous enemy was the Soviet Union, already ruling a number of Muslim countries, and daily increasing its influence and presence in others. It was therefore natural to seek and accept American help. As Osama bin Laden explained, in this final phase of the millennial struggle, the world of the unbelievers was divided between two superpowers. The first task was to deal with the more deadly and more dangerous of the two, the Soviet Union. After that, dealing with the pampered and degenerate Americans would be easy.

We in the Western world see the defeat and collapse of the Soviet Union as a Western, more specifically an American, victory in the Cold War. For Osama bin Laden and his followers, it was a Muslim victory in a jihad, and, given the circumstances, this perception does not lack plausibility.





From the writings and the speeches of Osama bin Laden and his colleagues, it is clear that they expected this second task, dealing with America, would be comparatively simple and easy. This perception was certainly encouraged and so it seemed, confirmed by the American response to a whole series of attacks--on the World Trade Center in New York and on U.S. troops in Mogadishu in 1993, on the U.S. military office in Riyadh in 1995, on the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, on the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000--all of which evoked only angry words, sometimes accompanied by the dispatch of expensive missiles to remote and uninhabited places.
Stage One of the jihad was to drive the infidels from the lands of Islam; Stage Two--to bring the war into the enemy camp, and the attacks of 9/11 were clearly intended to be the opening salvo of this stage. The response to 9/11, so completely out of accord with previous American practice, came as a shock, and it is noteworthy that there has been no successful attack on American soil since then. The U.S. actions in Afghanistan and in Iraq indicated that there had been a major change in the U.S., and that some revision of their assessment, and of the policies based on that assessment, was necessary.

More recent developments, and notably the public discourse inside the U.S., are persuading increasing numbers of Islamist radicals that their first assessment was correct after all, and that they need only to press a little harder to achieve final victory. It is not yet clear whether they are right or wrong in this view. If they are right, the consequences--both for Islam and for America--will be deep, wide and lasting.

Mr. Lewis, professor emeritus at Princeton, is the author, most recently, of "From Babel to Dragomans: Interpreting the Middle East" (Oxford University Press, 2004).

http://opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110010080

[_JS]

For a professor at Princeton, I'm really amazed at how terrible this article is.

During the Cold War, two things came to be known and generally recognized in the Middle East concerning the two rival superpowers. If you did anything to annoy the Russians, punishment would be swift and dire. If you said or did anything against the Americans, not only would there be no punishment; there might even be some possibility of reward

He gives one example (and a very famous example) of the Soviets work with the kidnappings in Lebanon. Yet, at the same time, ask the people of Chile how the Americans "rewarded" them for electing Allende's government. Ask the Sandinistas and some of the Nicaraguan people if we couldn't be just as bloodthirsty as the Soviets when our interests (namely Somoza) were deposed in that country. Tell the people of El Salvador who were tortured and murdered by right-wing death squads or the people pushed out of airplanes into the Atlantic ocean by the Argentinian military junta that they were "rewarded" by the United States.

No dice. We could be every bit as horrible with "swift and dire" consequences as the Soviets. Oftentimes we simply weren't willing to do the dirty work ourselves (but instead train others and have them do so by proxy). But don't buy into this gentle Uncle Sam during the Cold War horse feces.

These different responses evoked different treatment. While American policies, institutions and individuals were subject to unremitting criticism and sometimes deadly attack, the Soviets were immune. Their retention of the vast, largely Muslim colonial empire accumulated by the czars in Asia passed unnoticed, as did their propaganda and sometimes action against Muslim beliefs and institutions.

Doctor Lewis needs to learn more about the history of the Soviet Union. Nationalism and especially the Islamic movements in Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kazakhstan were tremendous concerns in Moscow, especially in the 1970's and 1980's. In fact, it was a primary ingredient in the downfall of the Soviet Union itself (the collapse into nationalism). Look no further than the Civil War in Tajikistan which erupted right after the collapse of the USSR and lasted for five years.

The Soviets faced similar situations all through their Muslim republics, which is one reason that Russification was pushed so hard, even by Stalin - who as a child loathed the Russification programs of the Czar.

The words "condemn" and "aggression" were not used, and the source of the "intervention" was not named. Even this anodyne resolution was too much for some of the Arab states. South Yemen voted no; Algeria and Syria abstained; Libya was absent; the nonvoting PLO observer to the Assembly even made a speech defending the Soviets.

All the states named here were led by secular leaders at the time, many of whom received goods from the Soviet Union. The PLO defended the Soviets because the Soviets were one of the states who openly criticised Zionism at the UN.

I expect these errors to be made by people who don't understand, but by a Princeton professor? South Yemen was a nominally Marxist state at the time and absolutely could not side with Islamist radicals, the same held true for Colonel Qaddafi - a man who once said the Haddith hold no value! Assad of Syria was a secular Baathist, heavily dependent upon weapons from the Soviets and fighting the Muslim Brotherhood at the time, a very active Islamist movement that mounted an insurgency in Syria.

Why would any rational person believe that the governments of Syria, Libya, and South Yemen would support radical Islam?

The Muslim willingness to submit to Soviet authority, though widespread, was not unanimous. The Afghan people, who had successfully defied the British Empire in its prime, found a way to resist the Soviet invaders. An organization known as the Taliban (literally, "the students") began to organize resistance and even guerilla warfare against the Soviet occupiers and their puppets. For this, they were able to attract some support from the Muslim world--some grants of money, and growing numbers of volunteers to fight in the Holy War against the infidel conqueror. Notable among these was a group led by a Saudi of Yemeni origin called Osama bin Laden.

WOW. Now we go from mistakes to outright lies.

The Taliban never fought the Soviets in Afghanistan. They weren't even formed as a group at that time and did not stage their first battle until 1994.

He's mistaking the Taliban with the Mujahideen. The Taliban came later in Afghanistan's history as a result of the widespread corruption and absolute terror that people lived with on a daily basis under the Mujahideen warlords and the other bandit associations in Afghanistan. Imagine living in a country run primarily by criminal gangs.

The Taliban formed, primarily with aid from Pakistan, as strict Sunni Muslims from the Pashtun tribe, who would wipe away what they saw as a horribly corrupt society of violence, greed, and anarchy. The majority of Afghani people approved of their taking control and Arabs, Uzbeks, and Chechens joined them. At first it was seen as a positive step forward for Afghanistan. Saudi Arabia also supported the movement.

To accomplish their purpose, they did not disdain to turn to the U.S. for help, which they got. In the Muslim perception there has been, since the time of the Prophet, an ongoing struggle between the two world religions, Christendom and Islam, for the privilege and opportunity to bring salvation to the rest of humankind, removing whatever obstacles there might be in their path.

Again, that would primarily be the Mujahideen. I am uncertain as to whether "we" helped the Taliban or not. We helped the Mujahideen because it looked very much like the Soviets could meet with their own Vietnam. The long-term consequences weren't generally considered.

Christendom and Islam have not always struggled. Indeed, for a period of time in Spain the two religions co-existed very well and it brought a great transfer of knowledge and philosophy between the two cultures. It was not until the fundamentalists from Morocco took over the Muslim lands in Spain and at the same time the Christian Kings in Northern Spain began to become very ambitious, that this period of mutual tolerance came to a bloody end.

This explains the widespread support in the Arab countries and in some other places first for the Third Reich and, after its collapse, for the Soviet Union. These were the main enemies of the West, and therefore natural allies.

Princeton should be ashamed that a professor would even write this rubbish. No sense of history and certainly no real analysis to provide proof.

We in the Western world see the defeat and collapse of the Soviet Union as a Western, more specifically an American, victory in the Cold War.

Americans generally see every war they've ever fought in as an American victory with the exception of Vietnam, whose loss is typically blamed on others. That's not an impressive statement. It is just the egocentrism of one's own nationalism. The British do it as well.

For Osama bin Laden and his followers, it was a Muslim victory in a jihad, and, given the circumstances, this perception does not lack plausibility.

Osama bin Laden is intelligent in some ways, but the fact that this guy is buying into this crap is not one of them.

The response to 9/11, so completely out of accord with previous American practice, came as a shock, and it is noteworthy that there has been no successful attack on American soil since then.

Ah, now I see the editorial side to this article. But if this is to be believed then there was no reason to increase security in the homeland, etc. The shock should have overwhelmed Osama's philosophy of history <eyeroll>

More recent developments, and notably the public discourse inside the U.S., are persuading increasing numbers of Islamist radicals that their first assessment was correct after all, and that they need only to press a little harder to achieve final victory. It is not yet clear whether they are right or wrong in this view. If they are right, the consequences--both for Islam and for America--will be deep, wide and lasting.

You know, I agree with keeping troops in Iraq as a moral obligation to the people of Iraq, but it is idiots like this who make it really difficult to take that stance at times.

I thought that Francis Fukuyama was a pathetic pseudo-philosopher. This guy is atrocious. He clearly has no comprehension of the politics nor history of the Middle East. Then he proceeds to engage in some sort of crap theory on historical progression that would have made Hegel reach for Alka-Seltzer in complete disgust.

No offense Bt, but this one belongs in the trash can or recycling bin.

[Michael Tee]

Like just about everything else Bernard Lewis writes, this piece is almost unbearably pretentious and silly.

The first part of the piece, his absolutely absurd and completely unverifiable statement, given without even a pretence of proof, evidence or sourcing, that "two things came to be known and generally recognized in the Middle East concerning the two rival superpowers. If you did anything to annoy the Russians, punishment would be swift and dire. If you said or did anything against the Americans, not only would there be no punishment . . . "

Now of course, I have to wonder, who exactly "knew" these two things?  Everybody?  Every camel driver in every fucking caravanserai at every fucking oasis?  The national leaders?  Their rivals?  The General Staffs of all the armies?  And how does Prof. Lewis know that they all knew these two things?  Did he conduct a poll?  Read their minds?

More importantly, was it really true that Americans would not punish anyone who annoyed them?  They sure as hell punished Mohammed Mossadegh when he nationalized the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, and it wasn't even their fucking company.  When Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser began to move closer and closer to the U.S.S.R. in the early 1960s, the U.S. in 1964 cut off all foreign aid to Egypt.  Prior to the attack on the Marine barracks in Beirut, U.S. warships in Beirut harbour or perhaps lying just off it had begun to shell certain militia positions in the hills above the city.  Now it's always possible that those militia units had not annoyed the U.S. in the slightest, and the Americans were shelling them just for the hell of it, but I think most folks, if not Professor Lewis, managed to figure out that the militia units being shelled had done something to annoy the U.S., and that the shelling was intended to be their punishment.  So obviously, with all due respect to the learned and erudite Prof. Lewis, his statment that it was "generally recognized" in the Middle East that you would not be punished for annoying the U.S. is almost certainly bullshit.  Either nobody with any intelligence recognized this as true, or - - perhaps - - they're all a bunch of idiots and recognized something as generally true that their own common sense and common knowledge should have told them was not true.

What about the other side of the equation?  That people who fucked with the Soviets met instant retaliation?  Although an amateur schmuck like me with no academic credentials in the field could easily come up on a moment's notice with THREE examples contradicting Prof. Lewis' idea that America could be fucked with with impunity in the region, Prof. Lewis himself comes up with only ONE example backing up his contention that fucking with the Russians brought instant retaliation.  An obscure kidnapping that nobody now remembers.  Details are lacking - - WHAT happened to the kidnappers' families that caused them to release the Russians?  We don't know.  What was the reason for the attack on the Russians in the first place?  We don't know.  Who were attacking the Russians?  How many Russians were there in the Middle East at the time?  How many Americans?  We don't know.

Prof. Lewis seems to believe that Russians earned immunity from local attacks because they struck back hard at their attackers while the U.S. never did.  In actual fact, we don't really know (a) that no more Russians were ever attacked afterwards or (b) that the reason for the lack of follow-up attacks on Russians was due to superior Russian security, better Russian intelligence, comparative lack of Russian targets, more sensible Russian regulations as to where their nationals in Beirut could or could not live or visit, more widepread hatred of Americans, better Russian PR or any one or more  of dozens of other factors.

Similar flawed reasoning regarding the lack of further attacks on U.S. soil since the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.  No exploration at all as to whether or not this is due to better airport and immigration security, opportunity to kill more Americans for less cost in Afghanistan and Iraq or indeed whether the real objective of the 9-11 attacks might have been to provoke the U.S. into invading and holding Muslim lands, thus leading indirectly to the downfall of all U.S. puppet regimes in the region.   In other words, why launch a second strike when the first has already done its job?

[BT]

He has quite the resume:

Biography
Born to middle-class Jewish parents in London, Lewis became attracted to languages and history from an early age. While preparing for his bar mitzvah ceremony at the age of eleven or twelve, the young Bernard, fascinated by a new language, and especially a new script, discovered an interest in Hebrew. He subsequently moved on to studying Aramaic and then Arabic, and later still, Latin, Greek, Persian, and Turkish. As with foreign languages, Lewis's interest in history was stirred thanks to the bar mitzvah ceremony, during which he received as a gift a book on Jewish history. [2]

He graduated in 1936 from the then School of Oriental Studies (SOAS, now School of Oriental and African Studies) at the University of London with a B.A. in History with special reference to the Near and Middle East, and obtaining his Ph.D. three years later, also from SOAS, specializing in the History of Islam. [3] Lewis also studied law, going part of the way toward becoming a barrister, but returned to study Middle Eastern history. He undertook post-graduate studies at the University of Paris, where he studied with Louis Massignon and earned the "Diplôme des Études Sémitiques" in 1937. [1] He returned to SOAS in 1938 as an assistant lecturer in Islamic History.

During the Second World War, Lewis served in the British Army in the Royal Armoured Corps and Intelligence Corps in 1940-41, before being seconded to the Foreign Office. After the war, he returned to SOAS. and in 1949 he was appointed to the new chair in Near and Middle Eastern History at the age of 33.[4]

In 1974, Lewis accepted a joint position at Princeton University and the Institute for Advanced Study, also located in Princeton, New Jersey. The terms of his appointment were such that Lewis taught only one semester per year, and being free from administrative responsibilities, he could devote more time to research than previously. Consequently, Lewis's arrival at Princeton marked the beginning of the most prolific period in his research career during which he published numerous books and articles based on the previously accumulated materials.[5] In addition, it was in the U.S. that Lewis became a public intellectual. Upon his retirement from Princeton in 1986, Lewis served at Cornell University until 1990.[1]

Lewis has been a naturalized citizen of the United States since 1982. He married Ruth Hélène Oppenhejm in 1947 with whom he had a daughter and a son before the marriage was dissolved in 1974.[1]


[edit] Research
Martin Kramer, whose Ph.D. thesis was directed by Lewis, claims Lewis as "the most influential postwar historian of Islam and the Middle East" whose authority extends beyond the academe to the general public. He is the pioneer of the social and economic history of the Middle East and is famous for his extensive research of the Ottoman archives.[1]

Bernard Lewis began his research career with the study of medieval Arab, especially Syrian, history.[1] His first article, dedicated to professional guilds of medieval Islam, had been widely regarded as the most authoritative work on the subject for about thirty years.[6]

However, after the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, Arab countries no longer admitted scholars of Jewish origin to conduct archival and field research there. Therefore, Lewis switched to the study of the Ottoman Empire, while continuing to research Arab history through the Ottoman archives,[1] which had only recently been opened to Western researchers. A series of articles that Lewis published over the next several years revolutionized the history of the Middle East by giving a broad picture of the Islamic society, including its government, economy, and demographics.[6]

Lewis argues that the Middle East is backward and its decline was a largely self-inflicted condition resulting from culture and religion, as opposed to the post colonialist view which posits the problems of the region as economic and political maldevelopment stemming from 19th century colonization. In his 1982 work Muslim Discovery of Europe, Lewis argues that Muslim societies could not keep pace with the west and that "Crusader successes were due in no small part to Muslim weakness." [7] Further, he suggested that as early as the 11th century Islamic societies were decaying, primarily the byproduct of internal problems like "cultural arrogance," which was a barrier to creative borrowing, rather than external pressures like the Crusades. [1].

Revulsed at the Soviet and Arab attempts to delegitimize Israel as a racist country, Lewis wrote a study of anti-Semitism Semites and Anti-Semites (1986).[1] In other works he argued Arab rage against Israel was startlingly disproportionate to other tragedies or injustices in the Muslim world: the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and control of Muslim-majority land in Central Asia; and the bloody and destructive fighting during the Hama uprising in Syria (1982), the Algerian civil war (1992-98), and the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988).[8]

In addition to his scholarly works, Lewis wrote several influential books accessible to the general public: The Arabs in History (1950), The Middle East and the West (1964), and The Middle East (1995).[1] In the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks, the interest in Lewis's work surged, especially his 1990 essay The Roots of Muslim Rage. Two of his books were published after 9/11: What Went Wrong? (written before the attacks) and The Crisis of Islam.


[edit] Views and influence on contemporary politics
In the mid-1960s, Lewis emerged as a commentator on the issues of the modern Middle East, and his analysis of Arab-Israeli conflict and the rise of militant Islam brought him publicity and aroused significant controversy. American historian Joel Beinin has called him "perhaps the most articulate and learned Zionist advocate in the North American Middle East academic community ..." [9] Lewis's policy advice has particular weight thanks to this scholarly authority. [6] U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney remarked: "...in this new century, his wisdom is sought daily by policymakers, diplomats, fellow academics, and the news media."[10]

A harsh critic of the Soviet Union, Lewis continues the liberal tradition in Islamic historical studies. Although his early Marxist views had a bearing on his first book The Origins of Ismailism, Lewis subsequently discarded Marxism. His later works are a reaction against the left-wing current of Third-worldism, which came to be a significant current in Middle Eastern studies.[1]

Lewis advocates closer Western ties with Israel and Turkey, which he saw especially important in light of the extension of the Soviet influence in the Middle East. Modern Turkey holds a special place in Lewis's view of the region due to the country's efforts to become a part of the West.[1]

Lewis views Christendom and Islam as civilizations that have been in perpetual collision ever since the advent of Islam in the 7th century. In a seminal essay The Roots of Muslim Rage (1990), he saw the struggle between the West and Islam gathering strength. It was in that essay that he coined the phrase "clash of civilizations", which received prominence in the eponymous book by Samuel Huntington.[11]

In 1998, Lewis read in a London-based Arabic newspaper Al-Quds Al-Arabi a declaration of war on the United States by Osama bin Laden, a person of whom Lewis had never heard before. Recognizing in bin Laden's language the ideology of jihad, Lewis wrote an essay A License to Kill in which he warned about the danger presented by the holy warrior.[11]

In August 2006, in an article about whether the world can rely on the concept of mutual assured destruction as a deterrent in its dealings with Iran, Lewis wrote in the Wall Street Journal about the significance of August 22 in the Islamic calendar. The Iranian president had indicated he would respond by that date to U.S. demands regarding Iran's development of nuclear power; Lewis wrote that the date corresponded to the 27th day of the month of Rajab of the year 1427, the day Muslims commemorate the night flight of the prophet Muhammad to heaven and back. Lewis wrote that it would be "an appropriate date for the apocalyptic ending of Israel and, if necessary, of the world." [12] The article received significant press coverage. [13]


[edit] Criticism and controversies

[edit] Debates with Edward Said
Lewis is known for his literary sparrings with Edward Said, the renowned Palestinian-American scholar and academic BBC News, who criticized Orientalist scholarship, claiming Lewis's work to be a prime example of Orientalism, in his 1978 book Orientalism. Said asserted that the field of Orientalism was political intellectualism bent on self-affirmation rather than objective study,[14] a form of racism, and a tool of imperialist domination.[15] He further questioned the direct knowledge of many leading Orientalist scholars such as Bernard Lewis on the Arab world. In an interview with Al-Ahram Weekly, Said suggested that Lewis' knowledge of the Middle East was so biased it could not be taken seriously, and claimed "Bernard Lewis hasn't set foot in the Middle East, in the Arab world, for at least 40 years. He knows something about Turkey, I'm told, but he knows nothing about the Arab world." [16]


[edit] Lewis' response
Rejecting the view that western scholarship was biased against the Middle East, Lewis responded that Orientalism developed as a facet of European humanism, independently of the European imperial expansion.[1] He noted the French and English pursued the study of Islam in the 16th and 17th centuries, long before they had any control or hope of control in the Middle East; that countries with little or no imperialist record in the Arab world — Italians and the Dutch and the Germans — were more important to European Orientalism than the French or British; and that much of Orientalist study did nothing to advance the cause of imperialism. "What imperial purpose was served by deciphering the ancient Egyptian language, from example, and then restoring to the Egyptians knowledge of and pride in their forgotten, ancient past?"[17]

Said has also alleged that Lewis treats Islam as a monolithic entity without the nuance of its historical complexities. According to Said, Lewis doesn't have

“ much time to spare for the internal dynamics and plurality of every civilization, or for the fact that the major contest in most modern cultures concerns the definition or interpretation of each culture, or for the unattractive possibility that a great deal of demagogy and downright ignorance is involved in presuming to speak for a whole religion or civilization. No, the West is the West, and Islam Islam.[18] ”


[edit] Allegations of denial of the Armenian Genocide
In a November 1993 Le Monde interview, Lewis said that the Ottoman Turks’ killing of up to 1.5 million Armenians in 1915 was not "genocide", but the "brutal byproduct of war".[19] He further suggested in the interview that "the reality of the Armenian genocide results from nothing more than the imagination of the Armenian people."[20] A Parisian court interpreted his remarks as a denial of the Armenian Genocide and on June 21, 1995 fined him one franc. The court ruled that while Lewis has the right to his views, they did damage to a third party and that "it is only by hiding elements which go against his thesis that the defendant was able to state that there was no 'serious proof' of the Armenian Genocide."[21]

When Lewis received the prestigious National Humanities Medal from President Bush in November 2006, the Armenian National Committee of America took strong objection. Executive Director Aram Hamparian released a statement of pointed disapproval:

“ The President's decision to honor the work of a known genocide denier — an academic mercenary whose politically motivated efforts to cover up the truth run counter to the very principles this award was established to honor — represents a true betrayal of the public trust.[22] ”

The ANCA Press Release further attacked Lewis by suggesting that early in his career Lewis admitted that there was an actual Holocaust of Armenians in his 1961 book, The Emergence of Modern Turkey, where he wrote on page 356, "A desperate struggle between [the Turks and Armenians] began, a struggle between two nations for the possession of a single homeland, that ended with the terrible holocaust of 1915, when a million and a half Armenians perished."[23]

[edit] Lewis' response
Lewis argues that:

“ There is no evidence of a decision to massacre. On the contrary, there is considerable evidence of attempt to prevent it, which were not very successful. Yes there were tremendous massacres, the numbers are very uncertain but a million may well be likely,[24] ...[and] the issue is not whether the massacres happened or not, but rather if these massacres were as a result of a deliberate preconceived decision of the Turkish government... there is no evidence for such a decision.[25] ”

Lewis thus believes that "to make [Armenian Genocide], a parallel with the Holocaust in Germany" is "rather absurd."[24] In an interview with Haaretz he stated:

“ The deniers of Holocaust have a purpose: to prolong Nazism and to return to Nazi legislation. Nobody wants the 'Young Turks' back, and nobody wants to have back the Ottoman Law. What do the Armenians want? The Armenians want to benefit from both worlds. On the one hand, they speak with pride of their struggle against the Ottoman despotism, while on the other hand, they compare their tragedy to the Jewish Holocaust. I do not accept this. I do not say that the Armenians did not suffer terribly. But I find enough cause for me to contain their attempts to use the Armenian massacres to diminish the worth of the Jewish Holocaust and to relate to it instead as an ethnic dispute.[26] ”


[edit] Stance on the Iraq War
Most recently Lewis has been criticised as "perhaps the most significant intellectual influence behind the invasion of Iraq", who urged regime change in Iraq to provide a jolt that — he argued — would "modernize the Middle East". [27] Critics of Lewis have suggested that Lewis' Orientalist theories about "What Went Wrong" in the Middle East, and other important works, formed the intellectual basis of the push towards war in Iraq.[28]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Lewis

[Lanya]

He does have an amazing background.
However, this does not prevent one from being wrong. 

This was an interesting thing I found when I was looking him up on Google.

http://www.ids.net/~gregan/lewis.html

En occultant les éléments contraires
The Bernard Lewis Trial
Bernard Lewis is a Professor Emeritus at Princeton University in the department of Near Eastern Studies who was condemned in a June 21, 1995 French court decision for statements he made denying the Armenian genocide.

Later, he wrote an account of the ruling in a letter published in the June 15, 1996 issue of the Princeton Alumni Weekly.

This page is to show the ruling, both in the original French and translated into English, as well as provide an opportunity to compare it with the version given by Bernard Lewis so that readers can gauge the accuracy of this well-known historian.

Here are excerpts from both Bernard Lewis' letter and the actual ruling:
[.......................]

[Michael Tee]

Lewis is basically a prostitute.  Whatever his credentials, he takes advantage of them to push a view which is always favourable to right-wing Zionist objectives.   A key objective being to keep Arabs at loggerheads with the West, Muslims and Christians in a state of perpetual enmity.  For this purpose, Islam must be presented as a menace to "civilization" (well, "our" civiliaztion at any rate)  akin to the Yellow Peril, the Communist Menace etc.

Turks are potential and past allies of the Jews.  As non-Arabs and the former imperialist oppressors of the Arabs, they will find it hard to ally themselves with folks who are naturally suspicious of them, so it's natural that they would gravitate towards military and diplomatic ties to the Jews.  The problem is that the Jews have a naturally acquired loathing of genocide and anything that smacks of genocide.  (Obviously I'm not talking here about neo-Con Jews who have gotten beyond such petty and trivial concerns as fundamentalist Christian anti-Semitism, torture, militarism, genocide, etc.)  A Turkey that committed genocide on the Armenians might just seem a tad, well, unsavoury, to the average Jew.  That's something for Lewis to work on.  Genocide?  What genocide?   We can't have a misunderstanding like that inconsequential little mishap come between Israel and a potential ally.

I don't question his educational qualifications, BT, but the guy is a whore.  Plain and simple.

[BT]

However, this does not prevent one from being wrong.  

I took no position on his correctness. I posted the article with no comment. If he is historically inaccurate so be it. If his subjective take on events is different from others subjective take on events so be it.

[Mucho]

Not only was Osama right that Americans are weak sucks, but certainly was smart enough to know that the Bushidiot would fuck the whole thing up & give Osama the world's respect and US the world's disgUSt.

[BT]

I doubt Bush has a thing  to do with americans being weak sucks.

[Michael Tee]

<<Not only was Osama right that Americans are weak sucks, but certainly was smart enough to know that the Bushidiot would fuck the whole thing up & give Osama the world's respect and US the world's disgUSt.>>

IMHO the system is skewed to produce idiot Presidents like Bush.  The military-industrial complex that effectively rules behind the scenes thrives on conflict and violence and is able to game the system so that the primary issue the voters need to decide (owing to the deliberately stoked fears of the enemy of the month) is "strength" i.e. readiness to resort to violence.  This appeal to the lowest common denominator guarantees that militaristic, "defence-minded" jackasses compete with one another to appear "tough"  ("toughness" here being equated to a readiness to drop napalm and high explosives on any population anywhere) and the inevitable result is more violence.  THAT'S probably what Osama saw and he played it beautifully.

[BT]

IMHO the system is skewed to produce idiot Presidents like Bush.

When Kerry ran he promised a faster stronger smarter response, which i guess would induce even more violence than Bush brought.

I don't think you HO is well thought out.

[Mucho]

IMHO the system is skewed to produce idiot Presidents like Bush.

When Kerry ran he promised a faster stronger smarter response, which i guess would induce even more violence than Bush brought.

I don't think you HO is well thought out.

Nothing wrong with faster  stronger as long as you attack the correct people & countries. That is where the Bushidiot went wrong..

[BT]

Kerry was referring to Iraq.

[Xavier_Onassis]

Osama was right in that Al Qaeda's members can be snowed into suicidal missions, and the US doesn't do this.

On the other hand, his views are XIV Century and do not jibe with those of most Muslims, and never will. Technologically, the US is also quite ahead of him, especially with robotic airplanes and such. Osama will not live to see anything that could be described as a victoiry by any impartial observer.

Like Juniorbush, I expect that Osama will also claim victory.
Like Juniorbush, he will also be wrong.

Chaos is never victory.

[domer]

"Prostitute?" Bernard Lewis is no prostitute is any sense. What he says he believes and he says it for that reason. I read his "Crisis in Islam" a couple of years ago and found it singularly enlightening. Rather than scoff at his (very well-argued) positions with which I disagreed, if I did (it's been a while), I noted the question raised for future attention. I'm not even sure I would call him a polemicist, for he thinks first, as I see it, and forms his arguments from there, not vice versa. Overall, despite rankling Michael and JS and no doubt other darlings of the left, Bernard Lewis, in my limited experience, is a valuable thinker on a topic of surpassing current importance and deserves respect on those terms.