[lit-ideas] Fukuyama, Arabists and French Multiculturalists
- From: "Lawrence Helm" <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 16 Apr 2006 04:47:19 -0700
Whenever like now, my note must be to correct misapprehensions or
misconstructions, I hesitate to write it, especially if I sense the motive
behind the note to which I am responding to be hostile; however, I am
dog-sitting a friend's Rhodesian Ridgeback, Rocco, who has successfully
prevented me from going back to sleep; so I haven't anything better to do .
. .
An "Arabist" is one who has embraced the Arab nation to which he has been
diplomatically assigned. He identifies with it, takes up its causes, and
chooses its side. Arabists often took the side of their Arab nation against
the U.S. This is not what is wanted in a diplomat, and the U.S. began
shifting people about in an attempt to overcome this malady. The downside
of such attempts, as Kaplan explains, is that the U.S. lost some expertise,
but the gain in loyalty was a desirable trade-off. Martin Kramer's thesis
in Ivory Towers of Sand, the Failure of Middle Eastern Studies in America is
that the Title VI expenditures have not resulted in expert advice about the
Middle East but instead have produced Arabist responses. He didn't used
that diplomatic term as I recall, but that is the effect. The experts
called upon by the government under Title VI were hostile to the U.S.,
unresponsive, and any advice was likely to favor Arab countries. Thus, it
is good that "Bernard Lewis, Martin Kramer, Daniel Pipes and others" are not
Arabists.
What I may have implied in regard to Fukuyama is that I found his thesis
about "The End of History" credible. I read his The End of History and the
Last Man in December of 1999 and was very impressed by it, but I have been
puzzled by everything he has written since that time - or perhaps I should
say that the emphasis (i.e., foreign affairs) that I focused upon, didn't
seem to be Fukuyama's primary interest. In retrospect one must take him at
his word and see the Fukuyama's primary idea of "the end of history" came
from Kojeve. Fukuyama gives him credit for it. And while Fukuyama deserves
credit for fleshing the concept out, it now seems to me that he didn't have
quite the same interest in it that Alexandre Kojeve did. His subsequent
writings were on other subjects or disengagements from the results of his
(Kojeve's) thesis.
You ask "the point of my roll call"? As I indicated in previous notes about
Fukuyama's America at the Crossroads" I criticized Fukuyama for accepting
the arguments of the French experts Olivier Roy and Gilles Kepel who are at
least nodding toward French multiculturalism in that they take a "soft view"
of the Islamist threat. They see the threat emanating from a few
"Jihadists." If they are right then we in the U.S. are over-reacting, and
this is what Fukuyama concludes. However the "roll call" as you call it is
a list of some of the authors I have read who take a very different view,
who see Fukuyama's Jihadists as being the activist element of Islamic
Fundamentalism which is sweeping the Middle East. With all of Fukuyama's
other interests I doubt that he has had time to read many of the authors I
listed. He lists only the two, Roy and Kepel, and he does not respond to
the idea that we are at war with Islamic Fundamentalism, aka Islamism, and
not just a few Jihadists.
Lawrence
-----Original Message-----
From: lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of Omar Kusturica
Sent: Sunday, April 16, 2006 12:37 AM
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: The US Army in mutiny?
--- Lawrence Helm <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> No one can be an Arabist that hasn't lived with them
> for years.
*One would think so, yet Bernard Lewis, Martin Kramer,
Daniel Pipes and others have managed to pass
themselves as authorities on Islam and Arabs without
having ever lived in any Arab or Muslim countries. I
guess that we could refer to them as "New Arabists."
In regard to recent discussions he
> is perhaps more in
> sympathy with Fukuyama, Roy, & Kepel than with
> authors I find more credible.
*I thought that you find Fukuyama credible ? (You
seemed to until he started saying some things you
didn't want to hear, anyway.)
> But a great number of other very knowledgeable
> people such as Amir Taheri,
> Kenneth Timmerman, Jonathan Fenby, Bruce Bawer,
> Mohammad Mohaddessin, Ilan
> Berman, Claire Berlinski, Jean Bethke Elshtain,
> David Horowitz, Daniel
> Pipes, Bernard Lewis, Samuel P. Huntington, Thomas
> P. M. Barnett, Henry
> Munson, Jr., Victor Davis Hanson, Robert Kagan,
> Richard Miniter, George
> Friedman, Paul Berman, Bevin Alexander, and David
> Selbourne believe the
> administration is (more or less) on the right track.
*What's the point of this roll call ? Don't you think
that we can name intelligent people (assuming that the
ones you name above are) who agree with our views ?
O.K.
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