Damn Arabists

Good thing the Bush administration didn't listen to those clown in the Intelligence Community:

Months before the invasion of Iraq, U.S. intelligence agencies predicted that it would likely spark violent sectarian divides and provide al-Qaeda with new opportunities in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a report released yesterday by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Analysts warned that war in Iraq also could provoke Iran to assert its regional influence and "probably would result in a surge of political Islam and increased funding for terrorist groups" in the Muslim world.

Spencer has more. It's remarkable to recall that for a couple of years following 9/11 actual knowledge of Middle Eastern countries was considered a disqualification for offering opinions about Iraq. "Arabist" was purely a term of abuse.

Comments

According to George Packer, in the first several months of the Central Provisional Authority's existence, in the thousands of people employed by that body, the number of people who spoke Arabic totalled four.

(that was a very poorly constructed sentence)

Posted by Freddie | May 26, 2007 3:24 PM

Did any Democrats in the Senate or House read this report before voting to authorize the war, or were they dismissive of Arabists as well?

Posted by Fred | May 26, 2007 3:30 PM

I remember that period very well. I'm not sure I like the term "Arabist", but knowing what the hell you were talking about was literally spelled out as "going native".

Posted by Ed Marshall | May 26, 2007 3:31 PM

'Arabists' or 'Realists'? Link this finding with Krauthammer's statement in the post below, and you have the world according to Kagan/Kristol/Krauthammer.

Remember, under the Provisional Authority any one with expertise in their field was ignored and bypassed. You just needed to be (literally) politically correct. This is how we ended up with Young Republican undergraduates running the Iraqi National Bank.

'We create our own reality'. We're into the POST-relaity world here--SURrealism. Salvador Dali could have done no better himself.

Posted by twit | May 26, 2007 3:49 PM

Conscilience strikes, at TPM:

[Noted Arabist Patrick] Lang went to see [Doug Feith], he recalled during a May 7 panel discussion at the University of the District of Columbia.

"He was sitting there munching a sandwich while he was talking to me," Lang recalled, "which I thought was remarkable in itself, but he also had these briefing papers -- they always had briefing papers, you know -- about me.

"He's looking at this stuff, and he says, 'I've heard of you. I heard of you.'

"He says, 'Is it really true that you really know the Arabs this well, and that you speak Arabic this well? Is that really true? Is that really true?'

"And I said, 'Yeah, that's really true.'

"That's too bad," Feith said.

The audience howled.

"That was the end of the interview," Lang said. "I'm not quite sure what he meant, but you can work it out."

--

Talking about how awesome our will is was a lot more fun than getting bogged down in all those stupid liberal facts.

Posted by Elvis Elvisberg | May 26, 2007 4:22 PM

Now hold on there a minute Matt, let us not be unfair. If your name was Ajami or Lewis then, well, then your status as an Orientalist and your knowledge of Arabic (and the Arab mind etc.) was lauded.

Posted by Castorp | May 26, 2007 4:45 PM

That's letting the Bushies off a little too easily.

Many of their policies helped create the sectarian battle going on now.

Posted by alphie | May 26, 2007 7:54 PM

Gross criminal neglegence. Impechment may no longer be a realistic option, but there shoud be some serious investigations to determine criminal culpability. A lot of needless US and Iraqi deaths from this recklessness and there will be a need for justice and retribution.

Posted by erict | May 26, 2007 9:01 PM

Nobody told me Matty's friend Spence For Hire had his own blog on Bluggered. Nobody tells me anything.

Posted by Linus | May 26, 2007 10:23 PM

It's remarkable to recall that for a couple of years following 9/11 actual knowledge of Middle Eastern countries was considered a disqualification for offering opinions about Iraq. "Arabist" was purely a term of abuse.

Why do you think it's any different now? Those 'couple of years following 9/11' have several more years or decades to go.

Posted by otto | May 26, 2007 11:27 PM

The old Arabists were typically descendents of Protestant missionaries families who went to the Near East in the 19th Century. Steve Kerr, a sharpshooter on Michael Jordan's Bulls, was the scion of an old WASP family that had been involved in the Middle East for generations. When I was at UCLA in 1982, his father Malcolm was vice-chancellor, but he left that cushy job to become the head of the American University of Beirut in the middle of the Lebanese civil war. He was assassinated in Beirut in 1984.

The traditional Arabists were hammered from the postmodernist left for their "Orientalism," as Edward Said famously alleged in 1978. Weakened in their base in academia by the multiculturalist left who sneered at the Arabists for actually knowing a lot about the Arab world (as opposed to just knowing about what Westerners had written about the Arab world, like Said's followers), the Arabists were then easier pickings for the neocons in Washington who loathed their lack of enthusiasm for Israel.

Posted by Steve Sailer | May 27, 2007 1:45 AM

"It's remarkable to recall that for a couple of years following 9/11 actual knowledge of Middle Eastern countries was considered a disqualification for offering opinions about Iraq."

It would indeed be remarkable if it were so. Can you offer any substantion for such a claim? (The fact the GW Bush did not listen to anyone with expertise in any field much less Iraq is not germane as GW is sui generis.)

Posted by David Sucher | May 27, 2007 2:11 AM

The traditional Arabists were hammered from the postmodernist left for their "Orientalism," as Edward Said famously alleged in 1978.

Edward Said quit cultural studies because he couldn't stand "jaw-shattering jargonistic postmodernism". I think it's WAY out there to suggest that po-mo leftists are capable of doing anything, but I don't think the word thinks what you think it means.

Posted by Ed Marshall | May 27, 2007 4:41 AM

The traditional Arabists were hammered from the postmodernist left for their "Orientalism," as Edward Said famously alleged in 1978.

Edward Said quit cultural studies because he couldn't stand "jaw-shattering jargonistic postmodernism". I think it's WAY out there to suggest that po-mo leftists are capable of doing anything, but I don't think the word thinks what you think it means.

Posted by Ed Marshall | May 27, 2007 4:41 AM

I thought that a large part of the Reagan II / Bush Jr. movement's electoral appeal was the embrace of the diffidently stupid & ignorant? I.e., right wing candidates who bellowed about how they didn't know nothin' about guvmint but they sure as hell was gunna take it apart when they got there. And 'we don't need no damn pointy-headed scientists and academics telling nobody nuthin 'bout no environment or health stuff, we just need people who know about business and Jesus.

In fact, I credit the Bush Jr. / Reagan II administration with helping to burn Americans out of their 30 year old fascination with the overtly stupid and ignorant as especially qualified for governing.

Posted by el_cid | May 27, 2007 4:42 AM

Sure, it's perfectly understandable that Edward Said, an extraordinarily cultured man, would come to dislike his followers.

But the impact of his book "Orientalism" on academia weakened the Arabists, whom he taught a generation to sneer at as "Orientalists." Obviously, no sane American government would employ Said's followers, since they didn't actually know much about the Middle East other than that they didn't like what Western Arabists had written about it. So, the neocons (e.g., Bernard Lewis) rushed into the vacuum as the chief dispenser of expertise on the Middle East, with unfortunate results.

Posted by Steve Sailer | May 27, 2007 5:08 AM

el cid:

G.W. Bush offers plenty of fat targets for criticism, but shrinking government isn't one of them; on the contrary, he added the largest entitlement program since the Johnson Administration (expanding Medicare to include drug coverage for the first time, "Part D") and dramatically expanded the scope of the Department of Education with the No Child Left Behind Act.

Next time you try to mock others for their willful ignorance, you might want to avoid parading your own ignorance.

Posted by Hortance | May 27, 2007 5:13 AM

Obviously, no sane American government would employ Said's followers, since they didn't actually know much about the Middle East...

Do you have anyone particular in mind here? I'd like to know what makes one a "follower" of Said and what they don't know about the Middle East.

Posted by inspace | May 27, 2007 7:14 AM

The old Arabists were typically descendents of Protestant missionaries families who went to the Near East in the 19th Century. Steve Kerr, a sharpshooter on Michael Jordan's Bulls, was the scion of an old WASP family that had been involved in the Middle East for generations. When I was at UCLA in 1982, his father Malcolm was vice-chancellor, but he left that cushy job to become the head of the American University of Beirut in the middle of the Lebanese civil war. He was assassinated in Beirut in 1984.

The traditional Arabists were hammered from the postmodernist left for their "Orientalism," as Edward Said famously alleged in 1978. Weakened in their base in academia by the multiculturalist left who sneered at the Arabists for actually knowing a lot about the Arab world (as opposed to just knowing about what Westerners had written about the Arab world, like Said's followers), the Arabists were then easier pickings for the neocons in Washington who loathed their lack of enthusiasm for Israel.

100% made up and meaningless.

Posted by Freddie | May 27, 2007 8:50 AM

The traditional Arabists deserved every shot they received from Said and others. There's good reason they were so weakened. Simply put, there scholarship was poor. Not all of them, but most of the "experts" in the Arabic world sucked then, and most of the "experts" in Arabic suck now equally. The good people are generally drowned out. Nothing's really changed.

Posted by Skyler | May 27, 2007 7:04 PM

re. the scorning of "arabists," this is my pet theory which i don't think i've seen made anywhere else. but i think it's yet another holdover from the "this is just like WW2 in all the ways we want it to be" sensibility of the administration. so if you read john dower's embracing defeat, about the occupation and reconstruction of japan (which you should do right now), you see that when planning the occupation the "old japan hands" were by and large excluded from the planning process and from positions of authority in the postwar occupation authority. however, this is not because knowledge of japan or japanese was considered unimportant, but rather because those japan hands had become japan hands by being close to the prewar regime and were largely excluded on the basis of those ties. it wouldn't surprise me at all if someone had half-digested the lesson on this and thought to themselves, "well if we excluded all those japan experts and japan turned out so well, we can go it alone on iraq as well" which of course ties in with the administration's overall anti-intellectual and anti-expert biases.

however, the parallel breaks down along two important dimensions: one, i don't think the doug feiths of the world were rejecting pat lang on the basis that he was (even unconsciously) a cat's paw of saddam; i mean, when i think of folks with connections to hussein, i think of "handshake" don rumsfeld and "policy committee" condi rice. second and more important, in the case of japan the rejection of a previous generation of japan hands was accomplished with the intensive training of a new generation, through language schools etc. in fact, many of the finest postwar scholars of japan (e.g. donald keene, i want to say seidenstecker as well?) got their start via language training in the army. whereas this time, the powers that be have seem to have forgone that little item as well.

anyway, just a thought ...

Posted by groobles | May 27, 2007 8:52 PM

"el cid:

G.W. Bush offers plenty of fat targets for criticism, but shrinking government isn't one of them; on the contrary, he added the largest entitlement program since the Johnson Administration (expanding Medicare to include drug coverage for the first time, "Part D") and dramatically expanded the scope of the Department of Education with the No Child Left Behind Act.

Next time you try to mock others for their willful ignorance, you might want to avoid parading your own ignorance.

Posted by Hortance | May 27, 2007 5:13 AM "
----------------------------

Wow, you really are a stupid little monkey, a sad character too.

There's not really anything in my post suggesting I was unaware of the fact that both Reagan regimes I & II (Bush Jr.) actually enlarged many government departments.

But then, I was talking about the anti-intellectual rhetoric of the Reaganite revolutionaries, and that has nothing to do with whether or not 'conservatives' are or are not conservative, or expand or shrink government at all, does it?

Surely you're not so thick as to believe that by barking your well known point that, er, duh, sumtimes the so-kald kunservativs make guvmit bigger, that this somehow means that their history of claiming to be again' guvmint vanishes?

You're just a sad little monkey desperately trying to use a recalled point which you hastily thought might apply here, and you can't really tell the difference.

Posted by El Cid | May 28, 2007 12:19 AM