Abstract: The Middle East without Illusions The Strong Horse: Power, Politics, and Clash of Arab Civilizations, by Lee Smith, Doubleday, 2010, 239 pp. What is key to understanding Middle East? Sometimes a perceptive outsider can grasp political culture of a state or a region better than a native observer or an academic. Lee Smith is such a person, offering a revealing anecdote for each occasion. Smith is knowledgeable with regard to political doctrines of pan-Arabism (qawmiyya), homeland nationalism (wataniyya), or Pan-Islam, and he is able to look beyond them. The is a metaphor and symbol for type of strength that evokes empathy for Osama Bin Laden among Arab masses and drives a seemingly liberal Egyptian academic, Dr. Saad Eddin Ibrahim, to support Hizballah. According to Smith, Arabs want a winner - a strong horse, not a dead one. Smith fulfills a role in Middle East that is similar yet more difficult than that of Alexis de Tocqueville in America, William Shirer in Nazi Germany, or Rebecca West in Balkans. This is a tough assignment - tougher than an American assaying Germany or a Frenchman discovering America. Successfully studying Middle East requires crossing tremendous divides of language and culture, and few Western observers, especially journalists, are willing to expend amount of time and effort needed to acquire necessary linguistic and cultural skills. Like Samuel Huntington, Smith says that there is a civilizational conflict, but, for him, it is not so much Islamic East clashing against West. It is more of a clash within Arab-Islamic As Smith says, the clash that led to 9/11 was less conflict between West and Islam than conflict between Arabs themselves about who will decide who is a true Muslim or a true Arab. This is a violent discourse whose language is not so much Arabic as it is language of power, used not just by nations but by entities - organizations and pseudo-states - that still operate on a tribal level, meting out violence to earn respect and establish a pecking order. Smith's insight into continuing tribal nature of Arab politics is not uniquely his. For example, Philip Carl Salzman and, earlier, Ernest Gellner published similar insights, but Smith buttresses his observations with telling incidents.1 This kind of analysis is a bracing antidote to politically-correct bromides offered by too many Western statesmen who think ouster of an Arab autocrat (Egypt or Tunisia) or defeat of an Arab totalitarian (Libya or Iraq) automatically leads to democracy. Smith's sober discussion should be required reading for civil servants who are officially described as intelligence officers but who are challenged when it comes to seeing proverbial dots, let alone connecting them.2 Smith cites medieval Arab historian Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406) for enunciating what I call strong horse principle - not Western imperialism, nor Zionism, nor Washington policy makers - ... ha[ve] determined fundamental character of Arabic-speaking Middle East. Instead, he says, bin Ladenism is not drawn from extremist fringe but represents political and social norm. That norm, Smith asserts, is constant search for power - Iraq invading Kuwait (1990), Egypt invading Yemen (1960s), PLO trying to unseat Hashemites in Jordan (1970), among many examples. …
Publication Year: 2011
Publication Date: 2011-04-01
Language: en
Type: article
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