My biggest problem with Kanan Makiya is not his politics really, or only his politics, more accurately. It is his personality. His conceit and self-worship is just unbearable. As far as I am concerned, his biggest problem is psychological. He is obsessed with himself--and he has every right to be obsessed with himself--but it is delusional to think that everybody is obsessed with you, just because you are so obsessed with yourself. Look at what he says about his book: "Cruelty and Silence is everywhere." This is a man who went to Iraq after the invasion hoping that the Iraqi people would cheer him in the streets; read his silly dispatches in the New Republic before and after the beginning of the war, especially the one when he called for more bombing of Iraq (when he was still safe in the US, of course), and especially of the Iraqi tv building, where civilians worked. He and Paul Wolfowitz, I am told, really expected that he would be so widely known in Iraq, and that he would become a prime minister or president of occupied Iraq, that was before any of them heard of the Grand(not really) Ayatollah. Look what he says here: "I was almost a pariah in Lebanon for ten years, because of Cruelty and Silence." I can assure him that he need not worry; nobody knows who he is in Lebanon, and nobody knows his Cruelty and Silence (you may read my long review essay of that book ("Arab Intellectuals on Trial) in Middle East Journal, 1993.) And notice that he has to credit an Israeli mentor for his communist years, just as he now has plenty of Israeli mentors in his neo-conservative years. That's nice. And also, I don't need Makiya to pontificate on Lebanon now. I did not enjoy his Iraq "expertise" and will enjoy less his expertise on any other Arab country, his position at Brandeis notwithstanding. But you have to really admire the politics of Middle East studies at Brandeis. You could be an architect (as Makiya is although he never completed his degree at MIT I am told), you could be a carpenter, you could be a chef, you could be a fire fighter, but you will be permitted to teach about Islam and Arab politics if you have the right pro-Israeli and anti-Arab [people] politics. So Makiya says--his typical generalizations a la Patai: "There's not a single Lebanese who thinks anybody but Syria was behind the assassination." Well, not true. If you follow Lebanese public opinion surveys (and they were cited on my site on many times on this issue), you will know that in fact many Lebanese blame either US or Israel for Hariri's assassination although many also do blame Syria. So wrong again. And look at how this "native informants" informs about Arabs: "And, to show you the worlds of ignorance we live in here." So he must be lucky to not be afflicted with the ignorance that Arabs are afflicted with. But wait: in his book (cited above) he says that the happiest day of his life was when he obtained his British citizenship. Was he talking about Britain then? And he of course lies when he tells his admiring interviewer that Arabs support Zarqawi. That is an outright lie. Not even the fundamentalist extremists are supporting Zarqawi in the Arab world. And by the way: did he mean this cliche: "All of a sudden the shoe was on the other foot entirely." or was he aiming at another shoe cliche, but got confused? And Makiya--notice yourselves--can't stop bragging that he had read Arendt. Good for you, Makiya. OK, Makiya: you read Arendt, and you have been bragging about that accomplishment for 15 years now. What do you want? A blender? (thanks Mouin)