"In the past week The Times has published an important interview with Egypt’s president, Mohamed Morsi (“Egypt’s Leader Spells Out Terms for U.S.-Arab Ties,”
front page, Sept. 23), and Pankaj Mishra’s Op-Ed essay, “America’s
Inevitable Retreat From the Middle East.” What they have in common is
the argument that the United States can no longer act as an imperial
power in the region, dictating actions and responses from Arabs or
Muslims. Part but not all of this has to do with American support of
Israel.
Propping up dictators (Egypt, Tunisia, the shah of Iran) or overthrowing
them (Iraq) and assuming that Washington can control the results will
no longer work.
I am reminded of a quote from Samuel P. Huntington’s much misrepresented
book “The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order”: “The
West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas, values or
religion ... but rather by its superiority in applying organized
violence. Westerners often forget this fact, non-Westerners never do.”
CHARLES D. SMITH
Tucson, Sept. 24, 2012"
Tucson, Sept. 24, 2012"
PS Charles, of course, wrote the best college textbook on the Arab-Israeli conflict. I remember he told me after the first edition that a British publisher said about his manuscript that it was not sensitive enough to the Palestinian side, while the American publisher said (about the same manuscript) that it was not sensitive enough to Israel.
