Sunday, August 08, 2004

The Investigation: U.S. Says Man Had Ties to Plot to Disrupt Vote

Good weekend reading. Oh, and just bought Imperial Hubris. More later.

The New York Times > Washington > The Investigation: U.S. Says Man Had Ties to Plot to Disrupt Vote

3 comments:

TigerHawk said...

I just bought Imperial Hubris, too. It will be interesting.

I've been reading a lot of stuff that is center-left on foreign policy - Rogue Nation, Allies At War, Plan of Attack. None of them dispose of the real argument to beat on Iraq, which is Kenneth Pollack's book The Threatening Storm.

Anyway, I'm working on the Mother of All Blog Posts on the Iraq war, which I hope to roll out in September at some point.

9:49 PM
Another Person said...

No, haven't read Clark's book. I really only bought Imperial Hubris because it didn't seem to be ideologically right or left. So far, my feeling is that Scheuer (anonymous) is matter of factly correct in some assertions, while others are interpretive (of these latter ones, about 1/3 ring true for me somewhat and the remaining 2/3rds seem forced).

His central contention (that muslims hate us for what we do, not who we are) seems broadly right. I used to live in Egypt and have travelled throughout the Middle East and I was never accosted for having freedom of speech in the US. I did have encounters that bordered on the unfriendly about Israel & Iraq, though.

Hubris' assertionn about the loving relationship that muslims have with their god and the Ummah generally is far to general to offer real guidance on constructing a foreign policy for the Arab world. To the extent that the Ummah thinks alike about the West's influence in the world and 's role as the antidote to that influence, we can say that Saudi-funded madrassas and exported Wahabbism have shaped that response. It is not correct to say that the Ummah simply has an inherently coherent body-politic that responds to perceived threats in the same way. Mass communication technologies and the moral authority that come from having the two sanctuaries in their lands have allowed the Wahabbists to dominate the debate as to what is a real (true) muslim.

I hope to write my own Mother of All Blogs (MOAB) on US forgien policy after I finish Hubris and reread Ferguson's Colussus.

1:51 PM
Another Person said...

Where the word got cut next to the apostrophe, it should read "and Islam's influence on it"

1:53 PM

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)