Center for a New American Security

For the past several months, I've been working on a big project related to U.S. policy toward the Middle East at the Center for a New American Security. (My research partner is Duke's Bruce Jentleson, whose research I have long admired.) During that time, I've had the opportunity to interact with a wide array of former and current U.S. policy makers as well as the kinds of na'er-do-well academic specialists on the region whose work I have always found to be thought-provoking. One thing virtually everyone can agree on is the dilemma in which U.S. policy makers find themselves: in a region that is rapidly democratizing, the United States is over-invested in the least democratic institutions and regimes in the region.

Where things get tricky is when one tries to decide what to do about that. The principle problem is one that has been in my head watching more violent crackdowns in Bahrain and Egypt: the very source of U.S. leverage against the regimes in Bahrain and Egypt is that which links the United States to the abuses of the regime in the first place. So if you want to take a "moral" stand against the abuses of the regime in Bahrain and remove the Fifth Fleet, congratulations! You can feel good about yourself for about 24 hours -- or until the time you realize that you have just lost the ability to schedule a same-day meeting with the Crown Prince to press him on the behavior of Bahrain's security forces. Your leverage, such as it was, has just evaporated. The same is true in Egypt. It would feel good, amidst these violent clashes between the Army and protesters, to cut aid to the Egyptian Army. But in doing so, you also reduce your own leverage over the behavior of the Army itself.

At some point, of course, the United States has no choice to cut all ties to a regime or institution. We are not, I feel strongly, quite there in either Egypt or Bahrain. But as I hear of more and more of my friends in the region beaten with crowbars and pelted with rubber bullets by the forces charged with protecting the citizenry, it's fair to wonder whether or not the United States is using the leverage it has to its greatest effect.

The photojournalist Bryan Denton has been a friend for several years, and this past year has been a career year for him. Those who followed the reporting of C. J. "Chris" Chivers from Libya probably also know of Bryan's photographs. Bryan and I caught up a few weeks ago at the wedding of some friends, and I convinced him, late one night, to answer a few questions for the blog. What follows is some pretty incredible testimony from one of the bravest men in the business.

What a year! I hardly know where to begin, given all that you and your cameras have seen over the past 10 months. Let's begin with something you didn't see -- Egypt. After living in the Middle East for all these years, you missed the kickoff to the Arab Spring!

Ha, I wish I had been able to be there. I was stuck for most of February on a small base in southern Helmand Province, embedded with U.S. Marines on an assignment that had taken some time to get set up so I couldn't get out of it. I was leaving Beirut for this assignment on January 29th, just as Egypt's protests were beginning and I remember having goosebumps as I watched al-Jazeera in the airport with virtually everyone else on my flight to Dubai, in total silence. I knew, after Tunisia, and based on the size of the protests I was seeing on TV, that the region was changing in a way no one had called or could have foreseen. Sitting it out in Helmand was tough, but I came back just in time to be in position for Libya, once the revolution there really got under way, and the borders opened.

Man, Libya was an entirely different kettle of fish from Afghanistan. As someone who has always tried to make myself as small as possible while under fire, I do not envy any 6-foot, 8-inch combat photojournalist trying to cover high-intensity conflict. Talk us through the beginning of that campaign. What were some of the biggest challenges you faced as a photojournalist?

I think in the beginning, myself and most of my colleagues thought that Libya's revolution was going to be more tear gas and rubber bullets than a conventional war, including combined artillery, armor and airpower. Virtually no one I know, myself included, even brought body armor into Libya in late February/early March, and I, despite my time spent in Afghanistan over the past years, was in no way prepared for the level of combat that kicked off in early march. I don't know if anyone was.

Most of us had been in Benghazi covering the aftermath of that city's uprising for about a week when Qaddafi forces attacked the city of Brega on March 2. We'd spent the previous two days documenting the rebels as they were in the very beginning stages of starting to think about some kind of self defense force, as many of them were calling it. Mostly, it was young students washing 14.5mm ammunition that had long been in storage, putting it into links, and then spending their mornings learning to line up in formation. On March 2, I was at one of these training camps when news broke that Qaddafi loyalist forces had attacked Brega, and the camp emptied out as men took to the road. It was as if all of Benghazi had decided to fight that day, with hundreds of cars full of men and boys, mostly unarmed, heading towards Brega. By the end of that day, the rebels had repelled what in retrospect was a small probing force of about 45 trucks, simply through sheer numbers of bodies on the road. Qaddafi had begun using airstrikes though, and I remember going back to Benghazi that day thinking that the revolution in LIbya had now become a military conflict.

I have always been pretty gung-ho, but what followed in the coming days, as the rebels continued to push west, bouyed by what they saw as a victory at Brega, and their destiny, along the coast was a hard introduction to a kind of fear I hadn't felt before while working. They encountered relatively light resistance up through Ras Lanuf and into Bin Jawad on March 5, where there was a day-long celebration by rebels and some residents. I had bought a bottle of Jameson with me that I was planning on cracking open once we arrived in Tripoli, and at that time, I was convinced that was going to be in a week or two tops. The next morning, March 6, we woke up to an entirely different reality.

Qaddafi troops, not in trucks, but in tanks and aided by loyalists in Bin Jawad had begun to push back against the rabble/horde of mainly unarmed rebels. The force had come from Sirte, the garrison town that is now under siege, and they were firing 122mm and 107mm rockets, T-72 tank main gun rounds, mortars, Qaddafi's airforce was dropping unguided iron bombs on groups of rebels massing on the road—which at the time was all the rebels really knew how to do, and Mi-24 Hind attack helicopters were straffing rebel positions. I had four of the most harrowing close calls of my career that day, all within the span of about four or five hours, as did a number of my colleagues. By the end of the day my fight or flight mechanism was completely shot, and I was the closest I've ever been to all out panic — it took a lot to keep my composure.

What compounded the fear most was the realization that many of the things I'd taken for granted while embedded with U.S. troops, like a robust Medevac chain, advanced communications and situational awareness tools, and all the other goodies that I'd grown accustomed to were absent. Our access was total and completely unfettered, which I think is why most of us braved it through those days ... the pictures, if you could muster the courage, were amazingly dramatic, but for the most part, and this became a theme throughout the Libyan conflict, we were working in the blind, and basing decisions with very real deadly consequences on very little information, if any at all.

The conflict turned nasty quickly. But the rebels improved over time. You had previously spent a lot of time with seasoned U.S. troops in Afghanistan and know the difference between well-trained regular units and the kinds of citizen militias that were fighting in Libya. Talk the readership of this blog through what you were able to witness in terms of battlefield learning and innovation.

The learning curve for the rebels was most certainly steep. I think the best way I've heard them described was by Chivers, who referred to them as "accidental combatants," a term I've always thought was pretty prescient. They were engineers, lawyers, students, unemployed youth, and I don't think at the outset, they anticipated such a long grinding conflict that would take so many of their lives, and require so much innovation in the field. There wasn't a lot, if any combat experience within their collective ranks at the beginning, and everything they did — especially in the early days, was learned through a school of pretty hard knocks. No place better illustrated this than Misrata — which was under siege for two solid months. By the time we arrived there in mid April, it was like a mad scientists workshop of urban warfare tactics. They'd taught themselves how to move between buildings by knocking out "rat-holes" dug through multiple walls along the frontline, and had turned downtown Misrata — essentially a circular network of roads that link up at various roundabouts—into a virtual maze by blocking off streets at various points with shipping containers and sand berms. In the beginning, they built these fortifications by putting a brave sole in a bulldozer or forklift, and having him brave blistering machine gun and RPG fire in order to build them in place, when they lost enough people and bulldozers, they started welding steel plates onto the bulldozers. Electricians and steel workers who had worked in the oil industry perviously were now working in make-shift weapons workshops, mounting all kinds of things onto the backs of pickup trucks as rebel units filtered in for refits or repairs, suggesting tweaks here and there. From an objective point of view, watching a civilian population it was awe inspiring to watch. In April, maybe two out of five rebels in Misrata had a weapon, and most of them were fighting from their neighborhoods.

No amount of training can give a man absolute belief in his cause. Most American troops I've spent time with in Afghanistan, where politics and fighting are constantly happening side by side, and often times at odds with one another, fight as much for each other as they do for their country. A lot of the soldiering I've seen, in a variety of places, relies on brotherhood more than rank to hold a unit together. In Misrata, what they may have lacked in training was replaced by this sheer will and belief in their cause and the notion of their city as a cohesive family unit. One thing Americans haven't had in over a hundred years, thankfully, is the experience of fighting over our own physical land. Fighting for something physical, like your life, or your house, rather than something almost existential, like your security changes the dynamic completely.

I remember this one day, in the hospital, a rebel came in badly burned. I was talking to his friend later who said that he'd been been in Birwaya, west of the city, when a Qaddafi forces tank had begun pushing on their position. According to his friend, the man had charged the tank with a grenade and a molotav cocktail, and in the process of trying to climb onto the moving tank to drop the grenade in the hatch, the molotov cocktail had exploded and engulfed him in flame. Perhaps not the smartest of tactic if self preservation is concerned, and there were plenty of similar cases of negligence in handling weapons that come along with an untrained fighting force, but the belief one has to have in their cause to charge a tank with a grenade? You can't buy, train, or equip a soldier with that ...

This has been a very tough year for photojournalists. First, at the end of the last year, Joao Silva was horrifically wounded in southern Afghanistan. Then several journalists -- including your friends Chris Hondros and Tim Hetherington -- were killed in Libya this past spring. What effects have these events had on you as a professional? And is there anything readers of the blog should know about these men and the other men and women who put themselves in harm's way to bring us the news here in the United States?

It has been a brutal year for our group, which is a small one. Joao Silva's wounding in Afghanistan, as well as Tyler Hicks' and Lynsey Addario's capture in Libya in March — both of whom I was working with just days before they were captured -- had me very rattled before the loss of Chris and Tim. More than any others, Tyler, Joao and Lynsey have been my mentors in covering conflict through the early years of my career in places like Georgia and Lebanon. I was lucky enough to get my start in this business by working alongside them, looking up to them both as photographers, and as individuals, and as a novice, they've often helped me gauge the safety of situations. What each of those three went through, before Chris and Tim passed, was chilling in that I think for the first time I really understood that this work potentially has serious consequences, no matter how much experience you have. Tim and Chris' deaths didn't really confirm this any more than it needed to be, but I still think about both of them a lot and haven't been able to shake the sadness knowing that both of them somehow ran out of luck, together, in Misrata, at such bright times in their lives.

None of us are immune, and we live and die by the choices we make in the field. I think Chris and Tim both knew this better than most. Both were brave in their reporting, but mostly to me, what I think about, is how thoughtful they both were. Tim I only met in Benghazi, but over two weeks or so working around him and talking over pictures in the evenings, I was in awe of how he could freestyle incredibly sensitive narrative jazz into a visual record based on what he was seeing. In an industry known for its large personalities, he traveled almost directly from the red carpet at the Oscars to the western gate of Ajdabiyeh, and arrived with no pretense or posturing. I, like most I imagine, met him and knew immediately that he was someone genuine and special, and am sad that I didn't get the opportunity to know him better.

Hondros I'd known since 2008, when we had both covered the war in Georgia, and we had hung out in Afghanistan, New York and Egypt several times in the intervening years. Chris took his work quite seriously, and I was always struck by his ability to look at situations in a very un-stylized way and let what was actually happening come through the image. It sounds easy, but it's not, and he was one of the best in the business in my opinion. His last set of photographs from Misrata, of rebels storming a building on Tripoli street, are as terrifying as they are a perfect example of his dedication to his work — especially knowing that he went back out to keep working after taking a break to file them.

Along the same lines, we spoke at length last weekend about risk mitigation in combat -- a subject I also discussed with Chris Chivers recently. Tell us about your philosophy for managing and mitigating risk in your work. What steps do you take to report what you need to report while doing so in as smart and safe a way as possible?

After March 6, which I wrote about above, I knew that covering the war in Libya would require a significant rethink in terms of managing risk if I was going to continue to cover it on a long term basis. I was extremely lucky to have had the chance to work with Chivers on my second trip, which included our Misrata reporting. I had some idea about what I was doing, but Chris (Chivers) can look at a battlefield, through all the light and noise, and see it as a three dimensional and dynamic entity. As we probed the front in Brega, and later, the frontlines in Misrata, and the Western Mountains, we came up with a system that both of us were comfortable with. As soon as we were within range of artillery, we wore our body armor and kevlar if we were outside or driving, and would only travel to the frontlines if there was news or a specific story that would justify the risk. Once there, we would do our reporting, get the material that we needed, and then get out.

Artillery was probably the single greatest threat during much of our time reporting together, and there were instances on the road to Brega early on that had led us to believe that the teams directing Qaddafi's rockets, mortars and artillery were striking pre-registered targets on the map such as intersections, or key installations — many of which were occupied by rebels, so hanging around at these positions just waiting for something to happen was potentially quite dangerous.

What was amazing was that by not simply chasing the noise, as I watched many photographers do — it's a natural reaction for many, including myself — we were able to do what was, in my opinion, some of the better reporting, particularly from Misrata, on the gears and moving parts of the rebellion.

I always end these interviews with something related to food and drink. You and I have together polished off several bottles of Laphroig on the balconies of Beirut. Where are the three best places in the Middle East to sit down with your photojournalist peers and swap stories over a cold beer or glass of Scotch?

A great part of this year and the last has been drinking less to be honest. Afghanistan and Libya are both fairly booze-free zones for me. I'm realizing that I need to start exercising more, and living healthy if I want to keep doing this job. That said, when in Beirut, one can never go wrong going for a cocktail at Kayan in Gemayze, or on my balcony as you mentioned, particularly if there's something on my BBQ. I was just in Sidi Bou Said in Tunisia as well, and that place nearly gives Beirut a run for it's money.

For those of you in New York City, an exhibit of Bryan's photos will be running from 20 October until 19 Novemberat the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. The rest of you can follow Bryan on Twitter at@bdentonphoto.

I have nothing against Mitt Romney. He seems like a good and serious guy, even if I thought he pandered to primary voters on torture in the last election. (And got slapped down pretty hard by John McCain in a debate, if I recall.) And I think Gov. Romney has a list of pretty good advisors on defense and foreign policy, including Eliot Cohen and Meaghan O'Sullivan, who are both bright and honest scholars and thinkers. But when choosing a co-chair for your Middle East policy team, surely you can do better than to appoint someone who was party to the brutal, sectarian Lebanese Civil War. Surely you can do better than to choose someone who was a partisan in that conflict, no?

Understatement of the Year? Fouad Ajami on the United States after 9/11:

America ... wasn't brilliant at everything it attempted in Arab lands.

I am off for a week's vacation on the family farm in East Tennessee and will be away from the blog during that time, so I wanted to highlight a few reading suggestions while I am away.

1. I took a little good-natured teasing for suggesting over Twitter that I can often find policy-relevant research in the American Political Science Review and the International Journal of Middle East Studies, but this month's IJMES really does have a great roundtable discussion that will be of interest to those studying the Middle East from a policy perspective and, specifically, what is taking place in the "Arab Spring."

In Foreign Affairs a few months back, Greg Gause wrote:

Scholars did not predict or appreciate the variable ways in which Arab armies would react to the massive, peaceful protests this year. This oversight occurred because, as a group, Middle East experts had largely lost interest in studying the role of the military in Arab politics.

A number of scholars do, though, take the study of Arab militaries quite seriously. And this month's IJMES features a roundtable discussion on "Rethinking the Study of Middle East Militaries" with short essays by Yezid Sayigh, Roger Owen, Robert Springborg, Oren Barak and others. I highly recommend policy-interested scholars of the region check it out.

[Warning: what follows has nothing to do with the topics normally considered on this blog. Proceed at your own risk.]

2. I am getting a little tired of political journalists and their thumb-nail deep understanding of trends within and strands of evangelical and fundamentalist Christian thought in America. Even as good an article as Ryan Lizza's profile of Michelle Bachmann -- which I enjoyed -- left something to be desired in its treatment of Francis Schaeffer and evangelical theology. Most treatments of the religious beliefs of Bachmann and also Rick Perry that I have been reading over the past few weeks are clumsy at the least and intolerant and ignorant at the worst. Watching Bachmann on Meet the Press on Sunday, for example, I was shaking my head in disbelief as the candidate advanced her "understanding" of "economics," but once David Gregory started grilling her on her theological beliefs, I started considering the whole exchange unfair, uninformed and inappropriate.*

If political journalists are going to start writing about the theological beliefs of people like Bachmann and Perry, they should first take the time to study evangelicalism and fundamentalisms within American Christianity in a serious way. One great, pithy (just 224 pages!) introduction to the subject, even if it is a bit dated, is George Marsden's Understanding Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism. Another great book, which is really a criticism of evangelical anti-intellectualism and should be read by believers and non-believers alike, is Mark Noll's The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind. Reading these books -- or, at the very least, the first book -- will better equip Americans of all trades and political stripes to speak intelligently about the evangelical and, in cases, fundamentalist beliefs of some candidates for the presidency.

I suspect that as many of these politicians have been as influenced by John Stott and Martyn Lloyd-Jones as by R. J. Rushdoony and J. Gresham Machen, and it's important for political reporters to know the differences and similarities between them all if they are going to start throwing out names and ideas as being relevant to the election.

*Look, I realize that it's the politicians who have opened to door to a discussion of their faiths by making such a big deal out of them in front of prospective voters. But last Sunday, it seemed as if David Gregory was telling Michelle Bachmann she was theologically wrong, and it just struck me as terribly unfair. For one brief moment, such did Gregory's line of questioning bother me, I found myself actually rooting for Bachmann.

Each year, around this time in the (lunar) calendar, Western newspapers are usually filled with stories about the latest exciting Ramadan soap opera everyone is watching. Nothing happens during Ramadan, the story goes, so most reporting on the Arabic-speaking world is of the human interest variety.

It's worth pausing to consider, then, how remarkable this year has been and continues to be. I woke up this morning to images of Hosni Mubarak in a cage, on trial in Egypt. This is a stunning image for me to see, so I can only imagine the effect it has on 83m Egyptians and about 250m other people in the region.

Elsewhere in the Arabic-speaking world, meanwhile, violent civil wars and upheavals continue to press for the fall of the Qadhdhafi regime in Libya, the al-Asad regime in Syria, and the Saleh regime in Yemen. If I had to place my bets, I would bet all will ultimately and bloodily be successful.

Remarkable. Ramadan mubarak indeed.

Let's give Gov. Tim Pawlenty some credit for wading into the Middle East in a serious policy speech yesterday. I'm going to pick through it in this post, taking major issue with some things he said and commenting in a more neutral manner on others. Ready? Okay...

I want to speak plainly this morning about the opportunities and the dangers we face today in the Middle East.  The revolutions now roiling that region offer the promise of a more democratic, more open, and a more prosperous Arab world.  From Morocco to the Arabian Gulf, the escape from the dead hand of oppression is now a real possibility.  

Agreed.

Now is not the time to retreat from freedom’s rise.

Agreed. Though it was right here that I started to think about how the United States can effectively respond to what is taking place in the Middle East with limited and reduced resources.

Yet at the same time, we know these revolutions can bring to power forces that are neither democratic nor forward-looking.  Just as the people of Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Syria and elsewhere see a chance for a better life of genuine freedom, the leaders of radical Islam see a chance to ride political turmoil into power. 

Probably true. Thought not chief among my own concerns about the revolutions in the Arabic-speaking world.

The United States has a vital stake in the future of this region.  We have been presented with a challenge as great as any we have faced in recent decades.  And we must get it right.  The question is, are we up to the challenge?  

Probably not, actually. Gov. Pawlenty's teammates in the Congress aim to slash the International Affairs budget.

My answer is, of course we are.  

Oh.

If we are clear about our interests and guided by our principles, we can help steer events in the right direction.  Our nation has done this in the past -- at the end of World War II, in the last decade of the Cold War, and in the more recent war on terror … and we can do it again.

Sometimes, though, as we have seen in the Middle East, our interests do not match up with our principles.

But President Obama has failed to formulate and carry out an effective and coherent strategy in response to these events.  

This is certainly true. But I have a little sympathy for the president here. It's tough to formulate a coherent regional strategy when our interests vary to such a high degree from country to country.

He has been timid, slow, and too often without a clear understanding of our interests or a clear commitment to our principles.

Meh. I actually see the guy's advisors trying to balance our interests against our principles, which is not the easiest thing to do in a region with Saudi Arabia in it.

And parts of the Republican Party now seem to be trying to out-bid the Democrats in appealing to isolationist sentiments.  This is no time for uncertain leadership in either party.  The stakes are simply too high, and the opportunity is simply too great. 

Well! At this point in the speech, I started to wonder whether or not we were about to get a taste of the full-throated freedom agenda stuff that kind of died in the maelstrom of Iraq and Israel's debacle in Lebanon in 2006.

No one in this Administration predicted the events of the Arab spring - but the freedom deficit in the Arab world was no secret.  

True.

For 60 years, Western nations excused and accommodated the lack of freedom in the Middle East.

True.

That could not last.  The days of comfortable private deals with dictators were coming to an end in the age of Twitter, You Tube, and Facebook.

True.

And history teaches there is no such thing as stable oppression.

True.

President Obama has ignored that lesson of history.  Instead of promoting democracy – whose fruit we see now ripening across the region – he adopted a murky policy he called “engagement.”  

Not sure how one is the opposite of the other, though I'm now sensing where this is going...

“Engagement” meant that in 2009, when the Iranian ayatollahs stole an election, and the people of that country rose up in protest, President Obama held his tongue.  His silence validated the mullahs, despite the blood on their hands and the nuclear centrifuges in their tunnels.  

 

While protesters were killed and tortured, Secretary Clinton said the Administration was “waiting to see the outcome of the internal Iranian processes.”  She and the president waited long enough to see the Green Movement crushed.  

I'm sure the administration has some good reasons for not wanting to openly side with the protesters in 2009 in Iran, but that decision has made the administration an easy target for the other party.

“Engagement” meant that in his first year in office, President Obama cut democracy funding for Egyptian civil society by 74 percent.  As one American democracy organization noted, this was “perceived by Egyptian democracy activists as signaling a lack of support.”  They perceived correctly.  It was a lack of support.  

Interesting. I had not heard this. It would, of course, be interesting for Gov. Pawlenty to point out here that his own party now controls the purse strings. Should the Congress now spend more on these kinds of democracy promotion programs abroad?

“Engagement” meant that when crisis erupted in Cairo this year, as tens of thousands of protesters gathered in Tahrir Square, Secretary Clinton declared, “the Egyptian Government is stable.”  Two weeks later, Mubarak was gone.  When Secretary Clinton visited Cairo after Mubarak’s fall, democratic activist groups refused to meet with her.  And who can blame them?

Plenty of activists met with Sec. Clinton, actually, though Gov. Pawlenty is correct that the United States was on the wrong side of history on Egypt.

The forces we now need to succeed in Egypt -- the pro-democracy, secular political parties -- these are the very people President Obama cut off, and Secretary Clinton dismissed.  

This is weak sauce. You can't blame the U.S. government for the fact that secular political parties are not stronger than they are.

The Obama “engagement” policy in Syria led the Administration to call Bashar al Assad a “reformer.”  Even as Assad’s regime was shooting hundreds of protesters dead in the street, President Obama announced his plan to give Assad “an alternative vision of himself.”  Does anyone outside a therapist’s office have any idea what that means?  This is what passes for moral clarity in the Obama Administration.  

I'm with Gov. Pawlenty on this one, but there is a contradiction coming up later. Wait for it.

By contrast, I called for Assad’s departure on March 29; I call for it again today.  We should recall our ambassador from Damascus; and I call for that again today.  The leader of the United States should never leave those willing to sacrifice their lives in the cause of freedom wondering where America stands.  As President, I will not.

Cool.

We need a president who fully understands that America never “leads from behind.”  

Oh, man. Whichever advisor uttered those infamous words in front of a reporter from the New Yorker needs to be flogged.

We cannot underestimate how pivotal this moment is in Middle Eastern history.  We need decisive, clear-eyed leadership that is responsive to this historical moment of change in ways that are consistent with our deepest principles and safeguards our vital interests.

 

Opportunity still exists amid the turmoil of the Arab Spring -- and we should seize it.

Hahaha, Tim Pawlenty sounds like Brad Pitt's Achilles from that horrible Troy movie. I'm fired up, Tim! Let's storm the beach!

As I see it, the governments of the Middle East fall into four broad categories, and each requires a different strategic approach. 

Just four?

The first category consists of three countries now at various stages of transition toward democracy – the formerly fake republics in Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya.  Iraq is also in this category, but is further along on its journey toward democracy.  

 

For these countries, our goal should be to help promote freedom and democracy.  

Okay, I'll buy that.

Elections that produce anti-democratic regimes undermine both freedom and stability.  We must do more than monitor polling places.  We must redirect foreign aid away from efforts to merely build good will, and toward efforts to build good allies -- genuine democracies governed by free people according to the rule of law.  And we must insist that our international partners get off the sidelines and do the same.  

Okay, but now I'm starting to ask those questions about where the money for this will come from.

We should have no illusions about the difficulty of the transitions faced by Libya, Tunisia, and especially Egypt.  Whereas Libya is rich in oil, and Tunisia is small, Egypt is large, populous, and poor.  Among the region’s emerging democracies, it remains the biggest opportunity and the biggest danger for American interests.  

True.

Having ejected the Mubarak regime, too many Egyptians are now rejecting the beginnings of the economic opening engineered in the last decade.  

True. But that liberalization allowed Egypt's economy to grow but only benefitted a small percentage of the richest Egyptians. Sounds a lot like another country I know, actually.

We act out of friendship when we tell Egyptians, and every new democracy, that economic growth and prosperity are the result of free markets and free trade—not subsidies and foreign aid.  If we want these countries to succeed, we must afford them the respect of telling them the truth.  

Nothing controversial there. A lot of truth, in fact. Read the Economist's special briefing on the Egyptian economy for more.

In Libya, the best help America can provide to these new friends is to stop leading from behind and commit America’s strength to removing Ghadafi, recognizing the TNC as the government of Libya, and unfreezing assets so the TNC can afford security and essential services as it marches toward Tripoli.  

I'm with this. The United States either needs to focus on a) removing Qadhdhafi or b) supporting the TNC militarily and politicially. One or the other. If Gov. Pawlenty wants to do that latter, I'm down with that. By the way, there's that "leading from behind" phrase again. Expect to hear a lot more of that in 2011 and 2012.

Beyond Libya, America should always promote the universal principles that undergird freedom.  We should press new friends to end discrimination against women, to establish independent courts, and freedom of speech and the press.  We must insist on religious freedoms for all, including the region’s minorities—whether Christian, Shia, Sunni, or Bahai.  

Outstanding.

The second category of states is the Arab monarchies.  Some – like Jordan and Morocco – are engaging now in what looks like genuine reform.  This should earn our praise and our assistance.  These kings have understood they must forge a partnership with their own people, leading step by step toward more democratic societies.  These monarchies can smooth the path to constitutional reform and freedom and thereby deepen their own legitimacy.  If they choose this route, they, too, deserve our help.  

I'm skeptical of how far Jordan is going to promote reform, actually. They still have one of the more brutal secret police in the region. But okay, I'll go along with this.

But others are resisting reform. While President Obama spoke well about Bahrain in his recent speech, he neglected to utter two important words:  Saudi Arabia.  

Yup.

US-Saudi relations are at an all-time low—and not primarily because of the Arab Spring.  They were going downhill fast, long before the uprisings began.  The Saudis saw an American Administration yearning to engage Iran—just at the time they saw Iran, correctly, as a mortal enemy.  

Oh boy, where are we going with this, Gov. Pawlenty?

We need to tell the Saudis what we think, which will only be effective if we have a position of trust with them.

Relationships of trust with the Saudis are built over decades, by the way.

We will develop that trust by demonstrating that we share their great concern about Iran and that we are committed to doing all that is necessary to defend the region from Iranian aggression.

Maybe. But I have spoken with a lot of high-ranking Saudi officials and princes, and all of them agree on two things: a) the United States must attack Iran because an Iranian bomb would destabilize the region and b) the United States must not attack Iran because a U.S. strike would destabilize the region. I wish Gov. Pawlenty the best in trying to reconcile this mixed message.

At the same time, we need to be frank about what the Saudis must do to insure stability in their own country.  Above all, they need to reform and open their society.  Their treatment of Christians and other minorities, and their treatment of women, is indefensible and must change.

Amen. But this is not the way to build up a position of trust with Saudi Arabia.

We know that reform will come to Saudi Arabia—sooner and more smoothly if the royal family accepts and designs it.  It will come later and with turbulence and even violence if they resist.  The vast wealth of their country should be used to support reforms that fit Saudi history and culture—but not to buy off the people as a substitute for lasting reform.

#realtalk

The third category consists of states that are directly hostile to America.  They include Iran and Syria.  The Arab Spring has already vastly undermined the appeal of Al Qaeda and the killing of Osama Bin Laden has significantly weakened it.

True. I might have myself argued much the same thing.

The success of peaceful protests in several Arab countries has shown the world that terror is not only evil, but will eventually be overcome by good.  Peaceful protests may soon bring down the Assad regime in Syria.

Peaceful protests? Probably not. Civil war? Maybe.

The 2009 protests in Iran inspired Arabs to seek their freedom.  Similarly, the Arab protests of this year, and the fall of regime after broken regime, can inspire Iranians to seek their freedom once again.  

Let's hope.

We have a clear interest in seeing an end to Assad’s murderous regime.  By sticking to Bashar al Assad so long, the Obama Administration has not only frustrated Syrians who are fighting for freedom—it has demonstrated strategic blindness.  The governments of Iran and Syria are enemies of the United States.  They are not reformers and never will be.  They support each other.  To weaken or replace one, is to weaken or replace the other.

 

The fall of the Assad mafia in Damascus would weaken Hamas, which is headquartered there.  It would weaken Hezbollah, which gets its arms from Iran, through Syria.  And it would weaken the Iranian regime itself.    

I'm going to give Gov. Pawlenty a pass on this for the moment. You'll understand why later.

To take advantage of this moment, we should press every diplomatic and economic channel to bring the Assad reign of terror to an end.  We need more forceful sanctions to persuade Syria’s Sunni business elite that Assad is too expensive to keep backing.  We need to work with Turkey and the Arab nations and the Europeans, to further isolate the regime.  And we need to encourage opponents of the regime by making our own position very clear, right now:  Bashar al-Assad must go.  

 

When he does, the mullahs of Iran will find themselves isolated and vulnerable.  Syria is Iran’s only Arab ally.  If we peel that away, I believe it will hasten the fall of the mullahs.  And that is the ultimate goal we must pursue.  It’s the singular opportunity offered to the world by the brave men and women of the Arab Spring.

I'm with the governor here.

The march of freedom in the Middle East cuts across the region’s diversity of religious, ethnic, and political groups.  But it is born of a particular unity.  It is a united front against stolen elections and stolen liberty, secret police, corruption, and the state-sanctioned violence that is the essence of the Iranian regime’s tyranny.  

 

So this is a moment to ratchet up pressure and speak with clarity.  More sanctions.  More and better broadcasting into Iran.  More assistance to Iranians to access the Internet and satellite TV and the knowledge and freedom that comes with it.  More efforts to expose the vicious repression inside that country and expose Teheran’s regime for the pariah it is.  

Okay.

And, very critically, we must have more clarity when it comes to Iran’s nuclear program.  In 2008, candidate Barack Obama told AIPAC that he would “always keep the threat of military action on the table to defend our security and our ally Israel.”  This year, he told AIPAC “we remain committed to preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.”  So I have to ask: are all the options still on the table or not?  If he’s not clear with us, it’s no wonder that even our closest allies are confused.    

Gov. Pawlenty, I have a question: would you launch military strikes against Iran to prevent the Iranians from acquiring nuclear weapons? (y/n)

The Administration should enforce all sanctions for which legal authority already exits.  We should enact and then enforce new pending legislation which strengthens sanctions particularly against the Iranian Revolutionary Guards who control much of the Iranian economy. 

Again, what about strikes?

And in the middle of all this, is Israel. 

Actually, to the left and upper right of all this.

Israel is unique in the region because of what it stands for and what it has accomplished.  And it is unique in the threat it faces—the threat of annihilation.  It has long been a bastion of democracy in a region of tyranny and violence.  And it is by far our closest ally in that part of the world.  

 

Despite wars and terrorists attacks, Israel offers all its citizens, men and women, Jews, Christians, Muslims and, others including 1.5 million Arabs, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, the right to vote, access to independent courts and all other democratic rights.  

[Lips bitten. I suspect Arab Israelis and Palestinians living under occupation might have a few words to say, though.]

Nowhere has President Obama’s lack of judgment been more stunning than in his dealings with Israel.

 

It breaks my heart that President Obama treats Israel, our great friend, as a problem, rather than as an ally.

This is complete B.S. And Americans do not buy it.

The President seems to genuinely believe the Israeli-Palestinian conflict lies at the heart of every problem in the Middle East.  He said it Cairo in 2009 and again this year.   

This is also complete B.S. But you know who does care about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? All those Arab democrats you've been talking about for the past 10 minutes.

President Obama could not be more wrong.  

 

The uprisings in Tunis, Cairo, Tripoli and elsewhere are not about Israelis and Palestinians.

This is actually true. But just because the uprisings were not about Israel does not mean our secular, Arab democratic heroes do not care about the Palestinians.

They’re about oppressed people yearning for freedom and prosperity.  Whether those countries become prosperous and free is not about how many apartments Israel builds in Jerusalem.

See previous.

Today the president doesn’t really have a policy toward the peace process.  He has an attitude.  And let’s be frank about what that attitude is:  he thinks Israel is the problem.  And he thinks the answer is always more pressure on Israel.  

Okay, this is nonsense, and most Americans do not buy this. Most Jewish American voters do not buy this either and are not animated by this nonsense. But I suspect that most of this is not directed at Jewish voters but rather at conservative Evangelical Christian voters -- the kind who vote in Republican primary elections.

I reject that anti-Israel attitude.  I reject it because Israel is a close and reliable democratic ally.  And I reject it because I know the people of Israel want peace. 

They most certainly do. Here's a question I have for Gov. Pawlenty, though: he realizes that many Israelis are scared to death about what will follow the al-Asad regime in Syria, right? I ask this because he seems to argue that we should a) support Israel on everything but b) work toward the overthrow of the al-Asad regime. What will Gov. Pawlenty do when our Israeli friends voice their concerns about post-Asad Syria?

Israeli – Palestinian peace is further away now than the day Barack Obama came to office.  But that does not have to be a permanent situation. 

Correlation =/= causation. Domestic Israeli and Palestinian politics might have more to do with this situation than the occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

We must recognize that peace will only come if everyone in the region perceives clearly that America stands strongly with Israel.  

I would love to hear Gov. Pawlenty prove why this statement is true.

I would take a new approach.

 

First, I would never undermine Israel’s negotiating position, nor pressure it to accept borders which jeopardize security and its ability to defend itself.

 

Second, I would not pressure Israel to negotiate with Hamas or a Palestinian government that includes Hamas, unless Hamas renounces terror, accepts Israel’s right to exist, and honors the previous Israeli-Palestinian agreements. In short, Hamas needs to cease being a terrorist group in both word and deed as a first step towards global legitimacy.

 

Third, I would ensure our assistance to the Palestinians immediately ends if the teaching of hatred in Palestinian classrooms and airwaves continues. That incitement must end now. 

 

Fourth, I would recommend cultivating and empowering moderate forces in Palestinian society.

This is a new approach, actually. The first, second, and fourth points sound a lot like the approach taken by the Bush Administration between 2000 and 2006. But even the Bush Administration continued support for Palestinian security forces in the face of anti-Israeli sentiment among Palestinians. So this is actually more hardline than even the George W. Bush administration. And how the hell do you do #3 and #4 simultaneously? Also, good luck doing what you have just described in the above while at the same time engaging with Arab civil society and the new governments of Tunisia, Egypt and Libya as described earlier.

When the Palestinians have leaders who are honest and capable, who appreciate the rule of law, who understand that war against Israel has doomed generations of Palestinians to lives of bitterness, violence, and poverty – then peace will come.

Demonstrably false, actually. See Fayyad, Salam.

The Middle East is changing before our eyes—but our government has not kept up.  It abandoned the promotion of democracy just as Arabs were about to seize it.  

True.

It sought to cozy up to dictators just as their own people rose against them.  It downplayed our principles and distanced us from key allies.

Like Hosni Mubarak? Oh, wait, you mean Israel.

All this was wrong, and these policies have failed.  The Administration has abandoned them, and at the price of American leadership.  A region that since World War II has looked to us for security and progress now wonders where we are and what we’re up to.

That's probably true. But I think U.S. influence in the region is on the wane anyway, and I am not sure this is entirely bad.

The next president must do better. Today, in our own Republican Party, some look back and conclude our projection of strength and defense of freedom was a product of different times and different challenges.  While times have changed, the nature of the challenge has not.  

Well, let's give Gov. Pawlenty credit for making it clear where he stands on the primacy/restraint divide within the G.O.P.

In the 1980s, we were up against a violent, totalitarian ideology bent on subjugating the people and principles of the West.  While others sought to co-exist, President Reagan instead sought victory.

Aaaaaand also withdrew from Lebanon in the face of violent Islamist extremism.

So must we, today.  For America is exceptional, and we have the moral clarity to lead the world.

 

It is not wrong for Republicans to question the conduct of President Obama’s military leadership in Libya.  There is much to question.

True.

And it is not wrong for Republicans to debate the timing of our military drawdown in Afghanistan— though my belief is that General Petraeus’ voice ought to carry the most weight on that question.

Half true. The president's voice should carry the most weight on that question, though I wish he trusted his field commanders more than he apparently does. 

What is wrong, is for the Republican Party to shrink from the challenges of American leadership in the world.  History repeatedly warns us that in the long run, weakness in foreign policy costs us and our children much more than we’ll save in a budget line item.  

Again, bold words for his own party.

America already has one political party devoted to decline, retrenchment, and withdrawal.  It does not need a second one.

Wow. I suspect we're going to see this "Democrats = Isolationism" meme more in 2011 and 2012.

Our enemies in the War on Terror, just like our opponents in the Cold War, respect and respond to strength.

Oh, goodness, has he been reading this?

Sometimes strength means military intervention.  Sometimes it means diplomatic pressure.  It always means moral clarity in word and deed.  

 

That is the legacy of Republican foreign policy at its best, and the banner our next Republican President must carry around the world.   

 

Our ideals of economic and political freedom, of equality and opportunity for all citizens, remain the dream of people in the Middle East and throughout the world.  As America stands for these principles, and stands with our friends and allies, we will help the Middle East transform this moment of turbulence into a firmer, more lasting opportunity for freedom, peace, and progress.  

 

Thank you.

Thank you.

Any and all scholars of the contemporary Arabic-speaking world need to read Greg Gause's nostra culpa in the latest Foreign Affairs, "Why Middle Eastern Studies Missed the Arab Spring."

Scholars did not predict or appreciate the variable ways in which Arab armies would react to the massive, peaceful protests this year. This oversight occurred because, as a group, Middle East experts had largely lost interest in studying the role of the military in Arab politics.

I am proud to have completed my own studies under the supervision of one of the few scholars still both inclined and equipped to carefully study the role of the military in Arab politics. But as Harb and Leenders point out (.pdf) with regards to Hizballah, few contemporary area studies scholars have either the training or inclination to carefully study the role of military organizations and their activities.

Ahhh, I remember the last time the president addressed the nation. Remember that? The whole "I have ordered Navy SEALs to track down and shoot Osama bin Laden in the head" address? I think we can all agree that was a great, great speech.

Today, the president is scheduled to deliver another speech. This one is on the Middle East, and I am neither aware of what the president will say nor sure why this speech is being given. I suspect this speech was planned some time ago in order to announce U.S. support for Arab self-determination -- which now includes military support to the rebels in Libya, a fresh round of sanctions against the regime in Damascus, and a package of economic and political aid to the people of Egypt.

The visit of King Abdullah this week, coupled with both the upcoming visit of Benjamin Netanyahu and some recent unpleasantness along Israel's borders, means the president will also be asked to address issues related to Palestinian self-determination specifically. The president will not want Netanyahu, in his address to the Congress, or other Israeli policy-makers, in crazy op-eds in the New York Times, to set the terms of the debate, so he will want to get out ahead and establish the parameters of the policy discourse.

That makes sense, but I suspect today's speech will be a bit of a mess because the president might try to do too many things with it and because expectations are now so high. Brian Katulis has gamely attempted to identify three goals around which the president might create a strategy for the region, and they all make sense. They also, though, highlight how difficult it is to actually come up with a coherent strategy for the region writ large. Although the Arabic-speaking world, at least, shares a common language and public sphere (to a degree, and thanks to media such as al-Jazeera), U.S. interests vary from country to country, making a one-size-fits-all regional strategy tough. Okay, so we support self-determination in Libya, Egypt and Syria. But why not in Bahrain or the Palestinian territories? Okay, so we will employ military force to effect regime change in Iraq and Libya. But why not in Syria or Yemen? These are questions Arabs have and to which they will likely not receive satisfactory answers.

I will be listening to the president's speech today with much interest and with very low expectations. I'll live-blog the speech, assuming I can get out of a meeting I have scheduled, and encourage you all to then check out the conversation moderated by @acarvin and our own @abuaardvark on Twitter (#MESpeech) after the speech.

Watch this space...

1143: OK, I just literally ran out of a meeting to live blog this thing and ... am now staring at a video of a briefing room. And John Kerry. And Mike Mullen. C'mon, already...

1149: @joshrogin: He's waiting for the Just for Men to dry #reasonsObamaislate

1155: Robert Fisk is apparently offering comment on al-Jazeera English. My friend @shadihamid writes, "I'm not sure if I like Robert Fisk's commentary on #MESpeech. He doesn't seem to understand how US policy works." Shadi, I think you meant to write, "I'm not sure if I like Robert Fisk's commentary on _______. He doesn't seem to understand how ______ works."

1159: Issandr el-Amrani (@arabist) writes, "Adherence to official US policy and internationally accepted solution (i.e. 1967) should not be big news."

1200: Man, this guy is really late. I've got $10 that says he's in Hillary's office right now with a pencil, a map and about three other people trying to draw out the borders of a Palestinian state, Mark Sykes style.

1203: @Todd_Zwillich: Advance team just realized podium isn't facing Mecca #ReasonsObamaIsLate

1206: Turn off your cell phones and pagers, everybody. (Who the hell still carries a pager?!)

1209: Lots of Arab ambassadors in the audience. What are the odds that one of the regimes they serve will fall by the end of the speech?

1211: White House aides are saying the president is late because they were making last-minute changes to the speech. "Strategy for the Middle East" doesn't seem like one of those things you want to be tweaking at the last minute, though.

1216: POTUS talking about how al-Qaeda lost the Arabs. Funnily, enough, I -- ahem -- wrote an entire chapter on this subject for this New York Times best-selling e-book.

1218: POTUS draws comparison between American revolutionaries and those in the Arabic-speaking world. Now he's talking about self-determination, political and economic.

1220: You can feel the strong influence of @abuaardvark on this section dealing with the new Arab public sphere.

1222: America to the Arabic-speaking world: "I'm not a witch. I'm you."

1224: Holy cow! I guess we really are all neo-conservatives now. Obama talking about how we cannot focus on stability -- we must support self-determination. I'll leave it up to you as to whether he sounds more like Woodrow Wilson or Natan Sharansky.

1226: "The United States opposes the use of violence and oppression against the people of the region."

1227: The United States supports "freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, equal rights of men and women, the right to choose your own leaders."

1227: Values > Interests; or, rather, our values are our interests.

1228: Now the president is talking about post-Iraq liberal interventionism and why we intervene where we can -- but why it's unrealistic to expect the United States to intervene everywhere.

1229: I wish I were as optimistic about Libya as this president.

1231: All of this liberal interventionist rhetoric is great, but as the president is speaking, his administration is slashing the defense budget, and the Republican House of Representatives is slashing our International Affairs budget. At some point, our aspirations run up against a smaller pool of resources available to policy makers.

1233: Strong words for Bashar al-Asad. Strong words for the regime in Bahrain, though, too.

1234: Holy cow, the president just pointed toward Iraq as an example to be followed in the region. How do other Arabs feel about that? My sense is that the Arabic-speaking world looks at the horrific maelstrom of violence into which Iraq descended in 2004 and thinks, "Uh, no thanks."

1238: The rhetoric about womens' rights and freedom to worship is great, but SAUDI ARABIA.

1240: Mentioning the destruction of Shia mosques in Bahrain is huge. That is going to infuriate the regime in Bahrain.

1241: Stabilizing and modernizing the economies of Tunisia and Egypt is where this speech goes beyond mere rhetoric. This gets as initiatives the United States can actually do, such as debt forgiveness. 

1246: I just got the text of the speech and am skipping ahead: "The dream of a Jewish and democratic state cannot be fulfilled with permanent occupation."

1247: The only thing POTUS is saying about Israel is stuff U.S. presidents have been saying about Israel since, oh, 1967. Issandr is right: there is no news here. The president is not saying anything Presidents Bush or Clinton would not have said.

1252: Jeffrey Goldberg: "President Obama is a better Zionist than Danny Danon and Likud hardliners, who will bring about end of Israel through endless occupation." True. Crazy, though: Obama is not so much presenting an alternative to what other U.S. presidents have said but rather an alternative to what Israeli leaders are offering their people right now.

1257: Aaaaand, that's it.

QUICK REACTION: Well, that speech did a few things:

1) It delivered a very anti-dictatorship, pro-self-determination message that would have made Woodrow Wilson proud. The president deserves a lot of credit for boldly taking on the regime in Bahrain -- even going so far as to blame it for the destruction of Shia mosques in that country. Huge. Cynics like me, though, will note the president did not say the words "Saudi" or "Arabia" anywhere in the talk. Women not having equal rights? People not allowed to worship freely? No freedom of assembly? Yeah, that is U.S. ally Saudi Arabia more than any other state in the region.

2) In support of Palestine, the president committed himself to basically the same stuff that every other U.S. president has talked about. In support of Israel, meanwhile, the president both brushed back the Palestinians on bringing statehood up before the United Nations and expressed scepticism about the deal between Hamas and Fatah. This was an incredibly pro-Israel speech, and anyone who says otherwise is talking nonsense. Only an extremist like Danny Danon could whine about what the president said. I can't believe the U.S. media -- and I'm looking at you, New York Times -- is reporting the president's support for two states built along the 1967 lines as news.

I am off to the White House to get spun on the speech in a few hours and will have more comments later. Overall, though, I was underwhelmed and suspect most Arabs will be as well. But maybe the early analysis is right, and this speech was more aimed at a U.S. audience than at the peoples of the region itself.

As some of you may know, I spent several days last week chained to a chair at my local coffee shop producing a chapter for a new e-book Random House is publishing on what the death of Osama bin Laden means for the War on Terror. My chapter, “How Al Qaeda Lost the Arabs,” is the first chapter in the collection after Jon Meacham ('87)'s introduction, and you can buy it for your iPad, Nook, or Kindle.* I was honored to have been asked to contribute a chapter to this volume on account of the other, much-more-distinguished-than-me contributors: James Baker, Bing West, Karen Hughes, Evan Thomas, Dan Markey and Richard Haass.

Writing a book chapter in two days is difficult, to say the least, and my chapter reflects the speed with which it was written. It also reflects the challenge of describing complicated events and phenomena in less than 5,000 words. So for those of you who are going to buy the book -- and at $1.99, you all better buy the damn book -- I am writing this short readers' guide to my chapter. Some of what follows will only make sense if you actually buy and read the chapter.

1. You will note that my chapter has more end notes than any other chapter in the book. Indeed, my chapter has more end notes than all of the other chapters in the book combined. In part this is due to the fact that I'm trying to describe some pretty complex phenomena, and thankfully, quite a few scholars and journalists have gone before me. So I basically pulled all the relevant books I could find off my shelves at home and in my office and did my best with what was available. (Which was quite a lot, happily.) All of the secondary sources I cited were in English, though often written by Arab scholars, while about half of the newspaper articles I cited or from which I quoted were in English with the other half in Arabic. If you read this blog or anything else I write, you'll note that I usually try to write for a general audience while at the same time nodding toward serious scholars and their work in my notes. Part of this is to keep my own work honest, while part of this is intended to direct the reader to more serious scholarly work that I think supports my own work but which does a better job of explaining what, again, are phenomena to which a 5,000-word essay cannot do justice.

2. I horrified Will McCants and Afshan Ostovar -- unlike me, two serious scholars of Islamic history -- last week as I described over dinner the way in which I had managed to reduce roughly a century and a half of Arab intellectual history into less than a single page of text. (And, on a dare, into less than 140 characters.) Obviously, Albert Hourani did a better job in 400 pages than I did in 500 words. Later, I reference the explosion of European capital and the development of non-monarchical systems of government in the 19th century while nodding my head toward Eric Hobsbawm's three volumes on a historical period I summarize in <cough> a paragraph.

3. In the same way, I make a reference to those like Ibn Taymiyya who relied on fiqh as their basis for political thought but didn't really mention the alternatives, which Tarif Khalidi gets into in one of the last chapters his Classical Arab Islam.** The first few chapters of Hourani are also good for this.

4. I do not really have the time to describe all the ways in which the public discourse in the Arabic-speaking world has been transformed over the past two decades. I do not mention, for example, Twitter, Facebook or even cell phones. But the overall point is the same: what had previously been whispered speech or transgressive jokes told in taxis or in coffee shops was now out there in public, challenging regimes as never before.

5. I make a reference, in my essay, to Muslim-Christian unity in Egypt. Ahem. So apparently that time has now passed! In all seriousness, I have been as horrified as anyone by the scenes from the past few days in Cairo. Sectarianism in Egypt is real, as are Salafists hell-bent on stirring up trouble. But since I make a reference to what I see as a still-unresolved conflict between the heirs of Muhamed 'Abduh, I do not think the broader point I am making here is rendered false by events. 

6. In short, I hope you enjoy my essay and think you will, but read it with an understanding of the author's time constraints and an appreciation for the fact that I at least make an attempt to acknowledge the broad, deep body of scholarly literature out there.

*Although the book is already available for both the iPad and the Nook, for some reason it going on sale through Amazon the day after tomorrow. You can pre-order it here, though, and buy it everywhere else here Oh, look, you can buy it now on Amazon.

**Tarif Khalidi was one of my professors at the American University of Beirut, and he caught me reading Classical Arab Islam one afternoon in 2005. He immediately started flipping through it, wincing at all the things in it he now disagreed with, and signed the book, "To Exum, from the author who no longer believes it." I'm pretty sure his last chapter on political thought escaped his winces, but if not, I apologize.