America in the Middle East, 1776 to the Present
Theodore Roosevelt and a companion ride camels in Sudan, c. 1909 (Bettmann / Corbis)
Robert Kagan wrote a review for The Washington Post of Michael B. Oren’s new book America in the Middle East, 1776 to Present. The review is very positive. Kagan has convinced me that this is a book everyone interested in this subject / American foreign policy / the Mideast, should read. That is why I decided to link to this review here at TMV: hoping that more people will read Oren’s new book.
Kagan writes:
We often hear that Americans know little about other nations; a bigger problem is that we know too little about ourselves, our history and our national character. When it comes to U.S. foreign policy, in particular, we were all born yesterday, unaware of how present policies and attitudes fit into persistent historical patterns. So when a brilliant, lucid historian such as Michael B. Oren does bring the past back to life for us, revealing both what has changed and what has stayed the same, it is a shaft of light in a dark sky.
Today, the conventional view is that George W. Bush took the United States on a radical departure when he declared a policy to transform the Middle East and that, as soon as he leaves office, U.S. policy will return to an alleged tradition of realism, rooted in the hard-headed pursuit of tangible national interests. This is both bad history and bad prophecy, as Oren shows in Power, Faith, and Fantasy, a series of fascinating and beautifully written stories about individual Americans over the past four centuries and their contact with Middle Eastern cultures.
As a historian, Oren is more storyteller than grand theorist, so as a study of the complex and contradictory motives of American behavior, his book is a bit thin. Nevertheless, three powerful themes emerge from his tales: that from the Founders onward, Americans have repeatedly tried to transform Arab and Muslim peoples — politically, spiritually and economically — to conform to liberal and Christian principles; that since the days of the Puritans, many Americans have been obsessed with the idea of “restoring” Palestine to the Jews; and that from the colonial era to the present, many (and perhaps most) Americans have regarded Islam as a barbaric, violent and despotic religion. Whether these purposes and perceptions have been intelligent or misguided, based on reality or fantasy, Oren shows that they have been the dominant features of our foreign policy tradition in the Middle East.
Oren demonstrates that suspicion and hostility toward Islam are almost as old as the nation. John Quincy Adams called it a “fanatic and fraudulent” religion, founded on “the natural hatred of Mussulmen towards the infidel.”
This was partly religious prejudice, of course, but that prejudice was reinforced by unfortunate experience. In the perilous early years of the republic, the Muslim Barbary powers preyed on American shipping and captured, tortured and enslaved hundreds of innocent men and women. When John Adams and Thomas Jefferson implored the pasha of Tripoli to stop, Oren recounts, the pasha’s emissary insisted that the Koran made it the “right and duty” of Muslims “to make war upon” whichever infidels “they could find and to make Slaves of all they could take as prisoners.” George Washington raged, “Would to Heaven we had a navy to reform those enemies to mankind, or crush them into non-existence.” And Congress did create a navy in the 1790s primarily to crush the Barbary powers and protect American traders and missionaries. President Jefferson — so often mislabeled as an idealist, pacifist and isolationist — eagerly launched the war and ordered the permanent stationing of U.S. naval forces thousands of miles from the nation’s shores.
Kagan explains, by using Oren’s book, that Americans have always tried to reform the Middle East. Although Christian “missionaries utterly failed to convert Muslims to Christianity … they did work to spread the “gospel of Americanism”: liberalism, technology and democracy.”
Read the entire review for yourself… and then go and buy the book.
Again, h/t to my friend and personal editor Holly.
UPDATE
Dave Schuler links in the comment section of this post, to this article at his own blog. Dave writes: “Y’all might be interested in a post of mine from a while ago on the first official contact between the United States and Saudi Arabia. It was by FDR during WWII right after the Yalta conference.”
Go there, it’s an interesting read.
12 Responses to “America in the Middle East, 1776 to the Present”
T.E. Lawrence’s “The Seven Pillars of Wisdom” should be required reading for every U.S. officer assigned to Iraq. It is, for my money, the great 20th century book on colonialist, er . . . interactions with Arabs. The movie on which it was based (“Lawrence of Arabia”) ain’t bad either.
A quote that resonate powerfully today in Washington and Baghdad:
Shaun Mullen is absolutely correct. Lawrence had overwhelming personal problems but his observations about the Middle East were clear-eyed and prescient. Oren’s book also seems to be worthwhile, with a couple of caveats:
1. An explanation is not an excuse. Irrespective of whether the White House cabal was acting consistently or inconsistently with reference to 250 years of American foreign policy, the invasion and occupation of Iraq was illegal, ill-conceived, poorly executed, and grievously misdirected. The “gee whiz, everyone else did it” argument does not balance a trillion dollars and tens of thousands of dead and maimed.
2. “Power, Faith, and Fantasy” is a terrific title because it certainly seems to capture the operative principles under which this administration operates but maybe it is time for America to stop acting like a closed-minded officious international missionary. Is there any group or place on this planet that the wild-eyed Protestant zealots who found themselves in America did not try to “reform?” Barbarism. violence, and despotism are indeed in the eye of the beholder.
Shaun: I have to admit that I have never read it. Shame on me, I know. Promise: will do it asap. I’ve got a lot of books to read after the exams, but I will put this one on top of the list (and I also want to read something by O’Brien as you advised me to do).
Jason: of course it is not an ‘excuse’ to continue persuing bad policies. But… it is interesting as to be able to explain today’s situation better and to see today’s situation in its historical context.
Also, personally I don’t think that encouraging democracy (through peaceful means), technology and liberalism is a bad thing.
It may have been handled wrongly, but the general idea of trying to influence them in a positive manner, is a good one imo.
Michael, c’mon, “It may have been handled wrongly…?” You cannot so blithely separate intentions from acts. I’m getting hints of that old refrain of “Just listen to us and you will have a better life…” As far as my reading of history tells me, a huge amount of bloodshed and destruction has occurred because of someone’s half-baked ideas about “positively influencing” someone else. Pick any period in history and I bet I can find an example of someone or some group who was/were absolutely sincere in their unique version of “truth” and who felt this great need to “enlighten” the world. The Crusades and the Thirty Years’ War are two of my favorites but you may have some of your own. Societies evolve in their own ways and at their own rates. My advice to the would-be “enlighteners” is when the feeling to enlighten strikes, have a drink, take a nap, spend an hour on the stairmaster, work on your own garden, whatever. Just leave the other guy’s garden alone. To be perfectly clear, I’m no pacifist. If you are attacked, then you do you best to smash the other guy – I just don’t believe in poking around where you haven’t been invited.
Just because we do have a history of having been active in the Middle East it doesn’t mean that an incurious, not that well read former governor of Texas who goes with his gut over advice from more experienced people than himself bases any of his decisions on that knowledge.
Maybe Kagan is using the book to justify the Neocon philosphy. We also had a war with the British – War of 1812 – maybe the British are really are enemy like the Arabs. The author was on Charlie Rose or another talk show. I don’t recall him as a NeoCON apologist.
I saw the author interviewed on the Daily Show. He said that he wrote the book because he kept seeing books by the title “Britain in the Middle East” “France in Africa” etc. but no “United States in the Middle East” and that considering the investment, we should know the history.
Personally I think that the times the US has been most successful at spreading western values is when they used consumerism, not bombs. Can anyone tell me that when they were young “trust me, I know what’s best” sounded at all convincing? What if that were accompanied by being beaten with a belt? No, the way to westernize the world is to get it to buy into (literally) one of it’s fundamental traits. Freedom? No. Buying! CocaCola, McDonalds, MTV, bad sitcoms and reality shows. Yes I know it’s sad to spread anti-culture, but it works very well. Pop culture spreads like wildfire, and the liberty (and debauchery) it carries in the package is a lot more tempting than Black Hawk helicopters “liberating” you to smithereens.
It’s absolutely true that most Americans are ill informed, both about the Middle East and our own history. This is a clear and present danger, as it leads to blindly buying into the latest political message from political pundits. Politicians ‘market’ their intentions, and we don’t have a ‘consumer’s report’ of our own knowledge to evaluate the message.
Y’all might be interested in a post of mine from a while ago on the first official contact between the United States and Saudi Arabia. It was by FDR during WWII right after the Yalta conference.
Its ok to encourage democracy- but most of the time our efforts seem geared more towards opening markets or protecting areas of the world that have a strategic interest to us. We seem to stink at nation-building, especially when those we are liberating aren’t interested in what we’re selling, and more than we’d want to live by Islamic law. Nations need to choose democracy on their own-not because it works for us.
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