Letters to the Editor
Journal of Palestine Studies
Vol. 24, No. 2 (Winter, 1995), pp. 199-200
To the Editor:
Ambassador Richard B. Parker's review essay of The Arabists: The Romance of an American Elite, in the Autumn 1994 issue (JPS 93, pp. 67-77), is an impressive rebuttal to my book. My error of misidentifying the pictures in his home is an egregious one. I apologized to him in a private letter some months ago; his review now gives me the opportunity to do so publicly. Regarding the conversations I had with Ambassadors Parker Hart, Marshall Wiley, and others, my notes and recollections indicate that I quoted them correctly and in context.
In most other cases he mentions, such as the definition of the term "Arabist," the influence of Loy Henderson on Foreign Service officers, the significance of Joseph Sisco as Near East Affairs assistant secretary, and the Iraq policy fiasco, Parker is, of course, providing "his" truths. I have also heard other, vastly different truths equally well-argued. The difference between Near East specialists are mirrored in the different responses to my book.
Parker says the real disgrace regarding Iraq was the Bush-Baker policy, which Arabists did not craft. The Bush-Baker appeasement of Saddam Hussein was no worse than the White House's appeasement of another dictator-cum-mass murderer in the post-Ottoman world, in the immediate aftermath of the cold war: Slobodan Milosevic. But Balkan specialists, unlike Arabists, did not take such appeasement lying down. The starkly different manner in which Europeanists responded to the coddling of Serbia and how Arabists responded to the coddling of Iraq is a subject on which I will have more to say in the preface to the paperback version of The Arabists, due out before the end of 1995.
Robert D. Kaplan
Potomac, Maryland
To the Editor:
Richard B. Parker reviews The Arabists by Robert Kaplan in your Autumn 1994 issue and - lo and behold - toward the end takes some gratuitous swipes at me. His comments call for a reply.
First, Parker accuses me of writing "the most paranoid review to date" because I noted an Arabist loathing of Maronites, Greeks Orthodox Christians, the French, Iranians, and Israelis. Well, my dictionary defines "paranoid" as "afflicted with delusions of persecution or of grandeur." Being an American, how can I be paranoid about the Arabist dislike of Middle Eastern and European peoples? Parker's accusation just doesn't make sense.
Second, Parker "wonders" whether I might have "influenced Kaplan's interpretations of what he saw and heard" because the grant for writing The Arabists went through the institute I directed. His wondering about this reveals how little he knows Robert Kaplan, an extremely independent-minded writer not likely to write anything but the truth as he sees it. Further, while in the course of his research Kaplan occasionally told me about his ideas, I remember no instance when he asked me for guidance. It's also worth noting for the record that I saw the texts of his writings only when published, not earlier.
Third, Parker writes that I am "no friend of either Arabists or Muslims." Let's start with the latter, and more serious charge. Not only am I a friend of Muslims but they are friends of mine. Here's a challenge for the ambassador: Produce a single piece of my writing where I express anti-Muslim sentiments. (I can provide you with a bibliography to help you track down my publications.) If you find one, I'll duly apologize. If not, you apologize. Game?
This said, I am indeed against something: fundamentalist Islam, a radical utopian ideology dangerous to both the Muslim world and the United States. I reject fundamentalist Islam for political, not religious, reasons. And, as Parker of course knows, I'm in good company because plenty of Muslims are also antifundamentalist.
As for my not being a friend of Arabists, that's an odd statement. To begin with, I am an Arabist myself by almost any definition of the term, having devoted five years to learning the Arabic language, three of them in Cairo.
More to the point, when it comes to State Department Arabists, I judge them by their work, not their reputations. When they do badly, I point out errors; when they do well, I applaud them. For example, I wrote in the June 1994 issue of the Middle East Quarterly a very favorable review of a recent book titled The Politics of Miscalculation in the Middle East. I praised this book as "a well-researched, insightful analysis," and "a fascinating entrée into the many-mirrored world of Middle Eastern politics." Your readers may be interested to learn that the author of this book is none other than Richard B. Parker.
Daniel Pipes
Middle East Quarterly
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Richard Parker replies:
I am grateful for Dr. Pipes' favorable words regarding my book. If my impression of his attitude toward Muslims is wrong, I apologize.
Unfortunately, I do not have time now to take up Dr. Pipes's challenge to pore through his writings in search of anti-Muslim sentiments, but if he will send me his bibliography, I will try to find time to go through it and return to the subject later on. Meanwhile, he should be aware that my impression is widely shared by Middle Eastern scholars, judging by the results of an informal sounding I conducted at the last conference of the Middle East Studies Association in Phoenix. I asked a number of people of various backgrounds and of both genders whether they thought Dr. Pipes was a friend of Muslims and the unanimous reply was negative, often expressed with considerable vigor. When I asked the basis for their judgements, I was told it was his writings and his statements. He evidently has an image problem and might want to think about how to correct it.
As for his aversion to Arabists, I should have prefaced that word with "State Department," because those are the Arabists Pipes seems to dislike, and I don't see how anyone can draw any other conclusion after reading his 15 September 1993 Wall Street Journal review of Kaplan's book. The following paragraph from that review, which is titled "Islamophiles in Striped Pants" (I assume that was the editor's choice and not Pipes's), is particularly offensive:
Bound up in their own small world, Arabists lack the imagination to understand either the US or American interests abroad. They loved a pristine Middle East, and regretted its modernization. Against all evidence, Arabists quixotically sought to show the "essential harmony of Western and Arab Islamic culture." They loathed Maronites and Greek Orthodox Christians, the French and Iranians. Most of all they hated Israelis, whom they blamed as much for spoiling their idyll as for the Palestinians' plight. Washington's increasing support for Israel caused many Arabists to slide into anti-Semitism.
This is the sort of misinformed polemic that has characterized political discourse on the Middle East for far too long. Such statements are certainly not friendly to Arabists, however many years Dr. Pipes studied Arabic in Cairo.
As for Robert Kaplan's remarks about the Arabists taking our Iraqi policy lying down instead of resigning as some people working on Bosnia did, the person who should have resigned over Iraq was Baker, not some poor Arabist carrying out his orders. The Foreign Service officers who resigned over our policy in former Yugoslavia made a brief splash in the press, but they did not have much impact on policy. That is the trouble with resigning - it may be an honorable thing to do, but it doesn't deflect the course of policy very often.
Richard B. Parker
Middle East Institute
Washington, D.C.
