Word: arabists
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...Crocker is the antithesis of the ideologues who provided the intellectual rationale for the Iraq war. He is a classic example of what the neoconservatives scornfully call an Arabist. He is fluent in Arabic and Farsi and has a real affinity for the cultures of the region. He was in the Beirut embassy when it was bombed by Hizballah in 1983, and he dug through the rubble for his lost colleagues. His proudest moment was raising the flag in post-Taliban Kabul, reopening the U.S. embassy. He was a co-author of a secret 2002 State Department assessment called...
...Indeed, the Arabist version of Realpolitik raises the essential question about Iraq, the one that should have been asked before the invasion: Can the U.S. impose Western niceties-democracy, a constitution, a national army-on a noncountry divided into tribes and sects and family dynasties? My guess is that Petraeus might say yes and Crocker might say no, but that both would agree the U.S. does have a role in mediating the mayhem as the Iraqis stumble toward their own solutions. The general comes to this moment more optimistic than the ambassador, which is why Crocker should be listened...
...Arabs in Palestine, and the time he devoted in his youth to studying it. It is partly his understanding of this “serious intellectual history” that seems to drive Nusseibeh’s belief in a unique Palestinian identity as opposed to the Pan-Arabist beliefs his father expresses. Nusseibeh characterizes himself more as an academic than as a politician or activist. He studied at Oxford, Harvard, and Birzeit university in Ramallah, and is now the president of Al-Quds University in Jerusalem. Yet Nusseibeh somehow manages to evade every role into which he might...
...abducted by Hizballah and rewarded with such colorful Fadlallah quotes as "People moved to terrorism are like the people in a school or post office who are pressured, feeling there is no alternative" and "You can go to www .fadlallah org. Gaghan knew by then that an Arabist ex-- CIA agent would be a major character in the aborning film. But as in Traffic, he wanted multiple points of view, so he logged more miles--he guesses his expenses approached $70,000--and did similarly intensive research stints with oil traders in London and lawyers in Washington. Through a journalist...
...denounced the Bush doctrine for presuming to destabilize the region in pursuit of some democratic chimera? They opposed the Bush doctrine precisely because they preferred stability. They warned us darkly that the alternative to the status quo was the seething Arab street--an unruly mob, anarchic, anti-American, pan-Arabist or perhaps Islamist, ignorant of all liberal traditions and ready to rise up against America should it disturb the perfect order of things by "imposing democracy...