Every Saudi student that comes home after a US college education repeats the anti-Americanism he hears at university. >
Lefty blowback.
That is true. However, using an anonymous E-Mail for a story is not the best source for said story. Horowitz disappoints me with this one...
FMCDH!
We have won the Cold War and never understood its lessons. Actually, we are too hasty and self-congratulatory on that, too: we have not won --- we merely outlived the enemy. I do not think that in this country, after the Cuban crisis, we really understood how ready the Soviets were to bring the world to an end.
We do the same thing now with the Muslim world: most people, including those that matter, do not really understand how the mind raised in disinformation works. This letter is a wonderful, very truthful description of that. I say so because it describes the workings of the mind and the propaganda methods common to the Nazis, Soviets, and the Arab world. Dictators invariably discover what works for them.
Had we truly studied the previous dictators, we would know how to deal with the current ones without loosing thousands of our citizens. But, if it ain't broken, don't fix it. Happy-go-lucky celebrate the millennium instead as if there is no tomorrow.
How do you expect we become experts in how the enemy thinks, if one third of our members of congress do not even have passports?
I would make studying this letter, word by word, mandatory in both the State Department and the DoD.
What if our politicans are babbling this tolerance BS just to lull them into complacency - letting them think that there is no way we would exterminate them (all of them) after another attack? The entire world tends to underestimate us, as well as our anger over 9/11.
No, this is no tinfoil. I'm just hoping that this is really the case, and that the letter's author has fallen for the bait. (Which means that the enemy has as well.)
A Likely Fabrication
(David Horowitz, "A Disturbing Letter from a Saudi", March 15, 2002)I was the subject of the essay by Ward Park in your book, The Race Card. I am also staff counsel at FAIR. I am also a Middle East area specialist, and was working in Egypt on Sept 11.
The letter on your website strikes me as a likely fabrication. the sentiments are not uncommon among Arabs, but the style and pattern of thought do not take an Islamic approach. A Muslim, especially a Saudi raised in the Wahabi tradition, would not describe Islamic colonization in perjorative language, or as a preventable threat, but as part of an immutable theological development. The two Arab names he cites are definitely not Saudi; I presume they relate to immigrant Muslim activists in the US -- not the sort of declasse' public figures a 'moderate' Saudi would associate with. Etc.
Only an actual handful of Americans are familiar with the historical context of Islam-Western relations. A good source in English is Dr. Bat-Yeor's works on "dhimmitude". A Muslim Arab, even a self-described moderate, would see Allah's hand in the events described in the letter, and would see the events and their consequences as intrinsically morally good -- not merely a justifable act of revenge.
The culture war with Islam certainly exists. But the analysis used by almost all commentators, including social conservative analysts,is of limited value for formulating policy and countermeasures, because it is entirely useless as a predictive tool.
M. Hethmon (mmhlaw@prodigy.net)
Washington DC
3/16/02
Horowitz responds:
I am now convinced the letter is a fabrication. I also think it grossly misrepresented Hussein Ibish. I am posting an apology and retraction in the next issue of frontpage.
While this exchange seems to undercut the letter's authenticity pretty seriously, it also seems to confirm the truth of the underlying sentiments.
As a nation, and as a people, we need to deal with Islamists as they really are.