The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Middle East

by Martin Sieff

Overview

Why most of what you think you know about the Middle East is wrong
The Middle East: a region that's almost never off the front pages, yet one most Americans know little about. The mainstream media and Ivy League academics only make matters worse by casting everything in the usual politically correct mold: Arab terrorists are just desperate freedom fighters, and the region's one free democracy—Israel—is the oppressor, not least because of its alliance with America. And if Islamic extremism is a problem, the establishment tells us, it's only because it's rooted in that source of all evils: religion. A different strain of political correctness has seeped into some minds on the right—most notably the Bush administration, which, so ready to buy into the egalitarian myths we are all taught, believed that Western-style democracy could flourish anywhere. Now, in The Politically Incorrect Guide(tm) to the Middle East, veteran Middle East correspondent Martin Sieff puts the lie to all these myths and clichés, giving you everything you need to know about the region to understand its past, its present, and its possible future. In The Politically Incorrect Guide(tm) to the Middle East, you'll learn:

* How, for three decades, the British supported parliamentary democracy throughout the Middle East, but it didn't work
* Why Britain's post-World War I Middle East policy was a comedy of errors and incompetence that soon escalated into tragedy
* Where America went wrong in Iraq: how U.S. policymakers vastly underestimated the intransigent, unsophisticated, and anti-Western nature of its competing communities
* How Saudi Arabia's security forces defeated al Qaeda—and why you never heard about it
* Why we'll miss the Arab dictators when they're gone
* How the Muslim nations of the Middle East took an irrevocable turn toward radical Islam not in the tenth century or after the fall of Baghdad to the Mongols in the thirteenth century—but in 1979
* How the Arab states openly declared their determination to prevent a Jewish state from being born in 1947—twenty years before the West Bank and Gaza were first occupied

The Politically Incorrect Guide(tm) to the Middle East is a bold first step toward facing the hard truths necessary for peace.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781596980518
Publisher:	Skyhorse Publishing
Publication date:	01/27/2008
Series:	The Politically Incorrect Guides
Pages:	230
Product dimensions:	7.30(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Martin Sieff is the country's foremost authority on the Cycles of Change. Over the past quarter century, he has developed an unparalleled record in covering and predicting the main economic and security developments of the world.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Revealing the Truth about the World's Most Politically Incorrect Region     1
Bring Back the Ottoman Empire     5
The Middle East a century ago
Ottomans exit, instability and strife enter
The secrets of Ottoman success
World War I could have skipped the Middle East
Gallipoli: Underestimating the Turks
Europe's "sick man" has some teeth
The Arab-Israeli Conflict: It's Not Israel's Fault     25
The creation of Israel: An anti-Muslim U.S. conspiracy?
How it all began
The rise of Haj Amin al-Husseini
Churchill in Cairo: 1921
Emir Abdullah of Transjordan
Herbert Dowbiggin: Unlikely prophet
How British imperialist weakness sparked the Arab-Israeli conflict
The Hebrew Bible: A book of war
The true story of Israel's creation
The Mess in Mesopotamia     49
Just like today: A bad beginning
Democracy in Iraq: 1925-1958
A Jewish base for the Allies
Where America went wrong
After Saddam: "Better Tiberius"
Banking on a bank swindler
Birth of the Iraqi insurrection
The insurgents: Not just a few troublemakers
Bombing the Golden Mosque: The point of no return
It isn't a civil war; it's a splinter war
Why the surge couldn't tame Baghdad
The Truth about Islam: Radical Islam Isn't Ancient (Which Makes It More Dangerous)     77
The wisdom of Prince Turki
The cycles of Arab history
The Middle East gets religion: 1977-1980
Iran     89
The Persian Empire: When Iran was good
Clash of empires: U.S. vs. Britain
Liberal busybodies spark theIslamic Revolution
Ayatollah Khomeini: The fruit of American meddling
Carter and the hostage crisis
Post-revolution Iran
Moderation (relatively speaking) in Iran
Democracy's bitter gift: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
Iran on borrowed time
The Israeli-Arab Wars: 1947-1973     103
Death almost at birth
The tide turns
Who's a Palestinian?
The real Yasser Arafat
Egypt's fight to destroy Israel
The Soviet Union vs. Israel
The miraculous victory
Results of the Six-Day War
Nixon: Israel's best friend
1973: The Israelis mess up big
Results of the 1973 war
The Saudis Are Part of the Solution, Not the Problem     135
The enemy of my enemy is my friend
Michael Moore's mania: The Saudis were behind September 11
Why separation of mosque and state is folly
How to fight Muslim terrorists: Build walls and monitor the mosques
The Saudis and Arafat: From appeasement to realism
Understanding the Saudis
The Arab revolt that worked
The founding father
King Faisal and the oil weapon
Saudi Arabia's three threats
Middle East Wars and Peace: 1975-2007     157
Arabs can fight
The Ba'ath Party's socialist roots
Arab tyrants: Assad and Saddam
Ford's Middle East successes
Yitzhak Rabin: The dove who armed Israel
Did Jimmy Carter really bring peace to the Middle East?
Clinton: Carter all over again
The History of September 11     185
Clinton's team missed the al Qaeda threat
Bush drops the ball on al Qaeda too
Heroes and lessons
The Saudis weren't complicit in the attacks
Why did it happen?
Peace in the Middle East: What Works, and What Doesn't     195
Hope at the end of the millennium
They are here to stay
Arab democracy = extremist rule
Why solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict won't solve the problems
The American pipe dream: A world without oil
Good fences make good neighbors
The Saudi solution
A safer Middle East
Acknowledgments     215
Index     217