Thursday, December 27, 2012

Bernard Lewis and his love affair with Middle East dictatorships

If you read Notes on a Century by Bernard Lewis you will understand more about him than if you read all his other books.  I mean, he makes it clear that he has a long-standing love affair with Middle East dictatorship.  This is a man who was so close to Turkish generals and even advised them on by matters of foreign policy.  The Turkish dictatorial government even offered to pay his legal fees when he was sued in French court for his claims about the Armenian Genocide (he even does a worse job in this book asserting that the Armenian genocide was not a genocide because the Armenians were mounting an armed opposition to the Ottoman Empire).   He was on close terms with the Shah and his government and even interceded with Princeton University to prevent the granddaughters of the Shah from being expelled from the college (he gleefully reports that he was rewarded for his effort with a large tin of caviar by her family).  He met with Qadhdhafi as part of a PR effort by his regime (he says that the interpreter--I thought that Mr. Lewis spoke Arabic fluently?--was a graduate of Purdue and I thought that it must have been none other than Mahmud Jibril who did research at Purdue).  He was close to the Hashemite dictatorship in Jordan and seemed cozy with Prince Bandar bin Sultan.  Of course, his relationship with the Zionist regime is too well-known, as his relationship with the Sadat regime.  This is the man who advised George W. Bush and Dick Cheney on matters of spreading democracy in the Middle East.  What a joke.