HH: Special edition of the Hugh Hewitt Show today. As you’ve known since 9/11, whenever a crucial book to understand the war comes out, I devote an entire show to talking about it and the issues about the war raised in connection with the book with the author. And today is one of those shows. Lee Smith has put out a brand new book called The Strong Horse. The Strong Horse: Power, Politics And The Clash Of Arab Civilizations. It’s published by Doubleday. It was brought to my attention by our friend, Michael Totten, who’s done such great reporting from the Middle East. And I’m pleased now to welcome Lee Smith to the Hugh Hewitt Show. Lee, welcome, great to have you today.  

LS: Thanks very much, Hugh. It’s a pleasure to be here, and thank you to Michael Totten, too, for bringing the book to your attention. I really appreciate it.

HH: Well, he’s not one to lavish a lot of praise, and so when he sent me the e-mail and said you’ve got to read this book, I was more than happy to. And I read it in three sittings, not two like Michael Totten, and so my compliments to you. Before we dive into the book, I want to establish for the audience, Lee, who you are and where you’re from. Give us a little bio on Lee Smith.

LS: Sure. Okay, right now, I’m in Washington, D.C., where I’ve been based the last few years. Before that, I was in Beirut for a couple of years, where actually Michael Totten and I first met and hung out. Now, we run into each other across the region periodically. I’m originally from New York. I was born in Puerto Rico, raised in New York City, worked in journalism and publishing. And then when 9/11 hit, as I explain in the book, I decided to figure out what had happened to my hometown. So I picked up and I moved off to Cairo, Egypt.

HH: Now you made a passing reference, before we go off to that, to having been at Cornell. Were you a student of Allan Bloom’s there?

LS: No, I wasn’t, actually. I studied in the English department. And what did Professor Bloom teach?

HH: Political theory.

LS: Yeah, no, I…did you study with him?

HH: No, but you reference Leo Strauss in one of your footnotes. So I thought you might be one of Bloom’s Straussians.

LS: Right. Yeah, no, I mean, I’m a huge fan of Allan Bloom, and actually, I sort of inadvertently cite him in another part of the book. I’m talking about a regime of Arab enlightenment. I think that’s probably a paraphrase of a line from one of Professor Bloom’s books. So I’m a big fan of his, and I do, I’m a big fan of Leo Strauss’ as well.

HH: So after 9/11, you up and move from publishing and journalism circles to Cairo, and you begin to study Arab…give people sort of a rundown of where you’ve been since 2001.

LS: Sure. Yeah, I was in Cairo for about a year, came back to Brooklyn, at which point I was traveling around the region a lot – Jordan, Dubai. Then I moved off to Lebanon shortly before the Hariri assassination, which actually we just, sadly, commemorated the 5^th anniversary of that yesterday. So it was right around this time five years ago that I moved to Beirut. I was there for about two years, and I let in the middle of the 2006 summer war between Israel and Hezbollah. So yeah, and then from there, I moved back to the States, and now I still travel frequently to the region, usually to Lebanon, though a fair amount to Israel as well, a little bit to Egypt, but mostly to Lebanon. I was in Lebanon, I guess, six times the last year, in 2009. And I’ll probably be there a lot again this year, too. A lot of friends…

HH: I want to explain to the audience, we are recording this interview on February 15^th. The 5^th year of the Hariri assassination was on Valentine’s Day, on the 14^th…

LS: Oh, right.

HH: Even though we’re airing it on the 26^th, I don’t want people to be confused by that. Lee Smith, what is your ethnicity? How do you manage to move so apparently effortlessly around the various precincts of the Middle East?

LS: Well, I was born in Puerto Rico. My mother’s Puerto Rican, so I guess whether I’m in Lebanon or Egypt or even Israel, people frequently take me to be a local native, until I open up my mouth, whether it’s in Arabic or Hebrew. Then, they realize that I’m just a foreigner. So yeah, I mean, one of the things is, though, I mean, I don’t…I’m an American, so when I go to these different places, people ask me not so much even there, but even here in Washington, people say well, are you pro-Israeli or pro-Arab, and which I think as an American to have to answer that question is kind of ridiculous. I mean, you know, I like to say that I’m on the side of the good guys. And that sounds a little simplistic. I think it is pretty simple. I mean in Lebanon, for instance, I’m on the side of March 14, the side of the people who were fighting for, in some cases, still are fighting for a democracy and sovereignty over their own country, and I’m against the bad guys, like Hezbollah, like the Syrian regime, who, you know, who are killing politicians, who are killing journalists, civil society activists. So I’m neither, I don’t see myself as, I see myself as both pro-Israeli and pro-Arab.

HH: Now in The Strong Horse, you’ve got very decided opinions. You just articulated a couple of them, and we’ve got three hours to walk through them.

LS: All right.

HH: But I want to start with you opinion of the American foreign policy elite by giving people…had you been interested in American foreign policy prior to 9/11, Lee Smith?

LS: Not so much. I mean, some of the work I did in journalism was on foreign policy. I mean editing, I was mostly editing, and some of it was on domestic politics. But I did a lot more literature. I was much more of a literature and book person. So no, this was, you know, and really my introduction to the Middle East was mostly through literature as well. I mean, I was interested in a body of literature and a poetry which I had no access to, knowing only English. So that interested me, as did things like music and other sorts of cultural entertainments. But getting there, getting to Egypt, and then living there and seeing things up close and sort of recognizing or believing that what I was seeing in front of me didn’t bear much relationship to the way this part of the world was typically described either by American journalists or foreign journalists, or U.S. policy makers. So I saw a huge difference between what was really happening what people typically described was happening.

HH: Now at one point in the book, in a very fascinating couple of pages, you describe meeting Omar Sharif in Cairo.

LS: Yeah.

HH: And he says to you, “Is it your Orientalist fantasy that’s brought you here, isn’t it?” And we’re going to have to explain. What is an Orientalist fanstasy, but also, was it true? You didn’t really answer the question in the book.

LS: Yeah, right. Well, you know, one of the funny things is that Omar Sharif was a, he was a schoolmate of Edward Said’s. And Edward Said is the sort of person who made this idea, Orientalism, famous. You know, what Orientalist used to mean. It used to mean someone who studied Orientalist languages, meaning Arabic or Turkish or Farsi or Hebrew, Kurdish, a number of other…I think, I believe…I say that without knowing for sure, but I believe Kurdish is counted as an Oriental language. But Edward Said turned it basically into a slur word, that an Orientalist was someone who looked down on Muslims and Arabs, and other people who lived in what we used to call the Orient. And this was part of his entire sort of, this was part of his entire critique, that the people who studied this part of the world had served empire to subjugate third world peoples. So when Omar Sharif said this, I mean, I think largely, he was just kind of joking. I mean, he was an interesting, fascinating character. But of course, any of us, you know, any of us who have seen Lawrence Of Arabia, I mean, any boys, young men, middle-aged men, old men who have seen this, and certainly American women, and it’s just loaded with romance. There’s this whole thing about being in a desert and riding horses, and liberating vast tracts of land and people. So I mean, it was kind of a gag, but it is also true. Lawrence Of Arabia, and lots of different aspects of representations of the Middle East, and Arabs do partake in this romance. So I think he was mostly being a character.

HH: He was scratching at you, though, to figure out what your motive was. And I think motive is always very, very interesting to me.

LS: Yeah.

HH: And The Strong Horse is a fascinating book. But what is Lee Smith’s motive?

LS: Well, I mean, it really was, again, New York is my hometown. And it’s not a nice thing to have your hometown attacked, and to have 3,000 of your neighbors killed. So it’s to find out exactly why this happened, and what had gone on, that really sort of motivated me. And in a sense, I think, actually, to come back to Omar Sharif, I mean he was joking around and being funny and pretty playful. As I also write in the book, you know, he led me over to the bar by my jacket sleeve, and we drank for the better part of the evening.

HH: Yes.

LS: That was a fun night. But I think that a lot of people there understood what an American was doing in Cairo, basically, two months after 9/11. There were a lot of Americans who came to the region, a lot of students, a lot of journalists. Either they came out of curiosity, or they came out of, I think most of the time they came out of curiosity. But I mean, it also was something, it was for journalists, writers, I mean, it still continues to be a bit story. But certainly a few months after 9/11, it was an enormous story.

HH: Yeah.

LS: So you know, I think they understood basically why I was there.

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HH: Lee Smith, let me start with a couple of quotes to center our audience from early in the book. From The Strong Horse, you write, “The Arabic-speaking Middle East is not a sea of some three hundred million Arabs who all have a common interest, but a region with 70% Sunni population, and dozens of minorities. The size of the Sunni majority and its concomitant power and prestige have allowed it to rule by violence, repression and coercion for close to 1,400 years.” A little big later, you write, “Force is at the core of the way most Arabs understand politics, and that therefore there is no way to understand how the Middle East works without understanding the concept of the strong horse. It is not a moral judgment, but a description.” These are candid but controversial statements. How have they been received by sort of the professional Middle East watchers and manipulators?

LS: I mean, you’re right, it is controversial. I think it shouldn’t be that controversial. I mean, you talked about Leo Strauss before, and one of the reasons that I use that quote, or I use that section from Strauss in the introduction is to sort of drive home the point to people that this is the way that politics has always been organized in the past, through violence and coercion. And most people have never had the great good fortune that we do to conduct our political lives free of this sort of force and violence. I mean, we are extraordinarily lucky, and we take our luck and our good fortune for granted. At a great cost, we take it for granted. And since I was explaining this to an American readership, I really wanted them to understand first of all how lucky we are, second of all, that this is how the region works. But your observation that this sort of goes against what the professional class of Middle East experts believes, yeah, that’s not something that you’re supposed to say, because people immediately reduce that to the notion that Arabs only understand violence, or they only understand force. And this was something that people wrongly, incorrectly associated with the Bush administration. This is not what the Bush administration believed. The Bush administration actually, the idea of democracy promotion was to give Arabs another choice, another option, not to organize their politics in terms of violence, but in terms of consensus and terms of agreement. So yeah, I think that already people have been critical of my position, and I’m sure more people will be critical as time goes on. I hope, I mean, I’m happy to have the argument. I’m looking forward to it.

HH: You quote a 14^th Century Muslim historian, and my pronunciation is not so great, so feel free to correct me often.

LS: Okay.

HH: Ibn Khaldun, is that correct?

LS: Yeah, yeah. That’ll do it.

HH: And his masterpiece is Al-Muqaddima, in which you write a summary. “History is a matter of one tribe, nation or civilization dominating the others by force until it, too, is overthrown by force. And it this, what I call the strong horse principle, not Western imperialism, not Zionism, not Washington policy makers, that has determined the fundamental character of the Arab-speaking Middle East, where bin Ladenism is not drawn from the extremist fringe, but represents the political and social norm.” That might be controversial, Lee Smith, because it’s very scary.

LS: Yeah, it’s very unfortunately. I mean, I think this is the case. I mean, if you look at…I mean, one of the arguments that I was trying to make, one of the arguments I was trying to make is that you know, we have, Islamic extremism. We have al Qaeda. We have bin Laden. We have all of these different…we have Hezbollah, Hamas, all of these different, vicious, ruthless outfits. But if we look at the other side, how do people rule? I mean, if we look at even the so-called friendly Arab states that are allied with us, whether it’s Egypt, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, you know, these are rulers who rule by force. I mean, the security services are very important. Security services, as we know, do things like extraordinary rendition. I mean, they torture people. So it’s a very, very hard…the political forms in that part of the world are very, very hard. Another point that I make is that it’s not, I think in lots of ways, the Bush administration saw the real problem being the regime, you know? Once you get rid of Saddam Hussein and these really vicious rulers, then you sort of will unleash the natural democratic energies of the Arab people. And unfortunately, this is just not the case. And it’s not a biological thing, it’s not a genetic thing. It’s a cultural thing. This is just the way it’s been going on for a very, very long time.

HH: You know, Lee Smith, I’m going to jump to the end of the book. We’ll come back. We have plenty of time.

LS: Okay, great.

HH: But I want to get to the heart of it. Book 8 of the Republic, you quote at the end, “The states are as the men are. They grow out of human character.” So I think as I thought about this book for the last few days, what you’re saying is the Arab character formed by history, not by genetics…

LS: Yeah, right.

HH: …is one that understands the world to be violent, and understands regimes to be violent, and understands that’s what survival requires. Is that fair?

LS: Yeah. I think that is a fair way to put it. And again, I mean, just to come back to repeat what you said, I mean, it’s not genetics, it’s not biology. I mean, look, this is a country, our country, the United States, where immigrants come here from all over the world, and they make it and they succeed. And they want to leave their parts of the world, because they know they’re bloody or ruthless or have failed. And they come here, and they see success. So it’s not as though Arabs come here and they live the same way. They don’t. They live like we do. They live the way all of us Americans do. But in those particular cultures, yeah, those particular cultures, I think that’s just the way it’s been going for, I mean, even long before the advent of Islam. I don’t see the problem as Islam. The problem is not religion. The problems are problems deeply embedded in the culture.

HH: I found it fascinating and very focusing. In fact, this is odd. You don’t quote him in the book, but I was thinking about Hyman Roth in the Godfather, Part II.

LS: Right.

HH: And this is the quote. He said when I heard Moe had been killed, I wasn’t angry. I knew Moe. I knew he was strong-headed, talking loud, saying stupid things. So when he turned up dead, I let it go. And I said to myself, this is the business we’ve chosen. I didn’t ask who gave the order, because it had nothing to do with business. And it seems like Arabia is just, in your world and your understanding, it’s just the region the way it is.

LS: Yeah, it’s just the way it is. I mean, and we can’t…it’s interesting, you know, because I mean, there’s a number of different things. I think first of all, we have U.S. interests at stake, including the Persian Gulf, including oil in the Persian Gulf. And then we have U.S. lives at stake, which we saw on 9/11, and we see, you know, we saw with the Christmas bomber. This guy nearly came over and killed quite a few people. So those kinds of things are of course very upsetting. But really, I mean, as I start the book saying, we can’t take it too personally, you know? So yeah, right. It’s like the Hyman Roth speech, which is an awesome speech. I’m really glad you quoted that. But that’s it. You can’t take it too personally.

HH: It’s very fatalistic.

LS: Yeah.

HH: It’s very fatalistic.

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HH: All right, Lee Smith, as I said when we were going to break, you’re very clear-eyed about the Bush administration and what the President knew and didn’t know, and what the Vice President knew and didn’t know or didn’t understand. But at the end of it, you know, your argument is that Americans underestimated completely, didn’t understand, really, Arab character. But I thought to myself, again out of Chapter 8, the states are as the men are, they grow out of human character in The Republic, our American character wouldn’t allow us to do anything but what we did after 9/11.

LS: Yeah, I totally agree with you.

HH: And so aren’t we doomed, really, to have this cycle over and over again until either the Arab character or the American character changes?

LS: Boy, that’s darker than my book.

HH: Well, (laughing)

LS: (laughing)

HH: I don’t mean it to be dark. I just mean it to be the logical conclusion of what you wrote.

LS: Yeah, I think you’re right, and that is something that I say in my conclusion. I say you know, I mean, I believe that we’ve learned something of a lesson about democracy promotion, and how difficult this is. But I think that we believe, you know, again, we sell ourselves short. We think that what we do here, we think that having created this republic, that this is a fairly easy thing to do, and all it takes is people of good will and fortitude, and it can be done. And it’s not that easy. And we shed a lot of blood over it, and it took a long time to get to this stage in what I believe is human progress. I think this is the best way to live. But not everyone can do it. Not everyone’s up for it. And I’m really happy that you keep coming back to that bit from the Republic, because I think that really is important. I mean, I think it’s a very important insight to realize that cultures, states, how peoples are ruled, they reflect the culture of the people themselves. You know, these things are inseparable.

HH: Have you spent time in Russia?

LS: No, I never have.

HH: Well, because I think I have read arguments about the Russian soul that parallel some of what you’ve written about the Arab soul in this book, in that it’s just not a happy place. It’s not an enlightened place. It’s not going to have a Voltaire. It’s not going to have anything…Putin is its natural expression, in other words.

LS: Yeah. Yeah, I believe that. And I mean, you know, there’s still wonderful things that come from Russia. I mean, we have Dostoevsky, but I mean, it’s not something that you read, it’s not something you read to cheer yourself up. But I guess I wouldn’t put it in terms of, I myself wouldn’t put it in terms of soul, even though I believe in a human soul. But to talk about a national soul, for me, anyhow, I’m just a little uncomfortable with it. That’s why it’s a little easier for me to describe it in terms of culture and cultural values, and how a culture operates like that. I definitely believe in those things.

HH: If you go back to your quote, though, from Plato, the states are as the men are, they grow out of human character…

LS: Yeah.

HH: I mean, soul is just a different word for human character.

LS: Yeah.

HH: Let me ask you if it was intentional that at the heart of your book, smack dab in the middle, pages 112-113, had George W. Bush’s November, 2003 National Endowment For Democracy speech. I mean, it’s right there. It’s the hinge of the book. And you come off with, in short, “A president usually characterized as a swaggering cowboy, a warmonger, was pushing a Middle East policy that could only be described as liberal, if not leftist.” He was Woodrow Wilson dressed up for the 21^st Century.

LS: Yeah. Yeah, I think that’s correct. I think, I mean, I think this has generally been the tendency of American foreign policy since Woodrow Wilson, I mean, to sort of step outside of a Wilsonian, even if you look at the people who are, you know, if you look at the people who are so-called realists, I mean, what they believe, I mean, the basic realist principle is that it doesn’t matter, right, what a regime looks like, the internal character of a regime. All regimes are rational insofar as they want to continue existing, and that’s all you need to deal with – how they act outside, right, their behavior, how they pursue their so-called rational interests. And I just think that’s preposterous to believe that everyone is like us? It doesn’t matter what a regime really looks like on the inside? I think that’s crazy. So even the so-called realists are people who dismiss the idea that other people are fundamentally different from us.

HH: You don’t have much, you don’t hold any brief for Francis Fukuyama. I mean, you kind of run him over very briefly here.

LS: Yeah…

HH: But that’s the opposite of your view.

LS: Yeah. I mean, also, I really don’t get, you know Paul Berman?

HH: I don’t.

LS: Well, Paul Berman, you know, he wrote Terror And Liberalism, and Paul Berman came up with a great line, I think he was reviewing him, and he said something like I really don’t understand what Fukuyama is about. I mean, maybe he doesn’t understand his own book. But what is he doing going back on the whole end of history thing now?

HH: Yup.

LS: So I think Fukuyama’s a really brilliant guy and a very interesting guy, but I think he’s also deeply inconsistent.

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HH: Have you actually been successful in memorizing some of the Koran, Lee Smith, as you set out to do?

LS: Yeah, I did. I memorized large chunks of it when I first moved to Egypt. And to hear it, to hear someone who knows how to read it, or actually recite it, yeah, it’s a really astonishing experience.

HH: Are you yourself religious?

LS: Well, it’s interesting that you ask that. Coming back from the, I mean, I sort of separate it into a couple of different things. I mean, I was, you know, raised Catholic, and I certainly believe in God. But coming back from the Middle East, you know, your religious identity, especially living in Lebanon where you have Shia Muslim, Sunni Muslim, and Maronite Christians, and religious…it’s partly about the practice of religion, but it’s also a part of religious identity. You know, what I mean?

HH: Yes.

LS: Like every woman who has a veil, or every guy who has a cross, it doesn’t necessarily mean they’re observant. It means that they’re attached to their religious identity. So I understand that a little more clearly now, and I’m a little more sympathetic to it. And insofar, yeah, and insofar as I identify with a Judeo-Christian civilization, yeah, I certainly identify with who we are in that way.

HH: Well, because my friend, Robert Ferrigno, who writes the books, the novels…

LS: Oh, sure. Right.

HH: Yeah, Robert is very unspecific about what he believes when he comes on my radio show, having encountered Koranic thinking for a long time, and spent a lot of time studying Islam. I think he’s, I think he’s hesitant to say anything definitively. It sounds like you’re in the same camp.

LS: Yeah, you know, I’m not a scholar. It’s very interesting. I mean, one of the wonderful things about the last eight years of living and traveling so much in the region is getting to learn large chunks about stuff I knew nothing about before. Again, whether this is literature, whether it’s about religion, whether it’s about Islamic history, whether it’s about the politics of the region, and how they intersect with our politics and our strategic interests, I mean, all of these things are fascinating. So part of it’s, you know, part of it’s just sort of, even though again I’m not a scholar, part of it’s scholarly interest. It’s just fascinating stuff.

HH: Well, part of the book also is not analytical so much as descriptive. I love the line, by the way, “Like all men who spend the better part of their day on top of a horse, this particular guy is vain.” I thought of Ronald Reagan. I mean, horsemen are not going to like this at all.

LS: No, no. I’m a horseman myself. I mean, know…I mean serious, I haven’t ridden in about a year now, but no, you know, my grandfather owned a race horse that won the Kentucky Derby back in ’76. So no, I say this from experience.

HH: Which horse was that?

LS: Bold Forbes.

HH: Okay.

LS: He won the Derby and the Belmont, and then finished third in the Preakness.

HH: Why all the stuff about horses and poetry, and the Arab music, and the difference between the Koran and poetry? Is that essential to understanding Arab character?

LS: I think it’s a very important…I mean, some of the stuff is very important. Some of it was just fascinating to me. I mean, again, it sort of depends on how far you want to go in. I mean, I think that for people to understand what sort of makes the Koran work as it does, not just as a book but as sort of this cultural, first of all, as a cultural artifact, then as this religious marker, I think you do need to know some of these things. Or it was helpful to me. And when I explain it to different people, they find it interesting, and they find it helpful as well. Some of the other stuff, like why I’m interested in the poetry, again, I just think to get a sense of how people live, what matters to them, what they cherish, what really means something to them, I mean, I think that’s a very, very important thing. There’s also…

HH: How many people that you read actually have any understanding of the region? How many people writing with authority, or attempting to assert authority on their propositions about the region have a clue about the underlying Arab culture?

LS: I’m not sure. I mean, you know, I think a lot of people aren’t interested in that. I think a lot of people, you know, a lot of Americans who write on American culture, or American politics, aren’t very interested in our own culture, right? I mean, remember that Tom Frank book that came out a few years ago, Whatever Happened To Kansas?

HH: Yup.

LS: I mean, this seemed to me to be an entire misreading of American culture, right?

HH: Yup.

LS: As Americans, what do we believe? We believe that at any time…I mean, first of all, politics is never entirely rational. It’s never rational, right? I mean, whether it’s American, or whether it’s Arab or whatever, I mean, a lot of times we’re flying by the seat of our pants. And as Americans, God bless us, we always think we are about the next one, who through our hard work, our blood, sweat and tears, and our labor, we’re going to hit the lottery, right? Not as a matter of luck, but through our hard work. So again, like Tom Frank’s book is like a total misreading of American culture. So I think that people do this all the time. I think that writers do this all the time with, you know, with their own culture, never mind other people’s culture.

HH: And we also, you know, I came away thinking gosh, are we really that foolishly optimistic? On Page 18, you write that, “This unbroken cycle of strong horses, columns of them, one after another rising in the desert, to replace the predecessor and rule until he, too, is put down by a more vital force.” That’s just so not American. It’s so alien.

HH: Yeah, but it used to not be so alien to us, right? I mean, there’s something…I mean, for us, by and large, our elite, anyway, I’ll leave it at that, our elite is not so interested in power, right? Even if you look at our novels, if you look at what we write about relationships, I mean, this is an important part of intimate relationships – power, how power is expressed and articulated. It’s a very important subject. And you asked before about horses. One of the important things about horses and horsemanship, again, this is like you ride a horse. Any one of your listeners who’s ridden a horse knows what it is, and knows how deeply the horse responds to you. If you’re fearful, the horse knows it. If you’re confident, the horse knows it. So all of these different things that I think yeah, maybe we’ve gotten a little bit away from like how we exercise authority, how we exercise power, what it means to vie with other people for power, I think these are deeply important things. And yes, in lots of parts of American culture, we don’t take these things seriously anymore. But it doesn’t mean they don’t exist.

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HH: Lee Smith, I don’t know if you’ve read Thomas P.M. Barnett, The Pentagon’s New Map, Great Powers, but he spent a lot of…

LS: I’ve heard about it. I haven’t read it, yet, no.

HH: He spent a lot of time on this show, and it’s almost the antithesis of your proposition. His proposition is we have a gap, we have to connect it with technology, and everything will be well. It seems to me that your proposition is, I think at one point, I don’t have the quote right in front of me. We treat a democracy as an iPhone left out for the Arabs to try and figure out, and it just doesn’t work the way that the technologists believe. Fair enough?

LS: Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think that there is sort of this…you’ve probably heard, I mean, I don’t know exactly his thesis, but I mean, the thesis I do know is that well, with all the Bluetooth and internet connectivity, and cable, and satellite television, that Arab youth will have a picture of the Western world, and they’ll be so attracted to it that they’ll put down all their old ways, and will say who needs that, all we want is a ticket in the globalization sweepstakes.

HH: That’s his proposition.

LS: And I just think that’s wrong. Yeah, I just don’t believe that. And I know that this has been…I mean, the Arabs have been, the Muslim reform movement was quite explicit about this. What they said, what the Muslim reformers said in the 19^th Century, they said by all means, adopt Western technology, especially Western military technology. But all the science you want, all these other things, fine. Take them, incorporate them into your lives. But as far as adopting the underlying values of Western culture? Do not do it. Stay away from it. And we have to look at this, and we have to look at how it bears out in reality, right? Everyone wonders why are there so many doctors who are jihadis? What’s this with Ayman Zawahiri? Here’s a doctor, you know, here’s a doctor who’s like bin Laden’s number two. But I was just reading a piece in one of the Israeli papers the other day, and a guy was speculating why there was so many engineers who are also, you know, Hamas militants or jihadis. Because there is no, because this is part of the whole thing. This is part of the, you know, this is part of the think – adopt Western technology, but not Western values underneath. So no, I don’t see the, I don’t see technologies bridging this gap at all. I just see it causing many, many more problems, in fact.

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HH: Lee Smith, I want to go to next, something that you wrote. This is not really central to the book, but it’s very interesting. I quote from Page 25. “Here, it might be helpful to understand the prophet of Islam as a type of pagan warrior hero. We are accustomed to think of Mohammad as a holy man, and he is,” you write, “But this hardly does justice to his career. He not only ruled a nation, the Islamic umma.  He was also a wily commander like Odysseus, who outwitted his often numerically superior opponents time and again. He is part of a tradition of epic heroes like Achilles, Beowulf, Cuchulainn, and Thor, a cross between Moses and Aeneas.” This is a completely different way of thinking of Mohammad. But it actually makes him much more human than I think Westerners are accustomed to doing.

LS: Right. I mean, I think it makes him, I think it makes him impressive, too, doesn’t it? I mean, he’s a serious, you know, he’s a serious figure. And really, we know all of these characters through our reading of literature, you know, in Thor, we know from comic books as well. But they’re heroic, formidable characters, and we know why people look up to them, because they’re warriors, and because they’re great leaders. So I think it’s, you know, I mean obviously, you know, Jesus Christ was a great leader in many different ways, but not in this fashion. And so I think for us just to look at Mohammad comparing him to Jesus Christ doesn’t give, you know, the prophet of Islam his…it’s not so much giving him his due. We need to see it how a lot of Muslims see it as well, you know?

HH: Right. Well, as Jesus does inspire, obviously, sometimes to a life of complete self-denial and grace and holiness, Mohammad, you can understand in this context, is inspiring to war…

LS: Yeah.

HH: And that this is a point of view that people have to get to understand it. I do have to quarrel, though. Not long after that, you write, “The contemporary West has no comparable figure, lawmaker, ruler and warrior at its origins.” And I thought, what happened to Washington? Washington was lawmaker, ruler and warrior.

LS: Yeah, you’re right, but he wasn’t, he wasn’t a holy figure. I mean, he’s definitely our great, he’s definitely our great original figure. But he’s not, I mean, I guess you can sort of say if you believe as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Harold Bloom, if you believe in the American religion, then Washington is the man.

HH: That’s what I think.

LS: Yeah, yeah.

HH: I think he’s every bit the prophet…and so, I just…I…in your revision or your next go-around, at least compare it. I want to go now to the history. Do you read Lawrence Wright?

LS: Yeah, sure.

HH: Okay, he’s been here four or five times.

LS: Yes, a wonderful book. I’m really hugely flattered that you’re comparing my book to The Looming Tower. I really appreciate that.

HH: Well, you try and cover many of the same things, and I want to give a condensed summary for people who have not read either of them, yet. And it begins, really, modern reformist Islam begins with Muhammad Ibn Abd al-Wahhab, who lived from 1703 to 1792, which I found it great. You put in that he’s a contemporary of Benjamin Franklin and George Washington, and he made a revolution as well. Would you tell people what Wahhab did?

LS: Yeah, I mean, one of the things that was going on in the…I mean, I certainly don’t think that his, I certainly don’t believe his influence, by the way, was entirely constructed. I mean, one of the things that the Muslim reform movement was concerned with, and I’ll work backwards into Wahhab in a second, Abd al-Wahhab in a second, was that they, they were very concerned that Islam had lost its sort of, it had lost its essence, and it had been polluted by, you know, it had been polluted by other ideas. And Muhammad Ibn Abd al-Wahhab, he was especially concerned with Sufism and Shiism. These are two other, you know, these are two other, I mean, Shiism is the other major Muslim sect, and Sufism is sort of, you know, it’s not really a sect. It’s just a kind of different Muslim practice. But because these are not as austere as orthodox Sunni Islam, Ibn Abd al-Wahhab was very much against them. And this is really where the whole idea of, you know, of Takfir, like calling other people apostates, that’s where it really started to sort of gather steam, with him. And so, you know, I mean, he was in lots of ways, again, a very negative influence. On the other hand, the Muslim reform movement, people like Muhammad Abduh, Jamal Afghani, you know, these people were very much influence by Wahhab. So he’s a central figure.

HH: What did he do, though? I mean, for someone who hadn’t read the book yet, explain to them what Wahhab did to Islam and to the Middle East.

LS: Well, I mean, one of the important things was is that he was tied to the ruling Saud clan of what is now known as Saudi Arabia, named after the ruling Saud clan. So that was very important. They essentially made a political/religious deal, and they would continue to sustain each other’s legitimacy at that point. I mean, really what Wahhabism, it’s a very, you know, again, it’s a very, very austere form of Islam. And it’s sort of the central, or one of the central components of what we now know as, you know, whether we call it political Islam, the Islamic movement, and we’d also have to include al Qaeda in these different movements.

HH: So he’s the founding father of it. And then about fifty years later, after his death, is born Jamal al-Din Afghani, who you just referenced. And he’s the charismatic founder of Salafism. And you know, a lot of these words get thrown around. What is the relationship between Salafism and Wahhabism. Are they simply two sides of the same coin?

LS: Well, it’s very interesting, and I didn’t really, I mean, I talked to a lot of people about this, and it’s very interesting. If you look at Wahhabism, really, its roots are in, you know, what we now know again as Saudi Arabia. We’ll just call it the Arabian Peninsula. Salafism is something a little different. It’s certainly influenced by Abd al-Wahhab, but it comes also out of an Egyptian tradition. Afghani lived in Egypt, and his followers, especially Muhammad Abduh, were all Egyptian. And Egypt plays a very different role in Muslim intellectual life. I mean, Egypt is a very different place with all the different mosques there. I mean, Egypt is really, in some ways, the center, the core of Islamic civilization. So what Salafism refers to is this group of intellectuals and political activists who also thought that Islam had steered off the wrong track. And the way to get it back onto the right track was to emulate the early days of the Islamic umma. The Salaf refers to the righteous forbearers, meaning Mohammad and basically the people around him, his followers, his closest followers. So to emulate that people, that would put Islam back on the true path, so that it could once again compete with the West. Remember, this reform movement takes place immediately after, or it starts after Napoleon invades Egypt. And you know, these Muslim intellectuals and activists are astonished. We thought we were the best of all nations. How could this happen? How could the infidels overrun us so easy? So they knew something was wrong. And what would correct it? Again, to emulate the prophet.

HH: You know, if I would say one thing about The Strong Horse, I’m talking with Lee Smith, author of The Strong Horse, what it made me think about is in parallel. I don’t think any American really can, or anyone can understand America unless they understand the revolution, the founding, the Constitution. If they don’t get Franklin and that generation, and Washington and Adams, and that generation, and then Lincoln…and what you’re doing, I think, here, very subtly, is you said okay, focus on Wahhab, then focus on Salafism, then go to Banna and then Qutb. And then you’re going to get to the modern place that we have, which is all built on this superstructure of history, which begins with a revolutionary trauma, which is Napoleon.

LS: Yeah, yeah.

HH: I thought it was just elegant.

LS: Thanks, thanks. I think it is, I think that is a really important, I mean, that really is the key moment.

HH: When we get from Salafists, though, when they begin their reform movement about embrace the West, take the technology, don’t take the morals, introduce Banna into the story now, because that’s when Americans begin to hear Muslim Brotherhood. They’ll begin to understand where we are today.

LS: Right. Banna was much less of a, I mean, these other characters were, especially Muhammad Abduh and Jamal al-Din Afghani, I mean, these people were much more sort of, they were much more intellectuals. They wrote, they lectured, they argued, they debated. Hassan al-Banna was not an intellectual. He was more like an activist, a political activist and community organizer. Banna also came to, he sort of came to maturity at a time when the British were still occupying parts of, they were still occupying Egypt, as they would for another quarter century after Banna formed the Muslim Brotherhood. So yeah, the formation of the Muslim Brotherhood is very, very important landmark in the development of political Islam in the Islamic movement. And again, this is a gentleman who, I mean, I actually have sort of a warm spot for Muhammad Abduh, even someone like Rashid Rida, who’s a very, you know, very interesting thinkers. Banna was not an interesting thinker. Banna was basically, you know, he was a man of violence. And there’s certainly room for men of action and people who do violent things. But the sorts of things that he did, and the sort of purposes that he lent is, you know, lent his feats of arms to, were, I think, repugnant.

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HH: Lee Smith, I want to go to the rise of anti-Americanism. And one of the bracing things about The Strong Horse is you point out this existed long before 9/11, it existed long before 1973 when Nixon and Kissinger intervened decisively on behalf of Israel.

LS: Yeah.

HH: It goes back prior, you know, ’56, Ike is on the side of the Arabs, basically, in that.

LS: Right, yeah.

HH: And so it goes back to Nasser. And I don’t think most Americans even have a clue who Nasser is or what he did. So why don’t you take a swing at setting up why he is the model for Saddam, bin Laden, Nasrallah, all of them.

LS: Right. Yeah, I mean, Nasser was an ideologue. He led the coup, the coup d’etat which we refer to as the Free Officers Revolution. It wasn’t really a revolution. It was a bloodless coup that deposed the then-king of Egypt. Nasser didn’t become president right away. I think it was two or three years he waited before he moved up his predecessor. But Nasser was, you know, Nasser was sort of the great hope of the, not only the Egyptian masses, but the Arab masses as well, and many of the Muslim masses. And we also have to, excuse me, have to remember that this was the time of the non-aligned movement, which was a little bit of a misnomer. The non-aligned movement were, you know, basically a group of nations that were not copping to the obvious fact that they were supported by the Soviets. So Nasser was definitely on that side. After a certain point, Nasser, yeah, it was quite clear that Nasser was on the side of the Soviets in the Cold War. But for a while, the Americans courted Nasser, and they thought that they could have a deal with him, especially the Eisenhower administration. And that’s why the Eisenhower administration basically compelled the Brits, French and the Israelis to withdraw from Suez in 1956. As I note in the book, Eisenhower was astonished when even after that, he found out that the Arabs hated the Americans.

HH: Right.

LS: And the fact is that, you know, by forcing out the French and the Brits, we were the only great Western power left in the region. There was no one else to hate besides us.

HH: Yeah, and you write, “I give no credence to the idea that the Arab-Israeli crisis is the region’s central issue.” If there was no Israel, Lee Smith, would the Arabs generally still hate us?

LS: I think it has little to do with Israel, and it has more to do with our position in the region. I mean, we’re very important in the region. You know, the Persian Gulf has been what a scholar, Martin Kramer, calls an American lake. So our position in the region is very important. And if there were no Israel, we would still have a very huge position in the Middle East. And so yes, I think that Arab rulers, presidents, demagogues, terrorists, would still use us as a foil to increase and enhance their own power.

HH: On Page 55, you write, “The U.S. is hated not because of what it does or because of what it is. The United States is hated for what it is not – not Arab, and not Muslim.”

LS: Right.

HH: “America plays the part of the utterly alien force that puts Arabs at existential risk unless they cohere as one. Fear of the outsider clarifies Arabism, and war against him unifies the whole, or in Nasser’s formulation, no voice louder than the cry of battle.” And I think it took me a couple of times through to understand what you were saying by resistance is deep in the Arab character. And I guess it’s resistance to us.

LS: Right. I mean, I think that yeah, certainly right now, that’s how it is. It’s resistance to us, and resistance to the Israelis. But also, if you look at the different people who cry resistance in the region, I mean, you find Hezbollah doing this. And you find Hamas doing this. And look at who else Hezbollah’s attacking. It’s not just the Israelis, and they’re not just anti-American. They also attack their Sunni, their fellow countrymen in Lebanon. And you know, in May, 2008, Hezbollah ran through Beirut, and they slaughtered Sunnis. They ran through the Shouf Mountains, and slaughtered Druze. So when they talk about resistance, you know, there are a whole bunch of different victims and targets of resistance. So yeah, while we certainly bear the brunt of it, along with the Israelis, this idea of resistance, this banner of resistance, it’s just to make different groups cohere and take on other groups.

HH: Now is this necessarily part of non-Arabic Islam as well? You don’t get that sense in Turkey or in Indonesia. We’ll leave aside Afghanistan and the tribalism there, because it’s very much the tribal…but it seems to me one of the optimistic things you can take away from The Strong Horse is that this endless war that we find ourselves in is not going to be won with Islam, but it’s going to be won with Arab Islamists.

LS: Yeah, I really look at the issue from…for me, I look at the issue as an Arab issue. First of all, I think it’s been very unsuccessful when our policy makers and elected officials have chosen to put it in terms of Islam. I mean, you know, neither President Bush nor President Obama are imams or sheiks, so they shouldn’t be talking about Islam one way or another. They shouldn’t say bad things about Islam, certainly not. But on the other hand, they shouldn’t be saying, you know, the real Islam is this, the true Islam is that. They’re not qualified to discourse on this. We would lose our minds, rightfully so, if our presidents were talking about the true Christianity or the true Judaism, right?

HH: Yes.

LS: I mean, this is the role of preachers, chaplains, rabbis, cantors, not the role of our presidents. So I find it very counterproductive when we talk about it in religious terms. And also, again, I just don’t see it in religious terms. A lot of these problems predate the advent of Islam.

HH: Yup.

LS: So that’s really how I see it.

HH: How much of it is because in the West right now, and if you’ve been hanging around with Michael Totten in Beirut…

LS: Yeah.

HH: You’ve probably been hanging around with Hitchens as well. And you know, the whole…

LS: Yeah, I was in Beirut with him.

HH: Did you almost get kidnapped with him that time?

LS: No, it wasn’t a kidnapping. It was a fight.

HH: Oh, that’s what I mean. Hitchens is a frequent guest on our program.

LS: I was in the hotel when it happened, and they came back breathless and a little bloodied. Thank goodness that nothing really bad happened.

HH: Well, I think part of the reason we don’t get the distinctions between all these different factions is because a sort of Hitchens-Dawkins projection is that all religious believers alike, it’s sort of like all aspirin alike. And you have the fundamentalist modern distinction out there. But we do tend to reduce Islamic believers into one category or the other.

LS: Right. I think that, what I’d say is this. I think that you have to take seriously the different texts that people, the different texts and different cultures that people come from, right? I mean, the Koran is not the same thing as the Hebrew Bible, which is not the same thing as the New Testament. And you have to take seriously, I mean, you don’t have to believe in it, but you have to take the fact seriously that people believe these things, that people believe they’re sacred texts. They’re not all the same. Just because people believe in God, or they are religious, doesn’t mean that all of those religions are reducible to the same sort of, you know, to the same sort of emotional construct. They’re different things.

HH: How comfortable are you talking about the Koran with Muslims?

LS: I mean, some of the times I learn a lot, some of the times I know a lot more about it than the people I’m talking about it with.

HH: Oh, how interesting.

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HH: Lee, about halfway through the book, you write, “Political ambition is in the nature of human existence. It’s a given in any society. The purpose of political institutions is to manage that struggle. Liberal democracies do it with mechanisms like checks and balances, separation of powers, multiple parties, free elections, everything familiar to us.” But then you write, “Arab societies have other methods. The most common is the use of violence to do away with rivals. But there are other techniques as well,” and you write set potential challengers at each other’s throats, get lots of different security services, jihad, et cetera. Is this going to be, is this going to be controversial in the Arab world? It may get you some critics in the West, but I mean, if Mubarak reads this, will he say well yeah, that’s right, he’s got it?

LS: (laughing) I don’t know. So far, I know there have been two reviews in Arab papers.

HH: Oh.

LS: One of them was in an English language Arab paper published in Abu Dhabi by a guy named Max Rodenbeck. You know, he speaks very good Arabic, I believe. He was raised in Egypt, and his father taught at the AUC. And his review was deeply, darkly negative. He had a very negative review of the book. But then, there was another, a very long, two-part kind of review/article/excerpt in a Cairo weekly called El Fagr. And this was an extremely favorable review. So I’m curious to see how the rest of the region will respond to if, or you know, depending on, of course, how much of the region does read it or tap into it. I mean, I think, you know, I mean, my sense is that if Hosni Mubarak read that, he’d say well, it’s really kind of unpleasant someone would put it out there in public like that, but of course, it’s true. I mean, you know, it’s obviously true. These guys don’t have real elections. If only they did. But yeah, that’s how they manage, that’s how they manage political ambition there, through the security services.

HH: I mean, if they closed the door, if they closed the door and you got inside, and Mubarak is talking with his head of state security, or of his various security services, I don’t think this would be controversial.

LS: Yeah, right.

HH: But I think it will upset a lot of people in Washington, who for whatever reason, and this is my question, why is it so easy for Americans, especially at the policy level, to believe the myth that this is a fertile field for democracy?

LS: Right. Well, I should say something. I should say that you know, part of the book is about my, a little bit about my transformation, or metamorphosis or what have you, that at first when I was first there, I mean, I was in Lebanon during the Cedar Revolution, and it was a greatly exciting, thrilling time to be there. You know, it’s always, I mean, it’s quite exciting to be in the middle of a revolution. And as I also write in the book, it was a great time to be an American and to feel that our government, our leaders, had taken the side of freedom. So that was really remarkable. But as I spent more time there, and as I thought about it more and more, I just said this is not, you know, even though the Lebanese want to have a democracy, a majority of the Lebanese would like to live like this, there is a group of armed men here, an armed militia called Hezbollah, and they hold this country hostage by force of arms. So there is no such thing as Lebanese democracy right now. It’s checkmated.

HH: Yeah.

LS: So…

HH: It reminded when Robin Wright wrote Dreams And Shadows, she had this very arresting, very sinister portrait of Nasrallah, which is it echoed in everything. It’s, he is a sinister figure.

LS: Yeah, yeah, he’s a very dark figure. And Hezbollah is a very, very dark shadow over not just Lebanon, but over the entire Middle East.

HH: I’m looking for the quote where you say they take joy in killing Jews. I can’t find it exactly.

LS: Yeah.

HH: But I’ve never heard it put that bluntly before.

LS: Yeah.

HH: And that makes a difficult proposition for any optimist.

LS: Right.

HH: So why does optimism persist inside the Beltway?

LS: I don’t know. I mean, I think it’s a function of American character, I guess. Also, I think, you know, I mean I know a lot of policy makers here now. And I mean, for a lot of them, it’s a professional thing as well. You know, if you were to get too despondent, how could you, seriously, how could you show up at work everyday and say well look, the fact is that we just have to deal with it, we just have to deal with the fact that things are not going to get better, that we’re dealing with a very, you know, dark culture in many ways. And so I think that people are looking for some sort of optimism. And again, we’re Americans. I just want to say that it’s not just that, it’s not just Hezbollah and Nasrallah that are anti-Semitic.

HH: Oh, of course not. No, but…

LS: I mean, unfortunately, this dispensation is spreading over Lebanon so that even large parts of the Christian community are expressing this, are expressing this vile sentiment.

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HH: One of those sort of upside down approaches, Lee Smith, is that you ask your reader to consider that Israel, forget our love for the democracy, forget anything else, Israel is our strong horse. And it is the strong horse, indeed, for Saudi Arabia, and what the Saudis refer to as the Gulfies, or the Egyptians refer to the Gulfies as the Gulf states.

LS: Right.

HH: It is, it’s what is necessary in the Middle East right now to counter pose Hezbollah and Iran and Syria.

LS: Right.

HH: And that’s just a different way of looking at this.

LS: Yeah, well one of the, you know, one of the issues, one of the problems that we’re having right now is that Israel has basically, I know that this might sound strange to some people, but Israel has basically kept the peace in the Eastern Mediterranean, that section of the Middle East, now since 1973. I mean, there have been smaller wars, smaller eruptions. There was the Lebanon war that Israel was part of. But state to state wars, there hasn’t been a state to state war since 1973, and that’s because all the actors in the region – Egypt, Jordan, even Syria, who does not have a peace treaty with Israel, but they all know that the U.S. backs Israel so strongly, they don’t have a choice of defeating Israel. So that’s been a very good thing to keep the general peace in the Eastern Mediterranean. We don’t have anything like Israel in the Persian Gulf that is able to keep the peace. We hoped that the Shah’s Iran might be able to do this, but of course, this was not the case, and the Shah fell, and now we have the Islamic Republic. We hoped that the Saudis would be able to perform some sort of similar role, but as we’ve seen since 9/11, the Saudis are not even capable of taking care of their own security. I mean actually, as we saw since you know, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. The Saudis can’t protect themselves. So it’s really kind of a weird stretch right now for us to basically be looking, some of us are, some of us are not, it’s not clear where the Obama administration is on this, but for us to be looking for the Israelis to not just keep the Eastern Mediterranean calm, but also the Persian Gulf. Frankly, I think that should be our job, keeping the Persian Gulf calm. We can take care of that.

HH: They must not, they must have no expectation of that. Even though the Persian Gulf is an American lake, as you point out, we’ve got all of our carrier groups there and overwhelming ability to project force against Iran if it goes crazy, but we’re not going to do anything about their nukes. And if they go nuclear, as I think you intimate in The Strong Horse…

LS: Right.

HH: The other nations in the region are going to have to go nuclear, and we’re going to have this sort of crazy cauldron of history of violence, armed to the teeth with radioactivity. It’s not a situation we want Israel to do other than what they probably will do, correct?

LS: Yeah, I mean, I’ll say that I would much prefer we do something about it. We’re the senior partner in the relationship. The Persian Gulf, after homeland security, the Persian Gulf is our vital national interest. The free flow of affordable energy, it’s not just important to…I don’t have a car, so it doesn’t matter to me because of the kind of car I drive. But it matters to me because of the stability of international markets. And this matters to every American. It’s a vital national interest. So I think we should act on it. Short of that, if we don’t act on it, yes, I think the Israelis should act on it, and I believe they will act on it. But again, I’d much rather see us.

HH: We’d need realism, wouldn’t we, at…an injection of realism about the size of a reservoir to change Beltway thinking, vis-à-vis Iran and sanctions, and vis-à-vis Syria. I mean, your portrait of Syria, we’ve been…I mean, it was very humbling to see you detail the number of visits that American secretaries of state have made to Damascus in search of a moderation that has never been there, for which there’s no evidence, and which only a fool would really believe will materialize under Bashar. Is that a fair assessment of what you’re saying?

LS: Yeah, yeah, definitely.

HH: Well then, Israel’s going to have to act, right? Because we’re not going to do it.

LS: Right. I’m afraid you’re probably right. To come back to Syria for a second, I was involved in a debate or an argument with a friend today who works on Syrian affairs. He’s not in government, but he monitors this stuff very closely. And that was basically my argument. I mean, we’ve been looking at the same thing for thirty years. Why don’t we take the Syrians seriously? Look at their strategic games. And once we do all this and take them seriously as an independent actor, just realize that they act this way for a reason, and we can’t change that behavior. So yeah, in terms of like real realism being injected into the American debate? I wish there was a lot more of it. I hope my book injects some. We’ll see.

HH: Do you regret that they did not keep the armies moving as they invaded, and simply crossed the Syrian border and go to Damascus? As one of your interlocutors in The Strong Horse says, you should have gone into Damascus. Do you regret, Lee Smith, that we didn’t?

LS: I don’t know if the army, if the military should have gone into Damascus, but I think that once the Syrians started messing, once the Syrians started helping to kill U.S. soldiers in Iraq, and once the Syrians started targeting our allies in Lebanon, they started to help our enemies target Israelis and Palestinians in Israel and the Palestinian territories, yes, I think we should have taken dramatic and violent action against the Syrian regime. Very violent and very dramatic action. Again, I don’t think we should have invaded Damascus, which would have been a handful and probably not worth it, but definitely do something to get their act in order.

 HH: Will you explain to the audience, Lee Smith, why is it not improbably that Iran and Syria cooperate, even though a lot of armchair Arabists say oh, they’re Sunni and Shia, they’re Persian and Arab, they’ll never get along?

LS: Yeah, I mean, there are a number of different reasons. Hezbollah, Hezbollah’s actually the cement that binds them. I mean, Hezbollah’s a very important asset for both Iran and Syria. It gives them an active front to fight Israel. Another thing is that both of these are non-Sunni states. So I mean, Syria is run by a minority Alawi regime, and Iran is run by, you know, it’s a Persian Shia state. So in order to project power in the Arabic speaking Middle East, they use Hezbollah to be able to project power. And they fight Israel through proxies. And that also allows them to project power. And then there’s basically, I mean, one of the most important things is they’re just allied over this ideology of resistance.

HH: Right.

LS: Ideology, resistance to the West, resistance to Israel. So yeah, they’re tied on a whole bunch of different…and on operational levels as well – business deals, defense agreements. They’re very close.

HH: 30 seconds, do you ever expect Iran or Syria to reach a diplomatic rapprochement with America about American interests?

LS: Not the way that these two regimes are configured right now. I think it’s certainly possible at some point in the future. But the Iranians, there can’t be the Islamic Republic, and the Syrian regime can’t be led, the Syrian government can’t be led by an Alawi regime. So maybe some day, but not now, not the way that these two regimes are formed.

HH: It’s so crucial for people to get.

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HH: Lee, when you are here in the United States, how do you get information about the Middle East? To what do you turn to get reliable information in a region full of propagandists?

LS: Yeah, for me, it’s different, because I’m online all day with different friends in Lebanon. So it’s very easy for me to get informed and get up to date news, and sort of get inside stories and stuff like that. I think it’s very hard for, I think it’s very hard for most American readers who are interested in it. And one of the things that people ask me all the time is they say well, what’s the best TV station that I should learn about this? I believe that the BBC must be better, because they’re British, right? Or CNN must be better than Fox. And I mean personally, my personal opinion is that I think Fox does an excellent job of covering stuff. And I even look at the crawl at the bottom of the screen, and I think wow, that’s information that most people wouldn’t necessarily know that they provide. But I think that all of the TV media do a pretty good job of trying to cover this stuff. I think if people really want to understand what’s going on in the region, and I certainly don’t mean just to peddle my own book here, but I think you need to read books. I mean, I think if people want to know the backgrounds of stuff, and the history of stuff, and what are the real issues that are going on, you really need to go for a book. And newspapers aren’t going to cover, and neither will the TV.

HH: Now of the blogs that you read to get up to speed, obviously we’ve mentioned Michael Totten.

LS: Right.

HH: But who else do you read?

LS: Well, I mean, I have a friend of mine named Tony Badran. He does a blog called Across the Bay, which specializes in Lebanon and stuff. Tony’s from Lebanon. But because there’s so much going on in Lebanon these days, including the Saudis have a stake in Lebanon, the Iranians through Hezbollah have a stake in Lebanon, Syria has a stake in Lebanon, Israel’s on Lebanon’s border, so the Israelis have an interest. So he covers a large part of the region on that blog. And he’s an excellent writer and a really good analyst.

HH: Across the Bay, okay.

LS: Yeah, so that’s a blog that I really like a log. And I mean, I say this, and Tony’s also a good friend.

HH: Do you read the Israeli papers, Ha’aretz and Jerusalem Post?

LS: I do, yeah. I don’t read Hebrew, so I read the English language press, Ha’aretz and Jerusalem Post. And I have some friends who write for both. I think those are both really, both top notch papers.

HH: And do you get a sense, as we have about a minute left before the break…

LS: Sure.

HH: Do you get a sense we’re entering into a crucial year? Or is this going to be, are they just going to watch Iran for a while, and people hold their, keep their powder dry, Lee Smith?

LS: I think there’s a whole bunch of different things that are moving in bad directions. I mean, that’s usually the way the region goes. And the issue’s not just Iran for the Israelis. But it’s also Hezbollah, and there are definitely a lot of tensions on that border right now. So I think that that war is just inevitable. I mean, that war is going to be resumed at some point or another. And whether it happens this year, next year or three years from now, it’s going to happen.

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HH: A couple of central theses here. One is democracy is not, as President Bush liked to say, transformative, Lee Smith. You are, you’re a skeptic of this whole project. And explain to people why.

LS: Well, because I think you can’t start with democracy. I mean, the President did believe that, that democracy is transformative. And I guess to be fair, I guess I would say I kind of thought the same thing until I saw it actually play out on the ground. And it’s not transformative. I mean, democracy is, as I think I write in the book, democracy is a flower. It’s not a root. You have to start with a whole bunch of different things. And democracy is one of the results. It’s how people choose to live among themselves. It doesn’t create other opportunities. It’s how people choose to live among themselves.

HH: Now this is on, from Page 153, I’m going to read three or four paragraphs here, because it’s so different from what most people think about the Middle East, but it’s also important in terms of how we understand it, Americans do. “Masculine energy is a powerful force. It creates civilizations and destroys them. In every society, there are only two internal checks to the inchoate charisma of its young men, less they lose themselves in free-floating violence that takes everyone down with them. There are the male elders, and even more important, there are the women, mothers and wives. Every society must decide how best to use its manhood to create, govern and defend itself. None can afford it when either the elders or the women urge their young men to take them to the brink of extinction. Unfortunately, it isn’t just the male elders who have been pushing young men to violence. Perhaps the unhappiest fact of the Arabic-speaking Middle East is that Arab women have been as well. A 9/11 joke,” you write, “A woman sees a man coming out of the men’s room in Cairo or Riyadh or Damascus or Beirut or Baghdad, and asks him are you Osama bin Laden? Why no, says the man. Why would you think such a thing? Because, she says, he’s the only man left in the Arab world. It’s just a joke,” you write, “but it gets at something important about the Middle East, which is that often Arab women hold men in contempt if they’re not willing to kill and die for Arab honor. Arab women are complicit in the violence of Arab societies, and so it should come as no surprise that of late, Arab women have picked up the mantle of martyrdom and chosen to suicide themselves while killing innocents. After all, many have been sending their men to death for years.”  That’s going to shock a lot of people, and I think probably the first thing you want to say is you’re not talking about Arab-American women. You’re not even talking about all Arab women.

LS: Right, right.

HH: You’re talking about this crazy sort of culture that’s taken hold there.

LS: Right.

HH: How do you change that?

LS: I don’t know. I mean, I really don’t know. But I mean, I think that this is one of the things, you know, for understandable reasons, we haven’t talked about…you know, Ayaan Hirsi Ali comes out with her wonderful books, her very, you know, courageous books about her courageous life. And so we’ve tended to look mostly at Muslim women, as Arab women, as victims. And yes, there is no doubt about it. In many ways, they are. But you know, when we see these different parades of young Palestinian, little Palestinian kids, infants, dressed up in suicide bomber outfits, it’s not just the dads were dressing them up, right? I mean, the moms are a part of it, too. So I think we need to look at it more. You know, it’s not just a couple of bad Arab guys who are responsible for this. There’s a lot of people who are complicit in this violence, and in this culture that it’s just sort of pushing itself towards the edge while it’s killing other people, too. So I think yeah, women have to be part of the solution.

HH: A couple of pages later, you write, “Maybe the question is not what went wrong with the Islam and the Arabs,” you’re quoting your friend here, “but what went right with the West. To ask what’s wrong with the Arabs is to take the West as the historical norm, and imagine that its progress is a trajectory that all societies must inevitably follow, leading towards freedom, democracy and respect for the inherent dignity of the individual human being. But since we have been handed all of these things for free, it is easy to overlook the sacrifices many generations made in blood along the way. Likewise, to forget how we got here is to trivialize the efforts of others elsewhere who strive for the same ideals, but met with little or no success.” Very pessimistic, Lee Smith. Very pessimistic.

LS: No, I don’t mean to be pessimistic. I mean, one of the things…okay, it’s pessimistic. But one of the things, again, one of the things that I want is for us to respect and admire what we have and who we are, and our forefathers, and the people, you know, our forefathers, the political officials, the people who died, who were burned at the stake, all the different people who led us on this path to get where we are today. It’s a remarkable story. It’s a remarkable narrative. It’s a great gift that we all enjoy. And we shouldn’t sell it short and assume that everyone else is capable of this. And also, I think we do need to give credit to these people who have tried the same thing but they failed. I mean, there are a lot of heroes in the Arab world. There have been a lot of Voltaires. But just because the Arab world doesn’t look, you know, doesn’t look like where you and I live, doesn’t mean that there haven’t been people who have tried. There are people who know that there are problems. I mean, I have a lot of friends still in Lebanon, in Egypt, all sorts of places who want something much, much better for their society. The sadness is I just don’t think they’re going to get it anytime soon.

HH: So what then ought American foreign policy to do? You don’t talk much about Iraq. It’s very interesting, as you say in the introduction, it’s in the background. It’s the background to everything.

LS: Yeah.

HH: But it seems to me it’s also the best hope that the region has, that what Bush and Company launched there is really, when you consider The Strong Horse, the only thing they’ve got going for them right now.

LS: It may be. I mean, I would like to be, and believe it or not, I would like to be proven wrong. I would love to see Iraq turn into a, I mean, it’s not ever going to be Switzerland, but I would like to see it, you know, stay, or become and stay a flourishing sort of democratic example. Whether or not that’s really going to happen, I don’t know. And it’s not just because of Iraq. It’s because of Iraq’s neighbors. If you look at what’s happened in the last, since August, there have been at least three major car bombings in Baghdad that have cost the lives of almost 500 people. Now on our terms, you know, whenever there’s a mega-terror attack in Israel, we look, we do the numbers, and we say well, that’s equal to one 9/11 a week. Well, if we look at 500 people killed in the middle of Baghdad, that’s like almost 2 9/11’s in the last five months. And that’s really bad. And we know who’s responsible for this. It’s the Syrians…I mean, the Maliki government has been telling us it’s the Syrians, and the Saudis have some involvement, too. So how do these people, how does the government of Iraq protect its own people? How do they provide security? How do they have to clamp down? Do they start sending, then, car bombs to Damascus, which is what the Maliki government has threatened? Maliki has said this. He said go ahead. You send car bombs to Baghdad, and we’ll turn them around and we’ll send them to Damascus. So those are my concerns for Iraq. Again, it’s not just the internal stuff, but the neighbors.

HH: What do you think of our firm commitment to drawing down to 90,000, and then to almost nothing within the calendar year?

LS: I think in terms of U.S. strategic interests, it’s a big mistake. I think that we have a lot of things…I think that first of all, we should continue…I mean, look, we owe something to Iraq right now. We tore that…we tore that country up. And I think that Iraq is much better off now than it was under Saddam Hussein, and I always will support the Bush administration deposing Saddam Hussein. Iraqis are better off, the Middle East is better off. The world is a better place without Saddam Hussein. Nonetheless, that country was torn up, it was under our watch. I think that we do owe the Iraqis something now that we’re there. And also, in terms of strategic stuff, it’s like we have an allied Arab army and an Arab allied security service. I don’t think these relationships are going to go away, and you hear people in Washington talk about us building on these relationships, which is what I want to hear. And that’s what we want to have happen. So that’s my concern, that if we draw down, that we lose a number of these different things, which you know, a lot of Americans died for this, and a lot of Americans, you know, we spent a lot of American money on it. So I certainly don’t think we should throw it away.

HH: This society built on honor and shame, which I read the excerpt on that, has that been displaced in Iraq? Steven Pressfield, the guy who wrote Gates Of Fire, frequent visitor, website is tribes, says no, it’s still a tribal society. Afghanistan is very much still a tribal society. It’s the tribes, stupid, is his famous phrase. And you echo that a lot in The Strong Horse.

LS: Right.

HH: Have we dented that culture by dint of the last seven years of occupation?

LS: I don’t think so. I mean, I can’t say. I really don’t know Iraq well enough at all to hold opinions on it. I can talk about the places that I know well. Lebanon…people can visit Beirut, you know, as Michael Totten has, and as I have as well with him, and just walk through the bars and see a very lively, wonderful scene. But one of the things you realize, seeing all these well-dressed, fashionable people, that the most important relationships they have are with their families and with their clans, and with their confessional sects, whether they’re Christian or Shia or Sunni. So I don’t see that changing anytime soon. I don’t see how it can change. I know there’s lots of people who want it to change, but it just won’t. And I would say that in the little bit that I do know about Iraq, what I can say is it was a matter of turning the tribes around that helped us defeat al Qaeda in the surge. It was a tribal affair. The tribes got mad at all these foreigners coming in and messing with tribal blood, trying to take their women, and killing their men with impunity. So I think that was a real tribal affair.

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HH: One impression you’ll have is that Lebanon is both the most wonderful place on the planet, and also the most tortured. You clearly love it, Lee Smith.

LS: Yeah, that’s a nice way to put it, though. I mean, it is one of the most wonderful places, and also one of the most tortured. It’s deeply sad. You know, it’s like watching a troubled younger brother, or something like that. I’m sure that sounds patronizing, but that’s the way it is. And you hope for all these wonderful, good things, and you can’t help but see that it can’t help but sort of stumble into all these problems, and it just can’t avoid them.

HH: Communicate to the audience who have not yet read The Strong Horse what Beirut is like, or what Lebanon is like. Give them a little idea of why you love it so.

LS: It’s just, I mean, it’s just a terrifically exciting place. I mean, the first time that I was there was shortly before the Hariri assassination. And Syrian troops still occupied the country. But just going around and talking to people, everyone was saying I can just feel something happening. Something’s about to change here. And then, two months later, sure enough, Syrian troops had withdrawn. There were a million people in the streets of Beirut clamoring for their…I mean, just that in itself is extraordinary.

HH: Yeah.

LS: You know, people in the Arab world, people in an Arab city clamoring for their sovereignty and independence, and their freedom. And it wasn’t an event organized by some demagogue telling them to go out and hit the streets or else they were in big trouble. They came down on their own, they risked, you know, at different times, they risked injury, they risked torture, they risked imprisonment. It’s just an awesome place. And then, I mean, you have other things. And just to walk through the city, walk into a bookstore, or a music store, and see books and CD’s in English and French and Arabic, it’s mind-blowing. It’s really wonderful. And the people are, you know…

HH: One of the things you write in here is that it was able to move forward because after 15 years of civil war, it was simply exhausted with killing. Has that exhaustion now dissipated so they’re ready for round two of civil war? Is that what you’re saying?

LS: I think everyone, well, not everyone, I think everyone asides from Hezbollah would, and the Hezbollah’s allies, I think everyone else would like to avoid that, because what we’ve seen for the last five years is that there’s only been one side firing, right? It’s only the Hezbollah side and Syria and Syria’s allies who’ve been killing other Lebanese. The other Lebanese have not been fighting, or they’ve not been doing the shooting. They’ve not been doing the assassinations, the car bombs. So I think one of the things that we’re watching now is how many people want to avoid a civil war in Lebanon. Yeah, so I think in lots of ways, it really is true. They’re exhausted by this, and they don’t want it to happen again.

HH: And your depiction of Israel’s view of Lebanon, also very original for much of what I’ve read, which is everyone’s lost somebody in Lebanon, and they don’t want any part of Lebanon, either.

LS: Yeah, I don’t think they do. I mean, it’s fascinating…three of the, in the last three years, some of the big Israeli movies have been about Lebanon. You know, first there was Before, and then there was Waltzing With Bashar, and then most recently, there was this movie called Lebanon. And this kind of comes from the Israeli elite. My sense is, going around Israel and talking to different people, and again, every man of a certain generation spent time in Lebanon. And they have interesting stories, and some funny stories, and some tragic stories. And I think they’re very interested in Lebanon in a way, but yeah, I don’t think, they want to go back in there and spend an awful lot of time in Lebanon.

HH: All right, and so with all that having been said, the Lebanese are exhausted, the Israelis want no part of it, it’s only Hezbollah, what is motivating, what is driving Hezbollah, both their love of killing Jews…and is it religious fanaticism? Or is it political positioning?

LS: Yeah, I think it’s a whole bunch of different things. I think it’s certainly ideological. I think the anti-Semitism is real. And it’s vivid. It motivates people to do things, the different things you hear people saying about not just Israel and Zionists, but about Jews. It’s really, certainly motivates people. And then yeah, then there’s the political positioning as well. And we have to remember that Hezbollah’s also a, basically, it’s an Iranian battalion on the Eastern Mediterranean. I mean, this was created by the Iranians, and the Iranians have final say over what Hezbollah does. So there’s a lot of different stuff that, a lot of different stuff at stake with Hezbollah. The Syrians have something…

HH: As we tape this, the Israelis have put out a worldwide alert that Hezbollah may be attempting to kill Jews, Israelis living and working in other countries as a result of the car bombing of Mughniyeh two years ago.

LS: Right.

HH: Is this a battle that will go long past Nasrallah if he is removed? Is it impossible to disband Hezbollah?

LS: Yeah, I think, I mean, one of the things that the Lebanese say, I don’t know how much I entirely agree with this, they thing what’s happened is that an entire generation in this community has been poisoned. I think it’ll be at least another generation, say the Iranian nuclear program was to come down tomorrow, and the Iranian regime would change, right? And even if the most optimistic projections, not realistic, the most optimistic and fantastical, that a democratic government would take over in Iran, and they cut off all supplies to Hezbollah, no more money, no more arms, and Hezbollah lost its weapons, and they just became a regular political party in Lebanon, even then, we’re an entire generation away, an entire generation has been poisoned by this hatred and anti-Semitism.

HH: And the same assessment of Gaza?

LS: Yeah. I haven’t spent time in Gaza, but from what I read and from what I see, yes, it’s very depressing. I mean, these organizations, they manage to keep people, they manage to make people march to this beat. And the people that have the power are the people with guns. They set the tempo.

HH: So what’s that do to their psyche? What’s that do to the Maronite in Lebanon, or the Israeli, or the Gulf state elite, that they’re surrounded by this inevitability of conflict for a generation? And not just conflict. That’s a nice academic term.

LS: Right. Yeah.

HH: Bloodthirsty killing, violence of the sort you describe. What’s it do to them?

LS: I think it has them terrified. I think it has them…I mean, everyone responds differently, right? The Israelis are different than, say, you know, the Arabs of the Persian Gulf states. I mean, they can’t defend themselves, or they won’t defend themselves. The Israelis of course can defend themselves, and will defend themselves. So you know, they respond differently. The Arabs have different ways of dealing with it, different defense mechanisms, different things they say. So they try to appear to be on Hezbollah’s side, even though they’re terrified of Hezbollah, or they’re terrified of the Iranians. And they’re talking out of both sides of their mouth, but they’re terrified, absolutely.

HH: And the young men who are part of the Hezbollah cadre, are they motivated by Shia fundamentalism? Or is that the allegiance to Nasrallah and the charismatic Nasser-like figure?

LS: I think both of those things are going on. I mean, what I would say with Hezbollah in terms of the religious component, it’s also a cultural component. And the Shia and Sunni have been at odds for, you know, since virtually the beginning of Islam. I mean, the split between the Sunni and the Shia, this goes back to the death of Muhammad. So this has been going on for a long time. And believe me, I certainly make no excuses for Hezbollah, but yeah, in terms of the fact that the Shia, as we saw in Iraq, the Shia are a persecuted regional minority. So this is what the Shia are scared of. The Arab Shia are scared of the Arab Sunnis. And this is definitely a part of Hezbollah’s thing as well. They’re really scared of the Sunnis.

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HH: Lee, before we run out of time, and we’re now getting low on time, I want to make sure we touch on the Saudis. They come across in your book, The Strong Horse, as, I think you called them, the paper strong horse.

LS: Yeah.

HH: They’re not really in control of their own destiny, they’re dependant upon the goodwill of others, on Israeli force, on American protection. How do they develop this mystique or this sense of being a dominant world player when they’re this weak?

LS: Well, I mean, a lot of it has to do just with oil. I mean, I think that’s the main part of it. The other part of it is, you know, as far as Sunni Islam, I mean, because both Mecca and Medina are in Saudi Arabia, they’re known as the guardians of the two holy shrines, the two holiest shrines of Islam at Mecca and Medina. So there’s some ideological/religious power there as well. And another aspect of it that I explain in the book is that a lot of the media, a lot of the Arabic language media, including the most liberal trends in the Arabic media, I know it might be hard for people to believe that there are actually liberate, moderate trends in the Arabic language media, but there are. And bizarrely, most of them are sponsored, or wholly supported by the Saudis.

HH: Oh, this is fascinating, Page 132. “Satellite news networks have little to do with opening up public space for the Arab masses. Arab media is a conversation between Arab elites used to influence opinion, promote interests, and tinker with the internal design of rival regimes. As Al Jazeera is an instrument of Qatari foreign policy that allows its owner, the emir of Qatar, to project more power than size and resources that this tiny emirate would naturally dictate, the Saudi-owned liberal media advances the pro-business, pro-U.S. aspects of Saudi policy.” I don’t think I’ve ever seen a realist interpretation of the networks before.

LS: It’s true. I mean, I think we have to get, I think we have to look at their media, Al Jazeera and al-Arabiya are the two main satellite stations. They’re very slickly produced, and they look great. But you know, behind all that, I mean, it’s about projecting power in the region, you know? It’s not about, well, their press just does not function the way our press does. It’s a very different thing. So yeah, it’s really interesting, you know? And this is how they play to block. They play to mess with each other.

HH: Do you…well, that’s it. Constant intrigue.

LS: Yeah.

HH: Do you expect the royal family to be in control in a quarter century, another 25 years? Can they survive this?

LS: I’m of the opinion that Arab regimes are mighty sturdy affairs, that you know, when they fall, it’s usually due to a military coup. There was a popular uprising in Iran, 1978-1979, but we just don’t see the same sort of thing. That’s another reason why the Cedar Revolution in Lebanon was so extraordinary. It was a popular revolution. And it forced the Syrians out. But insofar as actual regimes falling? I think you need, you know, I think what it takes is a military coup, which you know, we saw in Syria a lot, we saw in Egypt. So if I had to bet, yes, I would say the Saudis will make it.

HH: And the Mubarak regime, there is so much about Cairo and Cairo life here. What a fascinating place. But does he successfully transfer power to his son? Does that regime remain an authoritarian, secret police propped up, decadent…

LS: I think so, yeah. I think so. And you know, there’s some varied opinion on this in Egypt, which is surprising. There are a lot of people who are disgusted by the fact that Gama Mubarak is going to replace his father. And then there are other people who are saying well look, we’ve had military people running this country, running this regime since 1954, so…1952, rather. So look, the idea that Gamal Mubarak is a civilian? That’s a marked improvement. Now the fact that he’s a civilian might also make it a little harder for him to manage the military and security services. So it’s a mixed bag, but again, I think that’s a very secure regime as well.

HH: As winsome as you made Lebanon appear, and especially Beirut, you made Cairo sound like a hellhole that I never need to go to. And my question is, how many more people can they put in there? How ungovernable can a city be?

LS: Right. Well, it’s not a hellhole. You know, I have a lot of dear friends there. And you know, the passages on going out to that farm not too far from the pyramids, I mean, it really is an extraordinarily beautiful place in the countryside of Egypt, it’s just gorgeous, but it’s a very hard city. You know, there’s not a lot of room there for people. Not just actual geographic space, but political space and economic space and professional and personal space. So it’s a very hard place. And whenever I thought about how, you know, how daunting it was for me, I thought about my friends and how tough it was on them. And I described that in different parts of the book. But yeah, it is a hard, hard place to be. No doubt about it.

HH: But you also are very careful to point out, it is not because of state security, it’s not because of dictators that radical Islamist jihadism exists, correct, Lee Smith?

LS: Yeah, right. Yeah….

HH: We’ll come back after break and pick up on that, because that’s a key myth. It’s not because of the poor, it’s not because of the violence. It’s, well, we’ll have Lee Smith explain it when we come back.

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HH: Lee Smith, terror is not the work of rogue networks of stateless actors who flourish in failed states, you write in The Strong Horse, but of places like Syria and Iran, and before he fell, Saddam’s Iraq. What’s its origin? Where does it come from?

LS: Well, this is, I’m really glad you asked this, because this is something that I think is really, really important for all of us to recognize. Yeah, it’s not rogue networks of stateless operators. I mean, it’s all, it’s a function of Arab regimes by which I mean, look, there are definitely terrorist organizations, and there are Islamist organizations, and these things all exist, and we’d have crazy people who would want to blow up Israelis or Americans or other Arabs no matter what. But these places, these organizations cannot sustain themselves for long without the assistance of Arab regimes. So this is what Arab regimes do. They back these different outfits, most of the time to fight and deter each other. For instance, one of the things that’s gone on between Syria and Jordan for a long time is the Jordanians backed the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, and actually, they gave refuge to the head of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood for about ten years. Then finally, they asked him to leave about five years ago when the Jordanians thought they would have a better relationship with the new president of Syria, Bashar al-Assad. And then on the other hand, the Syrians backed the Jordanian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. So basically, they deter each other. They say if you mess with us, if you try to support our Islamists to hurt us and bring us down, we’ll do the same thing to you. So that’s basically what’s going on. I mean, all of the Arab regimes have a hand in different Islamist outfits, and different terror outfits around the region. Remember the story, this very sad, terrible story that came out of Afghanistan about a month and a half now, this Jordanian doctor who wound up killing the seven CIA agents?

HH: Yes.

LS: …and a Jordanian handler? Well, I think we all need to look at that and say who was this guy working for? And the fact that he had a Jordanian handler is enough to show you that all of the Arab security services, all of the Middle Eastern security services, have penetrated these outfits, all of them. This is not to say that they control them. I’m not saying, and I don’t believe the Bush administration ever said this, either, that for instance, Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11, or that the Arab regimes can control these guys perfectly all the time. They definitely cannot. But these outfits cannot exist without state support.

HH: So as we come to the conclusion of the conversation this segment and next, part of the, I think the strength of The Strong Horse is it’s just a big blast of wind to blow away a lot of smoke and a lot of conventional wisdom and a lot of thinking. But then at the end of it, you’re left thinking okay, what do we want, what do we want Hillary Clinton to advise the president to do, vis-à-vis these regimes?

LS: Yeah.

HH: And that really is the question, Lee Smith. Should we prop them up? Should we hold more futile elections, one man, one vote, one time as you talk about Djerejian saying? What should we do?

LS: Right. I don’t think we prop them up. I think they make it on their own. I think that we can, I think that all of these places would be fine without our support. I mean, it’s one of the conceits of a lot of Arab ideologues, that without, say, our support, the Egyptian regime would fall. No, they wouldn’t. They manage to repress their people quite competently without us. I think what we can’t do is, first of all, we can’t trust them to sustain or support U.S. interests. The Egyptians are not going to, the Egyptians, for instance, are not going to be that much help. Neither will the Saudis be that much help. So we have to keep a very close eye on them. We can’t go back to before 9/11 and assume they’re looking out for our best interests. We have only one ally in the region who does that, and that’s Israel. The Arab regimes do not do this. On the other hand, I think that we can’t force them as we forced the Palestinian Authority into elections, and we saw, you know, Hamas winning and taking over Gaza.

HH: Yeah.

LS: So I think we have to walk a pretty delicate balance.

HH: You write at one point that the Arabs, especially in Lebanon, assume that our guile matches our power, and they think that we’re moving these pieces around.

LS: Yeah.

HH: Well, do you think there’s any chance we actually have a strategery, as George W. Bush used to say? Do we actually have a plan?

LS: I don’t know. Do you see one? I talk about this with friends from Lebanon all the time. And none of us can see one, right? I think that the thing they wanted to do was, the Obama administration wanted to come in, and they wanted to get a peace deal between the Israelis and the Palestinians, figuring that this would be pretty easy to wrap up in a couple of months. All it needed was the Obama touch. And then from there, they’d be able to get all the Arab regimes on their side, and they’d be able to isolate the Iranians. I guess that was the strategy. None of these things have come to pass, right?

HH: I once heard a very senior administration official tell me that we needed to create the leaders they did not have, and he was talking about Maliki, and that unless and until we did that, they could never change. And I think that kind of goes back to your strong horse, strong leader view, and we have created Maliki. Is that a strategy?

LS: You know, it’s interesting. I mean, we’ve created…I mean, how much…really, how much did we create Maliki? I mean, he exists without, you know, he exists without us. I mean, he did win, he did win elections. I guess we’ll see what happens in March, the next elections there. I don’t think that we can, I mean, we can’t create them. Do you know what I mean? These people, they just sort of come about on their own. We couldn’t even handle someone like Nasser. They were just too smart at playing us. I mean, again, Hosni Mubarak is supposed to be an ally. Yeah, he’s kind of an ally, and he’s kind of not an ally. So I just don’t think that we’re capable of getting that far in there and fooling the Arabs on their home turf, right? These regime…

HH: Did you see, did you see any other regime, China, Russia, attempting to penetrate, and attempting to set themselves up again? Or are they all happy to wash their hands of the region and leave it to us to muddle through?

LS: No, I think the Russians are very energetic, especially with regard to the Syrians and the Iranians, right, I mean, in terms of different missile weapons, anti-aircraft systems that they want to sell. You know, I mean, the Russians play a very interesting game. I mean, the Russians, I don’t think they’re necessarily fighting us, just like the Chinese aren’t, but no one minds seeing us get damaged, right? I mean, the French were happy enough to see us get damaged, so the French opposed us over Iraq, and the French were with us in Lebanon. So everyone goes on their own, you know, they pick and choose their fights. And a lot of times, we’re at the center of the fight. It’s not bad for anyone across the world to see the Americans get damaged a little bit.

HH: Boy…

LS: It’s weird when you hear people saying oh, we need to get everyone on our side. Well, just by their own nature, they’re not on our side. We’re on our side. That’s it.

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HH: I hope I have baited the hook for those of you who have tuned in for some or all of the conversation. Eventually, it will be posted, the transcript of it, over at Hughhewitt.com. But Lee, I always like to ask one of the authors at the end of one of these, what did I miss? What did you hope to talk about that I didn’t talk about, or to emphasize?

LS: Nothing. I can’t tell you how happy I am that, to discuss the book at length like this. I don’t think I’ve had a chance to discuss it with anyone at this length. So yeah, it’s really been a thrill, and I really appreciate how closely you read it, and all the different questions. This is just the stuff that I like to talk about, and that really fascinates me still. Even having written the book, it still interests me.

HH: What’s next for you?

LS: I’m not quite sure, yet. I’m trying to come up with another book idea, and I’m thinking about different stuff that would, I mean, about different stuff that takes place here in Washington. So that might be a subject. I mean, I’m still very interested in the Middle East, and maybe write something about Middle East policy and how it’s made in Washington, the different people who contribute to this, both negatively and positively. So yeah, I think that might be a subject.

HH: Boy, I encourage you to do for America what you did for the Arabs, and just take Chapter 8 of the Republic, and go out and see what we’re supposed to…because do you think this is going to change us, this attempt to go Wilson again in the Middle East? Do you think we’re going to go isolationist as a result out of our frustration?

LS: That’s a very interesting question, and this is something that I was thinking about in about the year 2006 in Lebanon, and just watching all these sorts of things failing, and just hoping that Americans didn’t get too despondent, and that we didn’t say to heck with the rest of the world, we can’t change it, so forget it. But I don’t think that’s going to happen, because again, talking about the character of different places, the character of different nations, I think optimism is in our character, for better or worse, and I think that, I mean, honestly, though, we have had a very positive effect on large parts of the rest of the world. And again, I really hope that Iraq works out. But even if it doesn’t, the fact remains that we’ve had a very positive effect on large parts of the world. And even though we might be overly optimistic, it’s also true.

HH: A hundred years from now, what will the Arabs think of George W. Bush? I know that’s a ridiculous question, but I’m just curious what you think.

LS: No, I don’t think it’s a, I think it’s an excellent question. I think already, certainly when I was living in the, when I was living in the region, there were a lot of Arabs who loved George W. Bush. A friend of mine in Syria who I’m still in contact with, I mean, you know, I was watching the second inaugural. I write about this in the book. And he was crying and blowing kisses at the screen, saying George W. Bush is the only man who cares about the Arabs. So I think that in the estimation of many Arabs, George Bush is already a hero.

HH: On that note, Lee Smith, congratulations, fascinating book, The Strong Horse: Power, Politics, And The Clash Of Arab Civilizations. Thank you.

End of interview.