Someone Like-Thinking

...Lee Smith asks. Why is the region so assailed by the intractables of political dysfunction and religious violence?...

Smith, a Middle East correspondent for The Weekly Standard, contends in this short, dense, nuanced polemic that the area suffers from endemic political violence. The ruling elites are caught in “a perpetual pincer movement” between regional concerns and the internal threat of overthrow. They are simply self-interested factions trying, by any measure possible, to retain their grip on power. Jihad, Smith argues, is an age-old byproduct of this struggle as the ruler pushes the energies of the young militant warrior class away from his ­capital. For Smith, the 9/11 attacks were less the result of a clash of civilizations than part of existing Middle East power struggles.

Smith wants the American left to stop blaming American foreign policy for the Middle East’s ills and concentrate instead on the structural deficiencies of the region’s societies. This is an enticing exoneration but...

...it’s all too easy for the violent few to hold the majority hostage. Smith sees this as an embedded cultural inheritance. I prefer my history less dogmatic;...