THE CRUSADES ARE OVER AGAIN

By William Urban

Now that Muslims are too busy killing one another to remember what the topic of the day was ten years ago, it gives us a moment to think back on that era, when Jews in Israel were portrayed alternatively as crusaders and Nazis, and Americans in Iraq as crusaders. It is worth remembering this, because the theme will return again, if the pro-Palestinian/anti-Israel riots in European capitals don’t mean that it hasn’t come back already. There is some continuity in this: the first crusaders started out their “pilgrimage” by murdering every Jew they encountered.

I’ve been thinking about this. In fact, it fits right with the central theme of my next book — that people on the peripheries of states are often unhappy that their way of life, especially their system of morality and their religion, is being undermined by what they see in the distant, evil cities. This has little to do with religion, except that it is convenient to portray the conflict in religious terms. Armed resistance is justified by claiming that the dominant culture is encouraging women to go to school and to shave their legs.

Muslims have long told one another that western interference in their affairs is a revival of the crusades, or a continuation of them. This has long puzzled Americans, who think of crusades as organized efforts to cure cancer or stop crime.

Europeans know about the crusades, but they don’t see that medieval Christianity has anything to do with their modern secular states. Nobody wants to recover the holy places in Jerusalem, least of all the pope.

The crusades have been misunderstood or used as propaganda for so long that the myths are deeply embedded. Twenty years ago even historians portrayed them as Christian aggression or European imperialism. That has changed — I had a part in this by persuading several textbook writers that 19th and 20th century imperialism were efforts to acquire natural resources or strategic bases, while the crusades wanted to drive back the Turks from Constantinople and to reopen the pilgrimage route to Jerusalem. (The usual correction was to reduce the space given to the crusades.) Non-historians only remember that they were bad.

Imperialism certainly had its faults. But lumping missionaries and do-gooders together with the exploiters and explorers results in a pretty soggy interpretation of what it was. I particularly objected to using any inaccurate version of history in a debate about modern politics. One can say correctly that Arabs and other Muslims have a view of their history that collapses the present into the past. That is easy wherever societies remain mentally and emotionally where they were centuries ago. The Middle East may in a complex time-warp, with people killing one another over who was supposed to be Mohammed’s successor, but the West of today resembles the Middle Ages very little.

The crusades began as a response to the Turkish invasion that was about to overrun the [Eastern] Roman Empire that we today call the Byzantine Empire. The emperor had asked the pope to recruit mercenary soldiers so that he could drive the Turks back from his capital. This was an unusual request in that he usually considered the pope the equivalent of the anti-Christ, but he was in a desperate situation. Pope Urban II (a name that readers might easily remember) could not call on the Holy Roman emperor because he was trying to make him subordinate to the Church, so he went to France and called for the liberation of Jerusalem. That is how all crusaders became known as Franks.
Western pilgrims had long worked fairly easily with the Arabs, but after the Turks overran the holy city, that changed. The Turks were less accustomed to pilgrims and they disdained the Arabs, many of whom were Christians. The Arabs fought back, so the whole region was in chaos.

This meant that a relatively small Christian army was able to take most of what they called the Holy Land; they properly considered it a miracle. The problem then was how to consolidate the gains and protect them. The distance from Europe to Jerusalem meant that by the time a danger was perceived, it would already be upon them before any armies could be raised in Europe, much less marched to the rescue.

It was an impossible situation, but time and again attacking Muslim armies were driven back, and several times Christian chances for great victories were squandered by incompetent leaders. After a century, the West had only one foothold left: Acre. It fell in 1291. Soon Turkish armies and navies were moving against Europe. In time Tatars were raiding Russia and Poland; the Turks overran the Byzantine Empire, Bulgaria, Serbia, Romania, and Hungary; and Muslim pirates were descending on coasts from Italy to Iceland. Only in Portugal and Spain were the Christians winning victories. Europeans from that era would have laughed at the thought that they were oppressing Muslim peoples.

This began to change when the Portuguese rounded the Cape and drove Muslim merchants from their bases in Africa and India, then were followed by Dutch, French and British fleets. That, however, had little impact on the ongoing wars in the Balkans and the Ukrainian steppe.

The 1683 coalition of Protestant and Catholic armies that saved Vienna from falling to the Turkish siege (described in my book Bayonets and Scimitars) was as unlikely as the original conquest of Jerusalem. Totally improbable, yet it happened.
Two lessons came out of this long unhappy experience. First, people eventually tire of wars that seem hopeless. Second, that even the most hopeless situation can be turned around.

Most politicians lack the stomach for hard decisions. They like public adulation, and thrive on the symbolisms of power. Few have Churchill’s certainty of being right, and some who do are just flat wrong.

One lesson for us is might be, first, to reject any false comparison of modern politics to the past, then to remember that pulling out of a conflict does not mean that it is over.

Another is to recognize that the jihadists have moved on from complaining about the crusades. Now they take their inspiration from the seventh century blitzkrieg of Mohammed and his successors. It is now once more: convert, or pay taxes, or die. For Jews and Americans they prefer the third choice.

Review Atlas (August 28, 2014), 4.

THE MURDER OF KING TUT

By William Urban

Eager to read something about the Middle East that isn’t a threat to world peace, such as it is? This 2009 ‘Non-fiction thriller” by James Patterson fits the bill. Not that it’s a great book — it has certainly not thrilled its readers, most of whom have awarded it one star on Amazon (and that, perhaps only because that was the lowest rating available). I am more generous.

It may have helped that I listened to the audio-book from the Warren County Library. The reader was tolerably good, which was important because he had to work in three eras — that of Tutankhamen, that of Howard Carter, who discovered the boy-king’s tomb in 1922, and that of James Patterson, who described the problems he encountered in writing this very short book,

Of the three interlocking plots, I was most interested in Patterson’s, probably because I (and every other historian) have wrestled with the same problems. The greatest difficulty is usually a lack of information. Here it isn’t what happened to Tut — he was clearly done in — but why? Motivation is always a problem, and while the Roman question cui bono (who profits) usually provides an answer, we know that human beings do not always calculate profit and loss before committing a crime. Anger, jealousy, greed, insanity and pure stupidity have to be considered.

Patterson felt quite secure that he could figure this out from the comfort of his study in Los Angeles, while his co-author, Martin Dugard, did the dirty work of traveling to England and Egypt and interviewing people with insights worth knowing. (I was reminded of Nero Wolfe dispatching Archie Goodwin on similar tasks, but without the frequent flyer miles). The dirty work probably wasn’t all that bad, but we never hear much about co-authors or ghost writers; that’s the way of the world. (I hope he put some good meals on his expense account.)

The very audacity of Patterson’s conceit is stunning. Did he actually think that no one had ever considered the possibility that Tut was murdered? Or that nobody had asked who might have done it?

Had he called the novel “historical fiction” there would have been less criticism. After all, we allow fiction writers the freedom to invent suitable dialogue, to expand on well-known human passions as ambition, fear and lust, and we rarely complain when they throw in the occasional sex scene. (If the sex is not required in Patterson’s contract, he apparently has a sign somewhere in his house to remind him to stick a scene in periodically. He tells us that he writes instructors to himself on the tops of pages.)

The screenplay showing a weak king, a strong vizier, and an overbearing general is pretty standard fare; and the beautiful but helpless queen is usually there, too. In Ancient Egypt it was pretty standard, together with the ignorant and fanatical priests. Sort of like modern Egypt, too, I suppose, without the weak king and pretty queen.

The story of Howard Carter and his patron, Lord Carnarvon, is told more accurately. That is because Carter told it first, and told it rather well; and whatever he missed, newspapers and other archeologists filled in. The return of the Tut exhibition to America provided a target audience, and Patterson himself has a large and enthusiastic audience ready to buy anything with his name on it, even when a co-author wrote most of it.

Carter had spent a lifetime in Egypt, getting his start because he had a good eye and an ability to draw fast, then make first-class watercolors of the ancient wall paintings and carvings. He ate little, socialized less, and drank even less. This was good, considering that he had no money of his own and earned very little. The last decades of his life were given to the search for the tomb of King Tut, and when at last he found it, earning thereby instant and immortal fame, it was not long before he and Lord Carnarvon became even more famous as the first victims of the Mummy’s Curse.

Perhaps Patterson is only the most recent.

The most interesting parts of this so-so novel are the insights Patterson gives us into the way he writes novels. Patterson always works on multiple manuscripts at once, flitting from one to the other as ideas come to him and his co-authors provide plot lines. It must drive his publishers crazy to learn that he has stopped working on a manuscript they have paid an advance for, then have him promise that he’ll get right to it as soon as he can, knowing that he will finish at the last possible moment. His various co-authors must feel the same way, only more desperately, because they have more immediate bills to pay than publishers do.

Still, that’s the way it works. Less well-known authors send in a manuscript, then hears nothing until the publisher sends a letter “suggesting” changes and saying when these have to be done by. This is usually yesterday or earlier. It’s the opposite of the old army motto “hurry up and wait.” Authors do the waiting first.

Unlike most writers, Patterson makes heaps of money. That’s because he has the method down pat. He can write fast, he has an instinct for dialogue and pacing, and he usually comes up with a snappy surprise ending.

Alas, that’s the problem here. There is no surprise in the ending.

I’ve never been a James Patterson fan. I’ve read several of his books, but often the violence just makes me turn the CD player off. But this one was intriguing. And it might well be so still to anyone who doesn’t already know the story. So give it a try. After all, you’ve been warned, and the book is short.

Review Atlas (August 21, 2014), 4.

WAY OF THE KNIFE

By William Urban

Book titles today seldom tell you what the contents are — that is found in the subtitle, which in this case is, “The CIA, a Secret Army, and a War at the Ends of the Earth.”

The author, Mark Mazzetti, is the national security correspondent for the New York Times. That is, there is a tendency to be anti-Bush, anti-CIA, and, until recently, pro-Obama. Mazzetti has won numerous awards, including a Pulitzer Prize for stories on Afghanistan and Pakistan. These, like Nobel Peace Prizes, have a political bias, too.

Despite this, he is effective in showing how the CIA has repeatedly gone back and forth between its origins in the WWII era OSS and its function of coordinating information collection and analysis. The heart of information gathering used to be clipping newspaper articles and filing them for quick retrieval for when someone asks, “Who is this SOB I’m hearing about?” Today this is computerized, but the principle is the same.

Mazzetti shows that after 9/11 the CIA once again changed from being an intelligence organization (he uses the word “spy”) to a military one, with a world-wide reach, operating in the shadows, and killing by proxy or using drones. Under Bush the process was a “hammer”; under Obama it is a “scalpel”. Bush’s CIA wanted prisoners to interrogate; Obama’s just killed suspects.

“Knife” refers to old-fashioned cloak and dagger operations, but since human intelligence had been largely replaced by technology, that was impractical. Moreover, Bush and Obama both preferred using a bomb in tribal regions of countries with no effective governmental control of its hinterland; murdering a terrorist in a Paris alley would get too much publicity.

The CIA had been largely neutered under Bill Clinton and might have remained so except for Osama bin Laden, but once the decision was made to hit the 9/11 terrorists wherever they were, no organization but the CIA was ready to do it.

The CIA had the language skills, the local knowledge, the experience in working with foreign intelligence agencies, and a tradition of doing unpleasant but necessary tasks. The military, in contrast, was still thinking of massive tank battles and hunting submarines; the ability to work with irregular forces was long gone, and the budget was being cut. Anti-war activists wanted to use police and to try terrorists in American courts; arresting the suspects, however, was impossible. The Taliban mocked American requests to turn over the al-Qaida leaders, “What can they do? Sue us?

Special Forces, the CIA and private security firms quickly wiped those smirks off Taliban faces, but winning the conventional war did not bring peace and harmony, much less good government. Mazzetti’s book deals largely with Bush’s wars, since that was the era when we learned the hard way that we could not rebuild Afghanistan and Iraq as we once did Germany, Japan and Italy; he concentrated on the difficulties presented by Pakistan Secret Service, the ISI, which saw the Taliban as both dangerous and useful in confronting India, while the Americans would soon go home. There were also private armies, infighting between the CIA, the military, and local leaders, and the public’s expectation of quick results, then coming home.
Despite all the problems, some of which were a lack of coordination by the various organizations and jealousy of one another, by the end of 2008 Bush and Obama alike had concluded that both countries were sufficiently pacified to beginning planning a withdrawal. In December of 2012 Obama announced, “We’re leaving behind a sovereign, stable, and self-reliant Iraq,”

Awkwardly, this was just the moment when Mazzetti was finishing his book. For him the greatest American problem was the impact of drone strikes on Muslim public opinion. ”Fire from the Sky” was counter-productive, he said, and should be ended. That is essentially irrelevant now that the failures of the Obama foreign policy are visible everywhere, with Muslims openly killing Muslims across the Islamic world. The heart of this swift change beat in Syria.

When the Arab Spring appeared in 2011 peaceful demonstrations began against the Syrian government; when Bashar al-Assad sent in tanks and helicopters, an armed resistance fought back. President Obama announced that al-Assad had to go. Then he did nothing. Meanwhile, after dictators were overthrown across the region, radicals took over; once again, nothing. The same happened in the Syrian war. Iranians and Hezbollah came in, then jihadists who wanted to establish an Islamic state, but not the US.
These radicals — the ISIS (later called the ISIF, and now the Caliphate) — are more radical than al-Qaida. First fostered by Saudi and Qatar money to overthrow the pro-Iranian government of al-Assad, then by Kuwaiti oil millionaires, this June the jihadists crossed the border into Iraq, making more rapid gains than anyone had thought possible.

This makes Mazzetti’s book less relevant that it was when the Obama administration was following many of the New York Times recommendations; now that we have a world without significant American leadership, with a weaker military, and no guiding principles that allies can count on, the partisan quarreling over the role of the CIA seems, as they say, so yesterday. Pakistan, which Mazzetti depicted as always following its own agenda, not America’s, is now attacking its Taliban. Saudi Arabia, whose money financed the religious schools that trained the radicals, wants to kill jihadists before they can move on Mecca, but doesn’t trust its own military to do it.

The Caliphate’s massacres of Iraqi Christians and minorities has horrified everyone except hard-liners in the UN, Qatar and Turkey who think that Israel is to blame for everything. Elsewhere the Sunni and Shia worlds are being drawn together to resist the Caliphate in northern Iraq, which is flush with money, weapons, and a sense of invincibility. After a propaganda film boasted that the Caliphate’s flag will fly over the White House, administration spokesmen began to speak in hushed tones about the hundred or so Americans fighting with Caliphate and the even more numerous Europeans.

Now, after waiting for months, Obama has authorized limited bombing and drone strikes, but our aircraft carrier is far from the battlefield; meanwhile, the Kurds have almost no modern weapons, while the Caliphate has captured much of what Obama left behind for the Malaki government. There is no base for American operations, no air field, and hardly any Iraqi government. The Way of the Knife is still worth reading, but as history, not as a model for future action.

Review Atlas (August 14, 2014), 4.

IRAQ AGAIN AND FOREVER

By William Urban

Now that it appears that Baghdad won’t fall this week (maybe later), and that Iran will get its bomb eventually, and that Hamas will continue to demand the destruction of Israel, what can anyone say about this mess that hasn’t been said over and over again? There is plenty of blame to go around, but some of the arguments remind me of the proverbial cup falling off the table and breaking. Did the careless kid knock it off, or the mother who left the cup too close to the edge, or the father who put it on the table, or the distant company that should have made the cup stronger?

Many people seem confused about the news from the Middle East. This partially reflects a reluctance to read newspapers or listen to news programs. I know intelligent individuals who are proud of this. Is this a way of saying that they already know everything worth knowing? Or that they just don’t care? My class studying terrorism last year, a group of bright kids, got their information from the Daily Show and the Colbert Report. I guess that’s better than nothing, but I really don’t understand how anyone can get the jokes if they don’t know what the comedians are referring to. Back when I attended professional baseball games, I was told that I couldn’t follow the game without a program.

I am much less critical of people who are working two jobs who don’t vote, or even having one job and a family. But that doesn’t explain why only half of the eligible voters bother to show up at the polls. Maybe it’s a question of priorities, maybe a principled decision that they shouldn’t vote on issues they don’t understand. I can buy that. The world is complicated. I am reluctant, however, to agree with young people who say that voting is a waste of time and that their opinions have no impact.

Those arguments are not the issue. We face a major challenge to the world order and our way of life. Shouldn’t that have priority over attending a Rave event?

Those who do vote often do so carelessly. Many people just take the easy way out. For example, beloved relatives who vote for candidates based on their looks, accent or religion; or the TV addict who believes the last minute scare ads. Then there’s the aged woman my wife remembers from being a judge at a primary election — she insisted that she wanted to vote Republican and no one could make her understand that all the candidates on the primary ballot were Republicans.

This explains the American understanding of Middle Eastern issues. Over there it is much less calm and rational.

Once you cut through the details, the conflict in Iraq is partly a struggle between religious communities, partly about ethnicity, but perhaps even more about how much impact modernism should have on tribal communities. This is the subject of my next book, Wars on the Periphery, though I use examples from the 1700s to make my case, with references to modern problems.

It had been often noted that various traditions in modern Islam — honor killings, female mutilation, terror attacks on civilians, suicide bombings — have no place in the theology of the Religion of Peace. That is both true and irrelevant, because nobody in Iraq or Syria or Palestine wants to sit down for a philosophical discussion.

Many Americans are tired of being the world policeman, and ask why Middle Eastern problems should affect America. 9/11 should have taught us that this is not something we can just ignore. We might not be interested, but it will find ways to get our attention.

First of all, gas prices will go up. In January of 2008 Barack Obama told us that he would make gasoline prices “skyrocket” and that his cap and trade proposal would make the coal industry bankrupt. How high would gas have to go to make his green energy plans affordable? A lot more than the $1.91 price of early 2009. Congress, then controlled totally by Democrats, balked at the cap and trade proposal. So, with pen and phone he has since limited our production of oil and gas as best he could.

It was obvious even then that the nations which most wished the United States ill — Russia, Iran, Venezuela—relied on high gas prices to avoid bankruptcy. Iraq benefitted, of course, and Barack Obama, like Bush before him, expected the 100 billion dollars in oil exports to pay the costs of running the Iraq government — and distributions to the Sunnis and Kurds to keep them quiet. That would allow him to pull the troops out and forget about the region.

Secondly, nobody in the Middle East has been listening to our government-sponsored praise of diversity and multiculturalism. Instead, the mobs and some of the governments want unity and conformity. No dissent, no Christians, no Jews, and certainly no atheists or gays. Awkwardly, Bashir al-Assad’s Syria is beginning to look better than the rebels, but aside from his dictatorial ways and duplicitous diplomacy, he has some very nasty allies and supporters. He sponsored the murderous ISIS as long as it was only killing Americans. Then it turned on him.

Israel looks good except to the media commentators and university professors who see the Jews as the new Nazis. This truly puzzles me. I remember that Nazis made homosexuals wear pink Stars of David, and today the only country in the Middle East that allows Gay Pride Parades is Israel. Just try that anywhere else. (If you want to try, I’ll contribute a few dollars for your air fare to Saudi Arabia or Iran, but please buy one way, because I think you’ll miss the return flight.)

Third, we don’t want terrorists to have a state where they can prepare for expansion and for attacks on the West. We saw what happened with the premature pull-out from Iraq. Now we worry about the same thing happening in Afghanistan.

It’s not hopeless over there. Pakistan has finally learned that its support of the Taliban has a high price, and they are killing more Taliban than Obama ever did with his drones. The new Egyptian government stopped sponsoring jihad, and sentenced hundreds of fundamentalists to death; and the Saudis, Jordanians and Turks are aware that they cannot count on the Americans to do everything for them. Perhaps not anything.

Review Atlas (August 7, 2014), 4.