Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: SirRealist who wrote (15905)	1/9/2002 5:36:55 AM
From: JohnM	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

The link you can't reach is to this: Thanks, Kevin. I was about to ask Nadine to send it to me via PM. I assumed she was concerned about copyright issues if she posted it here. This Commentary review sounds much like the other reviews I read in which Sept 11 is used to settle political scores. The argument of the reviewer (and, I assume, Kramer) is that (1) Islam, not some perversion of Islam, is to blame for Sept. 11; (2) that Said's argument about Orientalism is the principle reason Middle Eastern scholars failed to see Sept. 11 coming; (3) that Said's argument touched a "deep vein of vulgar prejudice" running through American academe; and (4) and that, finally, all of this is the result of those three horsemen of the apocalypse in the academy, "voguish anti-Western and post-modernist theories, and the blight of political correctness." We could argue long and hard as to the merits and demerits of each of those supposed culprits. And those are good things to argue about. I'm tired of so arguing because they are the central arguments of my previous place of work. Definitely not banned from it as writers like Halkin seem to think. But the issue here is to argue that those of us who disagreed with Halkin and his friends (I'm withholding judgment on Kramer until I read the book, but it looks increasingly as if he makes this argument) were in, some fairly serious sense, contributing to 9-11 is simply unacceptable (I have much worse terms in mind). Well, thanks again for posting the review. John

To: SirRealist who wrote (15905)	1/9/2002 1:51:45 PM
From: tekboy	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Editing 101 for me, the key passage in the review was this: "If Martin Kramer is right, such an ability is now at a lower ebb than it was when the boom in Middle Eastern studies began 50 years ago. For those of us who do not have his insider’s view of the academic world, it is difficult to judge some of his pronouncements." Hillel Halkin is a very smart guy, a wonderful writer, and worth reading on just about anything. But I would never have given him this book to review, simply because--as he himself admits--he does not have the capacity to evaluate the substantive merits of the charges the book levies. In fact, none of the discussion of the Kramer book that I have seen in print so far strikes me as worthwhile. Some is by neocons or populists who buy his charges wholesale because they are predisposed to hate his targets; some is by academics who dismiss his charges wholesale because they have the reverse bias or just reject criticism by outsiders; and some is by ignorant journalists who are incapable of doing more than interviewing both sides and repeating in an "objective" manner what each has to say. Luckily, I do know of one excellent review in the works. It will be published in the next (March/April) issue of Foreign Affairs, and argues that a number of Kramer's substantive charges are valid but that he goes way overboard in his personal attacks and ad hominem argumentation, seeing bias where stupidity or legitimate error would be more appropriate. tb@sothere.com