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The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Middle East (Politically Incorrect Guides) | 
 enlarge | Author: Martin Sieff
Publisher: Regnery Publishing
Category: Book
List Price: $19.95
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Rating:  21 reviews
Sales Rank: 156395
Media: Paperback
Pages: 230
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 8.8 x 7.2 x 0.7
ISBN: 1596980516
Dewey Decimal Number: 956.05
EAN: 9781596980518
ASIN: 1596980516
Publication Date: January 28, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Cover and content clean, unmarked, strong binding.
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Product Description
In this informative, iconoclastic book, veteran foreign correspondent Sieff offers a jaw-dropping survey of the history and politics of a region that people know surprisingly little about--even though it's never off the front pages.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 16 more reviews...
 Way off-line about the Middle East February 2, 2008
mianfei
39 out of 60 found this review helpful
Martin Sieff's "The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Middle East", the thirteenth book in a series that maintains interest for me even with many doubtful claims, is really disappointing.
Sieff's most fundamental thesis in "The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Middle East" is that the West does not understand the culture of the Middle East, so that what works politically is very different from what the Left find acceptable. For example, Sieff argues Islamic traditions mean only a firm, traditionalist monarchy like the Ottomans or al-Sauds has any hope of bringing stability and peace. He argues democracy in the Middle East leads inevitably to the type of radical Islam that inspired the Iranian Revolution and modern Islamic terrorism. Sieff also argues that Israel is another critical element of stability in the Middle East and the conflict in Palestine today is not the fault of Israel's creation or Zionists but has much deeper roots.
As in the guides to global warming and capitalism, Sieff aims to show that the US will always be dependent on oil to produce nitrogenous fertilisers which are essential for farming. This is certainly a critical issue, but Sieff overlooks two facts. Firstly, reducing fertiliser use would reduce the current obesity epidemic and make production on much low-cost but ecologically unsustainable farmland impossible (to great ecological benefit). Secondly, he overlooks that the reason modern-day farming on marginal land depends on the Middle East (and North Africa) is their monopoly on reserves of the essential nutrient phosphorus. The Middle East and North Africa possess an even higher proportion of world phosphate reserves than oil reserves - so that Sieff's omission of this is hard to forgive.
In his assessment of Middle Eastern politics, Sieff is quite off-target. Whilst his assessment of the "Ottoman" Middle East as a primitive but peaceful backwater may be quite accurate, the Ottomans were always fighting wars. Robert Spencer, who wrote an earlier book in the "Politically Incorrect Guide" series, make me doubt severely whether Muslim fundamentalism really is new like Sieff would like to proclaim. Spencer's deeper historical analysis suggests the peacefulness of the Ottoman Middle East was due largely to the military weakness of teh Muslim world.
Also completely overlooked is the fact that the United States funded the Muslim Brotherhood for a very long time because its absolutism and intolerance made it the most effective weapon against the potential spread of socialism that Stalinist Russia was funding - aided by highly popular Communist parties in Iraq and Iran. Indeed, observers inside the CIA are well aware the White House kept no dossier on extremist Sunni groups until after September 11, 2001. US support for the Wahhabi-based al-Saud family is actually related to its support for these groups. Osama bin Laden only became a terrorist because Carter and Reagan funded him in the war against the Afghan PDPA.
Whilst it is true that bin Laden wants to overthrow the al Saud dynasty, many princes and clerics, as Dore Gold has shown, are very sympathetic to him. Other writers have serious doubts the Saudi rulers can do what Sieff would like them to for other reasons, chiefly corruption and declining living standards since the real price of oil peaked around 1980.
Iran's history also leads me to question his assumption that Iran is naturally fanatical and conservative. As Zbigniew Brzezinski shows, Iran's radical Islamists are actually a quite small and declining proportion of their population, which today is highly urbanised and faces many of the same demographic and social problems as Europe and East Asia. It is really very unlikely radical fundamentalism will endure in Iran. though Iraq is less advanced, demographers and other social scientists no doubt believe in the long run it will develop in the same way Iran has.
All in all, "The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Middle East" is very disappointing. Many facets of the modern history of the region are totally overlooked, and many of the opinions given quite dubious. Indeed, it often seems as if Sieff wants to do little more than placate the Republican Party against critics of its policy in the region.
I would recommend istead either "Hatred's Kingdom" by Dore Gold or "The Choice" by Zbigniew Brzezinski.
 An Excellent Review of Middle Eastern Politics January 22, 2008
Royce Callaway (SE Michigan USA)
33 out of 38 found this review helpful
This is an excellent book and certainly provides some controversial (aka politically incorrect) views of Islam, the Palestinians, Israel, and how we got to where we are. Martin Sieff shows how inch by inch and small decision by small decision we have arived with a worldwide conflict with Islamofascim starting with that arrogant aristocrat Winston Churchill and continuing with each US administration since 1917.
Sieff points out that our politically correct views have and continue to cost the lives of American soldiers, Iranian dissidents, Iraqi's, and Israeli Jews. He points out that the ridiculous and misguided attempts by the US and the western democracies to establish democratic governments in the middle east was not only doomed to failure from the outset but it is making matters worse as we pursue this bankrupt policy. The reality is that the Islamic Middle East is a tribal culture that is opposed to any central authority unless it is imposed with a mailed fist. Blood feuds are common and the battles between Sunni and Shia goes back a thousand years and is not likely to end anytime soon.
Perhaps the best chapter that puts the whole thing into historical perspective is the chapter on the Ottoman Empire. Sieff points out that the Ottomans ruled the region for more than 400 years and during that period ignorance, apathy, and squalor were the pillars of the Empire but the result was peace and tranquility. It was only when the trendy western democracies interjected their ideas of democracy, socialism, and representative government that things went to Hell in a handbasket.
Another fascinating point addressed in the book is that the Saudi's are not the problem but have in fact conducted a sustained and largely effective war against Islamofascism. While it is true that Arabia is a monarchy with draconian laws by western standards, it also is an effective ally and a stabilizing influence in the Middle East. The West has never fully grasped the strategic situation in the area where the Shiite Iranians were checked by the Sunni Iraqi's with the help of the Saudi's.
The section on the Israeli-Arab Wars was also well worth the reading because it puts the history into perspective. It not only describes how the Israeli's managed to defeat much larger armies but how those Islamic governments reacted and why the situation continues as it is today. This is not a whitewash of the Israeli's nor is it a blanket indictment of the Arabs, but it does show that if Israel were to vanish today nothing would change because Israel is not now nor has it ever been the motivating factor behind the carnage that has plagued the area since the fall of the Ottomans.
Overall this is a very good book with many excellent insights. I think Sieff could have provided more detail regarding the western actions following WW I and WW II that led us to this mess but he provides enough to show the foundations to the current conflicts and the rise of militant Islam. Although Sieff mentions the Muslim Brotherhood he doesn't provide many details regarding the actions of this terrorist group, which has behind several assassinations (e.g. Sadat) and much of the mayhem since its founding in the 1920's. However, the real stunning revelation in this book was that Yasser Arafat was homosexual and the Romanians had photographs to prove it. While I am not an advocate of blackmail it seems to me knowing how the Islamic world views homosexuality our state department could have used this information as leverage to get Arafat in line. It also was astonishing that Arafat had personally ordered the execution of an American diplomat and the CIA had the recorded telephone conversation when he issued the order. One would think that our state department would have used this information more effectively. This book is filled with small facts like these that simply take your breath away when you realize that the American response from one President after another is to do nothing other than to continue the failed policy of trying to bring democracy to the region. The Ottomans had it right and we should listen.
This is good book -- easily and quickly read -- not a page turner but very close. I highly recommend it.
Definitely worth reading January 17, 2008
Jill Malter (jillmalter@aol.com)
23 out of 29 found this review helpful
This book warns us that the Middle East is an area "where political correctness can kill." And I think Martin Sieff has done a good job in telling us something about the region.
The first chapter gives us an introduction to the Ottoman Empire. Next is a chapter on the Arab-Israeli conflict, which exposes the myth that the Holy land was promised to both the Jews and the Arabs. This chapter has plenty of interesting material, but I wish it had said spent some time on the infamous British White Paper of 1939.
Next is a good chapter about Iraq which summarizes some of the mistakes we've made in our war there. And following it is a chapter on radical Islam, which we see is something new, not a return to old ideas.
Chapter Five is about Iran. Sieff criticizes President Carter's handling of American policy involving Iran. While I think this criticism is deserved, it's not clear how much better things would have been had someone else been President. The next chapter is about the Arab wars against Israel. There are plenty of interesting tidbits here, as well as some rather interesting opinions about some of the leaders.
Chapter Seven asserts that the Saudis are part of the solution, not the problem. I'm not so sure that I would agree with such a characterization. The following chapter is about Middle East wars and peace from 1975 to 2007. Carter's role in bringing about peace between Israel and Egypt is discussed, again from a "politically incorrect" perspective. And there is a rather uneven discussion of the Oslo agreements and the Camp David negotiations of 2000, which we see were doomed from the start. But I think Sieff fails to show the extent to which the Arab side was uninterested in long-term peaceful coexistence with Israel.
Chapter 9 is about the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. I think that the role of the United Nations as part of the problem should have been mentioned here. We do not get to see the attempts to expel Israel from the UN, or the "Zionism equals racism" resolution, and now we don't hear about the infamous Durban "racism" conference.
The final chapter attempts to explain what works and what does not work in bringing peace to the region. That's a good idea, considering that some folks believe that if only everyone would put pressure on Israel, there would be peace. Sieff explains that this is false: solving the Arab-Israeli conflict will not solve the problems. Nor would the annihilation of Israel solve the problems: it would make them worse.
Sieff says that Natan Sharansky's book (The Case for Democracy) made matters worse by helping convince some people in our administration that democratic governments in the region would be a big improvement. Sieff is making a good point here, but I think this is unfair to Sharansky, who explained that the problem is the existence of "fear" rather than "free" societies. Sharansky noted that merely letting propagandized people vote extremists into power is not the answer!
The book also shows that the world will be using a great deal of oil for quite some time. We can't easily wean ourselves from it, and that means we will need to deal with Arab ownership of much of the oil reserves.
Sieff quite properly praises the Israeli security barrier, which has done a fine job of reducing casualties on both sides resulting from suicide bombings.
The book supplies some interesting recommendations for additional reading, often listed as "books you're not supposed to read." I think that's a nice touch.
Much of what Sieff says is rather controversial, and I think we readers need to use our own judgment in evaluating it. It's true that many of the "politically correct" views about the region are very dubious indeed, but that's no reason to accept the opinions of anyone who attacks those views. On the whole, however, there is far more good material than bad in this work. I recommend it.
 Great insights + whitewash of Saudis February 19, 2008
John
12 out of 18 found this review helpful
Don't get me wrong, this book is full of great insights, by a man who spent 40 years in the Middle East. I am glad I bought this book, and I like a lot of the material in the book.
... and yet, I can't get over the impression that he is whitewashing the Saudis. Look in the index, and try to find the word "Madrassa". Madrassa is a fanatical, Wahhabi, fascist-type school for grade school kids, and the Saudis have funded over 800 of them (with their oil wealth) in Pakistan alone. Any word of this in the book on how the Saudis are so expert in dealing with Islamic terrorism ? No. What about the alleged Saudi funding of terrorist groups in the Philippines (and all over), and the fact that there were documents found in Saudi government buildings (allegedly) in the Balkans right after 2001, showing the targets of U.S. government buildings ? What about the fact that the Saudis - supposedly so adept at dealing with terrorists - didn't warn the U.S. prior to Sep. 2001, even though it would have been very easy for them to do so (they didn't get tough internally on terrorists in the 'Kingdom' until they themselve were hit) ? What about the virulent anti-Semitic and anti-western literature that one can find (so I have read) in Saudi-funded "Islamic centers" in the U.S. ? Any mention of that ? I think that Sieff is right in that the Saudis are very good at dealing with terror in their own country, and that part of the Saudi elite really does want to stop Bin Ladin and Al Quida. But at the same time, I also believe that another part really doesn't. Foreign Affairs magazine had an essay on "The Schizophrenic Saudi State" which stated just that: some of the princes are very pro-Western, and some hate the West. It is not as simple as Sieff states. They are not such great allies after all, unless you consider an ally someone who takes trillions of dollars from you and then buys Islamic schools all over the world that teach that you are the Devil.
I would take this book with a BIG grain of salt. Read Robert Baer's book "Sleeping with the Devil", about the REAL Saudis.
Get a real book February 16, 2008
Karen A. Lebens (diablo)
7 out of 21 found this review helpful
Too bad that Americans are so ignorant about the middle east that they can uncritically accept books like this as accurate. When I was getting a degree in Near Eastern Languages and Literature I remember the students who had no time to take the first two quarters of ME history but all showed up in the last (modern) quarter so they could inject their opinions on all the current political topics and make sure that no anti-Israeli (in their opinion) sentiments got expressed. If you're interested in the ME you will do better to read books written by authors who actually have some in-depth knowledge of what they are talking about. This book misrepresents the Ottoman Empire, Islam, and just about every other topic it discusses.
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