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ISIS Is About the Arab Past, Not the Future

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ISIS Is About the Arab Past, Not the Future Michael Van Dusen LECTURE SERIES ISIS is About the Arab Past, Not the Future RAMI KHOURI Former Public Policy Scholar, Woodrow Wilson Center; Senior Public Policy Fellow and former Director, Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs, American University of Beirut; and syndicated columnist, The Daily Star May 2015 Wilson Center THE WOODROW WILSON INTERNATIONAL CENTER FOR SCHOLARS, established by Congress in 1968 and headquartered in Washington, D.C., is a living national memorial to President Wilson. The Center’s mission is to commemorate the ideals and concerns of Woodrow Wilson by provid- ing a link between the worlds of ideas and policy, while fostering research, study, discussion, and collaboration among a broad spectrum of individuals concerned with policy and scholarship in national and international affairs. Supported by public and private funds, the Center is a nonpartisan institu- tion engaged in the study of national and world affairs. It establishes and maintains a neutral forum for free, open, and informed dialogue. Conclusions or opinions expressed in Center publications and programs are those of the authors and speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Center staff, fellows, trustees, advisory groups, or any individuals or organizations that provide financial support to the Center. The Center is the publisher of The Wilson Quarterly and home of Woodrow Wilson Center Press, Dialogue radio and television. For more information about the Center’s activities and publications, please visit us on the web at www.wilsoncenter.org. BOARD OF TRUSTEES Thomas R. Nides, Chairman of the Board Sander R. Gerber, Vice Chairman Jane Harman, Director, President and CEO Public members: James H. Billington, Librarian of Congress; John F. Kerry, Secretary, U.S. Department of State; Albert Horvath, Acting Secretary, Smithsonian Institution; Arne Duncan, Secretary, U.S. Department of Education; David Ferriero, Archivist of the United States; William Adams, Chairman, National Endowment for the Humanities; Sylvia Mathews Burwell, Secretary, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services; Designated Appointee of the President from within the Federal Government, Fred P. Hochberg, Chairman and President, Export-Import Bank Private Citizen Members: Peter Beshar, John T. Casteen III, Thelma Duggin, Lt. Gen. Susan Helms, USAF (Ret.), Barry S. Jackson, Nathalie Rayes, Earl W. Stafford, Jane Watson Stetson Wilson National Cabinet: Eddie & Sylvia Brown, Melva Bucksbaum & Raymond Learsy, Ambassadors Sue & Chuck Cobb, Lester Crown, Thelma Duggin, Judi Flom, Sander R. Gerber, Ambassador Joseph B. Gildenhorn & Alma Gildenhorn, Harman Family Foundation, Susan Hutchison, Frank F. Islam, Willem Kooyker, Linda B. & Tobia G. Mercuro, Dr. Alexander V. Mirtchev, Wayne Rogers, Leo Zickler 2 Michael Van Dusen LECTURE SERIES ISIS is About the Arab Past, Not the Future RAMI KHOURI Former Public Policy Scholar, Woodrow Wilson Center; Senior Public Policy Fellow and former Director, Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs, American University of Beirut; and syndicated columnist, The Daily Star 3 Introduction Haleh Esfandiari Director, Middle East Program The Middle East Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars inaugurated the Michael Van Dusen Annual Lecture series on the Middle East last year, in honor of Dr. Van Dusen who stepped down as vice president and chief operating officer of the Center in 2014. He stayed on as Senior Advisor to the President for Alumni Relations of the Wilson Center. Dr. Van Dusen has been a supporter and a mentor of the Middle East Program since he joined the Wilson Center in 1999. His expertise and intimate knowledge of the region helped turn the Middle East Program into the vibrant forum it is today. The first speaker in this lecture series was the well-known journalist and Washington Post columnist, David Ignatius. His subject: Congress and Foreign Policy: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. Mike had started his career on the Hill, and David had worked on the Hill as an intern. This year’s speaker Rami Khouri, certainly the most prominent journalist in the Arab world, comes from Lebanon, a country, coincidentally, where Mike spent time as a student of Arabic. At Mike’s request, Rami Khouri discussed the most pressing problem plaguing the Middle East today: ISIS, its roots, aims, future, and the danger it poses to the region. 4 Biographies May 2015 Michael Van Dusen is Senior Advisor to the President for Alumni Relations of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. He held the position of Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer from 1999-2014. Prior to his time at the Wilson Center, he worked for close to thirty years in the U.S. House of Representatives, serving as staff consultant and then staff director of the Subcommittee on Europe and the Middle East of the Committee of Foreign Affairs, then Chief of Staff of the Committee on Foreign Affairs; and finally as Democratic Chief of Staff of the Committee on International Relations. He has traveled extensively in Europe, the Middle East, and the Persian Gulf, and has written widely on Middle Eastern affairs and on Congress’s role in foreign policy. He has been published in media outlets such as The Middle East Journal, Political Elites in the Middle East, the New York Times, The Middle East Journal, and the International Journal of the Middle East. Dr. Van Dusen has a B.A. from Princeton University and holds a doctorate from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. 5 Rami George Khouri is a Beirut-based internationally syndicated political columnist and book author, and a former Public Policy Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center. He was the first director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut, where he currently is a senior public policy fellow directing research on social justice and dignity in the Arab world. He also serves as a nonresident senior fellow at the Kennedy School of Harvard University, and his internationally syndicated column is published by Agence Global. He is editor-at-large, columnist, and former executive editor of the Beirut-based Daily Star newspaper, and was awarded the Pax Christi International Peace Prize for 2006. He teaches or lectures annually at the American University of Beirut and Northeastern University. He has been a fellow and visiting scholar at Harvard University, Princeton University, Mount Holyoke College, Syracuse University, The Fletcher School at Tufts University, the University of Oklahoma, and Stanford University, and was a member of the Brookings Institution Task Force on U.S. Relations with the Islamic World. He is a Fellow of the Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs (Jerusalem), and a former member of the Leadership Council of the Harvard University Divinity School, and the International Advisory Council of the International Committee of the Red Cross. He serves on the Joint Advisory Board of the Northwestern University Journalism School in Doha, Qatar, and the international advisory board of the Center for Regional and International Studies at the Georgetown University Doha campus. He was editor-in-chief of the Jordan Times for 7 years and was general manager of Al Kutba Publishers, in Amman, Jordan for 18 years, where he also served as a consultant to the Jordanian tourism ministry on biblical archaeological sites. He has hosted programs on archaeology, history, and current public affairs on Jordan Television and Radio Jordan, and often comments on Mideast issues in the international media. He has BA and MSc degrees in political science and mass communications respectively from Syracuse University. 6 ISIS is About the Arab Past, Not the Future Rami Khouri Former Public Policy Scholar, Woodrow Wilson Center; Senior Public Policy Fellow and former Director, Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs, American University of Beirut; and syndicated columnist, The Daily Star It is a double thrill for me to be back at the Woodrow Wilson Center, an institution for which I have so much respect. My experience as a fellow here one summer a few years ago was intellectually stimulating and personally very enjoyable, so it is always a treat to return and mix with old and new friends. It is especially satisfying for me to speak in a lecture series that recognizes Mike Van Dusen for his character and his professional achievements. Mike represents—in an otherwise erratic sphere in Washington, D.C.—accurate, relevant, contextualized knowledge about the Middle East and sensible policy prescriptions. His style is characterized by a combination of common sense, civility, and taking the task at hand more seriously than taking oneself. I met Mike when he worked at the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee in the early 1970s. Meeting Mike and others like him at the start of my career was an important reason why I have never given up on the possibility that a small, sensible, realistic, and equitable strain of Middle East policy deliberations in Washington, D.C. might one day grow to help shape U.S. foreign policy. This seems to be happening to an extent for U.S. policy toward Iran. Therefore, I am pleased to have this opportunity to publicly thank Mike for the example he has always set in Washington, D.C., and for helping me and others learn to balance personal and professional qualities for useful outcomes. I am especially delighted to try to apply some of the same kind of honest, factually based analysis that has always been a hallmark of Mike’s work to my comments today in this forum that honors his life’s work and his example. 7 Since Mike and I first met nearly 45 years ago, I have been living in, observing, analyzing, and reporting on the Middle East.
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