Middle Eastern Perspectives on the United States
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Middle Eastern Perspectives on the United States Are We a Reliable Security Partner or a “Problem to be Managed”? Amin Tarzi, James Zogby, Leon Hadar, Jon Alterman The Following is an unedited transcript of the sixty-second in a series of Capitol Hill conferences convened by the Middle East Policy Council. The meeting was held Thursday, October 14, 2010, with Thomas R. Mattair presiding. FRANK ANDERSON, President, Middle East Policy Council Well, good morning, everyone, and thank you for braving horrible weather and the resultant horrible traffic to get here. You’re the few and the brave and we greatly appreciate it. I’m Frank Anderson. I’m the president of the Middle East Policy Council. Middle East Policy Council is a nonprofit nonpartisan institution dedicated to improving the informed dialogue on national policy issues that – or national security issues that impact American interests in the Middle East. We’ve recently expanded the Middle East to involve the entire arc of crisis from sort of Morocco through the Indian subcontinent in the issues that we address. We do so with three mechanisms – one, we publish Middle East Policy, which keeps being measured as the most cited journal in the field in other journals; through conferences like this on Capitol Hill – today’s – the transcript of today’s conference will become the first chapter, as it does every quarter, of the next issue of Middle East Policy; and the third leg of our stool of education on the region is an educational outreach program in which we go around the country presenting teacher workshops to teachers, enabling and exciting them about teaching the geography, the history, the culture, politics, and religion of the Middle East. I’m going to turn over to Tom very quickly because we have – it’s late in time because of weather – to do the full introductions of each of our speakers. I wish to express my great appreciation to each of them. There are a couple good and old friends on this panel and I greatly appreciate their attendance and thank you all for coming and now let me introduce to you Dr. Tom Mattair, the executive director of the Middle East Policy Council. THOMAS R. MATTAIR, Executive Director, Middle East Policy Council; author, Global Security Watch – Iran: A Reference Handbook Thank you, Frank. Welcome, everyone. Thank you for coming in the rain. We chose this title because we were having a conversation with a former assistant secretary of state talking about the difference between American policy during the 20th century and the 21st century, and his remark was that in the 20th century we were viewed as a reliable security partner but in the 21st century we are viewed as a problem to be managed. So we’ve selected people who are very knowledgeable about various countries in the Middle East and the views of their leaders as well as their publics and I think we can cover this very well. Let me briefly introduce them. There are much more significant ample bios here on the invitation but I can give you the highlights of – of our speakers. Dr. James Zogby is the founder and president of the Arab American Institute, a Washington, D.C., organization which serves as a political and policy research arm of the Arab American community. He has a long history of activism in the Arab American community in the United States and is – has played an important role in the affairs of the Democratic Party, and he’s a senior advisor with the polling firm of Zogby International, founded and directed by his brother, John Zogby. And he seemed a natural choice today because his brand-new book is appearing either this week or – and it’s called “Arab Voices: What They’re Saying to the U.S. and Why It Matters,” and it’s based on many, many trips to the Middle East and meetings with leaders and publics and understanding the results of polls that have been taken about how we are perceived and what – and what they perceive is the major problems in our – in their relations with us. So we’re glad to have him. We also have Dr. Amin Tarzi, who is the director of Middle East Studies at the Marine Corps University in Quantico, Virginia, previously with Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty’s regional analysis team focusing on Afghanistan and Pakistan. And he has spent time at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies and at the Emirate Center for Strategic Studies and Research, where I spend some time, and is the author of a couple of important books. One’s called “Taliban and the Crisis in Afghanistan,” published by Harvard University Press in 2008, and another called “The Iranian Puzzle Piece: Understanding Iran in the Global Context,” published by MCU Press last year. We also have Dr. Leon Hadar, research fellow in foreign policies at the Cato Institute. He is the former U.N. bureau chief for the Jerusalem Post and the current Washington correspondent for Singapore Business Times and blogs regularly on the Huffington Post and is published in most of the – most important newspapers and magazines in this country. And he is the author of “Sandstorm: Policy Failure in the Middle East,” published by Palgrave Macmillan in 1995, and many other works, and has taught at American University and at the University of Maryland and is a graduate of Hebrew University and has a Master’s from Columbia and a Ph.D. from American University. And our fourth speaker is Jon Alterman– Dr. Jon Alterman who’s the director and senior fellow of Middle East program at Center for Strategic and International Studies, also in Washington, and before that was a member of the policy planning staff in the State Department and a special assistant to the assistant secretary of State for Near Eastern affairs. He’s a member of the Chief of Naval Operations Executive Panel, served as an expert advisor to the Iraq Study Group, teaches Middle Eastern politics at Johns Hopkins and at George Washington, and before entering government served at the U.S. Institute of Peace in the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and is the author of a number of books and is a Ph.D. from Harvard University. So that is our panel. I’m Thomas Mattair. I’m the executive director of the organization and I will moderate it. And we’re glad to see you and I think we will start with Amin Tarzi. AMIN TARZI, Director, Middle East Studies, Marine Corps University Good morning. First and foremost, I want to thank the Middle East Policy Council for extending this invitation so I could leave our swamp and come to this great city of Washington, and it’s a pleasure to be here and before I say anything else I want to make a disclaimer. I do not speak here for the United States Marine Corps or any U.S. government agency. I’m speaking solely as a researcher and as in a capacity as a professor. I teach there at the Marine Corps University. So I just want to make that clear. I’m not speaking here on behalf of DOD or anybody within the U.S. government. And I just learned that Mattair and I were kind of colleagues at one point without ever meeting each other. So that’s – that’s the Middle East for you. Sometimes you’re colleagues and you don’t even meet each other. It’s a small world. I want to begin today our discussion on the title. Now I know where the origin of the title is. When I read the title, as someone who – and I have – as you can see from my name, my origin is from that part of the world that we call the Middle East – I’m still not sure middle of what desert but we all – you know, I’m a former Marine as well so I cannot wear two hats. I’m – I don’t like hyphenation. I’m an American. But whatever I am I’m not – you know, my name gives away my background and I’m very proud of that. I’m not going to hide that name. So I may have an opinion of both of those sides and one, you know, both academically – I got my Ph.D. on Middle East studies. I don’t know if that was a great idea but I did it anyway – and I worked with two Middle Eastern countries. You heard about UAE but, five years, I was a political advisor to the government of Saudi Arabia on issues of Middle East, specifically Iran. So those perspectives have kind of made me reflect more, if I would, semantically about the title, so I’ll start with the title. And I’m not saying, by the way, that we should not discuss the Middle East or look at the Middle East as something that cannot be discussed or understood. But what I will try to do is – and I’m actually going to borrow a line from a former professor of mine by the name of Edward Said – most of you may know him – he, unfortunately, passed away; he was at Columbia – in his famous book, “Orientalism”. I think by looking at, you know, Middle East perspectives but from our perspective – here, we’re all from the West. We represent the West. We live in the West. But we are talking about the Middle East.