The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Middle East (Politically Incorrect Guides) (Paperback)

~ Martin Sieff (Author)
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Editorial Reviews

Product Description

In this informative, iconoclastic book, veteran foreign correspondent Martin 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 of the morning papers.

In The Politically Incorrect Guideâ„¢ to the Middle East you'll learn:

Why Islamic fundamentalism isn't ancient--making it more dangerous;

Why the Saudis are part of the solution, not the problem;

Why democracy and a Marshall Plan for the Middle East would only make things worse;

Why Arab-Israeli peace is impossible; and

Why we'll miss the old Arab dictators when they're gone--because the alternative is Islamic fundamentalism --This text refers to the Audio Cassette edition.

From the Inside Flap

Why most of what you think you know about the Middle East is wrong

The Middle East: a region that's almost never off the front pages, yet one most Americans know little about. The mainstream media and Ivy League academics only make matters worse by casting everything in the usual politically correct mold: Arab terrorists are just desperate freedom fighters, and the region's one free democracy--Israel--is the oppressor, not least because of its alliance with America. And if Islamic extremism is a problem, the establishment tells us, it's only because it's rooted in that source of all evils: religion. A different strain of political correctness has seeped into some minds on the right--most notably the Bush administration, which, so ready to buy into the egalitarian myths we are all taught, believed that Western-style democracy could flourish anywhere. Now, in The Politically Incorrect Guide(tm) to the Middle East, veteran Middle East correspondent Martin Sieff puts the lie to all these myths and clichés, giving you everything you need to know about the region to understand its past, its present, and its possible future. In The Politically Incorrect Guide(tm) to the Middle East, you'll learn:

* How, for three decades, the British supported parliamentary democracy throughout the Middle East, but it didn't work
* Why Britain's post-World War I Middle East policy was a comedy of errors and incompetence that soon escalated into tragedy
* Where America went wrong in Iraq: how U.S. policymakers vastly underestimated the intransigent, unsophisticated, and anti-Western nature of its competing communities
* How Saudi Arabia's security forces defeated al Qaeda--and why you never heard about it
* Why we'll miss the Arab dictators when they're gone
* How the Muslim nations of the Middle East took an irrevocable turn toward radical Islam not in the tenth century or after the fall of Baghdad to the Mongols in the thirteenth century--but in 1979
* How the Arab states openly declared their determination to prevent a Jewish state from being born in 1947--twenty years before the West Bank and Gaza were first occupied

The Politically Incorrect Guide(tm) to the Middle East is a bold first step toward facing the hard truths necessary for peace.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 230 pages
• Publisher: Regnery Press (January 28, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1596980516
• ISBN-13: 978-1596980518
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 7.2 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (29 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #46,235 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

29 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Definitely worth reading, January 17, 2008

By	Jill Malter ([e-mail]) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

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.

36 of 42 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Excellent Review of Middle Eastern Politics, January 22, 2008

By	Royce Callaway (SE Michigan USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Some interesting facts, but spectacularly wrong in the main, December 1, 2008

By	David C. Read (Glendale, CA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Politically Incorrect Guideā„¢ to the Middle East (Politically Incorrect Guides) (Audio CD)

I have to give this review a couple of stars because Sieff gets two huge issues right. First, he is correct that Bush's Natan Sharansky-inspired policy of promoting democracy in the Muslim world is wrong-headed and potentially very dangerous. History has shown that Muslim voters are liable to elect Islamist governments (Hamas), whereas the autocrats that the Muslim world typically produces are far more likely to brutally suppress Islamism than to be Islamists themselves. Sieff is also absolutely right in urging that U.S. presidents not exhaust themselves trying to obtain the unobtainable--peace between Israel and the Arabs. Sieff says: manage and ameliorate the conflict as best you can, and good fences make good neighbors.

However, I can't give this book more than two stars because Sieff's main thesis--that the Ottoman Empire was the Middle East's good old days, and that Saudi Arabia can function as a sort of Ottoman Empire in the modern Middle East--is comprehensively, ludicrously wrong.

Sieff argues that the Ottomans provided "stability" without defining what that means. I would define stability as a Middle East that doesn't threaten the Western world and pull Western powers into its conflicts. By this definition, the Ottomans provided anything and everything but stability. Right from the beginning, they threatened the Christian West, conquering Greece, the cradle of Western Civilization, and in 1453 finally snuffing out the Eastern Roman Empire. They invaded Southeastern Europe, persecuting the Christian peoples living there; they staffed their Janissary Corps with enslaved, Christian children kidnapped from Europe and forcibly converted to Islam. Much of the violence of post-communist Yugoslavia is a result of the Ottoman invasian, and the resulting patchwork Islamization, of Southeastern Europe. The Ottomans threatened to conquer Vienna in the 1520s and 1530s, and again in 1683.

Obviously, none of the "instability" of the 20th-Century Middle East has ever been remotely as threatening to the West as the Ottoman Empire was throughout most of its history. Even during the 19th Century, the slowly decaying body of the Ottoman Empire constantly drew European powers into its conflicts, as in the Russo-Turkish war of 1828-9, the Crimean War, and the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878. During the Greek insurrection of the 1820s, the Ottomans attempted a scorched earth policy that included enslaving large numbers of Greeks in Egypt. When, in the 19th Century, the Christian populations of Southeastern Europe--the Serbs, Bulgars, Romanians, etc--struggled for their independence, the Ottomans frequently responded by slaughtering thousands upon thousands of them in massacres such as the Batak Massacre. That Sieff is nostaligic for any of this is mind boggling, and more than a little nihilistic.

As ridiculous as are Sieff's fond memories of the Ottomans, his hope that Saudi Arabia can be a force for good in the region is, if possible, even more absurd. At least the Ottomans had an empire to run; the Saudis have only a portion of the Arabian penninsula to run. For good or ill, they can control nothing beyond their borders. But the way they govern their own country--as a THEOCRACY--would not create hope in any sane person for Saudi influence beyond their borders. Unfortunately, this is a subject about which we do not have to guess; as is very well known (although Sieff does not acknowledge it) the Saudis use their vast oil wealth to export their 7th Century ideology by funding mosques and madrassas all around the world. I personally don't believe there is a "moderate" form of Islam. But if there were, that form of Islam is certainly NOT what is being promoted by Saudi oil money in the mosques of Europe and America. Again, this is a well known fact that Sieff does not even attempt to address. In the long run, the Islam promoted by Saudi money is far more threatening to the West than even the Ottoman Empire in its heyday.

The Saudis are our hope for Middle Eastern stability?? Aside from the absurdity of its main thesis, this book has other problems. It is not well organized, it meanders from subject to subject without any organizational or argumentative purpose. Although it is not a long book, it repeats some facts 3 or 4 times, again to no particular purpose. Alas, I'm afraid the normally reliable editors of Regnery's PIG guides have allowed a prankster to tarnish their brand. I think Sieff is pulling our legs. As John McEnroe would say, "You cannot be serious."