Arabists: The Romance of an American EliteSimon and Schuster, 1995 M07 1 - 368 pages A tight-knit group closely linked by intermarriage as well as class and old school ties, the “Arabists” were men and women who spent much of their lives living and working in the Arab world as diplomats, military attaches, intelligence agents, scholar-adventurers, and teachers. As such, the Arabists exerted considerable influence both as career diplomats and as bureaucrats within the State Department from the early nineteenth century to the present. But over time, as this work shows, the group increasingly lost touch with a rapidly changing American society, growing both more insular and headstrong and showing a marked tendency to assert the Arab point of view. Drawing on interviews, memoirs, and other official and private sources, Kaplan reconstructs the 100-year history of the Arabist elite, demonstrating their profound influence on American attitudes toward the Middle East, and tracing their decline as an influx of ethnic and regional specialists has transformed the State Department and challenged the power of the old elite. |
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... Iraq! Comparison improves scholarship. The policies of the Bush and Clinton administrations toward Serbian aggression in the former Yugoslavia, as unsatisfactory as they were (and have been), are still more defensible than the response ...
... Iraq! Comparison improves scholarship. The policies of the Bush and Clinton administrations toward Serbian aggression in the former Yugoslavia, as unsatisfactory as they were (and have been), are still more defensible than the response ...
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... Iraq. No one resigned. Protest against the Bush Administration's coddling of Saddam was low key or nonexistent. There was no identifiable revolt, as there was among Europeanists regarding Bosnia. Why? This book may give part of the ...
... Iraq. No one resigned. Protest against the Bush Administration's coddling of Saddam was low key or nonexistent. There was no identifiable revolt, as there was among Europeanists regarding Bosnia. Why? This book may give part of the ...
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... Iraq, and southern Turkey. In truth, it was American missionaries like Bill's parents, through their letters home, their cultural societies, and their printing presses, who led the movement to legitimize the term Syria not only in the ...
... Iraq, and southern Turkey. In truth, it was American missionaries like Bill's parents, through their letters home, their cultural societies, and their printing presses, who led the movement to legitimize the term Syria not only in the ...
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... Iraq more than two hundred years later. As we shall learn, the famous encounter in July 1990 between U.S. ambassador April Glaspie and Iraqi president Saddam Hussein was, in reality, two centuries in the making. Miss Glaspie entered.
... Iraq more than two hundred years later. As we shall learn, the famous encounter in July 1990 between U.S. ambassador April Glaspie and Iraqi president Saddam Hussein was, in reality, two centuries in the making. Miss Glaspie entered.
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... Iraq) and at Ashitha (near the current TurkishIraqi border). This was American frontiersmanship at its bravest and most extreme, thoroughly deserving of mention in our schoolbooks, even if current political correctness precludes the ...
... Iraq) and at Ashitha (near the current TurkishIraqi border). This was American frontiersmanship at its bravest and most extreme, thoroughly deserving of mention in our schoolbooks, even if current political correctness precludes the ...
Contents
Aggrieved Area Experts | |
Mugged by Reality | |
Horan of Arabia | |
Indiana Jones | |
Debacle | |
The Icy Eyes That Had Contemplated Nineveh | |
Cowering in a Dark Alley | |
Hostages to Idealism | |
Reality | |
Mr Foreign Service | |
Old Hands | |
Never a Dull Moment | |
Redemption | |
A New Species? | |
Bibliography | |
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Common terms and phrases
Akins American missionaries antiSemitism April Glaspie Arab country Arab nationalism Arab world ArabIsraeli Arabists Aviv Baghdad became Beirut Bill Stoltzfus Bliss British cables Cairo career Christian Cluverius colleagues College Congregationalist Coon Crane culture Custis Damascus David Department Department’s desert Doughty Eagleton Eastern Egypt Eli Smith expatriates Falashas Feisal Foreign Service French FSOs Glaspie’s going Hermann Eilts Hume Horan Iran Iraq Iraq’s Iraqi Islam Israel Israeli Jerry Weaver Jerusalem Jewish Jews Jidda Kelly Khartoum Killgore Kissinger Kissinger’s knew Kuwait language Lawrence Lawrence’s learn Arabic Lebanon lived Loy Henderson Maronites Mesopotamia Middle East military mission Moslem NEA assistant secretary never officer Operation Moses Palestine Palestinian Parker peace Philby political president Protestant Roy Atherton Sadat Saddam Saudi Arabia says Seelye’s Shiite Sisco SixDay Soviet Sterner Sudan Sudanese Syria Talcott Seelye U.S. ambassador U.S. diplomats U.S. embassy United University Veliotes Washington Western Wiley William Yemen