The Strong Horse: Power, Politics, and the Clash of Arab Civilizations »

Lee Smith is the author of nine previous novels as well as three collections of stories. Her ninth novel, The Last Girls, was a New York Times bestseller as well as co-winner of the Southern Book Critics Circle Award. The recipient of an Academy Award in Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1999, Smith lives in Hillsborough, North Carolina.

In this provocative and timely book, Middle East expert Lee Smith overturns long-held Western myths and assumptions about the Arab world, offering advice for America’s future success in the region.
 
Seeking the motivation behind the September 11 attacks, Smith moved to Cairo, where he discovered that the standard explanation—a clash of East and West—was simply not the case. Middle East conflicts have little to do with Israel, the United States, or the West in general, but are endemic to the region. According to Smith’s “Strong Horse Doctrine,” the Arab world naturally aligns itself with strength, power, and violence. He argues that America must be the strong horse in order to reclaim its role there, and that only by understanding the nature of the region’s ancient conflict can we succeed.

The Barnes & Noble Review

It's too bad that Smith adopts such a gloomy view regarding the possibilities of liberal democracy taking hold in Arab lands, because arguably his book's finest feature is its trenchant criticism of Arab intellectuals' objections to the U.S. project for democracy in the Middle East -- which he points out became an American priority after no weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq. He notes the hypocrisy of those who spent years lamenting U.S. support for Arab dictators, only to become even more anti-American when the U.S. finally decided to change course, deposing Saddam Hussein in Iraq and pressuring other Arab despots. And he justly ridicules their blaming all or most of the region's ills on the U.S., but subsequently maintaining that the U.S. cannot possibly succeed should it attempt to improve the region's fortunes in a direct manner: "In their view, apparently, foreign powers are all-powerful in the Middle East when they're pursuing evil ends. But when they're trying to bring about positive change -- like creating democracy -- they're impotent."

Introduction The clash of Arab civilizations 1

Ch. 1 The strong horse : tribes 17

Ch. 2 "An Arab regardless of his own wishes" : the idols of Arab nationalism 28

Ch. 3 "No voice louder than the cry of battle" : Arab nationalism and anti-Americanism 44

Ch. 4 The Muslim reformation 63

Ch. 5 "The regime made us violent" : the Islamists' war against the Muslims 82

Ch. 6 Bin Laden, the father of Arab democracy 103

Ch. 7 The schizophrenic Gulf 121

Ch. 8 The battle of ideas : the conqueror of darkness and the Arab Voltaires 141

Ch. 9 "Your children or your guns" : the Cedar Revolution and the fight for the future of Lebanon 161

Ch. 10 The capital of Arab resistance : Damascus's regime of terror 183

Ch. 11 Middle East Cold War and the Israeli strong horse 201

Conclusion 217

Notes 225

Index 231