Sunday, December 15, 2002
The Saudis and the Kurds: Last but not least, two excellent pieces on A.) Stephen Schwartz and the Wahhabi Saudis and B.) the plight of the Kurds. ... The former is really about the intellectual odyssey of Schwartz, the activist, pundit and author of ''The Two Faces of Islam: The House of Sa'ud from Tradition to Terror.” What a character. Schwartz tends to prove the theory that it’s really one’s personality that shapes an intellectual outlook, for good or bad. ... The latter is a long piece (that I haven’t finished) about the sad, tragic history of the Kurds, by Peter W. Galbraith, a former U.S. ambassador to Croatia and now a professor at the National War College. We’ve let the Kurds down so many times. And there’s no compelling reason to think we won’t do it again.
