The American Spectator

I was fascinated by young Kenner’s report from Syria! He is no innocent: he’s an extraordinarily perceptive fellow. Georgetown, eh? I’ve marked it down: I have children in need of a sound education.

Students of Levantine politics can understand the optometrist Medium Leader and his machinations well enough, so long as their eyes are opened wide and have been recently examined by a proper doctor. Mr. Kenner has provided a window into the hearts and minds of the hapless (though, in the Arab manner, still cheerful and hospitable) Syrian people.

Some may write off Mr. Kenner’s account of his flirtations as lightweight reporting — it is not. It goes straight to the center of gravity in the Levantine conundrum we in the West are facing.

Our military and economic power are overwhelming, but we still have difficulty understanding that while the great number of human beings in the Arab and Muslim world are really just like us underneath it all, it is what they are underneath that makes them, as a practical ( and strategic) matter, as different from us as space aliens.

We have not yet discovered the proper mix of generalization and discrimination in our perception of the Islamic world, and so have been less than completely successful in optimizing our policy and posture toward it. Yes, all humanity has many things in common, but knowledge of those things does not necessarily improve or even inform our decision-making. Kenner has drawn a valuable schematic, illustrating with no little poignancy how, tho’ we all be human, the djinn, so to speak, is in the differences.

Bravo, bravo Mr. Kenner! I, on account of certain bureaucratic and administrative trivialities, must refrain for now from visiting the Arab world in person, though I study it with some diligence from without. Kenner has provided exactly the sort of data one cannot learn from news reports or analysts’ white papers. Fantastic! I thank him.