The American University website put up a summary of David’s September 16th talk with Hisham Melham at AU’s Center for Israeli Studies. Hisham and David discussed not only Myths, Illusions, & Peace, but also a wide range of Middle Eastern topics. Here’s a quote from the summary:
Responding to probing and nuanced questions from Melham, the Washington bureau chief for Al Arabiya who was the first person to interview President Obama after his inauguration, Makovsky discussed his new book, Myths, Illusions, and Peace: Finding a New Direction for America in the Middle East.
“People look at the Middle East from 50,000 feet in the air,” said Makovsky, Ziegler Distinguished Fellow of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “From 50,000 feet, everything looks very clear. The realists tend to say, ‘Just impose peace.’ The neoconservatives say, ‘Just impose democracy.’ We think there are a lot of maladies and dysfunctions in the Middle East that have nothing to do with the Arab-Israeli conflict. We don’t deny that this issue is evocative; we just have our doubts that it will solve the other conflicts. Will it have side benefits? Yes, but the Iran nuclear ascendance will retain its power, the sectarian problems in Iraq will continue. We shouldn’t oversell it.”
