Earlier this week, The Washington Post ran the following letter I wrote in response to a fawning profile of Columbia Professor Rashid Khalidi:

Forecasts That Don't Equal Power

Tuesday, May 18, 2004; Page A18

Philip Kennicott's profile of Prof. Rashid Khalidi ["The Knowledge That Doesn't Equal Power," Style, May 13] amply aired Mr. Khalidi's complaint that policymakers do not listen to the experts who know the Middle East best -- including Mr. Khalidi himself.

But in his book, "Ivory Towers on Sand: The Failure of Middle Eastern Studies in America," Martin Kramer documents that Mr. Khalidi's predictions are consistently not borne out.

For example, before the 1991 Persian Gulf War, Mr. Khalidi said that the United States would sustain heavy casualties in tough battles with Iraqi troops.

Undeterred by the rapid U.S. victory and the mass surrenders of Iraqi troops, Mr. Khalidi predicted that the Baath Party would "ditch" Saddam Hussein to save itself. Besides being false, this last prediction revealed an ignorance of Iraqi politics and the nature of Saddam Hussein's one-man autocracy.

AARON MANNES

I won't post the entire profile, but this excerpt should give you an idea:

Khalidi's book, "Resurrecting Empire," is part a primer on the history of the region and part an effort to sketch an intellectual battle that, in his view, we lost before the war even began. There has been "a muzzling of expertise," says Khalidi, a failure of academics familiar with the region, knowledgeable in its history, fluent in its languages to put themselves forward at a critical time. Especially during the march to war. The administration also failed to consult or heed its own government expertise, an expertise cultivated and created at huge cost over the years, he argues. Into the breach, an ignorance breach, stepped political ideologues -- "neocons" he calls them -- who advocated policies that are turning out to be disastrous.

Among other scholars who specialize in the region, this isn't a radical take on the present state of affairs. Michael C. Hudson, director of the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown, describes Khalidi as preeminent in his field, a courageous scholar and public figure.

"The whole question of academic expertise in the Middle East is a scandal," he says. "This administration is particularly knowledge-averse, not only to the academic world outside but to their academic experts inside."

For further background on Prof. Khalidi and the whole issue of the skewed teaching of Middle East affairs in academic I highly recommend Martin Kramer's "Ivory Towers on Sand: The Failure of Middle East Studies in America" and Campus Watch which the Post article calls a "right-wing watch dog group." Visit the site yourself, and see - all they do is report what academics studying the Middle East say publicly.

You could also check out my review of Kramer's book.

HSBC's Turkish headquarters was a target in the November 2003 bombing wave that hit Turkey. Then, a few days ago - as I discussed in my last entry - an HSBC branch in Athens was hit. Now, a series of four bombs struck HSBC offices in Ankara and Istanbul.

The four Saturday night bombings caused property damage, but injured no one. Two small bombs detonated at two HSBC offices in Istanbul at about 9:30 PM. An hour later two bombs went off at two HSBC offices in Turkey's capitol Ankara. Meanwhile, UK Prime Minister Tony Blair is due to arrive in Turkey today.

The November attack and the attack in Greece could be written off as coincidence. (The bombing in Greece was at an HSBC branch across the street from the other target.) But these latest, well-coordinated bombings in Turkey cannot be written off as mere happenstance.

The most logical explanation of the targeting of HSBC branches is that it is a way to hit Britain. HSBC is a world spanning bank headquartered in London - in effect it is comparable to hitting McDonald's - making a statement against both the home country, but also the global commercial values the business represents.

Britain is one of the U.S.'s strongest allies internationally and its participation in the liberation of Iraq plays an enormous role in shoring up American credibility. So it makes sense that terrorists would want to repeat the 3/11 attack on Britain hoping to encourage the British voters to throw out their present government. The fall of Blair would be a tremendous victory for terrorists - dwarfing the defeat of the Conservative Party in Spain after 3/11.

Another factor is London's role as a de-facto Arab capital. The most prominent independent Arab news papers (al-Hayat and al-Sharq al-Awsat) as many other Arab media outlets are based in London. Its proximity to the Middle East, Britain's colonial role in the region, and London's prominence in the international financial markets have made London an important center for Arab financial interests and expatriates. Al-Qaeda's European headquarters was in London. It is possible that HSBC has frozen assets linked to al-Qaeda and this campaign also targets the bank directly.

As a side note, there was a small protest outside of Britain's Embassy in Tehran. The crowd - only about 100 according to a British diplomat - was apparently upset about US & British military activity in the Iraqi holy cities. Since there is no American Embassy in Tehran, they have to make their point protesting at the British Embassy.