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Cheney honors Princeton prof. in Philadelphia speech
Associated Press

PHILADELPHIA - Vice President Dick Cheney honored Middle Eastern historian Bernard Lewis on Monday in a speech to the World Affairs Council of Philadelphia.

Lewis, an emeritus professor at Princeton University, was celebrating his 90th birthday on the same day of a conference organized by the council on Islam and the West.

During a brief luncheon speech, Cheney said he first met Lewis more than 15 years ago, when he was defense secretary under President George H.W. Bush, after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait.

Cheney praised Lewis for being "always objective, clearly candid and completely independent."

"You simply cannot find a greater authority on Middle Eastern history, classical Islamic civilization, the Ottoman Empire ... than this man," Cheney said.

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Kissinger: Keep U.S. troops in Iraq

Withdrawal would embolden Muslim extremists, he tells Philly audience

By BOB WARNER
warnerb@phillynews.com 215-854-5885

Former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger issued a strong warning yesterday against a precipitous withdrawal of U. S. troops from Iraq, suggesting it would be a failure comparable to Vietnam.

"We failed [in Vietnam] because in the end, America defeated itself and abandoned its military and political objectives," Kissinger said at a daylong conference in Philadelphia.

Whatever one's view of the decision to enter Iraq or how the military campaign has been handled, Kissinger continued, a withdrawal of U.S. troops now would strengthen the voice of Muslim extremists worldwide.

"If when we go we leave nothing behind but a failed state and chaos, the consequences will be disastrous - for the region, for America's position in the world and for peace in the world," Kissinger said.

He specifically warned that neighboring countries, including Iran and Turkey, would seek to extend their influence into Iraq "to fill the vacuum" of departing U.S. troops.

And there would be consequences throughout the rest of the Muslim world, Kissinger predicted, if "the Jihadist element" were able to take credit for the humiliation of the Americans.

His audience at the Park Hyatt Philadelphia at the Bellevue included Vice President Dick Cheney and several of the nation's leading authorities on the Middle East, brought together by the World Affairs Council for a conference on "Islam and the West" sponsored by Glenmede Trust Co. and the Pew Charitable Trusts.

Cheney gave brief remarks, limited to praise for Princeton professor emeritus Bernard Lewis, an influential Middle East historian celebrating his 90th birthday at the conference.

Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr., D-Del., unveiled a plan to limit the authority of Iraq's central government and create three regional governments, to provide Kurdish, Sunni and Shiite sects with more clear authority in separate regions and to reduce violence between them.

"Violence between the Shi'a and Sunnis has surpassed the insurgency as the main security threat," Biden said. "It is driving the country toward chaos and civil war...To prevent it, we need a political solution."

Biden's plan would make the central government responsible for border defense, foreign policy, oil production and revenues. Baghdad would remain under federal control.

Biden's five-point plan, developed with Leslie H. Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, also called for a regional security conference to be convened by the United Nations, and continued U.S. reconstruction aid, conditioned on Iraqi efforts to protect the rights of women and minorities.

Biden said U.S. troops are necessary now "to prevent total chaos" in Iraq. But he said President Bush should direct U.S. military commanders to develop a plan to withdraw all but 20,000 troops over the next 18 months.

Those 20,000 would be deployed to deal with terrorists, help keep Iraq's neighbors in check, and train Iraq's own security forces, Biden said.

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Cheney, Biden to speak in Phila. today

Expect some Center City streets to close in late morning for the Vice President's motorcade.

Expect some Center City streets to be blocked temporarily in late morning as the Vice President Cheney's motorcade heads for the Park Hyatt Philadelphia at the Bellevue, Broad and Walnut Streets.

Cheney is attending a World Affairs Council of Philadelphia conference titled "Islam and the West."

Cheney will speak at a luncheon honoring Bernard Lewis, a historian and Princeton University's Cleveland E. Dodge Professor Emeritus of Near Eastern Studies.

The daylong conference includes speeches by U.S. Sen. Joseph Biden (D., Del.), and others. Biden, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, will "lay out a new strategy for how to move forward in Iraq," according to a news release from his office.

For more information, including about any remaining tickets, call 215-561-4700, or visit the council's website at www.wacphila.org.

— Inquirer staff

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Bernard Lewis Marking 90 At Grand Fete

By ELI LAKE — Staff Reporter of the New York Sun
April 28, 2006

Most people lucky enough to live to the age of 90 might mark the day with a cake and some presents. But for Bernard Lewis, a man considered the world's foremost historian of Islam and the Middle East, the occasion is cause for a seminar on Islam and the West.

And while most 90-year-olds would be content to see their families on their birthday, Mr. Lewis will be celebrating his with a senator, a former secretary of state, a top television news anchor, and a very senior White House official whose locations are usually not disclosed. On Monday, Senator Biden, Henry Kissinger, Judy Woodruff, and Fouad Ajami will join Mr. Lewis at the Philadelphia World Affairs Council to discuss such weighty matters as "Domestic Security and International Image" and "Europe: A Fracturing Union."

Mr. Lewis's girlfriend, Buntzie Ellis Churchill, wrote in her invitation to Mr. Kissinger, "As the president of the World Affairs Council of Philadelphia and lady in Bernard Lewis's life, it's just easier to plan a conference than it is to bake a cake."

There are few academics or historians who have matched the achievements of the emeritus Princeton University professor. He has written more than 24 books, received 15 honorary degrees, and fluently speaks, according to Ms. Churchill, eight languages which include the four languages of the Middle East — Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, and Turkish — as well as Danish.

A former student of Mr. Lewis' and scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, Reuel Marc Gerecht, said his book, "The Muslim Awakening of Europe," is "one of the best history books ever written. It is one of the rare history books that has a chance to still be read 50 years after it was published." Even his rivals acknowledge his intellectual power. The late literature professor Edward Said built much of his popular theory of Orientalism, the view that Western analysts and historians write about indigenous cultures as a rationalization for their exploitation, as an attack on Mr. Lewis.

Mr. Lewis debated Mr. Said and author Christopher Hitchens in 1983 on the topic of Orientalism that many of Mr. Lewis' followers believe marked the decline of their mentor's field. "They believed it was a predatory conspiracy of western imperialists," Mr. Lewis said. "I took the view this was a legitimate branch of scholarship. Since then the Saidian view has triumphed in western universities."

Mr. Lewis' ideas about the Middle East are also more current today than they were 30 years ago. His name is invoked almost constantly by critics of neoconservatives for the counsel he provided to Vice President Cheney about Iraq and the Middle East. Mr. Lewis first met with the vice president in 1990 on the eve of the first Gulf War. On the eve of the Iraq war, Mr. Cheney went on NBC's "Meet the Press" and called Mr. Lewis "one of the great students" of the Middle East.

Mr. Lewis says his role in shaping war policy has been exaggerated. "I do meet people and talk to people. I am not a consultant or adviser. I do not have any security clearances," he said.

"To say Bernard is a double-barreled fan of democracy in the Muslim world is not exactly right," Mr. Gerecht said. "What Bernard Lewis has shown is the extent to which a lot of very bad Western ideas have implanted themselves in the Muslim world. The better one, the hardest one to absorb, democracy, has not. But there is reason to believe that might be changing."

On a deeper level, however, Mr. Lewis has become one of the most relevant intellectuals on the region in the twilight of his life. In 1976, he wrote an essay for Commentary called "The Return of Islam" that made the case that Islam was emerging as the primary way Arabs identified themselves and predicted the rise of Islamic demagoguery. At the time, this insight deflated much of the claims of the waning pan-Arabists of the region. In 1978, Mr. Lewis began translating the writings of Ayatollah Khomeinei — before the 1979 revolution in Iran. His scholarship provoked the late senator, Henry "Scoop" Jackson, to ask the CIA formally about the exiled cleric in Paris, who famously insisted his writings (since proved not only authentic but prescient) were forgeries. Mr. Lewis wryly notes that the only texts of Khomeini's "Islamic Government" were in Persian and Arabic. "This meant that most of Washington could not understand it," he said.

Professor Samuel Huntington has even credited Mr. Lewis with coining the phrase, "conflict of civilizations."

Born in London in 1916, Mr. Lewis became interested in studying the Middle East, according to Ms. Churchill, during his bar mitzvah. "With his bar mitzvah, he started to learn a new alphabet and that is when he began to learn his first foreign language," she said. Mr. Lewis attended the University of London at the time as opposed to Oxford and other schools because it was the only institution to offer a degree in Middle Eastern history, and not just Arabic.

Ms. Churchill, who talks about him in glowing terms, praises especially his wit in conversation and his ability to "speak in complete and perfect paragraphs." This skill has served him well in the last 20 years since retiring from teaching, she said. Mr. Lewis composes his books now from dictation.

But perhaps the highest praise Mr. Lewis has received is from his students, who say that despite his high reputation he has devoted time to mentoring. "You know when you are in his presence you are in the presence of a historical wonder," Mr. Gerecht said. "For those of us who believe that life is about time-tripping, there is no greater joy in this world than to be with Bernard Lewis."

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