Quicksand

"Yes, and it is a much newer book. The more I read about it the more I knew I would have to look at this book. He comes at it from the tradition of a European political historian and therefore his book is filled with comparisons between American policy now and previous policies by the Europeans. He also, very effectively I think, discusses the problems with America’s policies towards Israel in a very dispassionate fashion. And this is something which is quite difficult, in the United States especially, and yet I think he pulls it off very well and, without being overly critical of American policy, he points out the problems we have had in satisfying all the sides in the Arab-Israeli dispute. I talk about this a lot in my book and I think it really owes as much to Egyptian leaders as it does to the United States, particularly Anwar al-Sadat who broke completely with Nasser’s policies and announced this, in a way, when he talked about how his major interest was going to be “Nile Nationalism” not “Arab Nationalism”. In the process, he paved the way for greater American military support to Egypt, which was always on the basis of quid pro quo – that is, we would give Egypt military support in exchange for Cairo’s maintaining peace with Israel. And up until the fall of Mubarak, our military support to Egypt was second only in the world to our military support to Israel. Yes, I think that is true, and in many respects Sadat angered the rest of the Arab world by doing this. In fact, when he went to Israel to speak and when he made his deal with Israel, the angry Arab countries pulled the Arab League offices out of Cairo for a time. In many ways Sadat triggered the whole beginning of what we face today. The number one man in Al-Qaeda now is, of course, Egyptian. Ayman al-Zawahiri began in Egypt by opposing Sadat."