Matthew Duss asks what the WikiLeaks cables tell us about the Middle East in the wake of the Bush Doctrine.
For years, we’ve been told by conservative Middle East “experts” that, despite public pleading, Arab leaders were really not concerned about the destabilizing effects of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Hudson Institute’s Lee Smith exemplified this thinking when he wrote recently that taking Arabs seriously on the Israeli-Palestinian issue “would ignore the fact that interested parties do not always disclose the entire truth of their situation, especially when they have a stake in doing otherwise.” (Will similar skepticism be applied to Arab leaders’ comments on Iran? What a silly question.)
