Fouad Ajami: Middle East scholar or Shiite partisan?

Fouad Ajami, unenthused as he must be at the prospect of conceding that he erred in fervently supporting the Iraq War, is a tad more invested in the surge than is your average academic. So, naturally, at a time when even the hint of optimism on Iraq is duly punished in the media, Ajami departed Washington for Baghdad ...

By Henry Bowles

April 13, 2007, 4:10 PM

Fouad Ajami, unenthused as he must be at the prospect of conceding that he erred in fervently supporting the Iraq War, is a tad more invested in the surge than is your average academic. So, naturally, at a time when even the hint of optimism on Iraq is duly punished in the media, Ajami departed Washington for Baghdad to assess the situation for himself. His conclusions, published at great length in Wednesday's Wall Street Journal, did nothing to lay to rest the long-standing criticism that Ajami reeks of Shiite nationalism. (Not to mention the fact that his timing in noting "cautious optimism" in Baghdad, a day before a bomb struck Iraq's parliament building, was atrocious.)

On Iraqi PM Nuri al-Maliki: A "modest and earnest man" who admirably "did not flinch" in executing Saddam, is coming into his own and "increasingly independent of the diehards in his own coalition."
On a Shiite-ruled Iraq: A "realignment in Iraq [that] carries with it a gift for the possible redemption of modern Islam among the Arabs" and that "can go a long way toward changing the region's terrible habits and expectations of authority and command."
On concerns over Shiite power in the Middle East: "Our soldiers have not waged wars in Afghanistan and Iraq against Sunni extremists to fall for the fear of some imagined 'Shia crescent' peddled by Sunni rulers and preachers."
On Sunnis: The " 'Sunni street' – the Islamists, the pan-Arabists who hid their anti-Shia animus underneath a secular cover … remained unalterably opposed to this new Iraq …. The Sunnis have lost the battle for Baghdad."

Ajami's elegant writing cannot obscure his increasingly bizarre rhetorical acrobatics on the topic of Iraq. His evidently fervid Shiite nationalism and open disdain for the "Sunni street" compel him to write paeans on the powers of Arab redemption through a Shiite Iraq. But that means he has to remain basically silent on Iran, as his previous dismissal of Iranian influence in a Shiite Iraq is not universally accepted. Of course, if Iran succeeds in turning Iraq into a Persian satellite, Ajami's Shiite nationalism will run up against his equally strong support for U.S. power in the Middle East. How will he thread that needle?