Bernard Lewis, the neocons' favorite Orientalist, wrote on op-ed for the Wall Street Journal on May 16 that was more wrongheaded than usual. Its title: "Was Osama Right?" Meaning, of course, that bin Laden believed that the United States was a weak pussycat, and if we leave Iraq now it will prove him right. He concludes:

More recent developments, and notably the public discourse inside the U.S., are persuading increasing numbers of Islamist radicals that their first assessment was correct after all, and that they need only to press a little harder to achieve final victory. It is not yet clear whether they are right or wrong in this view. If they are right, the consequences--both for Islam and for America--will be deep, wide and lasting.

Weirdly, Lewis credits the Taliban and Osama bin Laden for leading the resistance to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and he says point blank that they got U.S. support:

The Afghan people, who had successfully defied the British Empire in its prime, found a way to resist the Soviet invaders. An organization known as the Taliban (literally, "the students") began to organize resistance and even guerilla warfare against the Soviet occupiers and their puppets. For this, they were able to attract some support from the Muslim world--some grants of money, and growing numbers of volunteers to fight in the Holy War against the infidel conqueror. Notable among these was a group led by a Saudi of Yemeni origin called Osama bin Laden.

To accomplish their purpose, they did not disdain to turn to the U.S. for help, which they got.

Weird, because the Taliban that ruled Afghanistan in the 1990s wasn't formed until after the Soviet withdrawal from that country. And although bin Laden was in Afghanistan in the 1980s, CIA sources are unanimous that he didn't get U.S. support, although he appears to have had some support from Saudi Arabia -- and, in any case, he hadn't founded Al Qaeda yet.

Then there is this gem from Lewis:

For a long time, the main enemy [of the Muslims] was seen, with some plausibility, as being the West, and some Muslims were, naturally enough, willing to accept what help they could get against that enemy. This explains the widespread support in the Arab countries and in some other places first for the Third Reich and, after its collapse, for the Soviet Union. These were the main enemies of the West, and therefore natural allies.

But where Lewis is wrong, of course, is that the USSR wasn't seen as an ally by religious Muslim organizations, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, the Wahhabis, and other fundamentalist and Salafi-oriented groups, all of whom were bitterly anti-communist. As I document in my book, Devil's Game, it was precisely because the Muslim fundamentalists were so anti-Soviet that they often got American support throughout the Cold War. The "Muslims" who joined with the USSR were the (often secular) nationalists, leftists, communists, Baathists, and Nasserists who were "anti-Western" because they saw the British and French as colonial masters. (Later, the United States joined the that list, by virtue of its Cold War opposition to Arab and Iranian nationalism.)

But for Lewis, it's all a big Muslim-Christian free for all.

In the Muslim perception there has been, since the time of the Prophet, an ongoing struggle between the two world religions, Christendom and Islam, for the privilege and opportunity to bring salvation to the rest of humankind, removing whatever obstacles there might be in their path.

Not true, and a silly simplication. Typical of Lewis. I'd ascribe it to his old age, but it fact he's been writing the same thing for more than half a century.