In what was supposed to be a critique of President George W Bush’s State of the Union Speech which included references to the “global war on terror”, Miller warned Americans of what they’re “up against” — “the sixth-century barbarism that these people actually represent”. In fact, he said, “the contention that all cultures are equal and that every belief system is as good as the next, is utterly reprehensible. We have to understand that some cultures are superior and some cultures are inferior. Our culture in the West is superior than their culture”.

…

I think it’s a mistake to imagine that US foreign policy these days is driven strictly by national interests or realpolitik,” he warned. “It is increasingly driven by certain cultural predispositions, certain ways of imagining the world that US policy-makers have thought themselves in possession of. And it’s these cultural predeterminations that I think are driving a lot of what’s going on in American foreign policy rather than America’s actual material interest, particularly in the Middle East.” So, for example, when Miller “critiques” Bush’s State of the Union speech, Makdisi notes, he actually replicates what the president says.

…

Makdisi’s bold views and prolific writings have earned him respect but also, unsurprisingly, enemies. In January 2006 he published an article in the LA Times entitled “Witch hunt at UCLA”, which explains how he and other “targeted professors” were the subject of an offer made by a UCLA graduate website encouraging students to “expose” professors who talk about Bush or the war on Iraq in return for money. Makdisi’s articles which appear in various American newspapers often generate positive feedback from “normal Americans” who, he says, have thanked him for speaking up and presenting a critical point of view. But he also gets hate mail by America’s Israel defenders accusing him of “vicious lying” and “hate”. Still, he says, “I’m holding up to what I know objectively to be a humanist argument. These guys see this and recognise — subconsciously because they can’t really process it — their own inhumanity in what they represent. So in their twisted minds, they turn it around and project it onto me. They accuse me of talking about hate, when I’m talking about peace and justice. They’re the ones talking about hate. It’s like you press a button and hate comes out of it like a volcano.”