Michael B. Oren, a noted historian and author of several acclaimed books on the Middle East, including the 2002 New York Times best-seller, Six Days of War: June 1967 and The Making of the Modern Middle East, discussed, in an exclusive intereview with the St. Louis Jewish Light, his most ambitious book to date: Power, Faith and Fantasy: America in the Middle East from 1776 to the Present.

Oren, who resides in Jerusalem, where he is a senior fellow at the Shalem Center, will be in St. Louis next week, where he will discuss his latest book on Tuesday, Feb. 12, at 7:30 p.m., at the Wohl Building of the Jewish Community Center, where he will be an “off-season” author for the St. Louis Jewish Book Festival. Oren was interviewed by the St. Louis Jewish Light by telephone from St. Louis after he had arrived in New York City to begin the book tour which will bring him to St. Louis.

Raised in the United States, Oren immigrated to Israel in 1979. He served as a paratrooper in the Israel Defense Forces, reaching the rank of major. He is a veteran of the Lebanon War, and served as the Israeli liaison officer to the U.S. Sixth Fleet during the 1991 Gulf War. He also acted as a representative of the Prime Minister’s Office to the Jewish underground in the former Soviet Union, and served as an adviser to the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. He is a graduate of Princeton and Columbia Universities, has been a visiting professor at Harvard and Yale Universities, and has received fellowships from the U.S. Departments of State and Defense as well as the British and Canadian governments. In Israel, he has been a fellow at Hebrew University in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv University. He lives in Jerusalem with his wife, Sally and three children.

In his previous books, Oren focused on specific aspects of Middle East history, including the 1967 Six-Day War and the 1956 Sinai Campaign, with a broader focus in his The Making of the Modern Middle East, which won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Power, Faith and Fantasy covers a much broader canvas, covering the complete history of United States involvement in and obsession with the Middle East from the presidency of George Washington through the presidency of George W. Bush.

Asked why he decided to take on attempting to tell the entire story of over 230 years of American involvement in the Middle East, Oren said, “It was actually an idea I have had in my head for a quarter of a century, since I was in graduate school. I began to encounter episodes of American involvement in the Middle East: Civil War officers serving in Egypt in the 1860s, American missionaries working in the Middle East in the 1840s, and these episodes sort of belie the assuption the American involvement in the Middle East began some time after World War II,” Oren said.

Asked why he decided to take on attempting to tell the entire story of over 230 years of American involvement in the Middle East, Oren said, “It was actually an idea I have had in my head for a quarter of a century, since I was in graduate school. I began to encounter episodes of American involvement in the Middle East: Civil War officers serving in Egypt in the 1860s, American missionaries working in the Middle East in the 1840s, and these episodes sort of belie the assuption the American involvement in the Middle East began some time after World War II,” Oren said.

“When I went to look for a book that sums up a comprehensive survey of American involvement in the Middle East, over the past 230 years, I couldn’t find any. I could find books about Great Britain in the Middle East, France in the Middle East, but not on America in the Middle East. I thought that particularly after 9/11 it was essential that Americans, who had to make some very crucial decisions about the future of the Middle East, it was important that they had a historical context in which to make those decisions.”

Oren added, “many people probably have never heard of some of the people discussed in the book. In fact, I hadn’t heard of them either until I started doing the research for the book.”

The third force, which Oren calls “Fantasy” is the influence of the imagination of authors, essayists and poets whose vivid and often romanticized descriptions of the Middle East as “a romantic, exotic, erotic area” has shaped American views of the region. “The image of dashing nomads on steeds, and people on flying carpets” images from books like A Thousand and One Arabian Nights have inspired legends and myths about the region in the Western mind, he said.

Mark Twain’s famous work of non-fiction, Innocents Abroad, with its often ironic but detailed descriptions of the Middle East, “greatly increased American awareness of and interest in the region. In fact, Innocents Abroad was the first book written by Samuel Clemens under the pen name Mark Twain and it became one of the all-time best sellers. Twain even joked that his book sold more copies than the Bible itself,” Oren added.

“A lot of the fantasy died on 9/11, and was supplanted by power and faith,” Oren added.

Asked to differentiate his notion of the power of fantasy from that of the late Palestinian-American scholar Edward Said, who described it as “Orientalism,” Oren said, “What Said did was to replace one fantasy for another. He replaced the romantic American myths about the Middle East with a myth about America as the source of most of the problems in the region. Said’s fantasy, which is far more invidious is that the Middle East had far more to fear from America than America had to fear from the Middle East. Said overlooked the very stark reality of Islamic extremism in his idealism of the Middle East.”

Of the three influences described by Oren, the greatest influence at present is “power, because it directly relates to oil,” Oren said.

“But faith is certainly close behind it. Faith influenced the decision by George W. Bush to go to war in Iraq to spread democracy in the Middle East. Faith is also guiding Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in trying to negotiate a treaty between Israel and the Palestinians. I think there is far less fantasy than there has been in previous periods of American involvement.”

In the case of former President Bill Clinton, “he was also deeply influenced by faith as well as power concerns in his Middle East policies,” Oren said.

“In the case of Jimmy Carter, faith was absolutely paramount in guiding his involvement in the Egypt-Israel peace process and other aspects of his Middle East policies.”

Looking toward the future, Oren expressed concern that “America may be poised for a rare period of isolationism, and future leaders may be much less inclined to exercise power options in the Middle East.”

In an afterward written for the paperback edition of Power, Faith and Fantasy, Oren says that the year beginning in July 2006 “might prove to have been the most pivotal in America’s Middle East experience — the year that Americans just turned away.”

He writes of a year that included more bloodshed in Lebanon and Israel, the victory of the terrorist group Hamas in Palestine and its takeover in Gaza, and the continuing concerns over Iran, which culminated in the visit from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadedinejad to Columbia University in the fall of 2007.

Upcoming St. Louis Book Festival author visits include:

* Dr. Arthur Agatston, author of The South Beach Diet Heart Program will speak on Wednesday, Feb. 13 for a ‘Lunch and Learn Program,’ beginning at noon. Tickets are $15.

* James McBride, author of Song Yet Sung speaks on Thursday, Feb. 21, at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $12.

Michael B. Oren, author of Power, Faith and Fantasy: America in the Middle East 1776 to the Present will speak at the JCC in Creve Coeur on Tuesday, Feb. 12 at 7:30 p.m. as part of the St. Louis Jewish Book Festival. Admission is $12. Call 314-442-3299 for more information.