Evenhanded foreign policy is regarded as self-defeating even by classical Arab moralists

Evidence

If “evenhandedness” means treating all alike, it would be a manifestly suicidal policy for any kind of government, American or other, to pursue. In the Middle East as in most other places, one is expected to help one’s friends and to harm one’s enemies. This is well understood, and was classically formulated, a thousand years ago, by the Arab moralist Ibn Hazm: “He who treats friends and enemies alike will arouse distaste for his friendship and contempt for his enmity.” — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 1675

Categorization

• XREF: Reverses the framing common in Said-adjacent critique that ‘bias’ against the Middle East is somehow distinctive to Western policy — Lewis grounds partiality as a regional norm via an Arab authority.
• SEED: Could anchor an essay on how the ‘evenhandedness’ accusation and counter-accusation structures US Middle East debate — each side claiming the other is uniquely biased.
• QUESTION: Is citation of Ibn Hazm here a genuine appeal to regional wisdom or a rhetorical enlistment of an Arab authority against the evenhandedness critique?