Post- Cold War World

Now the end of the Cold War comes, we've won the Cold War, but then American presidents, beginning with the first President Bush, then President Clinton and on to President George W. Bush, did something vis-à-vis the world that changed the system that we've been describing drastically. Let's talk a little about that. What did we do after the end of the Cold War that began the process of changing people's perceptions of the United States?

At the end of the Cold War there was this huge sense of relief in America, that it had done its job, that it had carried the world on its shoulders in the battle against the evil Soviet Empire, and after having carried the world on its shoulders for almost forty-five years, I think there was a natural inclination for America to say, "Okay, we've done our job. We have taken care of the world, we've protected the free world, we've defeated the Soviet Empire. Now it's time to come home." Of course, American did not have any intention to harm the world when it was doing it. All it thought was that it was doing it, maybe even doing the right thing in coming home and saying to the world, "You can take care of yourself." But having got so involved in the histories of other countries, when America disentangled itself, in the process of disentangling it left behind pools of turbulence in the world which unfortunately are now haunting America and haunting the world today.

A case study of what you're talking about would be the case of Afghanistan after we take into account that the U.S. had helped mobilize the global jihad against the Soviet Union and Afghanistan. Talk a little about that.

Yes, Afghanistan is, in some ways, the ideal case study to illustrate what happens when America disengages suddenly after having been involved in a country in a big way. During the Cold War very senior American figures would go to the border within Pakistan and Afghanistan, stand at the Khyber Pass, carry a Kalashnikov, and say, "These are the frontiers of freedom, and we stand here with these Islamic freedom fighters, and we are so glad that an Islamic jihad has been launched against the Soviet Union."

By doing that, America whipped up a sense of solidarity among pools of Muslims that until then had seen very little connection with each other. So, you had Mujahadeen freedom fighters from Algeria, from Indonesia, from Pakistan, all coming to fight in Afghanistan. But having whipped up this Islamic jihad sentiment, what America did was release a genie out of a bottle, and when it left, it didn't try to put the genie back into the bottle. It let the genie outside the bottle, and one of the most controversial things I suggest in my book is that if you want to look at the origins of 9/11, what happened on that day, you have to go back and study what happened in Afghanistan in the 1980s, because that's when the genie was let out of the bottle. America let the genie out.

Interestingly enough, as we move now into a war on terrorism which is focused on the Muslim terrorists who are not at all representative of the broad base of Islam, you are implicitly suggesting that it is not doing a good job anymore in waging a war on the terrain of the battle of ideas. Talk a little about that.

One point I want to emphasize, the point that you just made, is that the vast majority of the 1.2 billion Muslims in the world want to lead normal, peaceful lives. It's important for an American audience not to believe that all these 1.2 billion Muslims are out there trying to either support terrorism or engage in terrorism. That's not true.

But it's also true that there's a large amount of anger and antipathy towards America in the Islamic world. When you have anger and antipathy, normally maybe one percent, a half-percent of that population will try and do something about it. One percent of the Muslim community is 12 million Muslims, a half-percent is 6 million Muslims. So, you don't want to make such a big number angry towards you!

I also say in the book that this antipathy that has arisen between America and the Islamic world was completely unnecessary, because from the nineteenth century, the early part of the twentieth century, no Islamic state was colonized by America. In fact, the Islamic states were colonized by the European powers. And the Islamic states, the Arab states, can remember that it was American decolonization efforts that led to them being decolonized also.

So, there should have been a naturally happy, constructive, positive relationship within America and the Islamic world. Sadly, the exact opposite has happened. I think it's incumbent upon America, and frankly, useful for America from the point of view of its own national self-interest, to go out and understand where these reservoirs of anger have come from.

There is a perception in the Islamic world, and I tell some stories in my book about the attitudes in the mid-1990s, that America seemed to care about human rights when other peoples' rights were involved, but when Muslim lives were being killed, they didn't seem to notice. As you know, the one case that has more than any other case led to the alienation of America is the case of the Palestinians, sadly speaking. That's why it's very important for America to try and do something to revitalize the Middle East peace process again.

Next page: The Effects of Globalization