Conversations with History Blog

Evil and the Problem of Terrorism

As host of the Conversations with History archive, http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/conversations/  I prepare for the interview by reading the guest's collective work. I am then able to place the most recent book in the context of the guest's  life and times. This immersion often opens a vista for understanding current events in a way that is unexpected.  Let me cite an example that is relevant for today's news.

In the fall of 1999, I interviewed the noted psychiatrist and social theorist Robert Jay Lifton.  http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/people/Lifton/lifton-con0.html  Dr Lifton had just written Destroying the World to Save It: Aum Shinrikyo, Apocalyptic Violence, and the New Global Terrorism. This book is an analysis of the Japanese religious cult that launched the sarin attack in the Tokyo subway. In giving us a profile of the members and their charismatic leader, Lifton helped me understand the cult like quality which even the educated can embrace when a fanatical religious leader seems to be offering an ideology that responds to the spiritual and moral dislocation of modern life.  After the terrorist attack on the United States on September 11, 2001, I returned to Lifton's book as an invaluable resource.

Now that a recent article in the New Yorker by Jane Mayer chronicles the use of medical doctors in the U.S.camp at Guantanamo http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/050711fa_fact4 I was reminded of a seoond Lifton book, The Nazi Doctors. Here Dr. Lifton answers an important question:  How could German physicians who were committed to saving lives become such an important part of the concentration camps where they helped destroy lives. There is, Lifton teaches us, a fine line between good and evil that even the best trained can easily and without self recognition cross in the service of ideology.  I strongly recommend Lifton's books as an important resource for understanding the fanaticism that drives the terrorist cells.  He also shows the fine line that should not be crossed in the fight to defeat them.

What did they know and when did they know it?

In a previous post http://conversationswithhistory.typepad.com/conversations_with_histor/2005/07/ambassador_jose.html I discussed the CIA choice of Ambassador Joseph Wilson to check out the "yellowcake" story. The ensuing clash between Wilson and the administration's leading lights was grounded in two very different perspectives on the conduct of U.S. Foreign Policy.  Previously, in its diplomacy,  the U.S., while mixing ideology and national interest,  was, not immune to looking at the evidence that American ambassadors gathered through  contacts  they created while posted abroad.  As a former Ambassador to Niger, Wilson was a logical candidate for determining whether Saddam Hussein was in the market for African uranium. After all, since Renaissance times, this is how ambassadors  facilitate relations between states.  The Bush administration, on the other hand, represents a different tradition.  Define national interest through the lens of ideology and ignore the evidence if it contradicts what that ideology defines as the national interest.

Last week, new details of the controversy emerged in the Washington Post http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/20/AR2005072002517.html

When news of Wilson's trip became public through his New York Times op ed piece,  Karl Rove and Scooter Libby became interested  in information about Wilson, Mrs. Wilson and the Niger trip.  The work of the special prosecutor seems  to point to special interest in a State Department memo chronicling the Wilson mission and containing a footnote describing Mrs. Wilson's job  at the CIA.  The memo took center stage  not as information useful for making foreign policy but rather useful for destroying the legitimacy of contradictory evidence and the messenger who brought it to the public's attention.

This story calls to mind James Fallows's article, "Blind into Baghdad," (Atlantic Monthly,January/ February, 2004) which chronicles what we can call the Bush Administration's information strategy in the conduct of U.S. foreign policy during its first term.  Fallows demonstrates that the Bush team, prior to the start of the war,  ignored all government information that might inform U.S. policy toward Iraq--especially, if this information contradicted the decision to go to war and the Rumsfeld doctrine of using a limited force.  For the Fallows piece, see http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200401/fallows

With this information strategy in place,the sequence of events in the outing of Mrs. Wilson begins to make sense. Blind sighted by the Wilson op ed piece, the administration found the State Department memo very useful indeed. The prior choices-- about what to do in Iraq, about secrecy in implementing the decision for war, and about how to deal with the rest of the U.S. government--helps us understand the environment in which crimes might have been committed that required a special prosecutor.

For more on this aspect of the Bush policies see my interview with James Fallows in the Conversations with History Archive http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/people5/Fallows/fallows-con0.html For parallels with the Vietnam War, see my 1988 interview with Neil Sheehan http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/conversations/Sheehan/ and my 1998 interview with Daniel Ellsberg http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/people/Ellsberg/ellsberg98-0.html

Goodbye Bandar, Hello Turki

Today's New York Times http://nytimes.com/2005/07/21/international/middleeast/21bandar.html?pagewanted=all reports on the changing of the guard at the Saudi Embassy.  The article does not do justice to the backstory--how these two Saudi officials are implicated with the United States in the rise of Al Qaeda and of Osama Bin Laden.  To raise these issues at this time might seem unseemly in the context of the many parties in Washington honoring Ambassadors Bandar and Turki. The story is a complex web of intrigue and strategic blunder.  It is the tale of how U.S. policy in the last phase of the Cold War relied on the Saudi connection, Pakistan, and militant Islam to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan.  Fortunately, Steve Coll's Pulitzer Prize winning book, Ghost Wars, is a masterful account that tells us all we need to know.  I interviewed Coll for Conversations in March 2005 http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/people5/Coll/coll-con0.html Read the interview and then the book. Also see the Conversations with History Research Gallery on Militancy and Moderation in Islam http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/PubEd/research/islam.html especially the interview with Ahmed Rashid at http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/people2/Rashid/rashid-con0.html

Odyssey of a Diplomat

In May of 2004, I interviewed Ambassador Joseph Wilson on the occasion of the publication of his book, the Politics of Truth. The interview is posted at http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/people4/Wilson/wilson-con0.html  You can also find the podcast at http://feeds.feedburner.com/UCBerkeley

In the bitter, acrimonous controversy surrounding the revelation of his wife's identity by high officials in the Bush administration, there is, for obvious reasons, an emphasis on "Who Done It?"  The "IT" being the felony of outing a covert CIA agent.  There is also an emphasis in the debate on the party preferences of the combatants:  Rowe (Republican brain) versus Wilson( Democratic Advisor to John Kerry).  What is not being emphasized sufficiently is that because of his lifelong career in diplomacy, Wilson embodies a tradition of diplomatic service and leadership, a tradition that has marked the foreign service, especially since the end of World War II.  That tradition  involves courage (see Wilson's discussion of his role as Deputy Ambassador to Iraq before the first Iraq War) but more importantly a commitment to multilateral negotiations that necessitate a sifting of evidence and a weighing of the interests of different states and actors within those states.  In picking Wilson to check out the Niger yellow cake story, the CIA was designating a former U.S. Ambassador to go back to a former posting and check out the facts. This hearkens back to the work of many of our post war diplomats:  men like Philip Habib, Jack Matlock, Samuel Lewis.  To get a sense of this tradition, check out the Conversations with History diplomacy archive at http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/PubEd/research/diplomacy.html

Introduction

This weblog complements the online archive and satellite television program, Conversations with History. Created in 1982, Conversations is an interview program that focuses on individuals and ideas that make a difference. There are more than three hundred interviews in video and transcript at http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/conversations The interviewees are distinguished men and women from all over the world  who talk about their lives and their work. Guests include diplomats, statesmen, and soldiers; economists and political analysts; scientists and historians; writers and foreign correspondents; activists and artists. The interviews span the globe and include discussion of political, economic, military, legal, cultural, and social issues shaping our world.

The interviews are also shown nationally on satellite television.  Here is the schedule of upcoming broadcasts. http://uctv.tv/cwh/

This blog will provide an opportunity to comment on the interviews, offer insights, and link the interviews to discussion of contemporary affairs.

The author of this blog is Harry Kreisler who is also creator, executive producer and host of Conversations with History.