When they talk about people coming into Iraq from Syria and Iran and fighting Americans, these were not specific organized groups. They were young men who felt very strongly that there was a war going on against Islam, and an occupation, and they went to fight it. The groups that have been effective in organizing themselves are these radical Sunni Salafi groups. The movement existed, and it was probably expanding anyway. Oh, seriously? Because I think some people thought that it was plausible that after 9/11 it was not expanding. That the United States is hunting them down and catching them.
Certainly we're hunting down some of the leadership around bin Laden, but Al Qaeda is not just one centralized organization..It's a revolutionary movement. If you're part of a revolutionary movement, you join others who feel part of the revolutionary movement. As your sincerity is tested and people start to trust you, you start to get into inner cells and as you prove yourself in carrying out attacks against the enemy, then gradually you get into more and more powerful positions and you get more expertise and you can carry out operations. It's true that Al Qaeda has been dismantled in part--and that there is a reaction by progressive Muslims to militant Islam. All these things are going on simultaneously. And I think it's crucial to understand that they are going on simultaneously, and that if the United States expands its operations in the Middle East, I think it's absolutely predictable that there will be groups that are going to rise up in opposition to that.
Do you think the U.S. government knows the medieval historical analogues you mentioned earlier? Or cares? Or do the analogues not even matter?
I'm puzzled by the fact that the government probably knows these analogues. I know that some of the governmental advisers have talked about them explicitly. For example, Bernard Lewis, who is very influential on the Bush administration, takes the view that the colonial constitution of Iraq should be reinstated-the one that the British helped draw up under the British colonial rule. And I would call these the "Let's be colonialists and do it right" faction.
Of course, the Administration never presents it in exactly that way, but certainly people are conscious of that [history]. And I don't think there are many people in areas where the United States is acting that doesn't see this as a very close form of colonialism, very similar to British rule. We're going to bring democracy, we're going to set up a Parliament, we're going to bring women's rights, we're going to bring development. This is exactly what occurred under the British and French--and it did bring some development and some Parliaments and some good things-but people also felt it brought occupation. My concern is if the United States is entering into this world without thinking it through.
I have no idea how long the United States is going to be in Iraq and [I know there are some advisers] who are urging the United States to now move on to Syria and Iran in the same way. I don't know whether the American people, when we come to our elections, will think about these issues in terms of, 'Do we want to become colonial occupiers and hunt down the terrorists and occupy countries?' Will we look back on the British and think about why the British got tired of that?
