The FRONTLINE Interviews

Ahmed Rashid

Journalist and Author, Descent Into Chaos

Ahmed Rashid is a journalist who has written extensively on the Middle East and the rise of the Taliban. He is the author of several books, including Descent Into Chaos: The U.S. and the Disaster in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia.

The following interview was conducted by FRONTLINE’s Gabrielle Schonder on April 21, 2021. It has been edited for clarity and length.

This interview appears in:

America After 9/11

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Ahmed Rashid

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Global Reaction to 9/11

Let me ask you a bit about how the global community rallies behind President Bush in that initial military response to 9/11.And what I'm after is, what is the opportunity that America has in that moment, and perhaps how will we squander it?

Well, I think the agenda really, right after 9/11, was set by Tony Blair, the prime minister of Britain.He came and bolstered Bush, following—then a lot of European prime ministers came to Washington to meet with Bush and bolster him.And I don't think there was any sense of a plan or idea.Tony Blair came in with the concept right away of rebuilding Afghanistan, now in the terms of what had happened in the U.S. 50 years earlier.And the Americans slowly adopted this posture, “We will rebuild Afghanistan,” and that raised enormous hopes in the region that actually a country that had been at war—remember, the Afghans had been fighting the Soviets, and then the civil war, and the Taliban—that actually the world was going to be committed to rebuilding Afghanistan, helping Afghanistan.And yet, within a year, by 2002, Washington had shifted its attention to Iraq.And of course we can discuss the implications of that, but it was ruinous for any attempt to rebuild Afghanistan.

Let me ask you, before we get there, we go into Afghanistan 11 days after the attack, in terms of CIA presence and others.And I wonder, you know, what it appeared America was thinking to you?What was the goal in those early days?

Well, there seemed to be—again, I actually was on a book tour in the U.S. at that time, right after the Americans went in, and then talk of Iraq was bubbling up.And I was quite shocked, first of all, at the ignorance in Washington.For example, I mean, nobody seemed to give any credence to the fact that you want to go into Iraq?Do you know it's a majority Shia state?And the problems you had with Iran, do you think—don't you think they may be repeated in Iraq?Because there's a longstanding animosity to the Americans.

So, you know, there were issues like this, that really awakened me, at least, to the degree of ignorance that there was amongst people, amongst students who I was addressing in universities around the U.S., and particularly in Washington.There was no attempt, really, to formulate how are we going to move forward once we defeat the Taliban?How are we going to so-called rebuild Afghanistan?Can we rebuild Afghanistan?Is it a meaningful line to pursue or not?And what's behind the rhetoric?Is there real power and clout and money that you're putting behind this rhetoric?And frankly, very quickly, it became apparent that there was very little thinking or planning about this.

The Mission in Afghanistan

Yeah, I was going to ask you.I mean, how did President Bush fundamentally misunderstand the problem he was setting out to solve?

Well, I think the whole U.S. administration at that time were really not interested in understanding Afghanistan, or even understanding the region.And there was this, not just a dearth of knowledge, but a lack of will to try and improve your knowledge of the region.I had written the first book called The Taliban, which was read by a lot of people, including a lot of senior officials all over the world, and I think, you know, people were really shocked at the awful state that Afghanistan was in and what the Taliban had done.

And yet, you know, this was right in front of—in front of you all the time.But it was really not acknowledged as such.And I think unfortunately, the same mistakes that were made in Afghanistan were later made in Iraq.The Americans went into Iraq without a plan for day two, as to what will happen once the Saddam forces are defeated.And of course, in Afghanistan, it was the same thing.

Yeah, it just seems that our missions—our wires were crossed.Were we nation building?Were we getting the guys who had attacked us?What were the ambitions?What was sort of Bush's fundamental understanding of the goals?

Well, you know, the shift to Iraq, which was pushed by [Secretary of Defense Donald] Rumsfeld, [Deputy Secretary of Defense] Paul Wolfowitz, Bush himself, the hawks in the Cabinet, for a start, I think there was an enormous dependency on the Pentagon, on the military, to take all the major decisions, including the rebuilding and political decisions.The State Department didn't seem to have much of a say in what was going on.And then, when you looked at organizations like the U.S. Agency for International Development, AID, which was the linchpin of American help to beleaguered states, as it were, and which would, you know, the budget that AID was given was, within a year, had been transferred to the CIA, and as if the CIA were going to be now in a position to start deciding what schools should be built, or what hospitals should be built.

And so there was no really concerted attempt to deal with this whole issue of rebuilding and setting limits that we will go so far.We won't go further than that.And of course, this was exactly the same thing that happened in Iraq.I think, what I saw, from my perspective, was that the mistakes made in Afghanistan were repeated in Iraq ad nauseam and without any understanding that look, you've just messed up in Afghanistan by doing exactly what you're doing now.So if you take, for example, in Afghanistan, once the special forces and a lot of the elite U.S. and the satellites were moved to Iraq from Afghanistan, there was a lack of information, lack of intelligence in Afghanistan.And the whole war effort suffered greatly because of that.

And in Iraq, you had the disbanding of the army, the disbanding of the bureaucracy.There was nobody left to govern Iraq.And what was—what was the Pentagon expecting, that American officers would take over the ministries and become minister of culture and minister of health?It was—it was really an abysmal situation.

But all this had been done in Afghanistan, where what we—what we saw, that the CIA empowered the warlords, rather than starting out early in trying to build up some structures like an army and things, the warlords were in power , and the warlords were considered to be anti-Al Qaeda, anti-bin Laden.But in fact, they were playing both sides.They were just interested in making money, as we know, as we subsequently learned.They played a double game with everyone, and they enriched themselves in the process.

The Dark Side

Well, and America got played in the process.I want to go back to how far we'll go in this fight, and just back to Afghanistan for a moment.The vice president, Cheney's response to the attack was to work the "dark side," to protect the U.S. So looking back, how would this decision completely upend the world, how the world thought of us and how we thought of our own democratic values?And you know what I mean by the dark side, that we're going to work in the shadows.I'm curious how that would fundamentally change everything about how we were going to fight these wars.

Well, you know, a lot of—a lot of this came out much later.We had very, very little knowledge as to what was going on in Guantanamo, and more so, what was going on in these other prisons that had been built in countries like Poland and Thailand and Pakistan and others.So there was very little information.But what there was was part of this whole terrifying lexicon that Cheney and Rumsfeld had developed to describe the state of the world, which was that the world is in crisis, and the dark world is about to overcome the light world, and we have to stand, you know, stand firm and accept whatever the administration does.

So, of course, torture came into that in a—in a big way.There was a sanctioning of torture.It was not really given the kind of—it wasn't given the drill that, you know, big American decisions usually have with meetings of the—of the principals and all that in Washington.It was done very hush-hush and secretly, and very few people even knew about it.

And again, you know, the agencies, the CIA plus other agencies, they were empowered enormously to deal with the war effort, to deal with the rebuilding effort, to deal with intelligence gathering, almost everything.And that was a complete opposite of what we knew about the U.S. When the U.S. went in to fight a war, it did so with all of its various parts, bits and pieces functioning together, and having meetings, and deciding what to do collectively.But this was something very frightening, because it was just the vice president deciding what ought to be done.And in some instances, regarding Guantanamo, President Bush even learned about these things quite late in the day, which is what emerges later on.

Let me ask you a little bit about Guantanamo for a moment and the image that those pictures send out to the world.You know, there was this question early on about what to do with these detainees.You know, we’ve got to go find them; we've got to go find the men that did this.What were the realities of that?

Well, the realities were that everybody was put to the task of finding Al Qaeda—the Americans, the Afghans, the Pakistanis and the Iranians, anyone, and those in Central Asia.And the U.S. was offering these very large bounties if you brought in an Al Qaeda militant.And many times, the fact was that these were not Al Qaeda militants They were working with an NGO, or they were teaching Arabic, or whatever.And so there was a lot of false jailing, and capture and jailing, of people who may be sympathetic to Al Qaeda but have nothing to do with Al Qaeda.

So I think, you know—I mean, that was the first impression, that people were being picked up.And this included the state.I mean Gen. [Pervez] Musharraf, who was then president of Pakistan, went on a spree picking up all sorts of people, you know, from the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, many of whom we now know that the U.S. freed after two or three years of interrogation, when the threat had been lessened.

So Guantanamo, of course, I mean initially, very little was known about what was going on there.But once it was known, it became a horrible figment of people's thoughts about what the U.S was doing.And of course, the pictures out of Iraq and the treatment of Iraqi prisoners only, you know, really convinced people about, you know, what this war on terror was really all about.And I think it caused enormous resentment in the Muslim world, and an enormous embarrassment for many of these governments that were supporting the U.S. in these endeavors.

And again, just the impact of those Guantanamo images—I mean, the orange jumpsuits, the men handcuffed from behind, on their knees, outside, just any way—the response to that?

Well, you know, I think the response was just part of this whole attempt to demonize everyone, and all Muslims who were caught in the war zone, or Muslims who might have been helping Arabs to try and escape from that part of the world.So it was a very dire situation, and very depressing.And I think it shocked a lot of people, especially when the pictures came out.There was this classic picture, you remember, of all these detainees sitting in a plane, being—being conveyed to Guantanamo, a 24-hour flight, all the way to Cuba.And you know, there were hundreds of these people in orange jumpsuits, chained to one another, literally.And it was a very stunning image, which I think did enormous damage to the whole U.S. endeavor.

Democratic Values

Let me ask you, because we've now talked about black sites; we've talked about torture; we've talked about Guantanamo.And I'm curious if you can think back to, at the moment, what had America become.I mean, here we had talked about exporting our democratic values, rooting out sort of evil in the world, that you and I just have now kind of gone through the list of what we were willing to either—what democratic values we were either willing to put aside in order to fulfill that promise.I'm curious what you think about these.

Well, I think there were some very sharp contrasts.I mean, you know, I remember very well, I mean, Vice President Cheney, I think, who said, “Well, what should the American people do?They should go shopping,” which showed that, you know, that don't get involved in what we are doing in Afghanistan, or whatever.Just, you know, go shopping.Distract yourselves.Don't occupy yourselves with what your government is doing or not doing regarding this war on Al Qaeda.

So, on the other hand, there was a lot of concern.A lot of young people had come out against the war, had come out against the invasion of Afghanistan.And so American society, you know, starting with the enormous unity that they showed right after 9/11, very quickly, you know, started dissolving into factionism.And that was not surprising, given that the Bush administration had expanded the war without any kind of clearance from Congress, from the American public, from the media, from anyone.And the hawks in the administration didn't care about anyone.They didn't feel the need that they had to convince anyone, any Americans, as it were.And so there was an enormous neglect of the—of the various opinions that were bubbling up within the American public.

And again, the impact on our methods, you know, the ones that we've just talked about, the ones that would have been barely legal months prior to the war.

A lot of the steps taken by the administration were illegal.And certainly, the use of torture, which was cleared just by a handful of people at the top of the administration, and never went in for any kind of public discussion, either in the Cabinet or in Congress, it was all very hush-hush and of course, you know, extremely dangerous, because the hawks in the administration were taking on board the judgments that they wanted to take on board.They weren't taking on judgments that had been cleared by experts and doctors and people who knew what they were talking about.

And you know, people like Cheney and Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz wanted to believe what they believed, and they wanted the evidence to show that belief.And, of course, this becomes the real classic when, before the invasion of Iraq, when Colin Powell, the secretary of state, is made to say that these—that these missiles are in Iraq and that Iraq has potentially nuclear weapons, which was, of course, totally false.But again, the same people in the administration were trying to convince the American public that Iraq had nuclear weapons based on evidence which was very, very flimsy.

Failure to Capture Osama bin Laden

Let me ask you a moment about Tora Bora, and once bin Laden gets out, he flees to Pakistan and begins sending videos out one by one.It appeared to be, for America, “death by a thousand paper cuts.” I'm curious what your take is on that.But then, in contrast, what is the American strategy at this point?He seemed to have one.But here was our enemy, clearly operating with a strategy, but where was ours?

Well, I think, you know, that's a very good point.The point is that the first mistake, I think, original, the mother of all mistakes made by the U.S., was to leave out the Pashtuns of the peace settlement that took place in Bonn in the crisis.Now, the majority—the majority of Taliban came from the Pashtun ethnic group, but not all—not all Pashtuns were Taliban.

And there was a large lobby of Pashtuns who wanted to join the fight against Al Qaeda and wanted to help the Americans The Americans, instead, started bombing the Pashtuns everywhere and anywhere that they could find.There was somehow this degradation of Pashtuns being all Taliban, so they're legitimate targets; we can go after them.And without the Pashtuns, given that Osama bin Laden had planned his escape through all the Pashtun belt, between Pakistan and Afghanistan, without the Pashtuns, the U.S. was almost blind.

The second thing was that the main sources of U.S. intelligence, which were satellites and information on the ground, were withdrawn, I mean, to retrain for Iraq.And this was—this--within the administration, this became a scandal, that we haven't even caught bin Laden, and we haven't sorted out Afghanistan, we haven't dealt with the terrorism threat from Afghanistan and Pakistan, and yet, you know, the special forces are being withdrawn and are training for Iraq.And the satellites are being withdrawn also.So there's less and less information about movements on the ground by Al Qaeda.

So I think, you know, this was really—and the ease with which bin Laden—he goes into Pakistan, he comes back into Afghanistan, he goes again into Pakistan, and he's, you know, he has a whole network in both countries, which gives him sacra and relief and basically hides him for the next seven to eight years.

Invading Iraq

… Let me ask you about the decision to invade Iraq and, you know, suddenly the expansion to the “axis of evil” as part of our response to 9/11.Our enemies are no longer just Al Qaeda; now it's a large portion of the Muslim world.And I wonder, looking back, did the Bush administration have any idea how much was at stake and how much this decision would fundamentally reshape America over the next two decades?

I think what happened was basically the very easy victory that America had in Afghanistan—I mean, it was just a handful of special forces that basically defeated the Taliban, with the help of—with the help of Afghans and the warlords.But the strategy was the bombing of the Taliban and the heavy attacks on the Taliban that forced them to flee.So now, at the end of this, when the Taliban were all trapped in Kandahar in the south, they asked to surrender.They, in fact, sent a message to the Americans and to President Hamid Karzai, who had then—had then been chosen as—as president, that we want to surrender.The war is lost.And, you know, and Americans refused to accept it.And instead, because of this antipathy they had to the Pashtuns, who they were bombing regularly now, they refused to accept this idea that, you know, that the Taliban could surrender.

Now, it had already been well documented that the Taliban, you know, had given sanctuary to bin Laden and Al Qaeda, but had nothing to do with the attacks on America.Now, the Taliban should be punished or could be punished for hosting Al Qaeda, but couldn't be punished for bombing America, for which they were not responsible.And so this antipathy extended later, when the Bonn meeting took place, and the government in Kabul was formed.The Taliban were out of it, completely.They were not invited.They were not welcome.And the U.S. made it clear that we have to defeat these people completely, grind them down completely.

And I think, you know, that was one of the—one of the biggest mistakes.And again, you know, as I said, we see the same repetition in Iraq.Immediately, the victory takes place.There's euphoria in the U.S. Saddam Hussein has fallen.And what happened?The U.S immediately disbands the army.It disbands the Iraqi bureaucracy.So actually, there's nobody left to govern Iraq except the Americans.But the Americans are not ready to govern Iraq.They don't have administrators and technical people to deal with governance, people who speak Arabic, large numbers of Arabic-speaking Iraqis who would side with the Americans.

So it was a huge mistake.It was as bad as the Afghans empowering the warlords, the U.S. empowering the warlords in Afghanistan.And yet these mistakes were repeated again and again.And people like myself found it really difficult to understand why the U.S. was doing this.I mean, you know, I can give you all the instances of bad judgment in Afghanistan; don't repeat that in Iraq.But you are repeating that in Iraq, and it's going to lead to a catastrophic mess.

What do you think Bush didn't understand about this decision, the decision to turn to Iraq?I mean, we talked about, you know, the stress that was on resources.We talked about the lack of planning.We talked about the lack of strategy.But, you know, but I'm thinking more about the impact on the region, and fundamentally, you know, what would shift and reverberate for decades by expanding to Iraq?

Well, I don't think the Bush administration cared two hoops about the region or what anyone thought about, you know, what the U.S. intentions were.The hawks, particularly Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Cheney, wanted to invade Iraq.

And I think, you know, if we read some of the books of that period, it's clear that, you know, Bush was a bit hesitant in the beginning, but he was swept along by this whole thing of, you know, ending states, which was pursued by Paul Wolfowitz, of we will destroy all states, you know, linked to terrorism , and anyone critical of America from the Muslim world is probably a terrorist, so we have to go after them.And there was just an unwillingness to learn about, you know, what was needed in Afghanistan.I remember very well, I was invited to AID to discuss how, you know, what should be the focus of U.S. reconstruction.So I said the answer is simple.This is an agricultural—rural agricultural people.The first thing is to restore agriculture, which is very easy to do in Afghanistan, because our agriculture is only in a few sort of designated valleys, and the rest is desert and mountain.

And this is all agriculture.That's not sexy enough, you know.We can't sell that to Congress, you know.We're going to do agriculture?I said, “Well, that's what you want.If you want to bring the refugees back, you want to reestablish some kind of modicum of rebuilding, then, you know, what are you going to put up, a computer chip plant in Kabul?Is that going to help things?Is that going to help rebuild Afghanistan?No.

Colin Powell and Weapons of Mass Destruction

What is going to help is providing water and electricity and, you know, restarting agriculture.” …

Colin Powell is the most trusted figure of the Bush administration and goes to the U.N. to make the case for Iraq.And we now know the lies of the intelligence, the lies upon which that intelligence is built on.But I wonder if, looking back, you can help us understand how much we lost here, you know, how much this moment would affect America's sense of trust, trust in our democratic values, trust in sort of who we were, our credibility.

I think there was an enormous global lack of trust.And it wasn't just lack of trust in the Americans, because the NATO European countries were all backing the U.S. in this, Britain especially.And there was an enormous dearth of public support for not just Bush but for Tony Blair and other leaders in Europe once this emerged, once the invasion took place, and it became clear that there were no nuclear weapons in Iraq, and there was no—there was no nuclear program either, and the whole invasion of Iraq had been built on false premises.

I don't think that particularly bothered the hawks in the administration.They just carried on regardless.But, you know, all the institutions of the U.S. were involved in this cover-up, which meant not just the government and the ministries but the media.For example, I think <i>The New York Times</i> probably faced its most embarrassing moments ever because it was reporting the fact that, you know, there were nuclear weapons in Iraq.And the idea of making, you know, a fool of Colin Powell, which, you know, became apparent once the invasion had happened, was also extremely sad, because, I mean, the first Black secretary of state, a man with enormous following and respect in the U.S. military and outside the military, a man who wanted to perhaps stand as a candidate for the presidency, and, you know, his entire personality was—and, you know, was destroyed by this manipulation by the hawks.And I think people were very, very upset by that.

Abu Ghraib

Let me jump ahead for a moment to Abu Ghraib, which we talked about just briefly.But I'm curious to talk to you about the impact of those images, again, after—after Guantanamo, but the message that those images sent out to the world.

I think by the time of Abu Ghraib, there was already enormous public resentment against the administration and its actions in Afghanistan and in Iraq.And I think Abu Ghraib was really the icing on the cake.Those pictures were so dramatic and so horrible that I think they convinced a lot of people on the sidelines even that this war was not justified, and it was not winnable.And again, I stress that it also destroyed the reputation of many leaders in the Western world, not just the Americans.You know, if we see the leaders, the prime ministers who lost their—who lost their government, and the elections that followed, it became a rallying cry for opposition groups to condemn their own governments for backing this whole U.S. effort in Iraq.

And I think, you know, by then, there was, first of all, a much greater engagement of the American public.With Iraq and Abu Ghraib, it was highlighted that, compared to Afghanistan, where the American public would basically turn—told to go shopping by—by Cheney and ignore what was happening in Afghanistan.But nobody could ignore Abu Ghraib.Nobody could ignore what was happening in Iraq.And I think it led to a renewed burst of social movements and activities, and by young people especially, right around the world, and especially in the Muslim world.

Legacy of the Bush Years

Yeah.And I wonder if you can help me understand sort of domestically, as the Bush years kind of come to a close, what the legacy is of that presidency and the effects on the world's views of America.

Well, unfortunately, I think, you know, most people would like to forget about the mistakes made by Bush.I don't think there's been a proper investigation by Congress or by the courts or by anyone else as to all the mistakes.Nobody was ever held accountable for the mistakes, especially over the nuclear weapons in Iraq, so-called, and what happened in Afghanistan, the whole growth of the Taliban and the development of the Taliban, which kind of slipped under the U.S. radar without the U.S. realizing it.

So I think, you know, there was enormous misunderstanding and lack of trust in U.S. government.And I think, you know, a lot of what we are seeing today, about young Americans who are joining right-wing extreme groups, I think we can trace back to that period when there was not just by the left but also by the right, there was enormous distrust of America going to war and, you know, America trying to rule the world, as it were, and messing up so badly in the process.

You know, Bush is aware of his legacy in Iraq towards the end of the administration.And at the very end of the administration, he makes one last trip to Iraq.And this is when a reporter throws a shoe at him.And I wonder if you can help us, if you remember this, and if you could help us understand where America was in that moment, what we had lost since 9/11, and frankly, the rage that Iraqis had for us in that moment, how we went from solidarity at the beginning to this.

Yeah.I mean, the goodwill in Iraq lasted only a few days, because the U.S. attacked Iraq without any Plan B at all.And of course you remember the looting of the museums and the looting of the shops.I mean, there was nobody even to keep law and order in Baghdad, let alone the other cities.And then the chaos within the U.S. administration, series of administrators were appointed, etc.And I think, you know, it was this lack of control, lack of governance, lack of provision of—of proper maintenance of law and order and all the rest of it that I think, you know, convinced many people that the U.S. is a—is a pretty—is not the old supreme U.S., which can think of everything in advance and deal with it.But, you know, the U.S. is—is paralyzed with a kind of inability to understand, you know, what other people are thinking and feeling, and providing the necessities of life for other people.

Obama’s Tactics

… Let me ask you about Obama's hopes and ambitions for Afghanistan versus where he ends up.What are the lessons he's learning about—about the regime?

Unfortunately, I was very close to the Obama administration, and I met all of the principals.I met President Obama himself.There was not any real interest in Afghanistan.You know, if you remember, in his second term, he appoints Richard Holbrooke, the U.S.—former U.S. ambassador, to bring peace to Afghanistan and end the war.He never supports Holbrooke.And there was a lot of resentment against Holbrooke, because they found him to—they found him to be unsuited for the Obama team, etc.

So what happens is that, you know, Obama shows less and less interest.I mean, you know, despite Bush doing what he did in Afghanistan, which Afghans remember with enormous resentment, the fact was that, you know, Mrs. Bush would go to Kabul.She would—she would focus on girls' education.George Bush would invite Afghans to the White House.Obama never did any of that.He just ignored the Afghans.

… And that, I found extremely sad, because he was—he was a healer, Obama, and he could have healed the riffs in Afghanistan if he had really focused on it.And he didn't.I mean—and this was something I think he could have won the support of Congress, and even some of the Republicans, to end the war in Afghanistan.But he wasn't interested enough.He didn't get involved enough.He didn't support his own diplomatic mission that he construed and sent into Afghanistan.

And I think, you know, that—that—unfortunately, that legacy remains.Many of the people who sided with him, in whatever he did, are of course now back in power in Washington, with the—with the new administration.They've been around a long time.And, you know, I hope they take different decisions to what they took earlier.

… I want to ask you, though—but he's very dependent on drones and targeted assassinations and JSOC [Joint Special Operations Command].And I want us to talk about that, because it doesn't exactly look like we're bringing democratic values to the region.And I'm curious if we're still the good guys in this description.

Of course.What also undermined his reputation in Pakistan, Afghanistan, was his use of drones.He thought this was a cheap, easy way to deal with terrorism, without having to put out U.S. forces and sending them out and putting them at risk.And the drone war became a terrible image of the U.S., bombing orphan—innocent Pashtun tribesmen, their houses, their women; bombing weddings and funerals, where they think that an accumulation of people at one spot means that this is a training camp or something, when actually there's a wedding going on or something.

The image of the drone becomes, I think, a very disturbing influence over millions of people all over the Muslim world, and even in the West.I mean, there was a very strong demand in the West for an end to this drone war, as it were.So his whole image, Obama's whole image of being this peace-loving guy who's trying to end the wars in the U.S.—in the Middle East, what we're seeing is a revamping of the wars and the use of a new lethal weapon, a really lethal weapon, because it's so easy to use, and it can be so devastating in its impact.

The pain that America has inflicted on folks in the region in this drone war, you know, here we hear about the daily story about people who are killed, but it almost becomes a background noise, you know, to—in American media.And I wonder, what are the realities on the ground of the devastation and the rage towards this program?And also, you and I talked about, this is the Nobel Peace Prize winner.

I think, you know, even Obama's supporters were incredibly shocked by the Nobel Peace Prize being given to him, because remember, it was given to him right at the beginning of his administration.He hadn't done anything yet.And, you know, he said that himself: “I haven't done anything yet to warrant this.” And I think it was a big mistake, because again, it raised all kinds of expectations, that maybe the Nobel Prize people, they know something we don't know, that Obama is about to go on his peace offensive in Iraq, Afghanistan and end the war.He had raised all kinds of false expectations which were just not there.

So, you know, I think the Nobel committee made a very big mistake, I think, by giving it so early.And of course, subsequently, there was very little in the Obama administration to deserve a Nobel Peace Prize.I mean, he did not end wars.He escalated the war in Afghanistan through the drones.He created enormous public resentment all over the Muslim world.And the drone technology, as we now know, is in the hands of terrorists.It's in the hands of, you know, in Somalia, in Sudan.In many parts of the Muslim world, drones have been used not just by governments, but also by terrorists.And this is a legacy left behind basically by Obama, the sanctions, without really being able to know who you're killing.

And the pain of those on the ground?

Well, I think, you know, the pain was obviously enormous, the pain not only of those who were killed, the pain of those families who had suffered, and the movements, you know, for ending the drone war, which took place in human rights groups, and all the rest of it, in these countries, Pakistan, Afghanistan and the Middle East.The pain was felt very directly.

I mean, Pakistan was playing a double game in the sense that they were sanctioning the drones, they were giving the U.S. the intelligence about the targets that drones could strike, and yet publicly they were saying, “Oh, this is horrible, and the U.S. should stop doing this.” But there was a mass movement, also, with people going on strike and protesting outside Parliament, and questions being raised in Parliament, etc., about the drones.It became a very telling issue.

Killing Osama bin Laden

The death of OBL, and the symbolism of the killing of that moment, so many years after 9/11, I wonder, did it matter that we had now killed the mastermind of the attack?Or had the enemy grown so large that this wasn't going to solve anything?

Well, you know, the enemy, by the time of the killing of bin Laden, the enemy had changed face.The enemy was going to be ISIS; it's going to be militancy, fundamentalism, was not captured by the killing of bin Laden.It, in fact, was spreading.Bin Laden's own death, I mean certainly, you know, had an impact.But if it had been done earlier, it could have been—and if it had been done with a political strategy in mind, it could have been much more effective.

But, you know, it took eight years, almost, seven or eight years for bin Laden to be found and killed, which didn't speak highly of, you know, U.S. intelligence, and the fact that there are many stories about who provided the intelligence as to his hideout and all the rest of it.A lot of people didn't believe even that he was dead.The fact that the body was not shown meant—which is a wise thing, I think, because his body would have been buried and become a shrine of some kind, which would have been terribly negative.

But the fact was that many people, especially in the Muslim world, believed that this was—that this was a fake; the whole thing was fake.Like you know, many mullahs gave a religious decision that the Americans never landed on the moon and the moon landing was a complete fake.So this was another moon landing that Osama had been killed.

The Rise of ISIS

… Obama's strategy, when it comes to ISIS, and the rise of ISIS, sorry, underestimating ISIS, and sort of the fatigue, maybe, of what we're doing in this region, what Obama's ambitions are at this moment.But the mistake of that lack of strategy, that we missed something as big as ISIS?

Yeah. Well, I think, you know, the strategy from Obama in the Middle East was essentially—which ISIS was about to spring on him.And I think, you know, he purposely underplayed it initially, hoping that the local militaries and others would step in and deal with it.But of course that never happened.ISIS expanded enormously, and it brought in the Russians.And I think his biggest failure was actually being able to deal with the Russians.I mean, what were the Russians doing in Syria, you know?And why couldn't the White House then deal with the Russians, or work out some kind of working arrangements with the Russians?

And I think, you know, then it becomes Iraq and the whole Syria and the civil war in Syria.It becomes a free-for-all.I mean, everybody is jumping in with their troops, their equipment, arming and supporting and funding their various proxies.In a way, it was a repeat of what was happening in Afghanistan, but it—there was really no strategy as to how to deal with this problem, because there was just this issue of escalation, the extremists escalating, Obama not wanting to escalate, but being dragged into an escalation and then being caught—caught, you know, with the Russians and others moving in.

Legacy of the Obama Years

And if we could summarize sort of the Obama legacy , … I think back to those ambitions we talked about, of restoring moral authority, you know, and America's place in the world and our credibility back in 2008, and then, you know, certainly in—

OK. OK.

Where we end up.

President Obama carried enormous legitimacy and moral authority, and he was loved by millions of people all over the world.I mean, you see his reception in some of these countries, especially in Europe, who had been dealing with presidents like Bush and others, who plunged everyone into war.There was this hope that, you know, his moral authority would lead to a strategy to deal with conflict in the world.And, you know, that famous speech he gave in Cairo right at the beginning of his first term, when he talked about the Muslim world in very, in very wise terms, I mean, compared to the Bush team, who would be haranguing the terrorists, who would be engendered in the Muslim world, etc.So there was enormous hope and expectation.

And I think at the end of those terms in office, I think there was a lot of disappointment that, you know, the wars did not end.There didn't seem to be a strategy to end the wars.The world was a much more complicated place. There was much more confrontation between the U.S., China and Russia, the three biggest powers.And there were issues in which Obama was just not interested, didn't seem to be interested in doing anything.Now, of course, I mean, he rightly says that he was blocked from doing very much, but I think there is more—more that he could have done, more that he could have indicated that, you know, that he needed Congress, he needed the American public to support him, in trying to bring an end to these conflicts and wars, etc.But he seemed very tired at the end, and very morose in effect—in effect, that, you know, the chances of what he wanted to do, to build up the U.S. domestically, the health program, etc., these were wonderful things which he was not able to do fully.

The Trump Years

And let me ask you about a very big domestic shift that happens next, which is, you know, Donald Trump's ascension and what he did or said or promised that was so different about Iraq and Afghanistan and our role in the region.

Trump was essentially not interested in foreign policy.And he really, you know, came in with this mantra that “I will end the wars, Iraq, Afghanistan and anywhere else.” And he had absolutely zero understanding of foreign policy.He had zero understanding of the world around him: What were the forces which were negative?What were positive, you know?Where could he step in and deal with foreign policy on a real basis?And instead, what we saw was this kind of celebrity foreign policy, where he goes to meet the North Korean leader, and he has one-to-one meetings.Not a single one of those efforts turned into anything positive on any meaningful end result in which conflict intention is reduced.

So he saw policy essentially without understanding it.He saw it as an attempt to boost his ego and his image.And nothing really emerged from those years of power.

You know, he exploits the fear of radical Islamic terrorism, and he uses, in many ways, the language of 9/11 for an enemy that's here at home.You know, he describes his political opponents as the radical left, and the real threat is from the enemy within.What do you think he had learned about the language of the war on terror and our enemies?

Well, it was very easy for him to talk about the war on terror in his typically blunt style.It was very easy because, you know, all the vocabulary and the effort already had been put in by the Bush administration.And he was just exploiting it and using it much more dramatically.And basically, he was trying to impress the public that, you know, “I can deal with these terror attacks much better than you can.” But his main effort was domestic.I mean, for example, the war on terror was heavily linked to the immigration policies he had.You know, block all these Muslims, all these people who don't deserve to come to the U.S. Block them all from coming to the U.S. Make sure that nobody, non-whites should not be able to come to the U.S. And this, you know, the failure of the healing touch and the failure of past, [of] Obama and Bush to deal with the rebuilding of America, rebuilding of alliances, etc., was adopted by Trump in a very forward-moving way.

Is Trump rejecting Bush and Obama's handling of the post-9/11 world?

Yes, of course he is.I mean, you know, he never liked Obama.He was extremely racist in his comments about Obama before the elections.And he continues to dislike him.He hates the Democrats.There's no attempt to build unity within the—within the U.S., the kind of unity we saw his predecessors, George Bush try and reach out for after the attack of 9/11.We don't see the U.S. as a united country anymore.We see it as it's desperately fragmented and factionalized.And you know—and this, I think, creates a sense of enormous despair for millions of Americans and in millions of people outside America.I think liberals and people of—people who want democracy or are fighting for democracy have lost any kind of American legitimacy to do the same.

Looking at America during the Trump years, I mean the effect of Trump's war, his approach on America's standing in the world, and how that's sort of viewed.

I think, you know, he was such an egotist, I mean, I don't think he really cared about the U.S. standing.What he cared about was his own standing.Could he win the Nobel Prize?Could he bring North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons?Could somebody do something dramatic for me, so that, you know, I can be a star, and come on, you know, and be recognized in Hollywood and everywhere else as a—as a major star, and rocking the political firmament?

I think, you know, it was so personalized what he was doing, I mean, we've never seen anyone like this.I mean, even the most arrogant and the most personalized leader in the Western world, there hasn't been anybody like Trump, because he saw everything in terms of himself rather than of the nation or the world.

And, you know, I wonder, we've now talked about Bush's war, Obama's war, Trump's war, and the steady beat of a loss of American leadership, a loss of trust, the images of competence shattered, you know, Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, and for 20 years, we had been fighting—we have been fighting wars.And we're almost numb to it, as it's played out in the background of our domestic politics.I'm curious if you can help us sort of understand, from an outside view, how America got here, after 9/11.

Well, I think, you know, the basic plan of the Bush administration was to expand the war against terrorism, against Islamic fundamentalism.And that expansion of the war, which took place in Afghanistan, Iraq, and then, you know, other countries in the Middle East, was, I think, unwarranted and extremely dangerous.And it went unquestioned, because 9/11 gave the administration such a kind of legitimacy that anything they did was legitimate in the eyes of Americans.The Bush administration was certainly not keen to be questioned on anything that they were doing or whether it was torture or whether it was launching another war, was using special forces somewhere clandestinely.And at the same time, you know, they were unwilling to look at these issues rationally.

I think if there had been real rational judgments over Iraq, the U.S. would never have gone into Iraq, and that would have saved us just enormous bloodshed and enormous bad vibes, which then affected the U.S. and affected the whole world.

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