Tariq Ali, welcome.
- I'm glad to have you here in Los Angeles... - A very great pleasure.
...and share these few hours with our students and people who watch this film.
It's really an honor. Thank you. I would like to get right into it.
You write, "it's as if history has become subversive.
The past has too much knowledge embedded in it...
...and therefore it's best to forget it and start anew.
But as everyone is discovering, you can't do this to history.
It refuses to go away.
But try to suppress it, it reemerges in a horrific fashion."
When I think, sometimes, about the origins of the American empire...
...the first thing that comes to mind, of course, is that they began badly...
...by destroying the native population of the United States.
And that was linked to a religious fundamentalism view...
...in their own goodness and greatness.
I mean, the Protestant fundamentalists who came here...
...the pilgrim fathers, were religious fundamentalists.
And then the expansion of the empire...
...uh, which is something Cormac McCarthy describes...
...very well in one of his finest novels...
...Blood Meridian...
...uh, on the violence in even the internal expansion apart from the genocide.
Then you have slavery...
...the basis on which much, much wealth is generated inside the United States.
Then you have a civil war...
...which we are told is about the liberation of slaves...
...and which is partially to do with that, but which is essentially...
...an attempt to unify the United States of America by force.
That is what it is.
NARRATOR". The North institutes a naval blockade of the Confederacy...
...and is accused by the British and French of violating their rights as neutrals.
The British respond by recognizing the Confederacy as a belligerent...
...and Lincoln fears recognition of Southern independence may follow.
[EXPLOSIONS AND GUNFIRE]
September 17, 1862.
After a series of stunning victories on battlefields...
...between Richmond and Washington...
...the Confederates are stopped at Antietam in the bloodiest day of the war.
It is not a Northern victory, but it is enough to put an end to a British plan...
...to intervene on behalf of the South.
Four days later, President Lincoln issues the Emancipation Proclamation...
...freeing all slaves in those areas still in rebellion against the United States.
And some argue, often privately...
...that it might have been better for this entire region...
...if that war had ended in stalemate...
...because slavery would have been abolished.
Even the Confederacy was, at the end, offering to abolish slavery...
...knowing that this wasn't the problem...
...and that instead of one big state and one lesser one...
...and here we had had three roughly equivalent states.
The Yankees, the Confederacy and Canada...
...which might have given the continent...
...a more balanced, uh, position in the world.
But this didn't happen.
So all this created the modern United States that we know...
...and that, from the First World War onwards grew in size and influence...
...and became a dominant power...
...and which after the Cold War, has become an ultra-imperialism.
Unchallenged, unchallengeable militarily, very strong, no rivals.
This is the first time in human history that an empire has been without any rivals.
STONE: It made sense, the Pax Americana.
There would be one power and they would be benevolent.
ALI: Yeah. - It doesn't work that way.
ALI: It doesn't work that way.
It even brought-- You know, the Roman Empire, which coined the word...
...uh, couldn't maintain it for too long and began to crack up.
And the point is that the United States itself is a very, very large country...
...with a huge population, enormous resources.
The best example it could set the world is putting its own house in order.
I mean, the fact that it doesn't have a health service...
...the fact that the education system leaves a lot to be desired...
...the fact that when New Orleans erupted...
...large numbers of my American friends in New York...
...and the West Coast saying, "God, we had no idea things were so bad."
And that worried me. I said, "Well, why didn't you?"
What's happened now is that the collapse of the nee-liberal system...
...the bubble has burst and the whole world now is waiting for alternatives.
And the money being used to bail out the rich, taxpayers' money.
I mean, the whole ideology of nee-liberalism was:
"The State is useless. The State mustn't do it.
The market will do everything. The market is supreme."
The market collapses and they fall on their knees before the State...
...and say to the State, "Help, please."
And taxpayers' money goes to bail out every single bank...
...in the Western world, more or less.
But the effect this has on popular consciousness we are waiting to see.
One of your strong theses in your books is the Russian Revolution.
What was the impact on America, and what was the impact on the world?
Oliver, let us just start with the First World War...
...which probably was the single most important event of the 20th century.
Not recognized as such.
We mainly think about the Second World War and Hitler.
But it was the First World War...
...which brought about, suddenly, the death of a number of empires.
The Austro-Hungarian Empire collapsed. The Ottoman Empire collapsed.
The Tsarist Empire in Russia collapsed.
And on the heels of this arose nationalism...
...communism, revolutionary movements of different kinds.
The Russian Revolution probably would not have happened...
...in that particular way had there not been a First World War...
...which broke up the old ruling classes, brought an end to everything.
And I always like dates.
So you have in February 1917, the war is going badly.
Russia's in revolution. The tsar has been overthrown.
And in February 1917, coincidentally...
...the United States leaders decide that they're going to go into this war.
STONE: Would you say the United States went into World War I...
...decisively because of the Russian Revolution?
Or would it have gone anyway?
If Russia had withdrawn from the war...
...Britain and France perhaps would have been overwhelmed...
...by the German military at this point.
Well, I think the combination did it.
That the Bolsheviks had said land, bread and peace...
...they weren't going to fight on in this war...
...um, and there's no doubt that the Germans would have defeated the French...
STONE: There is no doubt? -...and the British.
No doubt that had the United States not gone in...
...uh, the Germans would have won a tremendous victory...
...and been the single most important power.
But that on its own, you see...
...wouldn't necessarily have worried the United States.
After all, they could have dealt with the Germans as the big European power.
But I think they probably felt that they had to intervene...
...to defend present and future U.S. interests in the globe...
...prior to that, prior to First World War.
MAN: But only when we realized that we were directly threatened...
...only when every protest had been ignored...
...and Germany had carried the war right into our home waters...
...did we feel compelled to fight.
ALI: So the First World War is the event that drives the United States away...
...from this part of the world in North America, into Europe...
...and sets it up on the world stage...
...and that sets the stage for the big confrontations...
...that we saw in the 20th century.
Because the Russian Revolution had a massive impact.
It did not simply topple the monarchy...
...after all, that had happened in the French Revolution...
...and in the English one before that, that wasn't new.
And the American Revolution had decided to do away with aristocracy...
...and monarchs altogether, it was a republic.
So that side was accepted.
But it was the hope that came with the Russian Revolution...
...the feeling that you could change the world for the better.
STONE: Can you describe some of the, uh, defeat of the Russian Revolution?
What you call the defeat of it.
You're not only talking about the 15-, 16 armies that invaded...
...but you also talk about the change when Stalin took over.
ALI: All the European powers tried to defeat this revolution...
...even though they'd just lost millions of lives...
...fighting a crazy war, the First World War.
Millions died in that war...
...so that European colonial powers could have more colonies...
...or maintain their colonies...
...but that didn't stop them from trying to defeat the Russian Revolution at its birth.
So when you had a civil war starting in Russia by the supporters of the czar...
...you immediately had 16 to 17 armies sent in by the Europeans...
...to back these people.
And I think that civil war consumed a lot of the energy of the revolution.
A lot of the best people who had made the revolution died.
Less experienced people, largely raw recruits from the peasantry...
...were brought up, put into places of power...
...lacking some of the old traditions of the Russian working class.
And on this basis of new recruits from the countryside...
...grew the power of the Soviet bureaucracy typified by Stalin.
STONE: The British, uh, invaded Baku...
...or the protected oil fields in Baku, with their ferocious army.
Who did the most amount of killing against the, uh, Russian revolutionary?
I think it was a combination but I think the British were very strong.
They felt the stakes were very high...
...and that if there was a revolutionary state established in Asia and Europe...
...this was going to wreck the British Empire...
...and the British Empire had to be preserved at all costs.
What they didn't see...
...was that the entry of the United States into the First World War was actually...
...if you think about it now...
...a very serious death blow against the British Empire...
...because what it showed was that the British, on their own...
...couldn't get their way in the world anymore.
They needed the United States.
Describe a bit about Wilson's involvement sending troops to Russia.
One should never forget...
...that the United States had a very strong tradition of labor militancy.
You had the Wobblies, the International Workers of the World...
...which united all the migrant workers from all over Europe into one big union.
And all these songs brought to life...
...and unified the labor movement in the United States.
That's what the Wobblies did...
...because these were people from different parts of Europe...
...who didn't even speak the same languages...
...German, English, Norwegian...
...and in the International Workers of the World they became one family.
MAN: I don't give a snap of my fingers...
. . . whether skilled workers join this union or not.
We don't need them.
There are 35 million workers in this country that aren't organized yet.
What we want to establish at this time is an organization...
...that will open wide its doors to every man or woman...
...that earns his livelihood by brain or muscle.
ALI: And there was a lot of repression.
People rarely talk about it but there was a lot of repression carried out...
...by the corporations in the United States against the American working class.
I mean, it was Wilson's, um, secretary of the interior and his attorney general...
...who expelled large numbers of Italians from the United States...
...under the anarchist threat or the Bolshevik threat.
People used to go knocking on doors of working-class immigrant homes...
...of Italian-European migrants who were active in trade unions is U.S. cities...
...dragging them out in the night and expelling them.
Which was panic. It was a panic reaction.
Then they think, "What can we do?
Why don't we destroy the head of this serpent or octopus...
...whose tentacles are going everywhere?
Go and, you know, put something in its eye."
And that was Russia.
So Wilson was very determined to defeat the Russian Revolution in its infancy...
...but he couldn't do it. Uh...
And of course, the Russian Revolution then tragically defeated itself in the '30s.
But that didn't become obvious to people till the '50s or the '60s.
So this idea that this was a real threat to the West persisted...
...and was, of course, the central mythology during the Cold War period...
...that the Russians had revolutionary aims for Europe...
...which is why NATO was created.
Or that the Russians threatened the United States...
...which is why we had to build a massive military industrial complex...
...to guard and defend the United States against Russia.
Well, we now know because of all the documentation that's gone out...
...that this was nonsense.
What would you say, what year, would be the defeat of the Russian Revolution?
Uh, I would say that the defeat of the hopes of the Russian Revolution...
...was probably 1929, 1930s...
...when they started on the big collectivization programs.
Collectivization was essentially an admission of defeat.
And the brutality with which that collectivization was imposed...
...on the Russian peasantry...
...left a very deep mark in parts of the countryside...
...which is why when the Germans entered Ukraine...
...they were greeted by many Ukrainians as liberators.
And if the Germans hadn't been so reactionary and so deadly...
...they might have had more impact...
...but because they regarded all Slavs as untermensch, "lesser peoples"...
...they didn't take these guys too seriously, you know.
Wipe them out.
Why do you say--? I'm gonna jump back quickly.
Why did you say the Russian Revolution...
...brought the British Empire to a quick end?
Because the Russian Revolution...
...uh, triggered off a wave of nationalist uprisings.
And people-- The nationalists now had a country they could look to for help.
I mean, it's quite interesting.
Um, I was once reading sort of very obscure documents...
...and there's a proposal in Trotsky's archive...
...when he was creating the, uh, Soviet Red Army.
He just dictates a note which is in his archives.
"Perhaps we should now...
...given that the Soviet Union extends to the borders of Afghanistan...
...help the Indians defeat the British.
Investigate the possibilities of setting up an anti-colonial call...
...of 20,000 soldiers, that should be enough...
...uh, and open discussions with the Indians."
The British were very panicked by that.
I mean, so much so, Oliver, that there was a small country in the Hindu Kush...
...called Afghanistan.
In 1919, a king called Amānullāh...
...whose queen was called Soraya.
King Amānullāh was very impressed by the Russian Revolution...
...and opened up negotiations with Lenin asking for help against the British.
Queen Soraya said...
...we have to follow the path of Russia and Turkey and liberate our women.
So the first constitution of Afghanistan...
...that was drafted in 1919...
...had given women the right to vote.
If that constitution had been implemented...
...women would have had the right to vote in Afghanistan...
...before they did in the United States.
And then the British said that this is leading in a very bad direction...
...and organized a tribal revolt...
...to get rid of that particular king and queen in Afghanistan.
So the greatest enemy of the Soviet Union was perhaps England, would you say?
In the, uh, post-revolutionary years?
ALI: I think England was probably the most intelligent...
...and conscious enemy of the Russian Revolution...
...seeing it for the threat that it was, but the Germans weren't too far behind.
The other problem, of course, was a massive rise...
...of the German Workers movement.
The split inside the German labor movement between a pro-Bolshevik wing...
...and a more traditional social democratic wing.
And if the Versailles Treaty was one element...
...in helping the Nazis come to power...
...the other element was, without doubt, the fear of Bolshevism.
That the decisions made by the top German corporations...
...and large swathes of the German aristocracy...
...which is not often recognized, to back Hitler and put him in powers...
...because they were fearful that if we don't go with Hitler...
...there's going to be a revolution in Germany--
Look what they did in Russia. --and we're going to be sunk.
So better go with this guy who's going to save us from the Bolsheviks.
Was not, uh, Mussolini popular in the United States?
Was not Hitler, to some degree, popular in England?
The Bank of England, uh...
...and the Bank of International Settlements seemed to support Hitler.
Absolutely. And Mussolini was very popular.
Uh, I was looking the other day at the first biography of Mussolini...
...published in Britain in 1926.
The introduction was by the United States Ambassador to Italy...
...saying that Mussolini is one of the greatest leaders that Europe has thrown up.
Uh, and this is the way to the future...
...and largely because this was the bastion against Bolshevism and revolution.
Likewise, Hitler. Churchill, Winston Churchill adored Mussolini.
And in that biography there are quotes from Churchill...
...uh, saying that Mussolini is a very important figure.
Uh, we support him and he's necessary.
Churchill always used to spell things out.
"If the Bolshevik hordes are going to be held at bay...
...we need people like Benito Mussolini."
And the same with Hitler.
There was a very strong element within the British ruling class...
...which wanted to do a deal with Hitler.
The British king, before he abdicated...
...Edward VIII was an open admirer of the Nazis...
...and after he abdicated he went and called on Hitler.
There were photographs of him and his wife, uh, seeing Hitler...
...being photographed with him.
And the reason for that was the same.
And the British appeasers, as they came to be known...
...I mean, they were extremely right-wing politicians but they were not irrational.
We regard the agreement signed last night. And the Anglo-German naval agreement...
...as symbolic of the desire of our two peoples...
...never to go to war with one another again.
[PEOPLE CHEERING]
They said if Hitler can be turned against the Russians, that would be tremendous.
Let's use him to wipe out the Soviet Union and then we can talk.
I mean, what they didn't realize is that had that happened...
...the Soviet Union might well have fallen...
...but it would have made Hitler so powerful he would have taken Europe overnight.
I mean, if you look at France, Oliver...
...when Hitler went to France after it had been occupied...
...cheering crowds greeted him in parts of France.
It took some years for De Gaulle and the communists to get their act together...
...and the resistance to begin.
But for the traditional anti-Semitism of the French right and their nationalism...
...was the basis for the Vichy regime...
...and the collaboration which most of France...
...quite happily carried through with Hitler.
Something not talked about too much but very important to understand.
STONE: Can we talk about the causes of World War ll overall...
...and the U.S. entry into the war?
You've, uh... And what you thought of Pearl Harbor.
Because you've said some interesting, off-beat things about Pearl Harbor.
The way it was like almost manipulated.
I think that what happened during the Second World War...
...was, one, you had the rise of Germany.
There was a fairly straightforward imperialist concern...
...on the part of the Germans...
...and if you study the speeches of the German leaders of the Third Reich closely...
...Hitler himself, but not just Hitler, Göring, Goebbels in particular...
...and study them seriously, what they are saying is this:
"Britain is a much smaller country than Germany...
...but they occupy so much of the world."
The French, who are the French? And look at the countries they occupy.
Look at what Belgium occupies. So they should share.
We've been asking them nicely to share the world with us, to share their colonies...
...but these guys refuse so we're going to go in and teach them...
...and Germany will become a world power.
So that side of the Second World War was a very traditional war...
...between competing empires.
Germany, which wanted to be an empire, and the French and the British...
...and the Belgians, who were empires.
NARRATOR". Thus, the march of conquest of the self-termed master race...
...has changed our national attitude from 1936...
...when only one out of 20 Americans thought we would be involved in war...
...to 1941, when 14 out of 20 Americans were willing to risk war...
...if war was necessary to ensure Axis' defeat.
I ask this congress for authority and for funds...
...sufficient to manufacture additional munitions...
...and war supplies of many kinds to be turned over to those nations...
...which are now in actual war with aggressor nations.
Our most useful and immediate role is to act as an arsenal...
...for them as well as for ourselves.
Isn't it remarkable that in November 1940...
...Roosevelt's elected on a platform of not going into the war?
November. This is after England is under serious attack...
...and is in jeopardy of falling.
Many people have suggested that Roosevelt felt that England would fall.
- Yeah. - So he would be willing to give away...
- England. -...Europe.
MAN: The Nazis had begun their shattering blitz on Britain.
[SIREN WAILING] [EXPLOSIONS AND GUNFIRE]
Hello, America. This is Edward Murrow speaking from London.
There were more German planes over the coast of Britain today...
...than at any time since the war began.
Anti-aircraft guns were in action along the Southeast coast today.
If that's the case, then I would think Roosevelt is thinking about a future world...
...without England controlling, uh, all these colonies.
Are these colonies perhaps available to Roosevelt?
ALI: Absolutely right. - Or to a new interpretation?
ALI: I think that this was a big point of discussion...
...within the United States ruling elite.
That the British Empire is collapsing and we will have to take it over...
...as much as we can, uh, in order to preserve...
...and protect our own global interests.
STONE: So was there a moment where you'd say during the Second World War...
...when America, the United States, became an imperial power?
To replace Britain, to inherit the British mantle.
I mean, Roosevelt, the interesting thing is that in one message to Churchill...
...he said it would be a big tragedy...
...if the British Navy fell into the hands of the Germans...
...and I suggest you send your entire navy to U.S. ports...
...so we can look after it for you, heh.
And Churchill was horrified...
...because for him, the idea of defeat didn't enter into the equation.
STONE: So the Atlantic Charter, the meeting in Newfoundland plays...
...a serious role here.
Because Churchill comes over in early '41
...and makes a deal, so to speak, with Roosevelt...
...to defend-- What do they call it? The four freedoms.
ALI: Yeah. - A charter for-- Basically, an alliance.
ALI: Yeah, by that time, the British had survived.
Uh, it became clearer in 1941 that they were going to fight on.
The Battle of Britain had taken place in the air...
...and hadn't been followed by a German invasion of Britain.
That's the other interesting thing. The Germans stepped back.
When England was ready, actually, for the plucking.
STONE: To go to Russia.
And he decided that he had to go against Russia.
And they began to plan Operation Barbarossa.
I mean, another big strategic error made by the Germans...
...because, you know, either you go for Russia in the beginning and deal with it--
Just thinking from their point of view...
...and that's what some of their generals were advising.
--Or if you've started to pulverize Britain...
...because you want the British Empire...
...then, uh, go for it and do it.
But at the last minute they changed their minds.
So there was a lot of irrationality there.
But, you see, the other interesting question raised as a counter factor is...
...what if the Japanese hadn't attacked the United States?
Whatever the provocations.
I wondered about Pearl Harbor constantly.
Why-- If you study the Japanese aggression from 1931 onward, in China...
...Japan is clearly vying for empire, an Asian sphere.
Throwing out the white man, throwing out the foreigners.
So Japan is seriously pursuing wealth.
Chopping up China, going towards Thailand and Indo-China...
...Indonesia, the oil-producing crescent of South Asia.
So why is America all of a sudden putting an embargo on Japan?
They are defending the British and French Empire interests in South Asia.
They are, because I think the, you know, significant proportion...
...of leaders in the United States felt...
...that it would be easier for them to take over the role of the British globally...
...than it would be to take stuff away from the French even, or the Japanese.
I mean, that was a tradition.
MAN: If the ultimate objectives of the Tanaka plan were to be achieved...
...now was the moment to strike.
Now, when Russia was otherwise occupied.
Now, before Britain could recuperate.
Now, before we could gather too much strength.
So the Japs made a fateful decision.
They would embark on phase three and phase four.
The conquest of the Indies and the United States...
...without waiting to complete phase two, the conquest of China.
Thus, to paralyze American power in the Pacific.
STONE: An American embargo is the declaration of war...
...so to speak. ALI: It was.
STONE: Like our Cuban blockade. ALI: It was serious.
STONE: The Japanese decided, this is it.
They had to either take on the United States, now or never.
I think you're right.
The other choice they had, of course, if they'd been thinking strategically...
...uh, is to have attacked Russia.
STONE: Yes, they thought of that.
They thought of that, but they thought, "Should we go for Russia?"
Which was already in a very enfeebled position.
STONE: Right, that makes more sense.
Which made much more sense from their point of view.
And then they could have linked up with their German comrades halfway between...
...and between them, occupied Russia.
Instead, they decided to hit the United States...
...which immediately brought the United States into the war.
And that was ultimately that.
MAN 1 : On November 26th, our secretary of state...
...presented the Japanese with a basis for peaceful agreement...
...between the two nations. The proposal was forwarded to Tokyo.
MAN 2'. One p.m., Eastern Standard Time.
The Japanese emissaries are expected at the State Department...
...to keep a 1:00 appointment they had requested...
...in order to present their answers to our proposals.
One-five p.m., the Japanese planes are approaching Hawaii.
The Japanese emissaries telephone to postpone their appointment until 1:45.
One-twenty p.m.
Japanese planes had been sewing death and destruction for an hour...
...on American outposts in the Pacific...
...when the Japanese envoys presented a memorandum to Mr. Hull.
It contained a recital of monstrous accusations against the United States.
After the U.S. declared war on the kingdom of Japan...
...then the Axis powers...
...Italy and Germany, declared war on the United States.
Now, they needn't have done.
Hitler was not told about the attack on Pearl Harbor.
He could have said, "We were not part of this.
We are not declaring war on the United States of America."
Yet, he did it. And I think it was a rash move because it would have put more pressure--
Some people in the U.S. would have argued, let's concentrate now on wiping out Japan.
[RINGING]
[MAN SPEAKING IN MOCK JAPANESE OVER PHONE]
Calling Tokyo. Help. Calling Tokyo. Help.
[OFFICER CONTINUES SPEAKING IN MOCK JAPANESE]
There seems to have been a lack of, uh, coordination...
...between Japan and Germany that's astounding on many fronts.
Especially in the Russian situation...
...because the Japanese withdrew from Siberia about 1940.
ALI: Once Russian intelligence had said that the Japanese had decided...
...not to invade the Soviet Union, they could move all their troops...
...and throw them into battle against the Germans.
MAN: The invader has been driven back far beyond the lines...
...he had occupied a year earlier.
A hundred and eighty-five thousand square miles of Russian land had been freed.
And in this winter campaign of 1942...
...the Axis powers had lost 5090 planes, 9190 tanks...
...20,360 guns, vast stores of other materials...
...and 1,193,525 men...
...of whom 800,000 were dead.
That is the story to date of the German attempt to conquer Russia.
There's an interesting thought you bring up.
You say the self sufficiency and essential raw materials...
...that characterize the United States came to an end after the Second World War.
And you talk about the United States needed to import oil, iron, ore...
...bauxite, copper, manganese and nickel.
Oil being predominant among them.
Can you talk a bit about the U.S. need for raw materials after World War ll...
...and what happened after being the richest country in the world?
Well, what happened was that the needs of the, uh, people of the United States...
...their expectations were much higher than they had been.
The manufacture of cars, for instance, the explosion of that particular industry.
The explosion of the military industrial complex...
...uh, was on a scale which no American leader...
...could have conceived of prior to the First World War.
And the need for oil, of course, always great, then and now.
And so they were making sure that they were never short of supplies.
The deal with Saudi Arabia...
...which later came to haunt the United States in the 21st century...
...it was very interesting, that deal, because it showed the transition...
...from one empire to another...
...before the first empire had officially collapsed.
The United States took over the role of guarding the Saudi royal family...
...and all their interests from the Brits during the Second World War.
So you're saying the United States inherited...
...with certain exceptions, this colonial legacy?
ALI: They inherited this colonial legacy...
...but they didn't operate the way the British did.
That when the British occupied Africa...
...you know, British civil servants went in and ran the country.
The queen was the head of the country.
I mean, it was a traditioned, old-fashioned colonialism.
By and large, the way the United States preferred to rule the world...
...was to find local relays who would do their bidding.
STONE: Local? - Drones, if you like.
U.S. drones who would do the bidding of the United States...
...without involving a direct occupation.
Where they did directly intervene the results weren't always happy.
Like in the Philippines.
So it was a different type of an empire.
You know, the figure given...
...is that the British got more out of controlling Argentina financially...
...than they got out of the most of occupying Africa indirectly.
And for the United States, I think, it is the second aspect...
...of where U.S. interests are concerned...
...what their corporations can do, what is the best possible atmosphere...
...for them to function in than anything else.
That dominated U.S. thinking for a great deal.
STONE: More of a nee-liberal free market?
ALI: Always, even before these words were invented.
That is how the, urn, United States tended to operate.
I mean, their companies would go in...
...personnel attached to their companies would go in...
...intelligence agents would go in to keep Washington informed...
...of what was going on, but they didn't like direct occupations...
...or sending in troops unless it became absolutely necessary.
They didn't go down that route and one reason they didn't...
...is because the early ideology of the United States was:
"We are an anti-colonial country."
Because we had to get rid of a colonial power ourselves, the Brits.
And this played a very important part in how the United States formulated...
...thinking about their own empire.
They would never admit they were an empire.
It is only recently that they've begun to do that since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Let's not forget that we are fighting for peace...
...and for the welfare of mankind.
We're not fighting for conquest.
We want peace and prosperity for the world as a whole.
So the world, uh... The two empires clashed...
...in the post World War ll era.
And the chief weapon became the, uh, nuclear bomb.
The decision-- This is a big, big debate...
...as you know better than many, Oliver, which goes on.
Was the use of nuclear weapons against Japan...
...necessary to win or even shorten the war dramatically?
Or was it a shot across the bows of the Soviet Union?
I'm one of those who believe...
...that it really was a shot across the bows of the Soviet Union...
...to show them, "Hey guys, we've got the big one.
So don't you tangle with us."
MAN: Japan is warned by the American Secretary of State.
My hope is that the people of Japan will now realize...
...that further resistance to the forces of the nation...
...now united in the enforcement of law and justice...
...will be absolutely futile.
There is still time, but little time, for the Japanese to save themselves...
...from the destruction which threatens them.
And the other thing to bear in mind is that in all these three countries...
...which the United States played a part in taking, uh, Japan, Germany, Italy...
...after the Second World War...
...the bulk of the military structure of these countries...
...and the same personnel who had fought against the United States...
...from all three countries was kept going. In Japan they'd removed very few people.
There was a war crimes tribunal against Tojo and people...
...but by and large they kept the main army in force.
In Italy, 60 to 65 percent of Mussolini's structure...
...in the judiciary, in the military...
...in the police force, was kept there.
And in Germany you probably had the biggest purge...
...but still, a lot of former Nazis joined the Christian Democratic Party...
...played a part in the police force and the judiciary.
Because by this time, the enemy was communism...
...and so everything that could be used against it was used.
Also, in a war-- A minor war that we mustn't forget is Greece, 1947.
ALI: Well, the Greek Civil War was a very vicious bloody war...
...involving virtually every single family in Greece. Families divided.
And it was a war-- The Greeks still call it "Churchill's War"...
...because Churchill was so attached to the Greek...
...right and to the Greek royal family...
...that he did not want that country to be changed in any way.
And the Russians had done the deal at Yalta...
...that Greece was to be part of the Western sphere of influence.
But a group of independent Greeks...
...communists, but more sympathetic to Tito and the Yugoslavs than to Stalin...
...led by a legendary leader, Aris, said, "We're going to carry on fighting."
And the Russians couldn't do much about it, but Churchill did...
...and it was prosecuted with real viciousness and vigor till they won.
And that war still has echoes today.
I mean, last summer I was in a part of Greece called Pelion near Salonika...
...and we were walking through a village and a Greek friend said:
"There was a big massacre in this village during the civil war.
And that's the cemetery of all the communists who died."
So these things don't go away. You know, they stay, people remember them.
STONE: And also, in Greece, didn't Churchill hand over, nakedly...
...the British Empire, the military power, to the Americans, saying:
"You finish the job"? Did he not do $0?
ALI: Exactly the same thing happened in Greece as happened in Saudi Arabia...
...as happened, uh, in other parts of the world...
...where decaying, falling empires handed over their functions to the United States.
So the United States took over the Greek civil war as well.
And they regard that as a victory, that they won that civil war.
Many of the officers who carried out the coup d'état in Greece in '67...
...imposing a military dictatorship on a European country...
...had fought in the civil war on the side of the West...
...and had been friends ever since.
We've been talking about the Western reaction to World War ll...
...and America's growth, uh, assuming the role of the British Empire.
Can we talk about the Soviet expansion of that era?
What you see would be a fair claim as to what Soviet aggressions were made...
...that could have provoked these responses in America?
Well, the Soviet leadership, Stalin and his successors...
...were tough on their own populations...
...but by and large, they were very careful at not provoking the West.
They kept to the deals they had made.
But because it had been agreed at Yalta by Churchill, Stalin and Roosevelt...
...that Eastern Europe, with countries named on a piece of paper...
...are part of the Soviet sphere of influence, the Russians then took that seriously.
And then they did what was really foolish and shortsighted of them.
I mean, like the United States made big strategic mistakes...
...so did the Russians.
To impose the Soviet system as it existed in the Soviet Union...
...on countries like Czechoslovakia and Poland and Romania...
...and Bulgaria and all the others, I think, unnecessary and wrong.
In Czechoslovakia there actually was an election held in 1948.
And the Czech Communist Party emerged as a very large political force in its own right.
And the Social Democrats were marginally stronger.
Now, it should have been perfectly possible in Czechoslovakia...
...to maintain Soviet influence within a Social Democrat Communist Coalition...
...but that wasn't the way Stalin did things.
So you had to have a one-party state, with the central committee...
...with a politburo, with a general secretary.
MAN: On February 25th, informed that the alternative is civil war...
...and aware of unmistakable threats of invasion from the Soviet Union...
...if he does not capitulate, President Beneš accepts a Communist cabinet.
Three months later a constitution, Soviet style, is adopted by parliament.
Beneš refuses to sign it and is forced from office.
Before the year is over...
The interesting thing is that what panicked Stalin...
...was the emergence of Tito in Yugoslavia.
An independent-minded Communist leader...
...uh, who wasn't prepared to do Stalin's bidding.
And that made Stalin fearful...
...because the model of Tito was quite attractive, not just in the Balkans.
I mean, the Greek Communists were attracted by it.
But even in the rest of Eastern Europe, they said:
"Well, you know, if Tito can be independent-minded and that's fine...
...why can't we be?
Why do we have to be under the sort of Soviet thumb?"
So, what had to happen happened...
...is that sooner or later people in these countries said:
"We don't like this whole style of government," and you had rebellions.
The first in Hungary in 1956, crushed by Soviet tanks.
Uh, I'm sorry. The first in East Berlin.
The workers' uprising in East Berlin...
...soon after Stalin's death, 1953.
And after the East Berlin workers uprising was crushed...
...Bertolt Brecht wrote this wonderful four-line letter in the shape of poem...
...to the central committee of the East German Communist Party.
He said, "Dear Comrades. It seems to me that the problem is the people.
Why not dissolve the people and elect a new one?"
[STONE AND ALI LAUGH]
Then came, of course, the last big attempts...
...by the Soviet Union to maintain its power.
Which was the intervention invasion into Czechoslovakia...
...in August 1968.
Where the Czechs were experimenting...
...with what they called "Socialism with a human face."
For the first time, you had a television network and a press...
...which was freer than many in the West.
For instance, I'll never forget...
...seeing Czech political prisoners on a special television program...
...confronting the warders, the prison guards...
...and the people who'd ordered their arrest.
"Why did you do it? Why?"
I mean, the example of this...
...the effect it had on popular consciousness was staggering.
People said, "God, we're doing something."
And these debates were then beginning to be smuggled into the Soviet Union itself.
The Russians panicked. They said, "This disease is to be stopped.
It's like a cancer. It could affect us unless we deal with it."
And they intervened.
And that Soviet entry into Prague in August 1968...
...I think was the death knell of the Soviet Union itself...
...because many, many people then gave up hope...
...including someone who is regarded as being very right wing and nationalistic...
...Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the great Soviet novelist.
Who said, when asked, "When did you give up hope...
...that the Soviet system could be reformed?"...
...said, "On the 21st of August, 1968.
When Leonid Brezhnev and his central committee...
...decided to invade Czechoslovakia.
For me, that was the end."
STONE: On the scale of aggravations, are you saying...
...that they were equivalent to the United States? Or England?
ALI: Well, they didn't kill that many people.
The question, wouldn't a Conservative American ask you:
"Well, at the end of the day, the American empire is founded on nee-liberalism...
...but these countries, to a large degree, have prospered...
...such as Japan, to a certain degree, Latin America...
...and to a certain degree, elites in Africa and so forth and so on.
And certainly Europe prospered, Western Europe anyway.
Whereas, the Soviet Empire did not practice, as you say, economic control...
...and yet, look what happened, they made everybody poor.
They made Hungary and Czechoslovakia...
...and Poland, which were rich countries at one point, poor."
Well, the argument against that is that Eastern European countries were...
...by and large, with the exception of Czechoslovakia...
...largely economically underdeveloped.
So the Soviet Union didn't have the wherewithal to rebuild these countries.
It was mainly interested in rebuilding itself.
Because the Russians suffered more during the Second World War...
...than any other country in Europe. You know, they lost 20 million people.
Their industries were destroyed, smashed.
But what the Russians used to do...
...was provide the countries with a crude, but effective...
...infrastructure, a social structure. Education was free, health was free...
...housing was heavily subsidized, electricity and water bills.
It was a sort of public utility socialism.
You didn't have freedom...
...but if you were a citizen in these countries this is what you got.
And you travel to these countries now, as I sometimes do...
...and the number of people who come up and say to you:
"We miss that period because that is all gone," is legional.
NARRATOR". Historians will argue the origins of the Cold War...
...but to President Truman and his advisers, the situation seems clear.
They believe that only firm and dramatic action will avoid another European disaster.
They decide on a policy of containment...
...of preventing the spread of Communist governments...
...to nations not under Communist control.
The free peoples of the world look to us for support in maintaining their freedom.
The early period of the Cold War...
...which saw the breakup of the old empires...
...saw the United States essentially increasingly taking over...
...the role of these empires.
The Korean War, the breakup of the Japanese Empire.
The Vietnam War, the breakup of the French Empire.
STONE: Iran. ALI: Iran. The coup d'état in Iran...
...the weakness of the British who could no longer control Iran.
The election of a nationalist government in Iran, the National Democratic Party.
A very democratic movement led by Mohammad Mosaddegh.
And the first thing Mosaddegh did when he was elected in Iran...
...was nationalize the oil.
He said, "This is not going to remain under the control of the British."
And at that point, the United States decided to back the British.
The CIA and British intelligence organized...
...the toppling of the Mosaddegh regime, bringing the Shah back to Iran, he'd fled...
...and mobilizing religious people in Iran.
All the demonstrations in Tehran against Mosaddegh...
...were organized in the mosques.
And with the Shah in power then, and all other political parties banned...
...torture used as a regular weapon...
...the only space that could be used was the mosque.
Then in Latin America, all attempts by South American leaders...
...nationalists leaders, Arbenz in Guatemala being the first...
...to break away from the American embrace...
...purely to defend their own countries...
...and to take rights away from the American corporations...
...to favor poor people in these countries, was seen as a communist outrage.
And if it means linking up with the worst elements in South America...
...or Iran or Asia, we will do it.
We have one enemy and that enemy is Communism...
...and everything we use against that enemy is justified.
The future of Guatemala lies at the disposal of the Guatemalan people themselves.
It lies also at the disposal of leaders loyal to Guatemala...
...who have not treasonably become the agents of an alien desperatism...
...which sought to use Guatemala for its own evil ends.
Well, the United States, um, as we've been discussing...
...believed in black and white.
They never thought there could be a gray leadership...
...which was neither Communist nor pro the United States.
The Indian government, which started non-alignment under Nehru...
...Tito in, uh, Yugoslavia and Nkrumah in Ghana...
...all these people said, "Look, we don't want to be part of the Cold War."
Sukarno was also part of that movement.
"You know, we are not communist, but we don't agree with what you're doing."
And a sane, rational government in the United States would have said:
"it's not such a bad thing to have some space...
...between us and the communists and have the third way."
But, no, the frenzy created by the Cold War...
...and the hysteria of that period was such that anyone who said:
"We're not on their side, but we're not on your side either" was treated as an enemy.
As the president has said, the central fight today...
...is the life-or-death struggle between communism and democracy.
The United States information Service is vigorously opposing communism...
...with facts and with ideas...
...emphasizing the values and the aspirations we share...
...with the people of the world.
ALI: And it's at the same time...
...that the first time American leaders began to use religious imagery...
...was during the Cold War.
"In God We Trust" was put on the dollar in the '50s.
Uh, and increasingly, presidents who were not deeply religious...
...started paying lip service, uh, to religion.
Why? Because religion was seen as a weapon against communism.
Um, they were in alliance with a lot of religious people...
...especially Muslims in the Islamic world, religious parties...
...and they were trying to show to them, we are religious like you.
I wanna go back just briefly.
We were talking about some of the leading neutralists...
...of the, uh, post-World War ll era...
...and we neglected to mention...
...sort of one of the greatest, uh, was Abdel Gamal Nasser.
ALI: He was someone who came out of the Egyptian military.
Probably there are much closer analogies between Nasser...
...and some of the radicals in South America who emerged from the armies...
...including Hugo Chávez most recently.
That this was an early version of that inside the Arab armies.
And they were moved by a desire to free the Arab nation.
It used to be one world.
You could move from Jerusalem to Cairo...
...from Cairo to Amman, from Amman to Damascus easily.
It was a world of cities.
And when the British Empire, backed by the French as a subsidiary...
...decided to divide that world up, to draw artificial boundary lines...
...to create boundaries, they then laid the basis, essentially...
...for what we now know as the Middle East.
Uh, Nasser was determined to reverse that process and create an Arab nation.
And he came close.
NARRATOR". The Suez Canal, lifeline of Europe...
...in a dramatic sequence of events became a cause of war...
...when President Abdel Nasser announced its seizure by Egypt.
First, Israeli troops struck down the Sinai Peninsula...
...to within a few miles of the canal itself.
Within days, Egyptian forces were completely routed.
The stage was set for the next move in the complex Suez situation.
Britain and France, after a short ultimatum...
...in a joint sea-and-air invasion attacked following a preliminary air bombardment.
But even as the occupation proceeded...
...world opinion against the invasion was mobilized.
At the United Nations, the invasion was branded aggression...
...and a cease-fire ordered.
To implement the decision...
...Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld flew to Egypt for preliminary negotiations.
Emerging from the crisis, which for a time threatened world peace...
...the United Nations Emergency Police Force was born.
Hastily assembled, it was jubilantly welcomed as it took up its task in Egypt.
ALI: And then soon after Nasser's triumphs...
...there was a revolution in Iraq.
And the British-imposed monarchy was defeated, toppled.
The king and his uncle were hanged by lampposts.
And the British were asked to take their bases out of Iraq.
"You can't keep your bases in here."
And for a while there was jubilation in the Arab world.
Could we have an Arab Republic with three capitals?
Damascus, Baghdad and Cairo.
And this was the weakness, I think, of Nasserism, that it couldn't do that.
Uh, by that stage, it had run out of steam.
Uh, in the same vein, I would love to--
Could you just explain a little bit more detail, not too much...
...about the Indonesian-American involvement in getting rid of Sukarno...
...and Suharto coming in and...?
ALI: Sukarno was seen as an enemy...
...because, you know, he would hop on a plane and go and see the Chinese.
He would talk to the Vietnamese.
He would say the War in Vietnam is not good what the U.S. is doing.
So he had to be toppled.
So Suharto, as we know, was working very closely with the, uh, United States...
...and began to prepare a coup d'état.
And in the preparation of this coup d'état, as they always have, or they usually have...
...uh, provocations.
Do you remember the provocation in Indonesia?
If my memory serves me right...
...there was an attempt made by a young lieutenant colonel called Untung...
...to carry out, or so we were told, pre-emptive measures...
...by arresting some of the reactionary generals...
...supposedly on the orders of Sukarno.
Sukarno claimed he had never given any such orders.
A few of the generals were arrested.
Uh, Suharto escaped and then organized his particular coup.
Sukarno was put under house arrest.
The entire Communist Party leadership was arrested.
Vigilantes were created with the troops, mainly Islamists fundamentalist...
...vigilantes who went from house to house on the beautiful Island of Bali...
...naming, "That's a Communist family living in that house.
Bring them out. Kill the women."
STONE: With lists provided by?
ALI: One of the things the CIA used to do...
...was, of course, in every country, prepare lists of who were the subversives...
...who were the Communists...
...who were the guerillas in Latin America who we had to be careful for.
Often they got these names out by grabbing people and torturing them.
Uh, in countries like Iraq, they got the list of Communists...
...by working with people inside the Ba'ath Party, like Saddam Hussein.
And then also supplying him with lists they'd got elsewhere...
...and saying "Wipe them out," which he did.
Uh, so the similar lists were provided to Suharto.
Not that it was a big secret in Indonesia...
...because the Communist Party was an open party.
This was the largest Communist Party in the world, outside Communist countries.
And it was in the largest Muslim country in the world.
And they wiped that out, thus creating a big vacuum.
STONE: One million? - One million people were destroyed.
- Men, women, children. - Men, women, children.
You know, I've read the most horrendous descriptions of these massacres.
That the men who were killed, they were disemboweled...
...and their genitals were hung out on display...
...in certain areas to create fear.
There were descriptions of the rivers running red with blood...
...for days and packed with corpses.
Why, if, uh, they're willing to, uh, dispense with Sukarno...
...who was a major neutralist leader in the world...
...were they not willing to go after Gandhi in India?
- Nehru. It was Nehru in India. STONE: I'm sorry.
ALI: They were not prepared to go after Jawaharlal Nehru in India...
...because India was, uh...
...a country with a lot of respect in those days...
...and Nehru was seen as a sort of Social Democratic leader.
He was elected. There was an opposition.
And the Indian Army was an independent army.
It would have been very difficult for the United States...
...to manipulate the Indian Army because India said:
"We're not part of your security pact."
So they couldn't do anything about India...
...but what they could do was transform Pakistan...
...into a U.S. base in October 1958...
...by organizing a coup d'état in Pakistan...
...and making the Pakistani military heavily dependent on them.
And links between the Pakistani military and the Pentagon date back to the '50s.
But your own life was marked by this. You were 15.
- Were you still in Pakistan at the time? ALI: Yeah.
Your whole life was changed by this coup in 1958, was it not?
You know, when a military takeover takes place...
...all political parties, trade unions are banned, all public demonstrations...
...all public gatherings of more than four people...
...not allowed.
And once news came though to us, I think it was '61
...a few years after the coup when the fear had begun...
...it was still there, but news came that Patrice Lumumba, the leader of Congo...
...had been killed by the Belgians or by the United States or by both. We didn't know.
NARRATOR". For months, the political pattern kept changing...
...with kaleidoscopic speed...
...until pro-Red Premiere Lumumba. ..
...was seized by the forces of strongman Colonel Mobutu.
But the struggle for power was far from over.
And I remember opening the papers and seeing "Patrice Lumumba killed."
And Nehru in India said, "This is the biggest crime of all.
The West will pay for this crime, having killed an independence leader."
Our government remained silent, so at my university...
...I said we have to have a meeting on the campus.
And we had about 500 students assembling in this big hall.
So I spoke to them and said, "Look, Congo has produced its first independent leader...
...and they've killed him because they found him a threat.
And we can't sit still, so let's go out onto the streets."
So they said, "Let's." So we marched. The police was totally taken by surprise.
This was the first public demonstration, defying all the military law.
And then on the way back from the U.S. Consulate in Lahore...
...as we approached our college back, the first slogans we chanted were:
"Death to the military dictatorship. Down with the military."
And still nothing happened to us.
So that is, uh, what was one of the small things that triggered off...
...then a big student movement in the country.
STONE: When did you, uh, leave Pakistan for--?
I mean, you're now basically in exile.
I live in London. I have lived in London now--
I came to study at Oxford in 1963.
And then I wasn't allowed back by two different Pakistani dictators.
And I became an ex-- You know, an exile.
You were 15 years old. From 1958 to 1961 is a defining period in your life.
ALI: You know my-- I now, uh...
...find it difficult to imagine what life would have been like in Pakistan...
...had there not been a military coup.
Had that first general election taken place, would Pakistan have split up in 1971?
I mean, you know, these counter factions sort of intrigued me more and more.
Uh, because the older you get, the more you think...
...of, heh, how these things have changed your life and that of others.
STONE: Yes. But we don't think at the time when we're young.
No. When we're young, we don't think about these things.
You know, you're prepared to do anything.
I remember when I was in North Vietnam during the war...
...and the bombs were dropping on us every day.
I just said once to the Vietnamese, I said, "Guys, we feel really bad."
You know, I'm in my 20s.
"Can't we do something to help you go up and help man the anti-aircraft battery?"
And the Vietnamese Prime Minister, Pham Van Dong, took me aside and he said:
"We're really touched you say that, but this is not the Spanish Civil War...
...where people from abroad can come and fight and die.
This is a war fought between us...
...and the most technologically advanced nation in the world.
So having foreigners coming in to fight with us...
...it would require a lot of effort keeping you people alive...
[BOTH CHUCKLING]
...which would be a distraction from the war against the United States.
- So don't make this request of us." STONE: That's very clever.
You see, I was on the colonial side of the picture.
You know, I was in New York City.
I didn't have any concept of what we were doing around the world...
...uh, in your country, in Pakistan.
We were interfering like a gendarme, as a global gendarme in all these countries.
But your life, it's your life, would be different now.
Perhaps you'd be, uh...
-...a merchant farmer in, uh Pakistan. - Ha, ha.
Who knows? But I mean, maybe it's been improved by the turbulence and exile...
...and movement. Social movement was created.
But if you had been born in Indonesia, you would have had the same issue.
Well, if I'd been born in Indonesia...
...and I had the same political views, I'd have been dead.
STONE: Perhaps, but you know, I'm saying everywhere there's people like--
Your whole-- An entire generation of people were shaken by the United States policy.
MAN: This is not a separate power structure, an imperialist power...
...messing over Africa and Asia and Latin America. It's all one enemy.
On the international level in Asia, Africa and Latin America...
...it's United States Imperialism.
Here inside of America, it's United States Fascism.
But it's all one struggle.
All of the oppressed people all over the world, regardless of color...
...are struggling against a common enemy, the U.S. Fascist imperialist pigs.
ALI: Go back to the Vietnam War.
That was probably the most formative war for an entire generation. You know.
It changed people.
Even people who supported the war and some of whom fought in it...
...it changed them forever. They couldn't be the same again.
I mean, it did make them think.
And it, after all, brought about this shift...
...that the U.S. would never be able to fight a conscript war again.
Because they said, if you conscript people...
...then it affects the whole country. Everyone is thinking.
[PEOPLE CHANTING AND SHOUTING INDISTINCTLY]
ALI: And it was when that Army and the revolt within the Army began to erupt...
...when black and white Gls said:
"Hell, no, we ain't gonna go. We ain't gonna fight in Vietnam.
Vietnam is where I am," that's what they were chanting...
...that the Pentagon was finished.
They knew they could no longer persecute this war...
...because they had lost the confidence of their own soldiers.
And there is no other, uh, event quite like that...
...in the history of the United States.
Or in the history of most other nations.
I mean, you know, you have to go back to the first World War.
I mean, the Russian Revolution happened because the soldiers said--
They threw down their guns and came back in.
NARRATOR: 1975, the last act of the Vietnam drama unfolds in Indo-China.
ALI: The triumph of the Vietnamese in April 1975...
...was stunning.
And it was accompanied for the first time by images.
The images of helicopters leaving the compound of the U.S. Embassy...
...with people clinging onto them was a total defeat.
That's how it was perceived, everywhere, including in the United States.
That had never happened to the United States before.
And as we were discussing earlier, it was not just a military defeat...
...it was a political defeat at home as well.
The greatest challenge of creativity, as I see it, lies ahead.
We, of course, are saddened indeed by the events in Indo-China.
But these events...
...tragic as they are...
...portend neither the end of the world...
...nor of America's leadership in the world.
Then came the Nicaraguan Revolution in '79.
Again, took the world by surprise that it had happened.
Everyone was surprised. The Somoza Dictatorship defeated...
...then a sort of consistent and persistent effort...
...by the United States to turn that back through the Contras.
The nations of Central America are among our nearest neighbors.
El Salvador, for example, is nearer to Texas than Texas is to Massachusetts.
Central America is simply too close and the strategic stakes are too high...
...for us to ignore the danger of government-seizing power there...
...with ideological and military ties to the Soviet Union.
And finally, they succeed, not as they thought...
...but they succeeded in toppling the, uh, Sandinistas as well.
And the backlash then continued...
...with the big collapse of the Soviet Union.
Once that happened, then the world changed again.
[PEOPLE SHOUTING INDISTINCTLY]
And people went into total retreat and saying nothing is possible.
So all you do is live in a consumerist world...
...be happy, don't think too much...
...and let's hope all works out well.
You know, at one point in the 1980s, I said to the press, perhaps innocently...
...I said, "What's wrong with the Pax Americana?"
You know, I was in a war. I don't wanna go back to another war.
But I'd rather have McDonald's on the corner than, uh, the Vietnam War.
ALI: Yeah. STONE: What's wrong with commerce?
What's wrong with spreading hamburgers and all this?
And I said, "You know, it may be boring, it maybe the arches are ugly architecture...
...it may be ugly, but it's better than killing people."
And that was my point of view back then, but it's changed.
If we look at what is going on now...
...what becomes very clear is that one system collapsed.
In its wake...
...there was, for years, a triumphalism that occupied the West.
"Hey, we won. We smashed you. We beat you, Ivan."
STONE: Ha, ha. ALI: A complacency set in.
They felt that we can now do whatever we want...
...get away with whatever we want to do.
There is no one to challenge us. The system is unbeatable.
And that is always a dangerous frame of mind...
...uh, for any imperial power to get into...
...to believe that nothing can affect you, because the world isn't like that.
So the first challenge, curiously enough, came from South America.
And it came from a continent which had experimented in nee-liberalism.
After all, the Chicago Boys didn't try nee-liberalism out first in Britain.
They tried it out in Chile under Pinochet...
...uh, and later in Argentina.
And at the same time, you began to see the emergence of social movements...
...in a number of Latin American countries, Bolivia, Ecuador, Venezuela...
...fighting against attempts to deprive them of certain things to which they were used...
...and which they liked, like free water.
Like transport subsidies.
Things which, in the scale of the world, appear very tiny...
...but are very important for the everyday life of many people.
And the interesting side of that...
...were that these movements were throwing up political leaders.
And these political leaders were winning elections democratically.
It was totally misunderstood, in my opinion...
...deliberately so by the Bush administration...
...which tried to crush all these developments.
Organizing military coups...
...backing the most reactionary people in these countries.
STONE: Bush Sr. or Bush Jr.? - Bush Jr.
Thomas Friedman did mention at some point-- I think you quoted him as saying:
"it's not just McDonald's, it's McDonnell Douglas."
ALI: McDonnell Douglas, heh.
STONE: And what did he mean by that? ALI: He meant by that, that essentially...
...it is American military power that is decisive in this world...
...and that helps to maintain McDonald's, uh, all over the world.
And if you look at that...
...I think the latest figures, that there are now, uh, U.S. military bases...
...or installations, I think, in nearly 60 or 70 countries of the world.
And that is a very heavy presence for the United States.
So the war on-- Bring me up to date on what they call this War on Terror.
The War on Terror I always found an odd concept for the following reason...
...the history of terrorism is real, it exists.
[PEOPLE SCREAMING]
And what it means usually is small groups of people...
...sometimes in their hundreds, sometimes a few thousand...
...who decide that the way they're going to change the world...
...is to hit targets that they select.
The anarchists in the late-19th and early-20th centuries...
...used to bump off presidents, heads of state...
...try to kill the czar of Russia, all that.
Sometimes they succeeded. Usually they failed.
Uh, in Paris, they would bomb bourgeois cafés, rich cafés, and say:
"We're killing the bourgeoisie."
I mean, this sort of nonsense has happened for a long time.
It never really changes anything...
...but it makes people who carry out these acts feel good...
...even though none of these people they were attacking crumbled as a result.
Then you had a big wave of it in the '60s.
You had the Weather people in this country, they didn't kill people.
Sometimes they killed themselves by accident.
They targeted, uh, installations, uh, etcetera.
Then you had groups in Italy, Germany, Japan. Terror groups.
Terrorist groups which grew out of the '60s...
...again, targeting sometimes people, sometimes installations.
You had Cuban terrorists trying to destabilize the Cuban regime...
...backed by a government, in this case, the United States of America.
The foundation of Israel is linked to terrorist groups, the Irgun...
...which destroyed the King David Hotel...
...and one of whose members was Menachem Begin...
...later given the, uh, Nobel Peace Prize...
...with, uh, Anwar Sadat of Egypt, heh, at the same time...
...at which point Golda Meir, an Israeli Prime Minister...
...when asked for her comment, said:
"I don't know whether they deserve the Nobel Prize...
...but they certainly deserve an Oscar for acting."
So, you know, the history of the world is littered with examples of terrorism.
So why make this act of terror...
...which is no different in its nature or its quality--
Though it's dramatically very different...
...because it takes place in a world where the image has become all important.
So the entire world can see the image of Twin Towers...
...being hit by these planes again and again and again...
...being repeated endlessly for a week on virtually every television show.
So the war on terror essentially became a hold all...
...for U.S. foreign policy getting its own way wherever it wanted to...
...and locking up people, and picking up people all over the world...
...with the help of its allies in the name of this war against terror.
[EXPLOSIONS]
MAN: Another large blast of explosions to the west of the city.
Can you hear me, Jeremy?
Massive shock blasts just coming through our windows.
I'm gonna have to take cover, Jeremy. I'm gonna have to take cover.
STONE: Why Iraq? Why, of all the places on Earth?
Two reasons. Some people within the Bush administration felt...
...that it was unfinished business since Iraq I...
...that they should have toppled Saddam Hussein...
...but Bush Sr.'s advisors had said don't do it...
...and as we now know, for good reason.
Bush Jr. and his advisors wanted to complete...
...what that administration hadn't done, and what Clinton hadn't done...
...even though Clinton had gone a long way in sanctioning Iraq.
When Lesley Stahl of CBS said to Madeleine Albright:
"ls the death of over half a million children...
...as a result of these sanctions, justified by what you did?"
And Madeleine Albright replied, "Yes, the sanctions were justified."
The other factor...
...which is usually underestimated in U.S. policy in the Middle East...
...except now it's coming more and more out into the open...
...is that the big link between the Likud Party in Israel...
...and the Neo-Conservatives in the Bush administration...
...meant that for the first time there was a very direct pressure...
...coming straight from Israel...
...also from AIPAC, the Israel lobby in the United States, but not just from them...
...for ending the Saddam problem now, quickly.
The Israelis didn't like the existence of Iraq as an independent state...
...uh, with an independent army, even though it didn't have nuclear weapons...
...because they felt that this was--
That it was always possible that this army would be used against them...
...uh, in the future.
And the doctrine of preemptive war...
...the Wolfowitz-Cheney doctrine written in the 1990s?
ALI: The doctrine of preemptive war.
The U.N. charter was brought into being...
...to guard nations against so-called preemptive wars.
The only condition for waging a war, the U.N. says...
...is if there is real evidence that you're about to be attacked.
And the reason that was written into the U.N. charter...
...is because the biggest defender of preemptive wars was Adolf Hitler.
Every time he invaded a nation, whether it was Poland or Czechoslovakia...
...or Austria, he used to say, "Our interests are under threat."
I don't know. I think, uh, given the state of the world at that time...
...with the sympathy, so called, that we had, why not go for Iran?
Which is more of a legitimate threat, and the Pentagon knows it.
Uh, I think...
...the war on Iraq...
...doesn't make total sense... STONE: Heh.
ALI: ...from a rational--
From any rational point of view of an Imperial administration.
But I'm saying, if you're gonna go for this big number in Afghanistan...
...why not take out Iran too, at the same time? Try to anyway.
Well, that would have been a bit more difficult to do...
...once they'd declared the war on terror.
Uh, if they had gone for Iran, the Pentagon would also have known...
...that as they knew that the Iraqi Army was quite diminished...
...that Iraq barely had any armaments, uh, left to wage a real struggle...
...that the Iraqi Air Force had been destroyed...
...whereas Iran was still quite a strong nation.
Uh, and they would have inflicted heavy casualties right at the beginning...
...because that was not a defeated country, defeated by sanctions...
...wrecked by permanent U.S. bases in the northern parts of the country.
STONE: So we were looking for a weakling.
ALI: A weakling to demonstrate American power.
STONE: Don't you think if Bush had won the war in Iraq...
...he may have been more aggressive in Iran by now?
If the Iraqi population had come out to greet them with sweets and flowers...
...then they might have been tempted to follow that same route...
...to Tehran and Damascus...
...but the Iraqi resistance stopped that dead in its tracks.
And whatever the politicians may or may not have wanted to do...
...the American military said, "Enough and no further."
You know, you talk about Iran, and that's, of course, a Persian country...
...and here we are with the Arabs in the middle between Israel and Persia, again.
How do the present-day Arab, uh, countries, Sunni countries, many of them...
...feel about Shiite Iraq?
Well, the Saudis and the Egyptian regimes are very upset...
...by the consequences of the Iraq war...
...that the United States have made Iran...
STONE: Which is a Persian country. ALI: ...a non-Arab Shiite state...
...the strongest state in that region.
So the two strong regional players now are Israel and Iran...
...and the Arabs feel caught between the crossfire.
But now we're in a stage where Israel has nuclear weapons...
...and is agitating like mad for Iran not to have them.
My own position on these things has always been...
...no one should have nuclear weapons.
But once you start going down that road...
...the Iranians are surrounded by nuclear powers...
...Israel, Pakistan, India, the U.S. Navy, which patrols their waters.
They've had their airliners knocked out of the sky...
...they've had Saddam Hussein unleashed on them.
What these nuclear weapons are essentially now...
...for smaller countries, are self defense...
...saying, "Don't try and take us over, don't hit us," Israelis included.
Which is why the argument that Israel is a country...
...threatened by powerful enemies is nonsense.
The Israeli military is very strong and it has nuclear weapons...
...so no one can destroy it militarily.
If the Israelis were to bomb Iranian nuclear reactors...
...these nuclear reactors are not situated just in one complex...
...as the Iraqi ones were when the Israelis bombed them.
They're all over, dotted all over the country.
There would be huge loss of life.
And the Iranians would hit where it hurts.
They would unleash wars in Iraq, in Afghanistan...
...they would hold the United States responsible.
On the Israelis via Lebanon, and the Hezbollah...
...they would hit back very hard.
So it's the same old story. The birth of Islam comes at the time...
...when Christianity and the Byzantium is dominant...
...as is Zoroastrianism in Persia...
...the Jews are around, there's three main power centers...
...and up come the Muslims, they become the forth power center...
...they take over the other three and here we are 1000 years later...
...and the four power centers are still shuffling for power.
When the Crusaders occupied Jerusalem in 1099...
...they attacked mosques, they burnt people...
...and they burnt large numbers of Jewish people alive...
...because they had been summoned to the synagogues, temples, to offer prayers.
And they were burnt.
And there was massive killings that took place...
...and that event, the capture of Jerusalem...
...Al-Quds, as they call it in Arabic, uh, left a deep scar.
[PEOPLE SHOUTING INDISTINCTLY]
ALI: And till Saladin, uh, took it back, uh, in the 12th century--
Ninety years later, he took it back and he said:
"We mustn't repeat those mistakes. This must be a city for everyone."
I often remind my Israeli friends of that, saying that:
"You know, you guys were protected for several hundred years by the Muslims...
...and now you behave like this?"
The interesting thing is that these old historical things go very deep...
...because when after the First World War the Ottoman Empire fell...
...and the British and the French took over the Middle East...
...predominantly the British...
...the French General Gouraud, marched into Damascus...
...went straight to Saladin's tomb...
...and said, "Saladin, we are back." Heh.
STONE: Sounds like Schwarzenegger. - Yeah.
You talk about the violence. You call it "the violence" as if it was a virus.
You call it, beyond Bush Jr., it's systematic...
...and I was thinking of Albert Camus...
..."the, uh, plague of mankind."
Well, um, the fact that torture has become acceptable again...
...or there's now a big debate going on about it in the United States...
...as more and more revelations are coming out...
...uh, is all part of the war-on-terror logic.
And this is an old, old argument which goes back a long way to the medieval ages.
The Inquisition used to say, "Torture them to get the truth."
That's where we're back now.
And it's...
I mean, you know, you...
If you can't torture them in the United States, torture them in Guantanamo.
If you can't torture them in Guantanamo...
...torture them at the Bagram, uh, Base and Prison in Afghanistan.
Where the Russians used to torture people...
...the United States and its allies are torturing people in exactly the same place...
...and there are horrific stories coming out of it.
Or use the Pakistani torture system or the Egyptian or the, uh, Syrian.
You know, send them people to soften up a guy...
...so he talks and tells the truth...
...not realizing that, how do you know it's the truth?
This guy was waterboarded, God knows, 200 times, Khalid Mohammed Shaikh.
I mean, what value does his testimony have in any court of law after that?
You're basically destroying anything you might have got...
...from a serious interrogation of these people.
So these are the values, which is why calling it human rights--
This is torture in favor of human rights.
You know, to defend our human rights.
And it's-- Just think about that phrase now, and it seems cynical to most people.
You have criticized the code of human rights...
...uh, as a lure, as a disguise to intervene in certain countries...
...whether it's the Balkans or Iraq...
...or a lot of Latin America and Cuba and so forth.
It's human rights. We've heard it and heard it again...
...but there is some legitimate concern about human rights.
Well, of course there is, and I support human rights.
But for me, a human right, apart from freedom to think...
...freedom to speak, freedom to read what he or she wants...
...must also include the freedom to live, the freedom to survive...
...the freedom from hunger, the freedom to work.
I don't think you can just take one and not the other.
Secondly, the way these human rights are used...
...is so selective that they lose all their impact.
And the Cubans have said, "Okay, we've got 100 or so prisoners--"
I don't know what the exact number is.
"--And we don't have democracy the way you like it either, but nor does China...
...and yet, China is your biggest trading partner.
They have prisoners, they execute them regularly...
...and there's no problem at all."
But it becomes a problem for a tiny little island.
So, what would you do? It's not an issue on the table.
But it's-- You see, the point I'm trying to make...
...is that in a world without any positive values, in a big vacuum...
...and a world totally obsessed with money and celebrity culture and all this...
...people are becoming slightly crazy.
[BOTH CHUCKLE]
STONE: Since when? Do you think that's new?
It's not new but, you know, in the '40s and '50s...
...'60s and '70s, Oliver...
...people did think the world could be changed for the better.
And when that feeling goes away...
...then all these, you know, retrogressive groups and movements come to the fore.
[GUNFIRE AND PEOPLE SHOUTING INDISTINCTLY]
[MAN SPEAKING IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE]
[IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE]
STONE: And Afghanistan now?
Afghanistan now is a total and complete mess.
Uh, everyone knows it.
Uh, President Obama knows it, his advisors know it...
...and the reason it's a mess is because they occupied this country...
...which they weren't really interested in.
They had two war aims. The war aims were capture Osama bin Laden, dead or alive...
...which is what Bush said...
...and capture Mullah Omar dead or alive.
Both these war aims they haven't been able to accomplish...
...despite the fact that they have the most advanced...
...surveillance technology in the world.
Where they can see tiny thing--
But Mullah Omar, a guy with, you know, a bad limp, one eye, heh...
...they can't track him down.
The last that was heard of him he was heading...
...towards the desert on a motorbike.
That's the last time anyone saw him, some journalist saw him, you know.
Steve McQueen in The Great Escape time.
[CHUCKLES]
So they didn't capture him. And Osama, God knows where he is...
...or if he's dead of alive.
STONE: So is America in another Vietnam quagmire in Afghanistan?
I think the only way it could become a Vietnam...
...is if they sent in...
...at least a quarter of a million more troops.
I think then they would be in a quagmire.
There would be heavy U.S. casualties, they would kill a lot of people...
...they would wreck that country, the war would spill over into Pakistan...
...involve large segments of the Pakistani population and military on both sides...
...and there would be hell to pay.
And it's a mystery to me, uh, why Obama didn't use his election victory to say:
"We're going to end that mess too.
These are directly linked to the previous administration."
"Iraq," he said, "is a disaster."
And he could say, "Afghanistan is a bad business too. We've got to pull out."
You write beautifully here. You say, "There is a universal truth...
...that pundit and politician need to acknowledge.
Slaves and peasants do not always obey their masters.
Time and time again, in the upheavals that have marked the world...
...since the days of the Roman Empire...
...a given combination of events has yielded a totally unexpected eruption."
Why should it be any different in the 21st century?
It won't be any different, uh, of that I am pretty sure.
Uh, we can't predict what these events will be or where they will happen...
...but they will surprise the world.
Uh, and it's precisely because one knows what has happened in history before...
...that one maintains a certain degree...
...of, uh, optimism.
Um, and, I mean, the Latin American developments, Oliver...
...were not foreseen by anyone.
No one expected that Venezuela, a country which was barely known in the world...
...would suddenly become, uh, part of the "axis of hope," as I call it.
Yes. Might I suggest two that strike me, uh, as real surprises?
One would be, uh, the collapse of empire through economic debacle.
Which is possible, uh, and has been suggested by some...
...who have said we've gotta take the State down...
...and the state has to get out of the, uh, military industrial empire...
...that it's built around the world, which is withdraw. Take the troops out.
Bring them home. Put people to work here. I've heard that.
Well, I think a lot will depend on the economy...
...and a lot will depend on if the economy carries on going under like this...
...what the American public will do.
So, uh, that's always a given that if the American population comes out...
...and rebels against all this, well that's the end then for the empire.
It can't exist.
STONE: Uh, it's very hard for the population to rebel against the military.
- That is always difficult, historically. ALI: Yeah.
I mean, it's-- They tend to rebel against cultural values...
...which can excite them, such as gay marriage and abortion.
I mean, it's easier to media can float cultural and social issues.
The military is very little questioned in our country.
How about this sacred cow of military, the military budget?
Is it a sacred cow? Haven't we a right to question it?
Is it something we don't dare ask about?
Why, Mr. Hunt, that sacred cow of the military ought to be slaughtered.
You can never give the militarists all they want.
HUNT: Well, how can we, say, not slaughter it...
...but just cut it down a little bit?
Well, we have three branches, Army, Navy and Air Force.
The chiefs are loyal to these branches, they should be...
...and each naturally wants all he can get.
That leads to splitting the budget roughly three ways...
...it doesn't give us enough for any one...
...and as a result we're spending ourselves to death and we still don't have security.
It goes back to this concept of, uh, always doing something...
...being proactive as opposed to reactive and maybe passive...
...which is not a good policy, I suppose, for a politician to sell.
I mean, the question is, people might vote for someone who says:
"We've done too much abroad for too long...
...and the costs have been great for us, and now let us transform that...
...by doing too much at home and using that same energy...
...to transform the shape and face of our country at home."
Uh, if a politician were to say that at the present time...
...I think such a person would get a lot of support.
ROOSEVELT'. The basic things expected by our people...
...of their political and economic systems are simple.
They are equality of opportunity...
...for you and for others...
...jobs for those who can work...
...security for those who need it...
...the ending of special privilege for the few...
...the preservation of civil liberties for all...
...the enjoyment...
[AUDIENCE APPLAUDS]
The enjoyment of the fruits of scientific progress...
...in a wider and constantly rising standard of living.
[AUDIENCE APPLAUDS]
These are the simple, the basic things that must never be lost sight of...
...in the turmoil and unbelievable complexity of our modern world.