The Untold History of the United States (2012–2013): Season 1, Episode 13 - On History: Tariq Ali and Oliver Stone in Conversation - full transcript

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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.