time once again for a community forum and we are very lucky to have with us live in the studio this morning need to include t v need include t is a filmmaker based in cape town she is in seattle to debut her first think what the government the point that the government wanted to do was find again you know to keep them at a certain level being do it in a language that you've done bandstand and it's interesting means that  yeah ok so he's his representative on the school is that when he starts doing because you have film footage of him speaking before a crowd of young people yeah and that blew me away by how young the students were and how active they were it was amazing yeah i mean i think it's quite popular you know outside of pilot think there's any and you use these popularity to get people involved you know and yeah i mean actually in the footage that you see that about seventeen years old is not oh yes sixteen seventeen years old you know  and he and his friends came out with an alternative to that was out before he got active in his school or during that this is doing that the i mean gangs are always an who actually part of the african national congress that that time and so through the bind they will use the movement that's actually kind of the joy which was you know at that time banned by the government and then you know the passively the pamphleteering speaking out and then found out that that just wasn't working anymore and the and i think the kind of level of resistance that and i got the impression from watching the film that he wasn't really waiting for any any orders or direction to come down from the amc he was kind of pretty much calling the shots himself on what he thought was best to do it what to order the interesting about and yeah i mean the iraqis family they they were great they were really supportive but it worth kind of difficult to you know gain the trust and first interesting thing a bad name is they want to know a lot about me like who am i a same with the worst people that i had interviewed but any and important thing for me was when somebody said that that they were so happy that it was one of our people telling the story and that's something that feel i still now be close relationship with and in deep respect because i also was in the way of any of these things before i started to form not really think through the moment i get really naive and but you know a i feel being being in the papers and i think i think that's something that they are really happy about but at the same time it's also really traumatizing because you know you think it was this they would cause chaos to make this statement that they do not approve of this case and that they were being taught but also be they would they were against corporal punishment that the time and all those things and that included you know so obviously police would be called but now because the action of the happening and you know all three high schools at the same time would be difficult to contain so it was just like those communit know the conditions that they were being forced eleven and not being able to thing but this is what we were and and being you know violence in acted on them on a daily basis and not just physical violence but poverty all those things that were being banned were of violence be on them efficiently i mean including the way they were classified yeah right and you include that in the film multiple times about the different leaders pointing out that they're not violent people they're being forced into this you know the conditions that are suffering yeah yeah and yeah i mean i mean i was watching the film and thinking oh my go film are these communications from the government and your intelligence agencies noting where ashley is different points in time when did this start when did he start getting on their radar and then they elected him back into the country yeah and many others his former well and they're still his friends here people he had worked with almost in recognizing when he came back yeah exactly they you know they he's now a target i mean he was a target when he left and now he's even more of a yes yes and i think this is an unfortunate kind of cd's of events that i don't know how the police could do we know the fact that he had come back into the you but obviously that happened i mean what happens is that then they start looking for the main places the way he hid out previously and then they find him at a safe house that he used to any before he left the specific what happened that specific day yeah i mean basically well what's interesting about the way actually died oh was you know killed was that so that the once again for community form and we are very lucky to have with us live in the studios morning andrew bass of it andrew bass of it is a retired professor of history and international relations at boston university a graduate of the u s military academy he served for twenty three years as a commissioned officer in the u s army his writings have been published in numerous publications including foreign affairs the nation the new york times washington post wall street journal and the financial times he is the author of numerous books also including the limits of power the end of american exceptionalism the new american militarism how americans are seduced by war washington rules america's path to permanent war and his latest book which he is here to talk about america's more war for the greater middle east military history andrew thank you very much for coming and spending time with us this morning well thanks thanks for having me on your program so you start out tell us what was your motivation in writing your latest book america's war for the greater middle east well i think this is it's an important story and it's in a it's a story that hasn't been told the story that the book tells really is a chronicle of u s military involvement in the islamic world beginning in one thousand nine hundred eighty and i think most of us have a have a general sense that going back several decades there has been a lot of u s military activity in countries from iraq to afghanistan to libya yemen somalia and so on my purpose was to put together a narrative of all of these campaigns long short big small to try to make the point that we should see them collectively constituting a war a war that i call america's war for the greater middle east and my purpose in doing that was to suggest to the reader that when you put it all together when you take stock of what the united states has tried to do militarily and what it's actually done militarily what consequences then one i think reaches the conclusion that this has been a misguided enterprise it's not working it has failed and if you reach that conclusion then it becomes possible to have a conversation about well what should we do differently rather than simply plunging further on which i think tends to be the reflex reaction of people in the policy community least warlike of our recent presidents but in one thousand nine hundred carter promulgated what comes to be known as the carter doctrine occurred a doctrine is a statement that says that the persian gulf is a vital s national security interest now and lay persons terms what that means is beginning in one thousand nine hundred eighty the united states views the persian gulf as a place worth fighting for why what prompted that declaration what prompted it was too big events one was the iranian revolution which overthrew the shah in among other things created the second oil shock and that same year in seventy nine the soviet invasion of afghanistan i recall that in one nine hundred seventy nine it's important to recall this because it's no longer the case but recall that in one nine hundred seventy nine the american way of life was basically dependent upon access to foreign oil and it appeared at that time that there was no alternative but to rely on ever increasing imports of foreign oil in order to provide the wherewithal to live the way we want to live in one and one aspect of that is to have lots of cheap gas so carter in essence conceded to that perceived reality and said well by god if if if indeed the american way of life is dependent upon oil from the persian gulf then this needs to become a strategic priority what ensued over the course of years unanticipated certainly by by carter was  ever expanding effort on the part of the united states using its military to pacify to bring order to not simply the persian gulf but an ever broader swathe of the islamic world so carter himself actually only initiated one brief military campaign that was the failed hostage rescue mission tried to free the american hostages held by the iranians but but from beginning with carter's successor ronald reagan each and every president has launched multiple campaigns in this in this region you could you know take them off  under reagan a failed peacekeeping mission in lebanon that culminated with two hundred forty one marines killed in a single day a a brief effort to put colonel  in his box through a bombing raid didn't didn't work khadafi responded by blowing pan am one o three out of the sky an intervention very much promoted by reagan on fought against iran a covert intervention in afghanistan targeting the soviets who are occupying the region and ultimately basically turning afghanistan into  a of a particular outcome reagan and his successors simply responded to situations where the response was repeatedly a military response  and i think from our perspective as we hear we are in two thousand and sixteen trying to reflect back on this long experience important thing to realize is it has never produced the outcomes that carter reagan the elder bush clinton younger bush rock obama have told us to expect so we've got this great military there's no question about it's a wonderful military with wonderful people serving it but in the war for the greater middle east it has been misused abused and has produced negative consequences at great cost to us and to sort of everybody else so what's your take on why each of these individual actions and campaigns that the u s has gotten into why do they initiate these without a sense of the history that went before them well that's a great question and i don't think there's an easy answer but one answer is the false historical consciousness that certainly exists in washington and in some respects i think is shared by large numbers of ordinary americans what i mean by false historical conscious what i mean is that we have come we americans have come to view history as kind of a triumphal march led by the united states there is a narrative a particular narrative of the twentieth century a narrative centered on world war two and its aftermath of the cold war which seems to suggest that forceful american leadership can destroy evil and transform the world in our own image now i'm overstating the point but nonetheless the point is basically correct we think we won world war two the truth is mostly the soviets defeated the germans but we think we won world war two we think we won the cold war we think that we are a liberator and the reason this is relevant is because those sorts of expectations then shaped the thinking of american presidents as they looked at the islamic world considered the problems the dysfunction with the islamic world and tried to calculate the best response you know i don't know if you remember the remarkable speech that george w bush gave in the wake of nine eleven in which he quite explicitly compared the enterprise then being launched what he called the global war on terrorism explicitly compared the global war on terrorism to world war two in the cold war bush said we have seen evil before and we destroyed it and we brought freedom and bush said in two thousand and one well we now confront a comparable evil and we will destroy it and we will advance the cause of freedom the reality is that the conditions in the islamic world the problem whatever the problem is simply does not bear comparison to the problems we imagined we solved in in the in the twentieth century in world war two and in the cold war so we are policymakers and again i think many in the general public share this have an inappropriate frame of reference that then makes it more difficult to look at a place like iraq and say iraq on the eve of the u s invasion in two thousand and three to look at a place like iraq and say  wait a second this is a this is a complicated place with with a complicated history and if we simply go in there and remove the regime we are likely to let loose forces of disorder you may remember that the bush administration thought that by overthrowing the regime that somehow magically a stable and democratic iraq was was going to emerge i'm not in making that point and try pick on the bush administration specifically what i'm what i'm suggesting is that sort of naivete and ignorance of local conditions has been a continuing problem dating from the  eighty s and quite frankly even going forward to the present moment when people are absorbed with the problems of isis and the syrian civil war so who are these policy makers are they the same policy when when we think of politics there is a tendency to see sharp differences between republicans and democrats and certainly on some issues there are sharp differences between republicans and democrats but it's important to realize that with regard to national security there tend not to be sharp differences that the continuity between administrations between reagan and george herbert walker bush george herbert walker bush and bill clinton for example the continuity he's far outweigh the discontinuity now the politicians themselves are not going to say that you know the guy who comes to office is going to say well i am i am striking on a completely different course from my my predecessor well he'll make that claim for for for domestic political reasons but but that's not that doesn't actually reflect reality i think more to the point you know with the all of the last half dozen presidents the only one we elected who actually knew anything about state craft was george herbert walker bush all the rest of them basically have been novices who learned on the job when we elect somebody to be commander in chief where from a perspective of knowing how the world works actually don't know all that much when you think about barack obama and not picking on him but as a as a first term senator  u think about george w bush as a governor of texas who rarely traveled outside of the traveled outside the country all of them each of these presidents comes to office dependent upon basically a  so called experts and members of this cadre even if nominally republican or nominally democratic they share a world view and it's that shared world view that i think explains why there are these continuity between month when administration to the next you know in the in the present in the present presidential campaign but the exception of senator sanders who actually doesn't say much about foreign policy the remaining candidates really all are it's hard to limit between him i mean secretary clinton as the leading democratic candidate is is nominally the voice of liberalism as opposed to the the stance of bull conservatives in the republican party but but secretary clinton is a hawk secretary clinton has vowed to destroy isis secretary clinton orchestrated the intervention in libya in twenty eleven which reduced that country to chaos and as far as i can tell she hasn't expressed much regret for having having done that so show so she is part of this foreign policy establishment and i and and and she but you could say the same thing about cruise you can certainly say the same thing about the bizarre donald trump shows little ability to appreciate that historical context that i'm that i address in this in this book they are they are oblivious to what the united states has been doing in the region since one nine hundred eighty with its military instead they simply focus on the here and now as if destroying isis is somehow going to solve the problem the truth is even if we destroyed isis eliminated isis demolished isis tomorrow the sources of disorder and dysfunction that gave rise to isis would still exist so the conversation in a political ought to be about well what are those sources of dysfunction and what if anything can the united states do what role can the united states military play in addressing those matters that conversation doesn't happen and i think it's it's it's a tremendous it's a tremendous loss and what role did the u s have in creating isis the situation that the conditions that well we had a direct role and a point here is not to somehow say  that the united states is directly responsible for all the bad things in the world that that is simply not the case the point is not to argue that if jimmy carter had not declared the persian gulf a vital u s national security interest that that here in tw sixteen the region would be in everything would be hunky dory that's not the case but but on the point under direct point of isis in two thousand and three we invaded iraq we invaded iraq with the expectation of transforming it into a liberal democracy instead we transformed it into a failed state out of that failed state out of the chaos the anarky the disorder there emerged iraq is this thing we now called isis so you can make a strong argument that isis would not exist today had not the united states chosen to invade iraq back in in two thousand and and what was the effect of when the u s began its put putting forces in saudi arabia and allying itself more with saudi arabia yeah well see this takes us back into the early one nine hundred ninety s one nine hundred ninety saddam hussein invaded kuwait we were ok with him invading iran we were not ok with him invading kuwait annexing kuwait seemed to put saudi arabia at risk of further iraqi aggression united states has been committed to the security of saudi arabia since world war two but only in one thousand nine hundred one did we face  this imperative now to act on that commitment so george herbert walker bush organizes a great coalition five hundred thousand u s troops deployed to the gulf kuwait is liberated in what seems to be a great and historic victory operation desert storm turned out operation desert storm led a lot of a host of loose ends to remain not least of all the fact that saddam hussein remained defiant and in power so the george herbert walker bush administration decided and his successor clinton affirmed that the united states was not going to maintain forces not not simply they were not going to come and go in a permanently maintain forces in the region in order to contain that was the term used to contain saddam hussein so that led to u s forces permanently stationed in saudi arabia the land of the two holy places and there were those in the islamic world not least of all a guy named osama bin laden who found that the presence of these infidels in saudi arabia has objectionable to put it mildly and the result was that bin laden declared war on the united states and during the one nine hundred ninety s this u s military presence resulted in attacks against u s assets you know the blowing up of the khobar towers barracks in in saudi arabia the attack on the u s s cole when it was docked at yemen the attacks on two u embassies in africa all orchestrated by bin laden and the point here is not to somehow blame the united states for bin laden's terrorist attacks the point is to is to emphasize that one of the unintended and and unwanted consequences of the gulf war of one thousand nine hundred ninety one that we thought was a victory one of the unintended consequences then was to lay the groundwork for what's going to be further disasters it's the blindness of the policymakers their inability to anticipate second order this group ing of policymakers that basically share your viewpoints and are trying to point out that history is an important thing to look at here well  senator sanders gave gave a talk couple weeks ago in utah this is the speech he gave when he said all the other candidates were going to the apec meeting in washington and declaring their fealty to the state of israel and to prime minister benjamin netanyahu and and senator sanders said i can't fit a pac into my schedule but he gave a foreign policy speech out in utah which didn't get as much attention as it deserve but the foreign policy speech at least as i read it suggested he's not a captive of the train of thinking that that has brought us to where we are in this war in the greater middle east problem i think is that his candidacy really is not it's not founded on a foreign policy view his candidacy is founded on strong arguments that he makes with regard to economic inequality and social injustice i personally would like to see him speak more frequently and forthrightly on foreign policy because he is the one and only alternative voice bombs the differences are whether or not we should send large numbers of troops on the ground or whether we should rely on special operations forces and trainers but but there is no difference with regard to continuing expectations that somehow or other the application of u s military power is going to set things right even though when you look at the experience of the last thirty plus years there's simply no evidence to support that s military power can provide an antidote to the dysfunction of the region so you have a degree in american diplomatic history yes what was this is kind of stepping back so what was after you got out of the military what was the motivation in pursuing that well i got my degree when i was still in the military i had the art the army sent me to graduate school very generously is a great opportunity for which i could continue to be very grateful and through happenstance i ended up studying  diplomatic history and in for through further happenstance and it up getting a job as an academic but it was through the grace of god not through some kind of you know grand plan that of my of my life so but from your readings i get the impression that you're leaning towards the use of diplomatic tools much more than the reliance on our presidents who have seemed to rely on military options yeah i mean i'm not i'm not a pacifist you know i mean quite frankly i think the notion of world peace is a bit of an lucian we need to have a strong capable military to defend us and to defend vital interests we should just be careful about how we define those those vital interests but i'm i'm completely pragmatic on these matters we should do what works and what doesn't work we should not do and therefore when when you take into account this thirty plus years of military engagement it's not working so we need to find an alternative and and when when you say diplomacy yes but i think you know there's a so there is some number of people who think that diplomacy means it is akin to isolationism is akin to throwing up your hands and saying well i guess there's nothing we can do i don't i don't think that's correct i think that diplomacy in this context means to to bring the country in the context of what to do about isis specifically it means to bring the countries of the region iran iraq saudi arabia turkey to realize that despite their many does not pose an existential threat to us and if i would argue strongly if iran iraq saudi arabia turkey would indeed collaborate with regard to dealing with isis they could have a problem so the diplomatic task facing the united states is to get them to set aside their various differences and to recognize where they have a common interest that's not a trivial challenge i mean it's not but it but quite frankly it's a challenge that i would argue is more susceptible to being handled than the notion of well let's go drop more bombs or let's go send more special forces into you know continue this this war that that has become endless and shows no sign of succeeding and very quickly because we have a minute left when the u s have to change its negotiating strategies with iran to be able to accomplish this it would and  purpose is to open a door that will make it possible for iran to come in from the cold and to once again play its role in regional affairs and the president is betting and it's a big bet that he is betting that iran will choose to play that role responsibly i mean by extension his bet is that the ayatollah as the clerics the mullahs the old guys are on their way out and young people define the future of iran well that we are unfortunately out of time i want to thank you very much for coming and spending time with us this morning i enjoyed it thanks a lot