 |
| The
Institute’s Center for Comity In Governance periodically
sponsors a bipartisan Member Forum on Public Policy for
members of the US House of Representatives. The following
edited transcript of one such presentation is offered for
the review of those Members of Congress unable to attend
that session, and to promote public consideration of a complex
issue facing the United States and other nations. |
Background: Bernard Lewis was educated at the University
of London, primarily at the School of Oriental and African Studies.
His B.A. degree was in History with special reference to the
Near and Middle East; his Ph.D. dealt with the History of Islam.
Lewis’s books include CULTURES IN CONFLICT: CHRISTIANS,
MUSLIMS AND JEWS IN THE AGE OF DISCOVERY; WHAT WENT WRONG?;
and (in 2003) THE
CRISIS OF ISLAM: HOLY WAR AND UNHOLY TERROR. Style note:
Questions appear in bold type, and all other text was spoken
by Lewis except for the closing acknowledgment by Jerry Climer.
___________________________________________________________
During these past months, I have been reminded more than once
of 1940, when I was a young man (first a civilian and then a
soldier) at a time when we were at war and in a very dangerous
and critical stage in that war. I have the same feeling of being
involved in a major conflict of global dimensions. The conflict
today has the potential of being as important, if not more important,
than World War II, and more deadly in its outcome thanks to
modern science and technology.
I must tell you -- and it does not give me any pleasure -- that
I felt more confident about the future in 1940 than I do now.
We knew who we were, we knew where we were, we knew who the
enemy was and what the enemy was; we knew what the war was about,
and we were, generally speaking, in a state of almost total
unity and solidarity.
All sorts of things were done that we didn’t like but
accepted. For example, at a certain stage it was decreed that
we must have a national identity card as a security measure
to deal with the danger of the fifth column. This was accepted
without a murmur. We all got our national identity cards and,
when the war ended, we all tore them up and threw them away.
This was a wartime measure; we weren’t putting up with
it in peacetime [smiling]. That’s one example, and I could
think of others.
It seems to me that there is insufficient realization that we
are now engaged in a global struggle. The war has been defined
as “a war against terror,” and it is of course a
war against terror -- but this is insufficient and is in some
respects a misleading definition. For one thing, terror is not
a cause, it’s not a power, it’s not an entity --
it’s a tactic. And the question is in who is using the
terror, how and for what purpose.
Calling it simply “a war against terror” also gives
rise to the dangerous and misleading implication that this is
basically a police problem -- that we are dealing with criminals
and therefore normal methods of detection, prevention, enforcement
and punishment will be adequate. This is certainly not the case.
We are dealing with a ruthless and determined enemy on a global
scale, who knows exactly what he is and what he wants. I wish
we could say the same of our side.
What is it all about? I think it became much clearer in the
1990s. Before that, the situation was obscured by a number of
things. The growing resentment of the captive peoples of the
Middle East and other parts of the Muslim world was palpable.
But it wasn’t focused and directed with the clarity that
we see nowadays.
At the end of World War II, the empires came to an end and the
Middle East in particular enjoyed what seemed like a new dawn
of freedom. Two great ideals were pursued through the 20th century:
Freedom and prosperity. Freedom was supposed to come through
the removal of foreign rule and the attainment of independence.
Prosperity -- and this may come as a shock to some of you --
was supposed to be achieved by socialism. In 1945, the Soviet
Union was triumphant on the battlefields of Eastern Europe;
the British Labour Party was triumphant in the elections in
the United Kingdom. Both kinds of socialism -- parliamentary
social democracy and Marxist communism -- seemed to be on the
up and up; and socialism and nationalism, freedom and prosperity
were the objectives.
It all turned out very badly. Socialism brought [the Middle
East] state economies, by now mostly derelict, which served
only for the enrichment of those who participated in the state.
The change from the old order was very well expressed by a British
naval officer called Slade. Contrasting the old order with the
new, he said: “In the old order, the old nobility lived
on their estates. For the new nobility, the state is
their estate.” This is very true all around the Middle
East – it is well understood and deeply resented.
The struggle for socialism brought poverty and misery and tyrannical
exploitation. The struggle for independence did not bring freedom
but a much more efficient form of tyranny. It meant the replacement
of remote colonial overlords by immediately adjoining tyrannical
masters who were less inhibited and more skillful in their repression
and exploitation. All this leads to a mounting rage among
the peoples of the region, which is the more important and the
more generally perceived and felt because of another important
change – the modern media.
In the recent past, one region didn’t know what another
region was doing; there was very little knowledge of the situation
in the world as a whole. Now every grievance is given immediate
universal publicity. And not only that, but they are
made painfully aware of the difference between their status
and that of other people, and even between the status of different
groups within their own society.
To put it bluntly, this is now seen as a failed civilization
by all the measures by which civilizations are judged. I remember
a Professor at an Arab university saying to me very bitterly:
“We now have more than 250 universities in the Arab world.
Almost every one of them has a school of engineering, and between
them they turn out tens of thousands of diploma’ed engineers
every year. But if an Arab government wants a job of any technical
difficulty to be done, they have to bring in contractors from
outside, from Europe, from America” -- because there’s
nobody there that can do it.
Now it has gotten even worse. Contractors no longer need be
brought from Europe or America, they come from Korea, which
half-a-century ago was just emerging from the middle ages with
a standard of living lower than that of Egypt. And now [South
Korea] is more or less of western-level.
They see their own failure and they also see the success of
others. Now it is not part of human nature, in the Middle East
or anywhere else, to blame oneself for what goes wrong. One
prefers to blame someone else, and there is of course an ideological
framework within which this becomes relatively easy.
The really big change in this respect came with the fall of
the Soviet Union. We think of that as our victory; some are
more specific and attribute it to the late President Reagan.
In their view, this was their victory -- the heroic Muslim
fighters in Afghanistan were the ones who drove the Red Army
to defeat and collapse, and brought about the fall of the Soviet
Union.
As Osama bin Laden puts it in his various writings and speeches,
“In this final phase of the millennial struggle between
the true believers and the unbelievers, the world of the unbelievers
was divided between two superpowers. We have now defeated and
demolished the more difficult, the more dangerous, the more
deadly of the two. Dealing with the soft and pampered Americans
will be a relatively easy matter.”
That is the message, and always supported by the same litany:
Vietnam, Beirut and the barracks, Somalia, and so forth. A whole
series of attacks that remained either without any serious response,
or with the response of a swift withdrawal. The message, as
they saw it, was clear: Hit them and they’ll run. This
is what led to a crescendo of attacks during the 1990s,
culminating in 9/11.
Clearly, 9/11 was supposed to be the opening salvo of a new
and final phase, bringing the war, as they saw it, to the enemy’s
home territory. What followed 9/11 came as a terrible shock.
Something had happened which was entirely outside their experience.
An election meant a change of government, and a change of government
meant a change of policy: Normal for us, but there was nothing
in their experience that would enable them to expect or even
to understand this.
The response of the Bush Administration, as I said, came as
a terrible shock -- what happened first in Afghanistan and then
in Iraq. A lot of argument has been carried on as to how a 9/11
was permitted to happen -- a legitimate question. But I think
another question which should be asked is how is it that since
9/11 there hasn’t been a single attack in the United States,
while there were so many before either in or on American installations
abroad. There have been attacks in Afghanistan and in Iraq,
yes -- but apart from that, no Khobar, no Cole, nothing like
the embassies in East Africa.
What I’m very much afraid of is that this might now be
changing. Listening to the discourse, listening to the debate,
they may be saying, and in fact some of them are already saying:
“Well, we were right the first time; we’d better
get back and finish the job.” This whole issue is I think
symbolized in one particular point: Fallujah.
Now you will remember what happened in Fallujah at the end of
March. Some civilian contractors were lynched, dismembered and
dragged through the streets by a triumphant mob. What I think
is important to understand is that “this was no accident”
(as they used to say in Moscow). This was a carefully staged
replay of what happened in Somalia [in 1993], when some American
soldiers were captured, dismembered and dragged through the
streets of Mogadishu among the triumphant mob. And the American
response was: “Let’s get out of there.” [Last
March was] a replay of what happened in Mogadishu, expecting
the same response.
What had been happening in Fallujah still leaves me, at least,
uncertain as to whether it is or is not the same response. There
is room for uncertainty and, obviously, there are many concerns
which determine policy. I fear that the coming election is a
major one, if not the major one, and that could give rise to
decisions and judgments that may be wise and just in domestic
political terms, but dangerous in the Middle Eastern, or more
broadly, Islamic context.
Having given you this cheerful message, I think I’ll pause
and invite questions and comments. Because of lack of time,
I was cutting out the finer points and the subtleties –
I put [matters] more starkly than I would have wished to do.
We keep hearing people say that the Arabs can’t govern
themselves, that they can’t [manage] democracy. What’s
your view of that charge?
This is a point often made -- a line of talk which runs something
like this: “These people are incapable of democratic or
decent government. Whatever we do, they will be ruled by tyrants,
and therefore the aim of policy should be to ensure that they
are ruled by friendly tyrants rather than hostile tyrants.”
For some quaint reason, this is known as the “pro-Arab”
line [laughter], and is much favored in diplomatic circles.
I don’t think it’s true. We have to remember that
this Islamic world, in the Middle East and elsewhere, has gone
through a series of traumatic changes, almost all of them due
to the process which is named “modernization,” and
which from their point of view might equally well be called
“westernization.” Modernization means westernization;
the modern world means the western world. That is the general
perception and, I think you must agree, that it contains a very
large measure of truth.
This has brought many disasters. In the old society, there was
nothing like the dictatorial government that we have now. People
look for example at the regime of Saddam Hussein and the Ba’ath
Party and say, “Well, that’s how they are, that’s
how they’ve always been.” Totally false. This [kind
of government] is an importation from Europe, and one can date
it precisely -- 1940, the French surrender, Vichy controlling
Syria and Lebanon (because it was a French-mandated territory),
which then becomes a major base for Nazi propaganda and activities
in the Middle East with tremendous impact; they found willing
listeners because they were at war with the West.
And that was when the Ba’ath was founded, as a clone of
the Nazi Party. The Nazis were driven out, but later the Soviets
came in, and it required only minor retouching -- to adapt the
Ba’ath Party from the Nazi model to the Soviet model.
Very minor changes.
Modernization, westernization, achieved a number of things:
First of all, it enormously strengthened the power of the ruler,
so that even a petty tyrant today of some small state has power
beyond the wildest dreams of the legendary sultans and caliphs
of the past. Also, perhaps more important, it either weakened
or eliminated the limiting powers which in traditional society
had prevented the emergence of any real dictatorship or despotism.
If you’ll forgive me for going back into the past: In
1786 -- three years before the French Revolution -- the French
ambassador to Istanbul wrote a letter to his government trying
to explain why he wasn’t making very rapid progress with
his diplomatic assignment. He says, referring to the Ottoman
Empire, “Here, things are not as in France, where the
King is sole master and does what he pleases. Here the Sultan
has to consult. He has to consult with the holders of
high office, and even with retired, former holders of high office.”
(“Consult,” by the way, is a very important word
in the Islamic scale of values.)
This was the way the traditional system worked. And this was
virtually demolished by the process of modernization. So –
though it may seem to you paradoxical -- this leaves me with
a little more hope. This kind of ruthless, brutal dictatorship
is an importation. It does not go back to the Islamic
past.
On the contrary, there are elements in the Islamic past which
are much more conducive to the development -- I won’t
say of a Jeffersonian democracy (obviously each society have
to evolve its own methods) -- but of a decent, civilized, limited
government. Government under law and answerable to the people
-- that, I think, is possible. But one mustn’t
be in a hurry. It doesn’t come with do-it-yourself assembly
instructions.
So the Sultan was a sort of representative monarchy? What you’re
saying is that the tribes would come together or the various
--
I think the monarchy is certainly a possibility. You see, one
of the problems is how to arrange a transition with some
sort of legitimacy. In Iraq, I thought it would have been a
good idea (and I said so some time ago) to restore the old Iraqi
constitution -- the constitution from the time of the monarchy,
which provided for a two-chamber legislative assembly, and a
monarch, and so on and so forth. As a starting point, that would
give legitimacy and continuity.
There are other ways of doing it. But one has to proceed slowly
and carefully. You must remember that, in a society that has
been under dictatorship for decades, you can’t just start
off right away with a free election. This would immediately
empower those who know how to manipulate and those who know
how to intimidate -- these would be the only two methods of
electioneering: Manipulation and intimidation.
Manipulation of course would be [by] the religious parties --
what has sometimes been called the Islamo-fascists. They have
several advantages in an election:
1) In the mosque and the pulpit, they have a network of contact
and communication which no other party could hope to achieve
and which no government can entirely control.
2) They address the electorate in familiar language. Modern
democratic parties talk about citizen’s rights, using
borrowed language to express borrowed ideas, which appear unfamiliar
and even meaningless when translated. They [Islamic Parties]
use Islamic language which resonates immediately with the audience.
3) If they win they are under no obligation to allow the others
freedom of expression. Democratic parties, by their very nature,
by their very ideology, have to allow the anti-democrats to
conduct their propaganda. The anti-democrats are under no such
obligation. I think it was [Edward] Devedjian who said that
“The ideal of the religious parties [is that] the democratic
program would be: One man, one vote, once.” This is what
almost happened in Algeria -- a sad story.
Dr. Lewis – in Iraq now, we are talking
about going right to an election next January, with [the] President
and Prime Minister trying to organize a process to bestow some
legitimacy on the government after the election. The majority
population is Shia; and, though some are secular and some are
religious, one would expect the Shiites to come out with the
most power after the votes are cast. What will that mean in
terms of the Shiites’ relationship to Iran, to the Hezbollah,
and in terms of the whole Middle East, where the Shiites feel
like a besieged minority in other countries?
For an election, I personally would much prefer the method that
is being used in Afghanistan, the loya jirga method: Get in
touch with organized, local groups that have real roots in the
society [and have been] formed and conducted in traditional
ways. Consult with them -- tribal groups, regional groups, religious
groups, occupational groups and so on. But that is difficult
to organize in a relatively sophisticated country like Iraq.
Now the immediate and crucial question in the Iraqi election
is: What will be the electoral system? The latest that I’ve
heard is that they want to go in for a proportional representation.
That would be disastrous -- because it would mean domination
and submission. A constituency system on the Anglo-American
model would be much better at preserving some sort of balance
between the elements. That’s why I think Anglo-American
democracy has worked so well -- because of this constituency
system.
I remember arguing this with an Austrian friend; he was speaking
very strongly in favor of proportional representation. I was
finally reduced to bringing out my ultimate argument in favor
of our system – I said, “But it works!” He
dismissed that as irrelevant and said “that sort of argument
has no place in an intellectual discussion.”
How about the Shiites?
The Shiite question is a very interesting one, and it has a
special relevance in determining relations with people in Iraq.
The Shiites have long felt that they are an oppressed people:
Not an oppressed minority, but an oppressed majority
in Iraq.
To describe the Sunni/Shia relationship, the best way to do
it is to borrow a word from Irish history and to say what you
had in Iraq was a Sunni “ascendancy,” going back
to the Republic; before that to the monarchy; and before that
to the Ottomans, and so forth. The Sunnis are very anxious to
preserve what they regard as their birthright: Domination of
Iraq. The Shia are very anxious not to return to it.
Now, a complication: In ’91, at the time of the first
Gulf War, President Bush Sr. called on the oppressed people
of Iraq to revolt against the tyrant. And they responded --
Kurds in the north, Shia in the south. In the meantime, we granted
an armistice to Saddam Hussein, for what reason has never been
fully clarified, allowing him to retain his Republican Guard
and, most important, his helicopter gunships. Thanks to these,
he was able to repress with the utmost brutality the rising
both in the Kurdish north and more especially in the Shia south.
The Shia have not forgotten that and are understandably
cautious. All the evidence that I have is that they welcome
being liberated from Saddam Hussein, but they won’t commit
themselves until they are sure we are serious and not just coming
and going.
There is an old problem. During the Cold War, for example, it
was well known and universally understood in the Middle East
that if you do or say anything to annoy the Russians, punishment
will be swift and dire. But if you do or say anything to annoy
the Americans, not only will there be no punishment, there might
even be some reward: The anxious procession of diplomats, congressmen,
journalists, professors and other would come to say: “Oh,
what have we done to offend you? What can we do to put it right?”
There’s something of that left, which doesn’t help.
If you were to project 20 years into the future, what
kind of a Middle East do you see, and what would our role be?
On the whole, I am optimistic. I’ll tell you why. They’ve
tasted the worst of dictatorship and oppression, and they are
not likely to want it if it can possibly be avoided.
There is also the point I mentioned before: The media. And this
is enormously important. They are now better informed, about
things at home and abroad, than ever in their history, and this
again is having an enormous impact. People are daring to speak
out, to express opinions on television and radio, even in print,
which would have been impossible only a few years ago. There
is a growth, a movement towards democracy, in that respect.
Another hopeful sign, but specifically in Iraq, is that Iraqi
governments before Saddam Hussein did, on the whole, make better
use of oil revenues than most of the other oil-producing countries.
They built a good infrastructure. They built a good educational
system – and on that, I can give you a consumer’s
report.
A very large proportion of my graduate students were Arab graduates
of Arab universities, and the Iraqis were consistently better
than any of the others -- not because Iraqis are better man
for man or woman for woman, but because they had a good educational
system. If an Iraqi came with a degree in history from the University
of Baghdad with first-class honors, it meant that he knew some
history, and the first-class honors [status] was a measure of
his performance, not of his connections.
So that, I think, is an encouraging sign. Although Saddam Hussein
did enormous damage to both [the infrastructure and the colleges],
he didn’t entirely destroy them.
The other very encouraging thing in Iraq is the position of
women. This may come as a surprise but, with the possible exception
of Tunisia, Iraq has done more for women than any other Arab
country. I’m not talking about women’s rights --
the word “rights” has no meaning in that context.
I’m talking about opportunity and access. You have women
going to the universities, qualifying in the professions --
women doctors, lawyers, company executives, research scientists
and so on -- without parallel in most other Muslim countries.
That I think is enormously important for the future and very
much a factor in favor of democracy.
Who are our opponents in Iraq, and how do they see the world?
I think we can divide our opponents into two categories: First,
those whose purpose is the restoration or preservation of the
old-fashioned tyrannies. This includes many of the governments
that we call our friends and allies in the Middle East, and
our friendship and alliance with them is a major reason for
anti-American feeling. It’s quite remarkable that Anti-American
feeling is strongest in countries with pro-American governments,
and pro-American feeling is strongest in countries with anti-American
governments.
The second group, and in the long run the more important ones,
are Al-Qaeda and Company. They see this as a global millennial
struggle between the true believers and the unbelievers -- one
which has been going on since the days of the Prophet, continuing
through the Crusades, the Ottoman wars and the rest.
And now, as they see it, it’s entering its final phase.
How seriously should we take Qaddaffi’s turn in policy
toward the West?
I’m a historian, not a psychiatrist.
[General laughter]
What about Syria?
Syria is a curious case. It’s very difficult to know what’s
going on. In Syria, the government is not only oppressive, it
comes from a regional religious minority. All the evidence is
that it’s cordially detested. But whether this results,
as it does elsewhere, in a pro-American sentiment, I don’t
know. In Iran, it certainly does, just as the rather dubious
support we get from the Saudis, and from Mubarak and Company,
give rise to anti-American feeling. Of the hijackers
on 9/11, almost all were Saudis and a few Egyptians. That must
tell you something.
How significant is the Israeli-Palestinian situation as we move
to a democratic Iraq?
The Israel-Palestinian situation is enormously useful. It provides
the licensed grievance in these countries -- Egypt and the rest
-- where they are not permitted to complain about their real
grievances. This is a useful way of letting off steam. If they
didn’t have it, they would need to invent it.
I do not, by this, mean to say that it’s unimportant.
It certainly is important, and it would be very beneficial if
progress could be made. But one is struck by the consistency,
looking back over the years, that every time there is some hope
in negotiations – or, as they might see it, every time
there is a real danger that peace might break out -- they do
something to stop it.
The famous case was the Barak offer to Arafat. Some people will
tell you that Barak’s offer was the most generous ever;
other people will say no, it wasn’t generous, it was hedged
with all sorts of reservations. That isn’t the question.
Even if we accept that it was the most generous offer ever,
Arafat was entitled to demand more. If you are in negotiation
and you think you’re winning, you try to get more. That’s
perfectly normal and reasonable.
But, in that case, you respond with a counteroffer, not with
an intifada.
By the way, the Israel-Palestine thing is only one of a sort
of ring of such problems, all around the bloody perimeter of
Islam (and I’m using “bloody” in the physiological
sense, not the British colloquial sense).
Does that mean that the forces of chaos and terror want
to see that conflict continue?
Oh yes, very useful to them.
The everyday Arab, though -- do they not care about that
conflict?
They do now. They’ve been fed a very solid diet of it
for some time now, in the hopes that they will forget their
local grievances. At one time it was all Chechnya, at another
time Kashmir, and so on and so on. It varies.
No, I’m not suggesting that [the Palestinian-Israeli conflict]
is not important, it certainly is. But it is preserved because
it is necessary as a safety valve.
How does the American Muslim community view the conflict
in Iraq?
They’re in a very difficult position because they are
mostly fairly recent arrivals in this country. They have family
and connections in their countries of origin, and the people
who rule those countries are totally ruthless in their methods
of enforcement. So it requires great courage and considerable
risk-taking for American Muslims to come out in any way against
these trends, whatever their feelings may be.
The Israelis and the Palestinians, every time they get
close, then something happens. Aren’t we seeing that in
Iraq too? The closer we get to the turnover on June 30th --
On yes, they want to keep the struggle going. Anything that
looks like a settlement or progress is a danger to them.
Osama bin Laden’s declaration is a very revealing document.
In February 1998 he published a declaration of war against the
United States, in which he sets forth his grievances. It’s
in a very large historical context, going back to the time of
the Prophet, the Crusades and much else. As far as the present
period is concerned, his first and major grievance is the American
presence in Saudi Arabia. Remember that, for Muslims, Arabia,
not Palestine, is their Holy Land. That is where the holy cities
of Mecca and Medina are situated; that is where the Prophet
Mohammed lived and died and where the Koran was revealed. From
the very beginning, no infidel presence was tolerated in Arabia.
And there were, at the time, communities of Christians and of
Jews who were simply expelled. To be fair, they were expelled
in a very humane way; they were compensated and resettled elsewhere
(not like the modern way of doing it). But they were not permitted
to remain in Arabia.
It’s interesting that, at the time of the Crusades, when
the Crusaders went to Syria, then Palestine and captured Jerusalem
and set up the Latin Kingdom, not a dog barked in the Muslim
World. The Muslims of Jerusalem sent agonized appeals for help
to the rulers of Damascus, Baghdad and Cairo -- there was no
response; nothing happened. It was received with indifference.
But, when the Crusaders started raiding into the Hijaz, that’s
when the great counter-crusade began, which ended with the total
defeat of the Crusaders.
So, that’s a major theme -- the preservation of the holy
land, the infidel presence in the holy land. Troops are being
withdrawn but the infidel presence is still very much there,
and we see how they are reacting against it.
The second point [bin Laden] makes is using the Holy Land --
that’s Arabia -- as a base for the attack on Iraq. Iraq
is not a “holy land” in any sense, but it was the
main center, the main seat, of Islamic Civilization during its
most glorious age, the age of the caliphs of Baghdad, for half
a millennium. And for him, and his followers, the attack on
Iraq is an attack on the heart of Islam.
In third place, just two lines -- a brief reference to what
he calls, using a rather contemptuous diminutive form, “the
statelet” of the Jews, and Jerusalem, without mentioning
the Palestinians, accusing Americans of complicity in this.
That was in the late ‘90s. Since then, [bin Laden] and
his spokesmen have changed the relative emphasis -- because
they’ve discovered that by emphasizing the Palestine question,
they can get a gratifying response in Europe, and from some
circles in the United States.
How can we win the hearts and minds of young Arabs in
that part of the world? Which is another way of saying: How
can we take care of these terrorists without having 10
take their place? Some people think it’s strength and
intimidation that does it, others [claim] you have to coax them
more --
Two things are necessary. One is to show strength -- no doubt
about that. They do not understand the open debate of a free
society. We see free discussion, they see weakness and fear
and division. An appearance of strength and determination is
crucial.
At the same time I think it is very important to show respect
for their dignity. Personal dignity – honor, if you like
– is extremely important in this society. This is one
of the things that the Israelis just seem to be incapable of
understanding or applying. Granted, they need to have checkpoints
-- but they could handle them more graciously.
One of the really difficult questions, and I have no answer
to this, is a major grievance in the Arab countries -- rarely
expressed in the press for obvious reasons -- is that they see
the United States as responsible for the corrupt tyrants that
rule them. I mean, whenever Mubarak does something that they
don’t like, or the Saudi royal house and others [do, the
conclusion is]: “Ahh now, these are America’s friends
and puppets.” That was the beginning of the Iranian crisis,
which led to the overthrow of the monarchy and the installing
of the present regime. The Shah was seen as America’s
puppet, and that was even worse because it turned out the puppeteers
were not really very reliable.
JERRY CLIMER: Dr. Lewis, we thank you for taking the
time to come down and join us today.
[Applause]
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