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| Transcript for Nov. 18 |
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PLEASE CREDIT ANY QUOTES OR EXCERPTS FROM THIS NBC
TELEVISION PROGRAM TO “NBC NEWS’ MEET THE PRESS.”
NBC News
MEET THE PRESS
Sunday, November 18, 2001
GUESTS: CONDOLEEZZA RICE
National Security Adviser
Professor BERNARD LEWIS
Princeton University
Author, “Islam and the West”
AHMED RASHID
Author, “The Taliban”
TOM FRIEDMAN
Author, “From Beirut to Jerusalem”
MODERATOR/PANELIST: Tim Russert - NBC News
This is a rush transcript provided
for the information and convenience of
the press. Accuracy is not guaranteed.
In case of doubt, please check with
MEET THE PRESS - NBC NEWS
(202)885-4598
(Sundays: (202)885-4200)
MR. TIM RUSSERT: Our issues this Sunday: the hunt for Osama bin Laden; American Special Operation Forces on the ground. Is Iraq’s Saddam Hussein the next target of the war against terrorism?
And: a down-home Texas summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin. With us: President Bush’s national security advisor, Dr. Condoleezza Rice.
What will happen inside Afghanistan after the Taliban? What fate awaits Arab countries like Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan? With us: three men who understand this part of the world: Bernard Lewis, author of “Islam and the West” and “What Went Wrong?”; Thomas Friedman, author, “From Beirut to Jerusalem” and “The Lexus and the Olive Tree”; and Ahmed Rashid, author of “Taliban.”
But first: the president’s national security advisor, Dr. Condoleezza Rice. Welcome back to MEET THE PRESS.
DR. CONDOLEEZZA RICE: Good morning.
MR. RUSSERT: Happy birthday.
DR. RICE: Thank you.
MR. RUSSERT: How goes the hunt for Osama bin Laden?
DR. RICE: We are continuing to look for Osama bin Laden, and we are going to find him. The key here is to strip away his protection, and in loosening the grip of the Taliban and beginning to make it unsafe for him to be in large parts of the country, we believe that we are tightening the net. We are going to do this. And I must say that this is the most important element of this war. It is absolutely the case that we wanted to loosen the grip of the Taliban, but that was a means to an end. Al-Qaeda has got to be broken up. Its leadership has got to be found. And Osama bin Laden has got to be found.
MR. RUSSERT: Are you convinced he’s still in Afghanistan?
DR. RICE: We have no reason to believe that he is not in Afghanistan.
MR. RUSSERT: In the city of Kunar, it appears that there are a lot of foreigners who will refuse to surrender. Some of the Taliban nationals from Afghanistan have given up, but people from Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, other Arab countries, are staying and fighting. Will they be destroyed?
DR. RICE: Well, one of the very clear elements of this war is that there are a lot of foreign fighters on Afghanistan’s soil. The Taliban allowed this country, in a sense, to be occupied by Arab fighters who are there to protect these terrorists and who are there to protect this wretched regime, but they are holed up. They are surrounded, and eventually, they will be destroyed.
MR. RUSSERT: In Kandahar, the stronghold of the Taliban, tribal warlords in that region are now negotiating with the Taliban, saying, “You know, you have a couple of days to figure out what you want to do with your lives. If you don’t surrender, you, in fact, may be victim of the United States military campaign and the Northern Alliance.” Will we give the Taliban in Kandahar a few days to sort things out?
DR. RICE: We are determined to destroy the infrastructure of the Taliban, to make certain that its grip is loosened. We are eventually going to get the Taliban in Kandahar. Now, the discussions that are going on between various tribal leaders, Pashtun tribal leaders and the Taliban, we obviously are not party to. But the important thing here is that until the Taliban’s grip is loosened on the entire country, it’s going to be difficult to do what we need to do, and what we need to do is to root out the al-Qaeda terrorists. We need to make certain that Afghanistan cannot be a base for terrorist opportunities again, and that’s our focus.
MR. RUSSERT: Kabul-we had asked the Northern Alliance not to go into the city proper. They did it. They’re in there in force. They have set up a Defense Ministry, Interior Ministry. Are we disappointed that the Northern Alliance has, in effect, taken over Kabul?
DR. RICE: Well, we’re getting very good soundings from the Northern Alliance that they understand their responsibility to be a part of a broad-based government. This is not a country that is going to be ruled by ethnic populations that are 25 percent, 30 percent of the country at best. It is going to have to be broad-based in order for Afghanistan to be stable. The Northern Alliance, it appears, in the early stages, did send security elements and forces into Kabul because they believed that the situation was deteriorating into chaos, as the Taliban were retreating. We understand that they’ve kept the bulk of their forces outside the city. And we have been very clear that we do not expect there to be a kind of pre- emptive government set up in Kabul, that this is for the United Nations and for Afghanistan’s neighbors and near neighbors to work with all Afghan elements, so that we can have a stable government there.
We believe that the Northern Alliance understands that and that they’re going to respect that.
MR. RUSSERT: So the Northern Alliance may have done us all a favor by stabilizing Kabul?
DR. RICE: Well, it’s clear that in those early stages, the Taliban, as they were retreating, were wreaking havoc in the city, and some of the elements of what the Northern Alliance did probably was proper.
MR. RUSSERT: Let me show you someone who returned to Kabul yesterday after being gone for five years. He is the former president, Burhanuddin Rabbani. There he is there. What role do you think he should play in a post-Taliban Afghanistan?
DR. RICE: The nature of this government is going to be up to the Afghan people. We have been in touch with Rabbani, we’ve been in touch with elements of the Northern Alliance. We’ve been in touch with a number of Pashtun leaders. And everybody, I think, understands that the future of Afghanistan has to be one in which all elements are represented. I really do believe that this time the Afghan people and their putative leaders want a chance to rebuild Afghanistan in a way that it will be stable and ultimately prosperous and can rejoin the international community. This has been a terrible period under the Taliban, and it seems that a number of elements understand that Afghanistan may have a new chance and that they really want to be a part of that new chance.
MR. RUSSERT: Rabbani, as you well know, supported Saddam Hussein in the Persian Gulf War. Will he be reminded about that?
DR. RICE: Rabbani is a complicated figure, obviously. But the Northern Alliance is doing what needs to be done here, which is getting the grip of the Taliban loosened so that this country can return to international well-being and can bring about well-being for its people. We’ll work with Rabbani and we’ll work with other elements of the Northern Alliance and other Pashtun leaders as well.
MR. RUSSERT: You don’t see Rabbani being president of the whole country?
DR. RICE: This is really a matter for the Afghan people, for the U.N., and for others to decide. We are not trying in the United States to impose a solution on Afghanistan.
MR. RUSSERT: Let me show you someone else. There’s been a lot of speculation about Mohammed Zahir Shah, the 87-year-old king who’s been living in Italy in exile. Would you think it in the interest of Afghanistan for the king to return?
DR. RICE: Again, Tim, I think we have to be respectful of a process here that is going to take place.
The U.N. has appointed an experienced diplomat in Mr. Brahimi to bring these parties together. We, Afghanistan’s neighbors, and near neighbors, the Russians, the international community are all supportive of this process. I think we have to let it unfold without trying to choose a particular figure around whom the Afghans can rally. The king clearly will also probably have a role in this, but it really is something that has to unfold in the process. I don’t think it’s something that the United States wants to try and prejudge.
MR. RUSSERT: The secretary of State, Colin Powell, said a few weeks back that there are some elements in the Taliban-they’ve been described as “moderate” elements-who would be part of the new government. You can’t cleanse the country of all Taliban. Is that still our position?
DR. RICE: We can certainly cleanse the country of Taliban leadership and its hard-core supporters.
Anyone who has supported this regime in the way that the leadership and their hard-core fighters have, it’s hard to imagine them being part of any-follow one government. Obviously, when you have large parts of the country that have been under Taliban control, there may be people who have dealt with the Taliban, but it’s very hard to imagine a Taliban element to this government. I just can’t-I don’t think the words moderate and Taliban go in the same sentence, frankly.
MR. RUSSERT: How long do you think the Taliban will survive? Will they last through the winter or do you see this ending in a matter of days or weeks?
DR. RICE: Well, this war is really a war to end terrorism on Afghanistan’s soil. It is to wrap up the al-Qaeda network, it’s to make certain that they can’t do the kind of harm that they have done to the United States and multiple other places. This may take a while. We need to keep our focus on the big picture here. It is really wonderful that the Northern Alliance has had the successes that it’s had. It’s wonderful that the strategy has worked so well in loosening the grip of the Taliban. But we need not to lose focus on the fact that there is still a lot of work to do. There are still pockets of resistance. And most importantly, until we’ve met the president’s objectives of rooting out the Taliban-rooting out al- Qaeda, of loosening the Taliban’s grip so that we can do that and of, ultimately, making sure that Afghanistan cannot be used in this way again, our mission will not be complete.
MR. RUSSERT: The Taliban treatment of women, reprehensible, although the Northern Alliance does not have a stellar record in dealing with women either. Will we insist that ranking women be part of any new Afghanistan government?
DR. RICE: The United States is not going to try to choose a government for Afghanistan, but we will stand by our principles. And our principles are that all Afghans deserve a far better life than they’ve had under the Taliban, and our principles include that women should have rights and women should have a rightful role in the life of the country. We have to remember that Afghanistan is a place where women were educated, where girls were educated, where lots of women were doctors and teachers. This is not a new concept for Afghanistan, that women can be functioning in an important part of a modern society.
It’s a value that we hold dear, and it’s a value that we would try to use our influence to have take hold, but certainly we cannot choose the members of the next Afghan government.
MR. RUSSERT: Recent data suggests that the Northern Alliance sold more opium on the open market than even the Taliban. Will any new Afghanistan government be told by the United States, “You’re out of the drug business”?
DR. RICE: Absolutely. Any new government wherever has to understand that the running of drugs, that corruption of that kind is not a part of being a modern society. And given that a lot of these drugs end up in Europe and even in the United States, this would be a high security priority for the United States. But we clearly have a long way to go here. We have to establish a government, we have to get stability in Afghanistan, we have to root out al-Qaeda. The end state for Afghanistan will undoubtedly be one that is better for the Afghan people than the Taliban has been.
MR. RUSSERT: If we are, indeed, successful in Afghanistan in eliminating Osama bin Laden and rooting out al-Qaeda, will the war on terrorism then turn to Saddam Hussein in Iraq?
DR. RICE: The president has made very clear that this is a broad war on terrorism; that you cannot be supportive of al-Qaeda and continue to harbor other terrorists. We’re sending that message very clearly.
Now, as to Iraq, we didn’t need September 11 to tell us that Saddam Hussein is a very dangerous man.
We didn’t need September 11 to tell us that he’s trying to acquire weapons of mass destruction. There could be only one reason that he has not wanted U.N. inspectors in Iraq, and that’s so that he can build weapons of mass destruction. We know that he tried twice before to acquire nuclear weapons. In 1981, when the Israelis pre-empted at Osyroc, he was trying to develop a nuclear weapon. In 1991, when our forces arrived in Iraq, they saw that, again, he was trying to acquire nuclear weapons. He is a very dangerous man. We have to deal with him on his own terms. We didn’t need September 11 to tell us that he’s a threat to American security.
MR. RUSSERT: Would the world be safer if he was eliminated?
DR. RICE: The world would clearly be better and the Iraqi people would be better off if Saddam Hussein were not in power in Iraq. I don’t think there’s any doubt about that.
MR. RUSSERT: Czechoslovakian government has told us that they have evidence that Iraqi agents met with one of the hijackers who flew the plane into the World Trade Center. Do you agree with that assessment?
DR. RICE: In evaluating the report, certainly one would have to suspect that there’s no reason to believe Saddam Hussein wouldn’t do something exactly of that kind; that he would not be supportive of terrorists is hard to imagine. But this particular report I don’t want to comment on because I don’t want to get into intelligence information, but I will say again, we do not need the events of September 11 to tell us that this is a very dangerous man who is a threat to his own people, a threat to the region and a threat to us because he is determined to acquire weapons of mass destruction.
MR. RUSSERT: We’ve heard so much about the coalition against the war on terrorism. Do you believe that Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan would support us going after Saddam Hussein?
DR. RICE: Well, I think it’s a little early to start talking about the next phases of this war because, as I said, Tim, we have a lot of work yet to do in the phase that we’re in. But it is no mystery or surprise to the people and the governments of Saudi Arabia, of Jordan, of Egypt that Saddam Hussein is a problem. This is a man, after all, who, just a year ago, refused to recognize, again, the right of Kuwait to exist. He is someone who threatened the kingdom of Saudi Arabia before. So they would not be surprised to know that he’s a threat either.
MR. RUSSERT: George W. Bush was the first American president to use the word “Palestine” last week. What is Palestine?
DR. RICE: Palestine is simply a term for a state that might exist for the Palestinian people. What the president was doing was to lay out a vision of where we might be, should we be able to encourage the parties to get back into a process that leads to a permanent peace in the Middle East. And in that vision, he does see an Israeli state, our good friend Israel, that is secure, where it is fully recognized and accepted that Israel has the right to exist within secure borders, where terrorism has been wiped out as a factor in the Middle East, and where the Palestinian people have a state in which they can determine their own fate and their own future.
MR. RUSSERT: Do you think you’ll see a Palestinian state in your lifetime?
DR. RICE: I certainly hope that I will see a Middle East in my lifetime in which the Palestinian people and the Israeli people, as well as other neighbors of Israel, live in peace, live in an environment in which prosperity and economic development are what we would be sitting here talking about: trade, the ability to have better lives for people. I think that that’s a vision that we all have to hope can come in the lifetime, and I will tell you, I think it’s a vision that will be within reach.
MR. RUSSERT: We have asked the Russians, under leadership of President Putin, to modify the ABM, Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, so we can have testing for our missile defense system. President Putin thus far has said no. Will we go forward unilaterally with testing and withdraw from the ABM Treaty?
DR. RICE: Well, in fact, the nature of the conversation between President Putin and President Bush was something like the following. The Russians continue to believe that the ABM Treaty is an element of the new security framework. President Bush continues to believe that the ABM Treaty-we need to move beyond it; that it is both a relic of the Cold War and, therefore, codifying a relationship that no longer exists, and that it is an impediment to a robust testing and development program.
The discussions between the presidents acknowledged that difference, but it also acknowledged that this is a very broad relationship with Russia. They made great progress on a number of fronts, including agreeing, in a matter of months, to simply change the nature of our offensive forces to eliminate large numbers of warheads and to bring the size of our nuclear forces into line with something that is more in line with the post-Cold War era. This was a tremendous breakthrough. They will continue to talk about the ABM Treaty, but the president has also made very clear that he intends to move forward with the robust testing and development program because it is his obligation to make sure that his successors are not put in a position where we cannot defend ourselves against the now-increasing, ubiquitous technologies associated with missile defense.
MR. RUSSERT: What’s our timetable? If President Putin is still not agreeing to do this by the end of next year, will we have gone forward with the tests?
DR. RICE: Tim, we’re continuing to assess the situation. We’re continuing to look with the Russians at what we might do. But the time is coming where our testing programs will start to bump up against the constraints of the treaty. We’re not going to violate the treaty, and that means that, one way or another, we’re going to have to move beyond the ABM Treaty.
MR. RUSSERT: Two years ago, at a speech at the Ronald Reagan Library, then-Governor Bush said that Russia was “guilty of excusing-we cannot excuse Russian brutality in Chechnya.” Does the president still believe that the Russian government is committing brutality in Chechnya?
DR. RICE: The president has been very clear with President Putin that the United States continues to be concerned about human rights and minority rights in Chechnya. As we’ve talked about the war on terrorism, we’ve been very careful to say that not every religious objector or freedom fighter is a terrorist. Now, it is clear and true that within Chechnya, there are some members of al-Qaeda, and the president called upon the Chechen leadership to get rid of these terrorist elements among it. Any legitimate leadership cannot associate with terrorists. But we have not been shy in talking with President Putin about the importance of a political solution to Chechnya and about the importance of respecting human rights.
MR. RUSSERT: A lot of concern about nuclear weapons falling into the wrong hands. Congress approved a Nunn-Lugar bill after former Senator Sam Nunn, current Senator Richard Lugar, which would monitor just where the nuclear materials in Russia are going. Your administration cut that program by $1 million. In light of what has happened since September 11, will you reinstate that funding?
DR. RICE: That funding was not cut. We have, in fact, been very supportive of the Nunn-Lugar program. All the way back in the campaign, the president talked about perhaps even increasing funding for programs of this kind. We did a review of the programs. We believe a number of them are extremely important and are working very, very well. We want to reorganize some. But most importantly, the money is a function of the spend factor. The money is a function of how much money is needed in any given year to actually carry out the programs that are planned. So this is a budget actual, if you will, not a cut in funding.
MR. RUSSERT: But you will continue to invest in that program?
DR. RICE: We believe this is a very important program. In fact, President Putin and President Bush again committed to the importance of these kinds of programs in their summit.
MR. RUSSERT: The president issued an executive order about a military tribunal to hold a, in fact, hearing, trial, if you will, for terrorists. Let me show you what William Safire, who’s not a bleeding- heart liberal, had to say about this. And I’ll put it on the screen for you and our viewers: “...a president of the United States has just assumed what amounts to dictatorial power to jail or execute aliens.
Intimidated by terrorists and inflamed by a passion for rough justice, we are letting George W. Bush get away with the replacement of the American rule of law with military kangaroo courts.”
Safire goes on: “...His kangaroo court can conceal evidence by citing national security, make up its own rules, find a defendant guilty even if a third of the officers disagree, and execute the alien with no review by any civilian court. No longer does the judicial branch and an independent jury stand between the government and the accused. In lieu of those checks and balances central to our legal system, non- citizens face an executive that is now investigator, prosecutor, judge, jury and jailer or executioner. In an Orwellian twist, Bush’s order calls this Soviet-style abomination, ‘a full and fair trial.’”
And even Wes Pruden of the Washington Times, a conservative columnist, said: ”[It’s] cynical to pretend that a military tribunal is justice under the law. Rigging a jury is beneath a president of the United States.
Conservatives, who preach mighty sermons about reverence for tradition, principle and values, should scream louder than anyone else.”
DR. RICE: This is an option that the president wants to have at his disposal in unusual and extraordinary and extreme circumstances. There is every belief in the administration that there may be times when it is appropriate to use the judicial system as we know it. But let’s be realistic about what happened here on September 11. We now know that for a number of years, there were people who were coming into this country from other countries-some of them among the types of these very Arab fighters that we’ve been talking about holding out in place like Kunduz-who were coming into this country for the express purpose of killing Americans. This is more like what Franklin Roosevelt faced in the 1940s with the Germans who were coming into this country to do the same.
Now, under certain circumstances-and I want to emphasize extraordinary circumstances, probably limited circumstances-the president wants an option that does not take this kind of case into our normal court system. In our normal court system, the potential compromise of information, as you’re trying to disrupt other terrorist cells, would clearly be a concern for the president, for the American people. It is the American president’s responsibility to try and protect the American people. We’re learning that we are open to a kind of attack that I think none of us ever imagined. This is simply an option for the president in extreme circumstances with people who came into this country with the express purpose of killing Americans, not for reasons of money or the like, but because we are Americans, because they resent what we stand for, and because they’d like to bring down our way of life. These are extreme circumstances.
MR. RUSSERT: Some observers have said when the World Trade Center was first attacked in 1993, those terrorists were put on trial in an American court, 10 found guilty. Timothy McVeigh, who blew up the Oklahoma building, put on trial, convicted, sentenced to death; that the whole war on terrorism is a war to protect our way of life, our system of justice and we should protect and defend it; that we don’t need a military tribunal. Let our system of justice stand and speak for itself.
DR. RICE: But I think you don’t want to start adjusting our system of justice to deal with the fact that, for instance, in an ongoing circumstance, where you may be dealing with people who’ve been caught but who are still connected to others who are sitting out there in cities of America carrying out attacks or intending to carry out attacks, you wouldn’t want to compromise the ability to go after them by what might be found out in a trial of law. This, again, is an extreme circumstance. It would be used in extreme circumstances. The president is simply trying to give himself an option to protect the American people by continuing to disrupt these terrorist cells of foreigners who came to this country with the express purpose of killing Americans.
MR. RUSSERT: I now have even a more profound respect for your views, Dr. Rice, when I read Glamour magazine this month. And let me show you what it said. Right there. “Five things you don’t know about me. I love to shop. On a Sunday after MEET THE PRESS, don’t be surprised if you see me at the mall.”
DR. RICE: That’s right.
MR. RUSSERT: You have your priorities straight. Let me tell you.
DR. RICE: That’s right. I’m going to be headed there soon, Tim.
MR. RUSSERT: After MEET THE PRESS.
DR. RICE: After MEET THE PRESS.
MR. RUSSERT: And also, when you were here last, you said the two teams in the Super Bowl would be the St. Louis Rams and the Denver Broncos. Rams are 7-and-1; Broncos 5-and-4.
DR. RICE: It’s a long season still to go.
MR. RUSSERT: You’re staying on the Broncos.
DR. RICE: I’m staying on the Broncos.
MR. RUSSERT: Your Cleveland Browns are playing the Baltimore Ravens today.
DR. RICE: Cleveland by seven.
MR. RUSSERT: A wager.
DR. RICE: I don’t wager, Tim.
MR. RUSSERT: What could I have-if the Ravens win, how about one free national security briefing for me.
DR. RICE: You’ve got it.
MR. RUSSERT: Dr. Condoleezza Rice, thank you very much.
Coming next: three men who’ve traveled the world to report on Islam: Bernard Lewis of Princeton University, Tom Friedman of The New York Times, Ahmed Rashid, author of “Taliban.” They are all next right here on MEET THE PRESS.
(Announcements)
MR. RUSSERT: And we are back. Welcome all. Tom Friedman, let me start with you. What’s going through the minds of the Taliban right now?
MR. THOMAS FRIEDMAN: What’s going through the minds of the Taliban right now is I think saving their personal lives. I think the Taliban regime and experience is finished. And I think now what basically is probably going through their minds is these are largely from the Pashtun ethnic group within Afghanistan and Pakistan and the idea is how can they melt back into being Pashtuns, and possibly take a new place within Afghanistan’s new order as Pashtuns, but no longer as Taliban. I think the Taliban experience is basically over.
MR. RUSSERT: Ahmed Rashid, you wrote a article last week which I want to read for you and our viewers on the screen: “Although the Taliban were prepared to retreat in their ethnic heartland in southern Afghanistan once the going got tough, they badly underestimated American bombing power, the determination of the opposition Northern Alliance and their vast unpopularity among the Afghan population. The result has been a rout rather than a tactical retreat.”
And let me show you something, Ahmed, that you wrote in August of 2000. And this is uncanny. This is a year ago: “There is a very strong anti-Taliban mood building up within the whole population, especially the Pashtoon population,” that Tom just talked about in southern Afghanistan, “because of the terrible food, water and job situation-much more now than when the Taliban took over major cities like Kabul. In cities like Kandahar, which they have ruled for six years now, nothing has been done, and public frustration is growing.”
Pretty insightful, Ahmed, and in your mind, one of the reasons that the Taliban collapsed so quickly?
MR. AHMED RASHID: Yes, certainly. I mean, I think you-we’ve been hearing about the peoples’ complaints about the Taliban for several years. And also, I might add, I wrote two years ago about-in Foreign Affairs, about the role of the Arabs and how the Afghans were getting fed up with being bossed around by the Arab contingent under bin Laden, and how many Afghans were telling me at that time that, in fact, they thought that al-Qaeda was running the Taliban rather than the other way around. So this is a process that’s been going on for quite some time. It’s not something that just started on September the 11th.
MR. RUSSERT: Dr. Rice just said that there was, in fact, an occupying force in Afghanistan, as you mentioned, al-Qaeda, members from the Arab states, from Pakistan, mercenaries, if you will, who came into Afghanistan and appear to be the last forces willing to surrender. Is that your sense?
MR. RASHID: Yes. I mean, what we know about the Taliban holding out in Kunduz, I think the Afghan Taliban are trying to find a way to surrender, whereas the foreign fighters are resisting that and don’t want to surrender. They will want to fight till the end. And that’s probably the case in Kandahar.
We don’t know how many Arabs there are in Kandahar or Pakistani or Central Asian fighters, but they will also resist until the end. And I think, you know, Mullah Omar, the Taliban leader’s last statement where he talked about, you know, bringing America to its knees, the whole statement just reads like a handout from bin Laden. It doesn’t read like anything that I’ve ever read or heard from Mullah Omar before. And I think, you know, that points to the kind of influence now that bin Laden and this global jihadist ideology being spouted by bin Laden now has over the Taliban hard-core.
MR. RUSSERT: Do you believe Osama bin Laden is still in Afghanistan, and do you believe that he will be killed or captured?
MR. RASHID: Yes, he’s certainly in Afghanistan. I believe very strongly he is in southern Afghanistan.
And I think the coalition forces have probably narrowed down the area in which he is now. And I think he will be killed or captured within days, if not weeks, because what we have now is a popular uprising against the Taliban. Bin Laden and the Taliban hard-liners are now-cannot survive when the Pashtun population in the south has risen in revolt. They depended on the Taliban military, they depended on popular support to feed them, to house them, to give them sanctuary and to make them inconspicuous, if you like, from American satellites. That is now no longer the case. They are now very conspicuous because they are the enemy to the whole population.
MR. RUSSERT: Tom Friedman, what does a post-Taliban Afghanistan look like to you? And will people like Rabbani, the former president who came back to Kabul yesterday, or the former king, Zahir Shah, returning from Italy-what’s it look like?
MR. FRIEDMAN: It doesn’t look like the U.S. Congress, Tim. I think that it looks a little messy. You know, they say of Afghanistan it’s a country governed best when governed least, and I think the most we can hope for is a very loose federation of various ethnic groups-Tajiks, Uzbeks, Pashtuns and others, and warlords-and somehow loosely tied together with a central government in Kabul, hopefully assisted by the United Nations, maybe some Arab-Muslim peacekeeping troops. But all you basically need there is some kind of structure, Tim, reasonably coherent, that can assure that another Osama bin Laden cannot take root there and cannot hijack a government, the Afghan government, to perpetuate a terrorist war against the United States. We don’t need a lot, but we need that minimum structure.
MR. RUSSERT: Ahmed Rashid, in a post-Taliban Afghanistan, will the Northern Alliance accept the notion that it’s time to have a broad coalition government, and even though they “conquered” Kabul and some other cities, to the victors should not go the spoils, they have to hold back their ambitions and allow democracy to take hold?
MR. RASHID: Well, I believe now that the moderate faction in the Northern Alliance-that is, the faction led by the Tajiks, led largely by the commanders of the former assassinated commander Amachia Massoud-these are the people now who control Kabul, who control much of the northeast of the country and who are now going for the Taliban in Kunduz. These people do have a vision for the future. I think they’ve learned from the past, and I think, as Condoleezza Rice said, I think that they have done a good job, and they need international support to strengthen them, so that they can resist attempts by other factional leaders in the Northern Alliance, who would like to see a monopoly of power. I think this moderate faction is well aware that they have to build bridges to the Pashtuns; they have to build bridges across the region to all their neighbors, satisfy their neighbors’ demands that this will not be a one-sided regime.
So it’s going to be messy, as Tom said. I mean, it’s not going to be easy at all. It’s going to need a lot of hard work on the ground by the U.N., by the U.S. But I’m very optimistic because I think, you know, in the next few week, the next stage of this that we are going to see-the TV cameras are concentrating on all these men with guns, who are hanging out and taking over these cities. What you’re going to see in the next few weeks, I think, with Afghans going back home, with the NGOs and the U.N. humanitarian agencies coming back into the country, you’re going to see now people’s movements. You’re going to see citizens of the country, of the big cities, demanding an end to war, demanding peace and insisting upon the warlords that, you know, “We’ve had enough of this fighting, and we want you to settle your differences and put down your guns.”
You’re going to see a people’s movement in the next few weeks; I very confidently predict that. And I think that is going to put real pressure on these commanders and warlords that their time is up; that the time for fighting is up, and that they will have to now accommodate each other and find some kind of compromise.
MR. RUSSERT: We’re going to have to take a quick break. Will there be more Osama bin Ladens in the future? Tom Friedman visited some of the schools in Pakistan that helped create the Taliban. And Bernard Lewis has some very strong thoughts about the future of Islam, the future of the Middle East.
A lot more coming up right after this.
(Announcements)
MR. RUSSERT: What happens to the Middle East? What happens to future Osama bin Ladens? After this station break.
(Announcements)
MR. RUSSERT: And we are back. Bernard Lewis, you wrote an article in last week’s New Yorker in which you quoted Osama bin Laden from an interview he gave in 1998. Let me show you and put it on the screen. This is Osama speaking: “We have seen in the last decade the decline of the American government and the weakness of the American soldier, who is ready to wage cold wars and unprepared to fight long wars. This was proven in Beirut when the Marines fled after two explosions. It also proves they can run in less than twenty-four hours, and this was also repeated in Somalia...The youth were surprised at the low morale of the American soldiers. ...After a few blows, they ran in defeat. ...They forgot about being the world leader. ...[They] left, dragging their corpses and their shameful defeat.”
And, also, you talked about Osama bin Laden’s being emboldened by defeating the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. How important was it for the United States of America to show raw, brute military force against the Taliban?
PROF. BERNARD LEWIS: Well, I don’t like the word “brute” very much, but to show force, determination, I think, is absolutely crucial because hate has been there for centuries; that is not new.
What is new and dangerous is that the hatred is no longer mitigated by respect or limited by fear; that is the new situation. Two reasons; one is they are-well, let me go back a step.
In the past, there were always divisions within the Western camp. They could turn one against the other; and during World War II, to Nazi Germany; and during the Cold War, the Soviet Union. Now there is no other power. The United States is the sole superpower and the unchallenged leader of what they would call Christendom, or “the land of unbelief.”
Now, that means if they want to do anything, they have to do it themselves. This might, in itself, appear a daunting prospect, but they are encouraged by two things: one, what they see as their victory-not entirely without justification, their victory in driving the Russians out of Afghanistan in such a defeat that it was followed immediately by the breakup of the Soviet Union. They feel that they have done it to the fiercer and more dangerous of the two superpowers, it should be relatively easy to do it to the other.
And the other thing is their misreading-at least I hope it’s a misreading-of things that have happened.
For example, Somalia. As we see it in the Western world, this was a country enduring terrible internal troubles. We tried, as we do everywhere, to be helpful and sent in people to help them. When the intended beneficiaries of this mission of mercy proved murderously ungrateful, we thought, “Well, to hell with it. We’re going.” That is not how it’s seen there. This is seen as an imperialist enterprise.
MR. RUSSERT: You have a wonderful expression that when Americans say, “Well, that’s history, that means it’s all behind us,” when you say, “That’s history” in the Islamic world, it means...
PROF. LEWIS: Very different.
MR. RUSSERT: ...very different, referring to something specific.
PROF. LEWIS: And it is. Yeah.
MR. RUSSERT: Tom Friedman, you had a chance to go to the madrassas, the schools that teach people this militant view of Islam, if you will. Let me show you a clip from USA Today, which talking about the schools: “Peshawar, Pakistan-Morning at the Dar-ul-Uloom Haqquania madrassa, or religious school, begins with a prayer and a defiant chant. ‘Oh, Allah, defeat the enemies of Muslims and make Islam and the Taliban victorious over the Americans in Afghanistan,’ the 3,500 students say in unison in the school’s courtyard...”
“Ten of the Taliban’s 12 senior leaders studied here. Their pictures hang on the walls of the courtyard, next to that of Osama bin Laden. ...Tens of thousands of students at Pakistan’s 6,000 militant Muslim madrassas say they plan to go to Afghanistan to fight U.S. soldiers, attack bases in Pakistan that may host American forces or conduct suicide bomb attacks against U.S. targets if President Bush launches military action against bin Laden and the ruling Taliban militia in Afghanistan.”
That was way back in September before the bombing. Those schools are just bubbling over with future Osama bin Ladens. How do we turn that around? How do we get a real education curriculum in those schools?
MR. FRIEDMAN: Well, what’s happened in Pakistan, Tim, as in other countries in that region, is basically the public school system has collapsed. There were 3,000 of these or so madrassas back in the late 1970s, early ’80s. Now there’s an estimated 39,000 of them because they filled in the void. They provide food, clothing, housing and education, albeit a religious and very narrow education, for all these young boys. Of course, there aren’t any for girls. And how we break that-break into that circle is a huge issue. I’m not saying we need to export, you know, our textbooks to these people. People are entitled to whatever education they want.
But what is dangerous about these schools, I think, for these countries and for these societies is that they are not preparing people who are in any way capable or educated to deal with the modern world and deal with modernity. So, you know, my kind of motto is: We’ll get bin Laden, but these schools are what produces bin Ladenism, and bin Ladenism is produced by a vicious three-part cycle-authoritarian governments, poverty and anti-modernist religious education. And the three just constantly reinforce each other. And until we can break in at all three of these things, we’re going to have a lot more bin Ladenism to deal with.
MR. RUSSERT: Do you think if we are successful in eliminating the Taliban, the Pakistani government will be emboldened and try to close down these schools in their own country?
MR. FRIEDMAN: Oh, I would be careful about that. I think these are deeply, deeply rooted. I think they’re rooted in an interpretation of Islam today that is deeply, deeply rooted. And how one breaks into that, it requires something a lot deeper than a quick American victory in Afghanistan.
MR. RUSSERT: Let me turn to the Middle East and the Arab world. This was in The Washington Post on Friday: “Arab-language newspapers did not splash pictures of the newly unveiled faces of Afghan women flirting with fresh air and sunlight for the first time in years, nor did they focus on the sense of release felt by an Afghan boy flying a kite, an activity banned by the retreating Taliban militia.” Instead, they focused on the military campaign.
And this from The New York Times on Friday. And here’s the headline: “For Some Kuwaitis, the Ardor for America Cools. Gratitude in 1991, Resentment in 2001. Eight years ago, the al-Munaif family slaughtered sheep in tribute to one President Bush, as that leader was hailed as the liberator of Kuwait during a 1993 visit in which he basked in adulation. But by last year, when a son was born to Sara...the young woman did not hesitate to choose a name meant to send a very different signal to the West. The little boy is Osama, after Osama bin Laden. ‘We don’t like war,’ said Sara’s brother Fahad, 27. ‘But we have our red lines. It seems the Americans only want to support Israel and attack the Muslims. And if this is a war between Christians and Muslims, we ought to fight.’”
Ahmed Rashid, this is Kuwait. This is a country that the United States saved from Saddam Hussein, and yet, here we are in 2001, people naming their children after Osama bin Laden, America’s enemy. How do you explain that mind-set to an American audience?
MR. RASHID: Well, in Kuwait in particular-I mean, the Kuwaiti royal family during the Gulf War had promised all sorts of political and democratic and economic reforms, and they didn’t carry out any of them. And the U.S. did not put much pressure on them to do so. And, in fact, after the Gulf War, I think there was an enormous hope amongst the Arab people that the Arab regimes would be forced under international pressure to try and improve their performance both in government, you know, and towards democracy, having a freer press, etc., but none of that happened. And I think-you know, I mean, I’m not somebody who blames the West for that, although I think the U.S. did play a major role in preventing that happening because it just didn’t exert enough pressure.
But I think after the Gulf War there was a complete lack of introspection within the Arab regimes and the Muslim regimes. And I just hope that this war in Afghanistan and this fight against terrorism does lead to the kind of introspection that’s very necessary in the Muslim world about how we are governing ourselves, how the people are benefiting or not benefiting. I think, you know, this is really one of the crucial issues which has to be tackled. I think it is being tackled in some countries. I think that, for example, there’s a lot of introspections going on in Pakistan right now. You talked about the madrassas, but there’s another side to this picture where a lot of people are now questioning a lot of Pakistan’s failed policies in the past, the failure of earlier regimes. People are now demanding that aid and foreign aid should be directed to precisely what Tom said, education. I mean, we don’t want U.S. aid now to go to the military-more guns and tanks. We want U.S. aid to go to the educational system so that the public school system is rehabilitated.
MR. RUSSERT: Tom...
MR. RASHID: You know, I think these kinds of introspections are going on right now.
MR. FRIEDMAN: A Kuwaiti friend of mine said to me the other day, Tim, apropos of that quote, you know, he said, “We Arabs are very good at never forgetting what happened 1,000 years ago, but we can’t remember what happened 10 years ago.” Ten years ago, America liberated Kuwait. And one reason you have the kind of press coverage coming out of the Arab world about Afghanistan-that it’s all about America hitting civilians, not about, as Ahmed has pointed out and other, that this was the liberation basically of Afghanistan from the grip of a really totalitarian philosophy and group-it’s because if they reported about Afghanistan that way, well, then they’d have to report about Iraq that way and maybe about Saudi Arabia that way, maybe about Egypt that-maybe that same kind of flourishing of desire for freedom and women’s emancipation and opportunity lurks in every one of those societies, as well.
MR. RUSSERT: Bernard Lewis, this is exactly the theme that you’ve been tackling in your life and have a new book coming out in January. Let me show you something you wrote. This is in The Philadelphia
Inquirer: “For vast numbers of Middle Easterners, Western-styled economic methods brought poverty, Western-style political institutions brought tyranny, even Western-style warfare brought defeat...It’s hardly surprising that so many would be willing to listen to voices telling them that the old Islamic ways are the best and that their only salvation was to throw aside the pagan and infidel innovations of the reformers and return to the True Path which God prescribed for his people.”
But then you offer a formula in your new book, and this is terribly important and here it is: “If the peoples of the Middle East continue on their present path, the suicide bomber may become a metaphor for the whole region, and there will be no escape from a downward spiral of hate and spite, rage and self- pity, poverty and oppression, culminating sooner or later in yet another alien domination. ...If they can abandon grievance and victimhood, settle their differences, and join their talents, energies, and resources in a common, creative endeavor, then they can once again make the Middle East, in modern times as it was in antiquity and in the Middle Ages, a major center of civilization. For the time being, the choice is their own.”
Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, you believe that they have to look inward, be introspective, as Ahmed has been saying and Tom’s been saying.
PROF. LEWIS: I think they have to-and it’s-I concede right away that it is an extremely difficult task.
If I may go back to the point you made about the failure of all these attempts. For a long time now there has been a realization, particularly in this very historically minded society, that things have gone very badly. The first reaction to their awareness that the West was, in every way, more successful was to try and find out “What are the secrets of Western success?” and to adopt them, and as I pointed out in the passage which you quoted, they all went wrong. They adopted Western military methods and have suffered even more crushing defeats than before. They tried to adopt Western economic methods, both capitalist and socialist, and neither of them worked. You have an appalling level of poverty, and all the economic indicators are among the worst in the world. They tried to adopt Western political models, and the only ones that have really been acclimatized is the single-party dictatorship. I mean, the Ba’ath, which rules in Syria and in Iraq, different branches of it, clearly show the influence of the Nazi Party and the Soviet Communist Party.
So it’s not surprising that there is a strong reaction against modernization. Now, there are two ways of looking at this. One is better modernization, authentic modernization with real freedom, not just the word “freedom,” which is very much used. The other-that is, I would say, the way of the Turkish republic and modernizers in other countries in the region. The other way is that of the people who say, “Well, this whole experiment in modernization has been a disaster. All our troubles have fallen upon us because we followed the ways of pagans and infidels, and the remedy is a return to our own authentic past.” Now, this is the line of the Wahabis since the 18th century.
MR. RUSSERT: And it was the line of the Taliban.
PROF. LEWIS: Well, they’re an offshoot of the Wahabis.
MR. RUSSERT: Right.
PROF. LEWIS: The Wahabis were a Saudi Arabian group liberally funded, thanks to oil revenues, who set up schools and centers in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and now increasingly in the former Soviet republics of Central Asia.
MR. RUSSERT: Let me ask Tom Friedman a question. Will these governments take on Bernard Lewis’ formula and modernize themselves in a real way with real freedom and, two, would Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan support American attack on Saddam Hussein to rout him out?
MR. FRIEDMAN: Well, on the first question that both Bernard and Ahmed-you know, the need for these governments for some looking in the mirror. Unfortunately, what they’ve been doing is taking the mirror, Tim, and using it to reflect all the wrath of their own people into our eyes. That’s what they’ve been doing with the mirror, basically. And until that stops, until-I mean, if you read the Arab press and you read what they say about commentators like Ahmed or Bernard or myself who raise these questions, actually try to raise them in a sensitive way because we believe that the potential of Arab-Muslim people will never be realized under these kind of regimes, it’s nothing but venom and wrath directed at people who raise that. Until it comes from the U.S. government at the highest level, it doesn’t happen.
As for Iraq, I think it’s very much on the agenda, not just because we won in Afghanistan or so far have won. I think the most telling thing about what’s happened in Afghanistan, Tim, is what Ahmed pointed out, the sense of liberation.
MR. RUSSERT: Yeah.
MR. FRIEDMAN: We liberated these people and we should be aware of that, and I have to believe the same attitude would happen in Iraq.
MR. RUSSERT: To be continued.
PROF. LEWIS: May I...
MR. RUSSERT: We’re just out of time, Professor Lewis. I’m sorry. Tom Friedman, Ahmed Rashid, thank you so much.
We’ll be right back after this. |
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