The following is an abbreviated version of an interview that ran on the NPR affiliate KUSP on Monday, September 17th, 2001 on KUSP. Edmund Burke III is a professor of history at the University of California at Santa Cruz

E.S.: Good Morning and welcome to continued special programming here on KUSP as we continue and expand our coverage and conversation about the week of September 11th, 1001, a week that's really changed a great deal in America. We hope to make it a lot more than just an American focus for the next hour as I'll be joined with Edmund Burke, Professor of History at University of California at Santa Cruz.

We are here to talk about some of the international issues, the foreign policy issues, the security issues, and the historical issues that I think demand all of our attention in the wake of the worst terrorist incident this country has ever seen. This has been a rather protected country over the last 225 years. Probably we have not seen violence like this on our shores since the British burned the White House in 1814 near the talk end of the war of 1812. I want to welcome to this conversation someone I respect a great deal. He is Professor Edmund Burke also known as Terry. Throughout this interview I will refer to you as Terry. Thanks for being here.

T.B: It's a pleasure.

E.S.: I want to start out with a banner that I think has been reproduced in newspapers and television stations all over the country from a protest yesterday at a rally in Islamabad, Pakistan. It's a giant poster that says, "Americans think. Why are you hated all over the world?" I'm not necessarily believing that Americans are hated all over the world, but if we are to respond to this tragedy and understand it better, we need to understand why, at least in some places, we are hated.

T.B: I think that is an appropriate place to start Eric, because in the wake of this tragedy that has just ensued and all of the complicated emotions that it brings forward, one of the things that also should come forward (in addition to the anger and the rage and the fear and the various other emotions that we are all feeling) is what on earth is going on? Why are these people so angry? Why would somebody fly an airplane into the twin towers? What would make them so angry and so single-minded of purpose that they would do that? That is the question that is just mind boggling. I don't begin to think I have a complete answer to that, but I do have some perspectives and would like to offer a few of them now.

E.S.: In doing that can I ask you we were all shocked by what happened last Tuesday. Perhaps asking if you were surprised by it is different than asking if you were shocked.

T.B: Well, on one hand I was absolutely blind-sided by it... I could not see this thing coming. On the other hand, in the world that we live, such a thing is always possible. And indeed, as is often the case, Hollywood has been there first. There actually have been movies in which the idea of flying a 747 into the Twin Towers is one of the plot items. So certainly it was out there.

E.S.: Maybe that's where the idea came from. What we have been focusing on is a particular candidate, Osama bin Laden. We could spend some time talking about him which could be useful, but I would suspect that you have a sense that this story is bigger than that.

T.B: Well I think it is. Let's say a little about bin Laden first because maybe not everyone has been following this from the beginning. He is somebody who comes from a family of middle class people in Yemen. His dad moved to Saudi Arabia and became close to the corridors of power, the Saudi monarchy. He made a considerable fortune as a contractor and go between. So young Osama grew up in the lap of luxury. In Saudi Arabia he became a businessman of his own. If we stop the career right there, which is up to about the late 70's, it would be a perfectly normal biography of a Saudi businessman. And then, something happens. One something that happens is the Islamic revolution in Iran. Bin laden being a Sunni Muslim and not a Shiite would not have been in favor of that. I don't know that we have any information about what he did think. But the more important thing that happens in the immediate neighborhood is the implosion of Afghanistan following a coup by a communist group that was supported by the Soviet Union, and the decision by the U.S., Pakistan and Saudi Arabia to begin to support the Afghan resistance which was known as the Mujahideen. Bin laden made himself very useful. He had a number of contacts. He had a university education so he is someone who has modern sector skills and abilities that were quite useful to the CIA and to the Pakistani security forces, the ISI. He proceeded to make himself quite ubiquitous. Gradually he evolved into a central player in the support of the opposition to the Soviet backed group in Afghanistan.

E.S.: Was he on the CIA payroll? Do you know?

T.B: There seems to be some evidence that, in fact, he was a CIA asset as they say. That is to say he was on the payroll. That is something that should make us pause for a moment. If we think back to the first Twin Towers attempt back in 1993, when a group of mostly middle eastern origin people sought to blow up the Twin Towers with a fertilizer bomb very similar to the one McVeigh was to use a little bit later on in Oklahoma City. The spiritual leader of this little group of Muslims that pulled of the first Twin Towers episode and many of the participants were also people who were veterans of the Afghan affair and had been in close association with elements of the CIA. This is what the CIA calls blowback - the unintended consequences of interventions and actions.

E.S.: Of course it is a strange odyssey going from a CIA asset to someone who is completely opposed to this country. I gather that one of the things that happened was the stationing of troops on Saudi Arabian soil. This infuriated him perhaps as much as anything that happened in Israel and Palestine itself.

T.B: I think one of the things we need to try and make some distinctions between is that the suicide bombings that are going on have been going for a while now in Israel, and originated first really following the Israel intervention in Lebanon in 1982. That is the first time we see suicide bombings. It does not previously exist as a tactic for Muslims. Kidnappings, hijackings those kinds of things were the more appropriate kinds of tactics. There the purpose was to negotiate. With a suicide bombing it is not about negotiating. So, that tactic develops in Lebanon and then it undergoes some important transformations and becomes globalized and modernized in the horrific form we have just seen. What is going on in Palestine is very specifically connected to the dynamics of that conflict and the Twin Towers episode, while it may posit or hold out as part of the justification for it, continued Israel dominance and oppression of the Palestinian people. Nonetheless it is really not so much about that at all. Note, for example, that I believe up until now no Palestinian has been among those arrested. Those who have been arrested or were part of those that were on the plane, whose biographies we are beginning to know a little bit about now, all of those people, with the exception of maybe one or two, come from countries that were American allies during the Gulf War.

E.S.: Like United Arab Emirates?

T.B: Right, and Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

E.S.: Bin laden is seen as the prime suspect and as I said we will not spend an entire hour talking about him, but understanding a little bit about him both because he may be the prime suspect and because I gather your sense is were we to capture bin laden, this story does not end.

T.B: Exactly. It's a loose affiliation of individuals some of whom are wealthy and a particular sort of religious fanatic. Some of them are in the Arab Gulf. Others live in Pakistan. They can be found all over the world in fact. They are people that have modern skills. They could have all held jobs in the United States economy. They are middle class people. It is not a bunch of guys working at a pizza parlor and grumping around the back end of some kind of street front mosque in Brooklyn as in the Twin Towers one. Now we have moved up the social ladder.

E.S.: Another difference with the suicide bombings in Israel and the West Bank it that we see many desperate young men quite often from refugee camps.

T.B: That's right and what is so striking and diabolical about some of the stories that we are getting on who these people are is that some of them in Florida were living with their families and kids and taking kids to soccer practice. Then, all of a sudden, the families are sent away on the second of September.

E.S.: And, they prepare for their death.

T.B: Yes, there's so much to reflect on here.

E.S.: It's no accident that bin Laden has been in Afghanistan. He is integrally linked with the Taliban and the spiritual leader, a man by the name of Omar, is a good friend and supporter.

T.B: That is correct.

E.S.: This will raise some questions as we have heard our President and in fact our whole government vow to go after any who shelter terrorists as being equally culpable to terrorists themselves. This is going to raise questions as to who is our enemy.

T.B: That is right. Are we going to war against 1.2 billion Muslims? How do we want to explain to the world who it is exactly we are after? How do we avoid in the process destabilizing a somewhat fragile world economy and particularly fragile political system? The state of Pakistan is a state that is held together by chewing gum and bailing wire. It is a very weak enterprise. And the coalition of generals that have just caved into U.S. demands, very likely some of them have mental reservations about exactly how far they will travel down this path and what kinds of passive resistance they are going to put in place. The thing could eventually fall apart. We're talking about a country of 160 million people.

E.S.: In other words we could see the disintegration of Pakistan as a consequence of our insistence that if you are not with us you are against us?

T.B: Exactly. That's one of the delicate little games that needs to be thought about as we're doing this. The metaphor of war strikes me in many ways as unsuitable to this. In the case of a war, we are talking about conflicts between states. In this case, it is not a conflict between states-- it's a shadowy world of fanatics that are in touch with each other via the internet but could be anywhere. There don't have to be that many of them. Nor do they have to possess highly sophisticated arms. Again we have seen that it is possible to hijack planes with the most surprising things.

E.S.: Exacto knives.

T.B: Yes.

E.S.: Along with that, as to who the terrorists are, is the question do we have a national security complex and leaders who can see this as the new paradigm or are they still stuck a little bit in the Cold War?

T.B: Well that is what I was saying, the metaphor of war, like the drug war -- is this an appropriate way of talking about what requires a whole lot more precision and recognition of the complex layers of contexts that these people are imbedded in? So sophisticated police intervention, police action in the primary sense of that term, not police action as in undeclared American wars, but police as in gathering information and identifying who the bad guys are and bringing them to justice---- that's the kind of thing I think needs to happen. And, stiffening the resolve of countries like Pakistan and others that have permitted the proliferation of all sorts of groups in their territories. In part I guess it's the weakness of the Pakistani State that this has happened there. But, it's also a consequence of the way in which the role of Pakistan in the whole Afghan affair played out.

E.S.: Well, Pakistan has been a full supporter of the Taliban up until now. Are Taliban's clerics?

T.B: Well the word Taliban means student and it's a traditional word in an islamic context for someone who is usually a young man who goes to study at the feet of a more experienced scholar and learn about the quaran and learn about the Islamic law and so on. The Taliban is the plural, meaning 'students.' It comes out of a world that pre-exists the coup that happened in 1978 in Afghanistan -- before the country blows up and the Soviets intervene and then we intervene and so on. The madrasas were a way in which this predominantly rural and tribal society, which was Afghanistan at that time, generated its own local elites. They would come throught the madrasas which are the Islamic schools. These students would study with one teacher or another over the early portion of their lives. Eventually they might get a job in some small village school and that would be their fate and their fortune. Then toward the end of the Afghan mobilization, after the CIA had been involved for some time, the Taliban emerge as a military group. Now we are talking about armed students, who are closely associated with the ISI, the Security Installation Services of Pakistan, and who are seen by some observers at least in part a kind of Pakistani effort to create a reliable instrument that will bring order in Afghanistan and an end to the civil war that errupts in 1992 after the collapse of the Soviet Union and its withdrawal from Afghanistan. So there is a big civil war in the 90's that happens in Afghanistan. That disturbs the Pakistani leadership who in part helped to generate some of the chaos that was going on. But they then began to think that this could blow back into Pakistan. We can say to some extent it did, and therefore we (Pakistan) must bring order. So, the Taliban are in part to be understood in the interests of certain elements of the security establishment of Pakistan. As a way of sort of cooling off stuff in Afghanistan and creating a state out of the rubble that was left after the mujahideen and the civil war that ensued thereafter.

E.S.: My follow up question: Is there a paradigm of some sort in this? We support an emerging group because we want an anti-communist state. The emerging group may or may not be prone to democratic ideals, and in fact we find again and again we have been supporting regimes post WWII around the world that really weren't interesetd in democracy or ideas of peace and justice. But the dominant rule is that if you're against communism, you're on our side; we will support you. We really don't care how you go about your business. We don't care how bloody you are. We don't care how repressive you are. Perhaps I am being a little overdramatic and simplifying but I suspect not too much.

T.B: I think there's an element of truth in that, and we're not just talking about the Middle East. We're talking about a bipartisan foreign policy in this country, at least since the end of the Vietnam war. You could even go back further still ---we could see the Vietnam war as one more instance of this...

E.S.: It seems we are getting one of the answers to the question of why Americans are hated. Well maybe it's who we decided to support.

T.B: I think a lot of it has to do---and this has come out in a lot of the commentary we have been hearing about on the tv and radio in the past few days---that there is a sense that some of the objectives of the people (who flew these planes in these diabolical ways into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon) had to do with trying to effect change in their homelands by weakening American resolve, and by weakineng American control in their own countries. So from the point of view of many Saudis, the Gulf War ---which perhaps they may initially favored since it was a threat to the territorial integrity of Saudi Arabia and potentially the regime--- nonetheless had the unfortunate side effect of bringing American troops into Saudi territoy for the very first time. In at least a publicly acknowledged way. We had had secret bases there before that time but now it was open and out. And that provoked outpourings of rage on the part of some Saudi clerics.

E.S.: Because of the holiness of some of the sights in Saudi Arabia?

T.B: Partly. There is a sense of defilement or potential defilement of the holy places.

E.S.: Though Americans were never in Mecca or Medina.

T.B: And, were, in deed, based very far away from it. So what is this about really. I think, in part, what it is about is a sense of the pollution of the presence of aspects of American life that many of these people find very abhorrent. So it's sexual permisiveness, it's corruption -- well whose to point fingers there?-- and other aspects. And it's very complex because many of the same people who detest the U.S. are quick to go out and buy VCRs and all the latest technological stuff and in other ways are very admiring of many aspects of American sociey. So it is very complex.

E.S.: If I've ever seen a love-hate relationship, it's about this country. While we are setting up phone calls I would like to turn to one of your areas of real expertise which is Israel and its conflict with Palestine. There is bound to be some huge implications in what happened on September 11th on this. Already I am hearing several things many Israelis --while mourning the loss of life in the tragedy here -- are saying. Perhaps Americans now understand understand how we are living. It has been argued by some on the Palestinean side that Israel is using this as a pretext for less negotiation, further intervention, more conflict. Any truth in that?

T.B: Well, I think that the perespectives of the Palestinians and the Israelis are as you characterize them. How the U.S. will play this is one of the trickier aspects of putting together a coalition that will make it possilbe to -- in a sustained way -- have a 'war against terrorists.' As was the case in the Gulf War, I think we have already begun to see a few signs of separation at the level of policy between American policy in this newly delcared war on terrorism and our close connection with Israel. As in the Gulf War we basically told Israel to sit down and let us handle it. I think there is an instinct now in the foreign policy elite to begin perhaps to take a little distance from Israel -- quite the opposite in some ways from the expectations of some of the Israelis that you metion -- and to begin to become a little more even-handed toward the Palestinians. To try again in a more whole-hearted way perhaps to regenerate those deeply undermined peace talks. If we don't do that, we won't be able to keep together the coalition, and if we can't keep the coalition together, then the legitimacy of American intervention in this arena is going to be deeply undermined to the existing goverments that support us.