it grew quite rapidly through the 30s and 40s -- 30's and 40's. it was mainly at that time, ironically enough because things changed later, but at that time, it was mainly a, an urban organization. it was especially popular with the urban lower middle classes. they were either artisans or workmen of various sorts. it was said back in the 40's if you have really a lot of trouble finding a plumber in cairo, like joining the muslim brotherhood and you'll never want for a plumber. and then there were people who joined who had an education of a modern sort, but in arabic. they didn't know french or english, but they weren't, they weren't lacking for an

education. and many of those joined. and as the movement grew, it was an authoritarian movement. you weren't allowed to be in the muslim brotherhood and say publicly well this idea about x, it's a limit loony toons. you'd be thrown out. not only thrown out if you defied the authority structures of of this organization, but the memoirs that i've read. social control mechanism of some religious groups, there's some peace churches in the united states that engage in shunning and so shunning is like people just stop talking, we were best

friends and over at their house, and they'll just cut you off without a further by your lease. and not only cut you off, but they might cut off anybody insisting on remaybing in touch with -- remaining in touch with you. and the shunning is again, it's a sign of a controlling kind of organization, and i would say in my definition, it's a cult-like behavior. and the word cult is controversial in social science because some sociologists of religion consider it pa jortive and want top avoid it so they talk about new religious movements. i in social science, you can always use a word as long as you define it properly. and i define a cult as an organization that's characterized by high demands for obedience.

and commitment of time and resources. on the one hand. and by relatively distinctive believes and -- believes and practices, the mainstream society on the other. if you knew somebody who believed weird things and acted strangely, then you might not spend a lot of time with them. and so they'll be off on their own. and then if they also, you know, get a message from their supreme leader that they have to do the x because my leader told me to, again, that's isolating. and the more isolated they are, the more easy they are to manipulate and likely to obey the leader and some point. and they're afraid they'll lose all their friends and so forth.

so, i see the cult as a sociological formation, a set of social control mechanisms, characteristic of some religious organizations and also i think some political organizations are cult-like in the way that they arrange things. the brotherhood had an emphasis from its beginning on social reform. it founded schools, it had you know classes for women, and it had womens august zil ri, and its message was a kind of religious egyptian nationalism. so the british influence on egypt had been pernicious. egypt was poor and frankly they would have said, you know, not a danced or backward because it had been kept back by people

like lord kromer. literacy rates were low, most people were poor, and, but they would blame all that on the british form of government in egypt. and i have to say as a historian, they would have been completely wrong about that. there wasn't any substantial industrialization in egypt under the british, literacy rates were kept low deliberately and so on and so forth. and so that message of egyptian nationalism, but with inflected by a religious sense. resinated with a lot of people. and there are all kinds of estimates, you know, we don't have good social science statistics for mid-20th century egypt, but my best guess is by

the late 40s, they were probably half a million or so muslim brothers in egypt, or muslim brethren, because they were men and women, that this was in a population of 16, 17 million at the time. so that's a very significant group. and if you remember that they are mainly urban, then it's even more significant because they're a high proportion of urban population. at the time, most were rural. now, in the 1940s was the first time that we have proof of the brotherhood developing a terrorist wing. up until that point, it seemed to be, you know, a typical movement of religious reform. in 1942, because of world war ii and the british fears of the italians and the ultimately the germans in libya and the

possibility that the access might try to take the suez canal and it might even try go further east and get iraqi and iranian petroleum, because of the war wft allies in world war ii, the british thought it was important, i mean, it's not what they called it, but more or less they reoccupied egypt. they recolonized it. so they just installed a government favorable to them in 1942 and they, they then sent a lot of troops. a lot of austrailians and new zealanders among others. and the egyptians again, you know were in this period of discovering themselves and somewhat nationalistic and the idea of having all these foreign

troops suddenly in their country and having government switched out by british imperial decree was very distasteful to the nationalists and the religious nationalists among them and including the muslim brotherhood. so the brotherhood hated this period of reimposition of british presence in egypt. reminded them of all the things they hadn't liked from 1882 to 1922. in addition to which, during world war i, the british had issued the ball four declaration which argued for a jewish homeland in palestine and when the british conquered palestine and was awarded to the british as a mandate by the league of nations, the british opened it to jewish immigration, mainly at

that time from europe and russia. the british balfur declaration said it would not inconvenience the palestinians. so, you know, this policy was a mishmash and destined to cause all kinds of trouble which of course it did. the muslim brotherhood among all egyptian political forces was most invested in stopping this pros. and during the '30s, an kpmpl of how history looking different upon where you are in the world. during the '30s with the rise of the fascists in europe and a very anti-semitism which, you know, began with people being

fired from their jobs then you had crystal meth, then the attack on jewish shops in germany, and ultimately then in the '40s the holocaust. so from the point of view of world jew ri and the 1930s and of anybody who cared about human rights was really important that some place be found that they could escape to from these predators. and the british having made these pledges in the balfur declaration opened palestine to jewish declaration, although not steadily because there was pushback from the palestinians and it changed over time. but from the point of view of the palestinian population and their supporters like the muslim brotherhood. there were foreigners coming in, it was like from their point of view, illegal aliens and taking

jobs and taking land and displacing people. and so the brotherhood not only was upset about egypt being more or less reopened by the british, but also upset that the same british were displacing or menacing their palestinian brethren. and there were actually muslim brothers who went and fought as volunteers in 1948 when war broke out between the israelis and the palestinians. so during the '40s, the brotherhood leadership appears to have decided that this was, the situation was intolerable, they would get the british right back out of egypt and they would do so by terrorism. and by terrorism i mean a political tactic of putting

pressure on people politically. by engaging in violence, including, especially violence against non-combatants, against civilians. and in the '90s, at least this was in the u.s. federal code, this definition of terrorism. it's a non-state group. it's a group that just like appointed themselves, right. nobody elected them, they don't have any particular standing web and they decide to deploy violence to get their political project through, and the violence that they deploy is, is deployed against non-dpat tants, against civilians. so they developed training camps in the desert, the egyptian desert leading to libya was isolated and had smuggling routes and so forth. that was a great place to put a training camp. they taught young men how to

deal with dynamite, thousand make a timer, detonator, all those sorts of things. how to use a rifle. and they began then staging attacks inside egypt, inside cairo, and alexandria, and elsewhere on a british soldiers, on egyptian officials and on jewish shops because at the time, egypt had a small, but substantial jewish population and they were targeted by the brotherhood. now, at the time that this was happening, it was not known who was behind these incidents. and it was a judge in alexandria and a case came to him of a altercation between a british sailor and an egyptian and he ruled for the sailor for the foreigner, and the brotherhood like shot him dead. it wasn't known who was doing this, and it just looked like

well there's a lot of crime these days. there's incidents. but the british, you know, had a pretty good intelligence system and the british archive there began to be suspicions that there was an organized group behind this. and so then in the fall of 1948, a car or a jeep was driving erratically with two young men in it, and the police stopped them and they searched the car and the glove compartment, they found documents from the brotherhood instructing them to carry out operations. and then there was like explosives in the trunk. so this was a smoking gun, they finally realized there's something in the brotherhood that's directed this stuff. and it was called the organization within the brotherhood that was involved in the terrorist operation was

called the secret apparatuses, or the secret service. and hadn't been known what was being secret at all. but now it came to light of day. and immediately as he understood this, prime minister muhammad in egypt outlawed the muslim brotherhood. now the thing i want to emphasize here is that most muslim brethren didn't know about the secret apparatus and weren't involved in terrorism. so the brotherhood was kind of like the layers of an onion. there were people on the outside of it who were sympathizers, then people closer called helpers, and, you know, strict inherents, and people around al-banna, the inside circle and on the way inside beyond anybody's preview was then the

secret apparatus. so the people on the outside, again you know they thought this is a nice organization, it makes schools and it has meetings and it's for egyptian independence and so forth. they didn't necessarily know. and i've had students come up in my class after this lecture and say my grandparents were members of the brotherhood, they weren't terrorists. that's almost certainly true. the terrorist ring of the brotherhood was a very small and specific group of people. but it seems to be impossible that hasan al-banna didn't know about it. the organization had a dual aspect. it had a terrorist wing, but also had a civilian wing. and there are many organizations like that, you know, not an

analogy here, but in the '80s, the irish republican army conducted violent operations in england, and yet there was a shinfane was the political wing. and when negotiations began, it was be, it was with the political wing. so having a political wing and a violent wing of a movement of that sort is not unusual. and i mean to say nothing about, you know, the rights or the wrongs of the situation in northern ireland. i'm simply giving the structure of the thing, and that was true of the brotherhood as well. when he forbade the brotherhood late in the that year, a brotherhood member assassinated him, killed him. and this is a really big event. the sitting prime minister of a major middle eastern country was assassinated by this group, or

at least by a member this group. and early in 1949, al-banna was standing outside the ymca in cairo and was killed. so these events are a little shadowy, but i presume that the egyptian secret police took revenge on al-banna for the assassination by rubbing him out. then the brotherhood is driven underground, it's an underground organization. and people have to stop meeting and deny they ever had anything to doed with it and so forth. 1952, young officers in egypt made a coup against the regime. the parliamentary regime in egypt was kind of game of big landlords, they had huge

haciendas, cotton farms on which the pesants work, extremely inequal society, a few thousand families on the good land. parliament was the big game, who was in parliament was the big landlords. of a few small industrialists and so forth. it was the elite. and much of the country were pesant sharecroppers or people without any power at all. and then this top elite was financially accused of corruption, and so the young officers made a coup. they felt they were betrayed in 1949 by the egyptian government because it had sent them to fight in the israel palestine war and had given them substandard equipment because of corruption, they sold off the good stuff. some of them, and hadn't backed

them properly. there was a lot of resentments in the officer core about the government. and then there was popular resentment, about his continued ties. because this government that existed in 1952 was still the same government that had been kind of put in by the british in '42, the waft party. there were riots in cairo in winter of '52, and in fact some of the city was burned over continued british, the continued british presence in the suez canal zone because the british owned the suez canal and had been an egyptian project in the 19th century, but in 1976, the british brought it for a song because the egyptian government had become very, very deeply in depth to european bondholders and needed to sell off assets. so egyptian nationalists really

minded that the suez canal was not british, it was not egyptian, that it was british, and they wanted to push the british back out of it. and there were riots about that. so the officers made a coup in 1952. and initially these young officers you know they had no grassroots. of a particular sort. and they, they banned political parties, but they were looking around for some group and society that might, you know, be reliable and be able to mobilize people and would support them. so initially they exempted the muslim brotherhood from their ban. they didn't athrow to operate as a political party, but they kind of lifted the prohibition on it and let it operate. well, it appears to be the case that the brotherhood, some of the brotherhood took this

situation not with a sense of relief that okay now we can organize again and the ban against us is dropped, but they were ambitious, and they said well gee, the officers made a coup and came to power, maybe that's what we should do. so they in 1954, muslim brother attempted to assassinate the leader of the military revolutionary command council. this was an unfortunate event for many reasons, for the brotherhood in particular, there may have been members of the brotherhood that didn't know about this. wouldn't have been in favor of it, but the particular people who carried it out brought a great deal of -- badness on the

wheel movement. moreover the attempt failed. so then the full rath of nasser was visited object muslim brotherhood. mass arrests, trials, people were jailed and some were tortured. it was a military government, so trying to kill the leader of it and then failing resulted in extremely unfortunate consequences. in the mid-'60s, nasser releesd most of these -- released most of the prisoners from brotherhood from prison. one memoir said that immediately they started talking about how could they kill nasser. so there were members of the group who seemed not to have

learned from their experiences. and one of the members who wasn't released and who was kind of idiolog of the more extreme wing of the muslim brotherhood was qutb. he developed a theory while he was in prison of the non-muslim state. sop he said you know abde abdel nasser, that seems like a muslim name. and there were a lot of people in government that seemed to have muslim names, but then they're jailing and torturing the real muslims who are the muslim brotherhood. how could that be? how could one muslim do that to another muslim? and the easy answer is, they're not really muslims. if they're behaving that way.

and he didn't bring up anything about, you know, like the brotherhood trying to kill nasser. he saw this as an unjustified persecution of the true believers. so he developed this theory which is in arabic is called tacfir of getting people who claim to be muslims, ex-communicating them if you will. this is not, this practice is not approved of in the tradition of sunni-islam and sunni law. sunni islam developed as a big tent tradition. so there were groups in early islam that, you know, in technical islam drinking alcohol is forbidden, and there were groups who said that somebody who drank habitually was not a muslim. would get thrown out of community. but this sunni-muslim point of

view on the whole by and large was that does someone claim to be a sunni muslim, from a sunni-muslim family and do they drink? do they tipple? well then they're a bad muslim. not that they're not muslim, just bad muslims. you find among the great sunni jurorists, one after another says that takfir or declaring someone not a muslim, we don't approve of. it would have to be an extreme case and so forth. but qutb went against that sunni tradition with an extremist view where he declared almost everybody who thought they were sunni-muslims to be not really muslim. and only, you know, the people who thought like him were actually. and moreover, he had taken on a

lot of id logical baggage, he uses the word vanguard, he thinks the muslims need a vanguard just as the learnenists did. there is no longer any muslim state, there's a capitolist state, soviet, communist state in the soviet union, but no muslim state anymore, there hasn't been for hundreds of years. so that's his goal is to emulate communism to make islam like communism, a political ideology to have vanguards, and he uses explicitly marks his terminology in this regard and take the thing over and makes an islamic state and to implement a kind of fundamentalist version of muslim law, and to declare people who don't go along with this to be not muslims and then, you know, if you claim to be a muslim and you're not a muslim, among some

medieval jurorist this is apostsi and to be a capital crime. some of what he's implying is not only not muslims, but they should be killed. well, you know, the sue my muslim authority in egypt recoiled from this theory and denounced it, and even the brotherhood, the mainstream of the brotherhood leadership denounced it. nasser alleged that said dwrks utb was part of a -- qubt was part of a conspiracy and had him executed. whether he was part of a conspiracy or not, i don't know. the official egyptian newspaper descriptions of the conspiracy are not plausible, had something to do with connecting with the soviets and i don't know if extreme muslims at that time probably were very close to moscow, and i think he visited

him in cairo in 1964, that didn't make any sense to me. but he was executed and he became a marker to other extremists in egypt. sort of you could make an analogy maybe to, you know, what happened at waco in the 1990s when this cult was accused of stockpiling arms and ultimately was taken down by u.s. officials for the far, far right in the united states. they became martyrs and refer their, refer their -- there were further terrorists attacks in their name. in 1970, another change of government. nasser died in 1970 and he was succeeded by sadat. he was a man of the right.

he liked free enterprise on capitalism, he thought the united states was the real superpower and wanted to dump the soviets and go over to washington. and when he first got into power he was surrounded by leftists who would have been appalled, there was a joke that sadat, whenever he was in a taxi he would instruct the taxi driver to signal left and then turn right. and he, as nasser had in 1952 was looking around for some group and society that might support his shift of egypt away from the socialists model because, you know, something like half the economy was in government hands, and the egyptian military was supplied by the soviets. and it was, it was really, you know, a junior member of the east block in a way egypt at that point. he wanted to shift it to the right, and he needed, he needed

some support in broader society. and who would be anti-communists, anti-left, might support sadat in this enterprise would be the muslim brotherhood. so he makes up with them. he lets them mostly out of jail. he lets them have a news letter, lets them organize on college campuses, in fact he encourages them to organize on college campuses. and tries to rehabilitate the brotherhood as, you know, a right-wing political group that would support his change in policies. and to be fair, a lot of muslim brothers were tired of being in jail and tortured and being on the outs, and they welcomed this opportunity. so they weren't recognized as a political party, but they, when sadat brought back parliament in the late '70s and through the '80s they understand sadat's successor, they would contest elections for parliament under

party rubrics. it would be known that somebody was a muslim brother, but they would run for parliament. and so they learned to campaign, and they, their leadership kind of made a pact with the egyptian government. we won't commit terrorism, we won't try to kill anymore leaders, we won't blow things it up. on the one hand, and you won't persecute us and you'll let us have a few members of parliament and have a position in society. that was a bargain that sadat initiated with the muslim brother. i think on the whole by and large, it helped. oe kalgs -- occasionally the government would persecute them and put them in jail and so forth. and, but on the other hand, they had a long game. they were thinking over the next decades and they didn't want to the go back to being considered a terrorist group, so by and large, i think they, they reformed themselves and became a

political and social force because they did a lot of cherokee work, a lot of help in soup kitchens and helping with the poor and so forth and took up some of the slack that the government wasn't involved in at that point. and so i think it was a very unstable bargain in some ways, but it was, it was a bargain, and the brotherhood in my view, you know, for the next decades adhere to it. now it may be that some kind of secret apparatus continued to exist. and it may be that the inner core of the muslim brotherhood, you know, hadn't become european liberals. i don't know. these things are kind of of difficult, difficult to tell because they don't, people involved in secret activities don't usually spill them.

but at the fringes of the brotherhood, as it became more active and it spread around these ideas that the real, the good society should be what they considered to be an islamic society, women should be vailed and -- veiled and that islamic law should determine a personal status law and other laws, there were young people on campuses, in small towns who em bide these messages from the brotherhood, weren't necessarily brotherhood members, they were kind of fellow travelers, but who didn't have that long experience that the brotherhood leadership had had of coming into violent conflict with the government and trying to overthrow it and then being thrown in jail and tortured and so forth, and who were impatient. who said, why are these old guys you know sucking up top sadat

when he's pursuing policies similar to muslim interest? and so there were radicals at the fringes. and when, and there was a basic contraction in sadat's policies, because on the one hand, he unleashed the muslim right in egypt. and he did that i think mainly for economic reasons, muslim right was all about free enterprise. those guys weren't allowed to be part of the socialists sector, they wouldn't be allowed to be appointed a manager of a state factory. they had to be sberper ins and shop -- entrepreneurs and shopkeepers and so forth. and they would support sadat's attempt in the '70s to shift egypt towards a more capitalist economy, but on the level of geopolitics. he wanted to make up with the united states, and the brotherhood didn't like the

united states. and sadat realized he had to have a peace treaty with israel. and there was no group in egyptian society that hated israel more than most of the muslim brothers. in fact, morrissy who later became president in 2012 got his start in political organizing in the delta in rural egypt as a member, a group that had anti-zionist in its name. the grass roots organization of the brotherhoods very pro-palestinian and anti-israel. so sadat when he made peace with israel, he angered this fringe. not of the brotherhood itself maybe, but of groups in its or by the.

-- orbit. one of the groups that merged in the '70s and became tabloid fauder in egypt and they withdraw from society. this name was not their own, it was given by the egyptian press, but, you know, they would attract young people and marry them off to other members without their parents knowing about it or their permission. they would discourage them from contacting their families and they would, some of them would go abroad and work and send back remittances, and the others would like live in furnished apartments, it was kind of a come unikind of thing -- commune kind of thing. they became much more sinister was the egyptian islamic jihad which was two separate groups but over time they cooperated with each other, which also

founded in the 1970s and 1977, and i was in cairo at the time, and i remember this 80 members were arrested with explosives. this is a flashback to 1948, right? then one of their members, wrote a pamphlet about the lapse duty because there were five pillars of islam, praying, and fasting, and so forth, he said there's a sixth pillar that's been neglected which is jihad. which is fighting what he considered holy war. and i mean this is not again, it's not the sunni tradition. first of all, jihad in that sense is not even found in the koran. it means fighting for it. it's a later development, this idea of jihad, just as crew saids was a later development in

christianity. not in the new testament. and, so that's one. second of all, not only is it not a pillar, but in classicalist islamic law there are two kind of religious duties on an individual. there are individual duties, so like prayer, everybody has to pray, that's an individual duty. you can't escape it. you can't say well my friend prayed so i don't have to, it's an individual duty. then there are collective duties. there are things that the muslim community has to get done that somebody has to do. but not every single individual would necessarily be involved in that. and defending the community because most, most theorizing about jihad and holy war and so forth, ultimately views it as defensive in character, although there were medieval thinkers who

promoted a kind of aggressive view of it. but in any case, defending the muslim community was a collective duty, and who would carry it out would be determined by the leaders of the community. so this vigilanteism or this idea that some hydroponics engineer in some small town in egypt could wake up the in the morning and declare jihad on europe is not the sunni legal tradition. that's weird. that's cult-like. and would be rejected by, you know, the seminary, the great center of muslim law and learning. so this idea that farik had was, and the, one of the chief egyptian religious authorities wrote a reputation of him in this regard. well the egyptian islamic jihad formed a 12-man council, tobacco

infiltrated the military, it took a leaf from the book because the revolutionary command council in 1952 were young officers, former cadets. so obviously if you wanted power in egypt, one of the ways to get it would be infiltrate the officer core and make a coup. they tried to do that and had some success in getting some military men on their side. one of the eij leaders was zumur who wasn't dressed like that then, he was a physician in the upscale neighborhood in cairo. and he was from a very prominent, elite family. he was the first elite egyptian really to throw in with muslim extremism in the late 20th century. mid-20th century. he, another group and sadat encouraged these muslim

groupings on college campuses. and they gradually developed with an independent point of view, and some of them turned towards extremists ideas and they idolize d the upper egypt man who had radical tendencies and who was a recognized cleric. and he encouraged them in a radical direction. . '79 you had revolution in iran which character ieds itself as islamic revolution and the muslim brotherhood tradition in egypt really, really does not like shiite islam. it wouldn't approve of most of what happened in iran, but the idea that a muslim movement could take over the country and declare an islamic republic gave a lot of hope and, and heart to the sunni radicals in egypt.

so in 1981, some of these radical fringe movements get together and decide to take out sadat. to punish him for cozying up to the united states and making peace with israel and in hopes that then there'll be a revolution, the people will come to the streets and egypt will turn into an islamic republic like iran. and actually the evidence is that anwar, that he was cool to this project. he didn't think that egypt was necessarily in a revolutionary moment, but the more hot headed members of the group prevailed and sadat was reviewing, was in a military review, he was in the stands, and the tanks and artillery and trucks were going by, as one of the trucks went by, one of these egyptian islamic jihad members who was in

the military jumped out of the back and sprayed the review stand with machine gunfire, killed sadat, wounded a lot of other people, and hit sadat's vice president in the hand. so again, the experiment of letting political islam operate in hopes that it'll function something pliek christian democracy in germany you know that this project of trying to get it to become a responsible member of liberal society crashed and burned. and to be fair is wasn't because of the leadership of the muslim brotherhood which i maintain kept their bargain in this period, but on the fringes of the brotherhood, these other radical groups caused the policy to crash and burn.

and the way that mubarak's government, because he is the successor in 1981 dealt with this incident, i think caused a lot of trouble in the aftermath because, you know, holding terrorists, if you're the government is always chancy. because the other terrorists minded that you're holding their friends and that encourages them to do more terrorism. so the best thing is if somehow you could get them away, out of the country maybe. and so the egyptian government let most of these guys go after a while. with the understanding, i think, that they had to go fight the soviets in afghanistan. so you know the egyptian authority said look, you guys seem to like jihad a lot. you called anwar sadat, you want to fight, we got a fight for you

over here, godless communists are running over a muslim country, go make yourselves useful. and that's really the origins i think of al qaeda in some ways that the egyptian intelligence and, for its own reasons wanted to get rid of people and sent them there. you begin to get a core of arab fighters in afghanistan who collate later under osama bin laden into al qaeda. the blindshake got a visa to the united states, i hope whoever gave him that visa is not in the government anymore. i don't have any evidence that they were ever fired. charged with tried to kill anwar sadat wants to visit the sights in new jersey. sure. come.

that's weird. and there's some back story here that i don't know. but in any case, he comes to new york and surprise, becomes the head of a radical mosque in new jersey and attracts hodheaded radicals around him and maybe reaches out to the newly formed al qaeda and the early '90s and all of the sudden the world trade center has this explosion in its basement. these guys were amateurs thankfully so that they didn't realize blowing up a small truck bomb in the basement of the world trade center would produce a lot of smoke, but it didn't actually do really bad structural damage to the world trade center which was very well put together. but i did an interview in which it said we were always thinking on how we could get bombs on planes.

we wanted to fly a plane into brooklyn. these guys are very anti-semimettic. and they thought of new york as a jewish place, they wanted to attack, we wanted to fly a plane into the cia building in langley, he said that we could never figure out how to get the bombs on the planes. so not a rocket scientist. later on in the '90s, al qaeda managed to recruit some engineers who knew what the shaik did not know is that planes don't need to have bombs put on them, they are bombs. so out muslim, the islamic grouping as they called themselves involved a covenant of islamic action, violent reestablishment of the caliphate, complete rejection of anything that looks like secular

law. and they continued to carry out violent attacks in egypt all through the 1980s and '90s. as i said, often these guys when they were arrested in imprisoned in egypt would be let out on grounds that they leave the country and go to fight in afghanistan. and he was among those who had been imprisoned and who went to fight. he actually set up medical clin toik treat the wounded, the freedom fighters who were fighting the soviet occupation. and he later became involved with the saudi billionaire osama bin laden. in the '90s, you had this steady stacato set of attacks in egypt. i remember one shootout in a

restaurant. the radicals, the muslim radicals in egypt understood a lot of money came into the egyptian government from tourism, so they wanted to destroy tourism. so they would shoot tourists. typically would succeed in keeping a lot of people away. in 1995, mubarak went to want ethiopia and they tried to assassinate him there and failed. in 1997, these guys jumped the shark in egypt because they, they killed tourists, just shot them down at luxor who had come on a tourist bus, and luxor is one of the major tourists destinations in egypt. and the egyptian public really minded this. you know, a lot of times in the united states there's this image of muslims as inherently radical

or violent or whatever which has grown up, especially it has its roots in the crew saids, but it has become more vur lant in the periods since september 11th and there are billionaires who have foundations that kind of promote this, what is called islamphobia. most muslims are not violent and, in europe most terrorism nowadays in the past few years has come out of the european left or far right than it has out of muslim groups in europe, even though there are a lot in europe. so it's just not true that most muslims have this or yenation. and the -- orientation. and the egyptian public in general really sweets, kind-hearted people that really value guests and they'll give you the shirt off their backs. you have to be careful when you're in egypt, not so say you really like something because they'll want to give it to you.

and so the idea that these guys were killing their guests really wounded a lot of egyptians. and people in luxor ran to the hospitals to give blood. and after that, i think recruitment for these groups was over with. and they went into very radical decline. and then the government, you know, arrested something like 30,000 people for thought crimes. . somebody wore a beard and looked like they might some day think well of the islamic grouping or the egyptian islamic jihad. the government would put them in jail. and put all the leadership of the islamic grouping in jail, and as a result, the leadership after a few years in jail understood they were going to be there the rest of their lives and their movement was over. they had no further success in rerecruitment. and so then they did repentence.

they said we were wrong. the korun forbids this kind of violence. it's basically an document that only allows violence under certain rare conditions, self-defense and so forth. and we just, our interpretation was just in the '90s and '80s, we were like wild men. we were on something and we were wrong. and so they issued this series of pamphlets which had a big impact on the street in egypt. so while i think radicalism declined in the nile valley and mainstream egypt, out in the mail strom of afghanistan, it thrived. and it was no accident that when the u.s. was hit, it was hit from afghanistan and not from egypt where things were going in an altogether different

direction, and in fact, opinion polling seems to show there's a gradual -- not by any means majority but significant move in the younger generations of egyptians less religious secularism. that's my story of muslim extremism i would characterize it as in modern egypt and the way it fed into al qaeda. we'll talk about how it fed into al qaeda itself. let me open into other questions. y yes, michelle. give me a few seconds to get you the mic. >> do you think the current aleg a legations that the muslim brotherhood in egypt has been overrun by al qaeda is true?

>> well, i don't think it's true that the muslim brothers in egypt, between adherence and supporters -- you're talking about probably 20% of the population at thinks well or had thought well of the organization. i don't think those people are terrorists. that's crazy. whether there was a small clique at the top of the organization which still operated like the secret apparatus and behind the scenes was looking up with muslim radicals, this is what the military was alleging. it doesn't seem plausible to me but i don't know. we don't have the documents. apparently, the egyptian military bugged mohammed morsi's offices. it may well be as the trial

proceeds that transcripts will come out which are somehow damming of him in this regard. i don't know. this is the allegations. on the surface it doesn't seem plausible to me. certainly i think the steps that the military has taken are not warranted against rank and file of the muslim brothers. certainly that government of morsi was run in a very closed way. it did have secret policies. we'll have to see if any proof comes out of these accusationac. >> why do you think more radical schools of thought in islamist, i guess, jurisprudence of how the fear -- why did that gain so much popularity as opposed to more liberal or less hard lined elements of islamic thought? >> so the question is why the

more radical understanding of islam and ex-communication practices, vigilanteism had this popularity. the first thing i want to say is that i don't think it was that popular. the mainstream of egyptian society was not like that. so -- but it did have popularity in some quarters obviously. i think it was because of the structural contradictions of a post colonial society like egypt which from the late 70s the egyptian government was seen by a lot of egyptians as color raetirae collaborating to keep them down. they didn't really do anything about that. a lot had been appointed by the government and would have been fired if they had spoken out. i think it's kind of like in any

society when something is going on that the young people feel is just wrong, then you get protests and sometimes even violence. in the vietnam war period in the united states, a lot of people decided that war was wrong and then you get that and so forth. i think it was a contradiction between people's ideals and hypocritical behavior as they saw it, of their institutions. other questions. yeah. >> throughout today's lecture, the united states was rarely brought up and didn't seem as though they were too involved in any of these actions. at what point did disdain for the united states make its way into the muslim brotherhood or at least the more militant factions? >> yeah. well, the question of the united states and the muslim

brotherhood is a little bit complex because the united states's support for israel against the palestinians they had a negative view and were quite critical of it. in 2005 there were 88 muslim brothers were elected to the parliament. their parliament visits. they became junior members of the egyptian establishment. they began to develop american contacts so when mohammed morsi, was president of egypt, he had correct relations with the u.s. it wasn't a complete representure. i think there was a certain amount of pragmatism in the group despite its basic.

because they were excluded from the public sector, a lot were free enterprise and they liked so part of america. morsi, you know, he has a degree from the university of southern california. he was an assistant professor at the cal state north ridge. he was involved in as in aa contract. one egypt shawns before the election said why wouldn't egypt need dr. morsi. so there were all of these contracts with the united states that were self evident. we have to leave it there. thank you everybody. we will see you next time. [ applause ] on wednesday, american history

t.v. in prime time marks the 50th anniversary of 1964 civil rights act. at 8:00 p.m. remarks by president linden johnson. at 8:30 the congressional gold medal ceremony honoring martin luther king jr. and 9:45 on congressional debate and at 9:45 eastern, a talk with todd purdam, the author of two parties. and the battle of the civil rights act of 1964. now you can keep in touch with current events from the nation's capital using any phone any time simply call 2026268888 to hear congressional coverage, public affairs programs. everyday listen to ai recap of

the day's events at 5:00 p.m. eastern on washington today. you can also hear audio beginning sunday at noon. call 202-626-8888. long distance or phone charges may apply. >> wednesday, two representatives of the kurdistan region government discuss the ongoing conflict in iraq and the potential for an independent kurdistan. we'll be live at 12:30 eastern on cspan. >> my first reaction was surprise because i had worked for mr. sterling. i coached the clippers in the year 2000. he invited me to his daughter's wedding. i had no idea exactly what was going on. but i also -- because of my

association, i know algin bailor. i know what he was complaining about. i was confused not knowing exactly what set of facts mr. sterling stood behind. when his words came out it was so obvious and shocking. just disgusting. all of these things wrapped in one. the surprise on that sentiment who relies on back americans for so much of his success and public profile, it was amazing. i couldn't believe it that someone could have that much bigotry inside and think that it was okay. >> july 4th on cspan a look at racism and sports just after 11:00 a.m. eastern. later exploring the red planet beginning at 3:40. later at 8:30 p.m. eastern discussion on gun rights and the

personal recovery of arizona congresswoman gabby gifforda. >> now on american mystery tv, this is part of a course called history of genocide taught by john young in saint augustin florida. this is two hours. so, i mean as a kind of overview just to refresh everyone's memory here, we started with an overview of the history of it.

rwanda. this tension was precipitated by the withdrawal of the colonial powers in the 1950s and 1960s such that there was tension for the next 20 and 30 years erupting into violence. becoming pretty severe starting in 1990 with the invasion of uganda of the rwanda patriotic front. this violence escalated through the early 1990s. there were preprisal killings i r rwanda. that brings us to our topic of genocide and the u.s. and international response to the genocide. we will talk tonight about the kind of narrative of the

genocide itself. what happened between late 1993 and the middle of 1994. the genocide itself taking place over 100 days between april 6, 1994 and mid-july -- early to mird july of 1994. we do this through a number of books that our students have been exposed to. maybe we should talk about them. so we have sam ana powers, a problem from hell which is an interview of the u.s. response to genocide beginning with arm evenia and nazi genocide. we've also read for tonight romio de laris and his account in the piece keeping force in the united nation's force in rwanda.

a canadian general, never saw combat from before this time. accepted this command in late 1993. found himself in a genocide of epic proportions in 1994 and a unique witness to this whole thing. we've read power and de laris and writings from sources. victims and perpetrators the genocide. that's where we're left tonight. we've also encountered on on an aesthetic level through film and other things. i think this leaves us to talk about from an intellectual and emotional standpoint, the u.s. response and international response. >> one thing i would just add to that is obviously during the course of the semester we've confronted you with quite a few different texts, ideas, themes, issues and challenges.

obviously some of them have been quite difficult and quite wrenching but really, i think, we've seen the course progressing to the time where we would spend, you know, two solid weeks on the rwanda genocide because of its implications for policy in the 21st century because so many of the issues we've confronted crystallize here. there's obviously no sense in weighing one genocide as more significant than the other. but the growing role of the united states as a world power, and the way the genocide in rwanda unfolds have put us in a situation where many of the issues we've grappled with during the semester we have really been in front of you. >> in a way, the rwanda genocide is the climax of this source.

this is the most obvious genocide since the nazi genocide. it's an obvious case. it fits the definition. people were singled out, targeted. there was an attempted exterminati extermination. if they had not been successful in their military endeavors to retake the country in 1994, this might have led ult naetly to full extermination. in a way it's the most complete of all of the genocides. the pace of genocide is frigh n frightening that in 100 days, 800,000 is kind of the official toll or the toll that is accepted. maybe more than a million. it's uncertain exactly how many people were killed but a frightening number of people were killed. this genocide also produces some serious emotional residents as

we've seen also already. we've all felt the emotions of this topic. i think rwanda brings a lot of this to the floor particularly the role of frustration as we counter the international and u.s. soresponse so to this. we stood helplessly by. as you've read de lare and these authors. as you read power. how have you experienced this frustration. what has been your experience as students with this. tiffany. >> de lare, every time he says we could have done this but we didn't do this. every time he mentioned i tried to get this through. nobody reacted. the reaction was we're not going to worry about it.

we won't have the resources. we can't let you do that. it's so frustrating. they had one opportunity after the next to intervene and they never did. >> okay. other responses. yeah, eddie. >> half measures like -- they didn't make true on their promises. especially the international community when it came in regard to mid-may when he called for reenforcements around 5,000. the un agreed on it but none of the countries sent men. they all argued who should sent the men. when it came down to just logistics. it wasn't even about the lives, it was the logistics. the money and resources they koe allocate to the problem. gentleman i think that's an excellent point. we're talking about resources that -- given the collective

resources that could be martialed by the united states, by france, by really any european country that might have had a stake in this. of course belgium sent some people. what was actually sent, what was actually provided by a pittance. that was exaggerating it really. they sent damage vehicles that showed up not in working order with manuals in the wrong languages without parts needed to repair the vehicles needed to be repaired. of course, the number of people and what should have been sent. >>. david. >> for me the most difficult aspect of everything. as you mentioned there were so many logistical and technical problem that's weren't addressed by anyone at all until they were notified -- until they realized there was a problem. the most difficult thing for me

was the empty leadership that came from the supposed leaders. >> right. >> they seemed to be only basing their mission on this symbol of international intervention and the principal that we're going to be monitoring and see what we can do but there was no wait. there was no practically applied leadership to those promises. ultimately when you have that comes is that you need to do something about this. it can't just be words. you can't base anything in symbolism because it means nothing when it comes to the actual ground affects. >> who in particular would you call out for this or the force behind the rhetoric. >> it was the john -- not john but bobo -- >> right dr. bubu. the cameroon guy who was the original -- >> the one who was really in charge of the entire mission.

>> de lare's contacts in new york. their response was always whenever he would give them a report from the field and typically with political leadership is you want to trust the people in the field giving feedback because they are the ones that are actually in the physical situation but they didn't regard anything he had to say. their response was no, you're straying from the bounds of your mission. i think ultimately that was -- to me, it was the most concerning. >> it's so striking to de lare how frequently people he's appealing to are playing defense. they seem to be looking for ways to actively avoid what he's calling for or what seems to be compelling based on the circumstances. >> often this is out of self-interest. one has to of course analyze motives and take a lot of things into account here but it seems

that at times people who should be in sight site 20 clsh 20. we look back and at blatant self interest that seems to be happening or the careerism is particularly concerning. >> to build off of your points and david's points how out of touch everybody seems to be. he acknowledges that in the beginning when he talks about the peace keeping manual is written for a post world war ii manual. i think when you see the inaction but completely out of touch with what's going on on the ground. even in cambodia, there was the

disbelief because that's was not what the modern world was supposed to be. >> right. so what they do -- david raised this point and you raised it again. they do this kind of symbolic show of aide, right? >> never is this more striking than, i think, mad el inn's statement after the pull-out where they reduce the size off troops opt ground somewhere from 4,000 to somewhere around 270 people in the country of rwanda which is the size of maryland with a population of 10 million people or something like that. 270 peace keepers. she says this is a quote that they are to have a quote they have to have a small skeletal

operation to quote show the will of the international community. we're not going to tolerate the killing of civilians so we are going to leave people in the country to show that we have a will. it comes across as completely empty rhetoric. andrew. >> speaking on leadership, what really bugged me was the fact that they always said that even any real force would take time like with the bombing. we had to find the plane and then we had to fine the clearance but when france decided to send in the turquoise -- operation turquoise they were there like that, you know? so that was very frufrustrating they had the capability and there was this bureaucratic paper work to go through. >> or even more frustrating, once the ut decided to get involved to aid the refugee crisis, 1.7 million fleeing into

zyere. at that point, you know, all sorts of aid was marshals. i guess this was a band-aid on the aorta. we're going to do something at this point but in de lair's words. what's the title. >> too much too late. >> too much and far too late. it really lynnings rings very hallow. >> one of the most interehinder things was the fact that you only had a very fall number of leaders -- de lair was the force commander and he had no poll -- before that the political

commander got sick owe he couldn't couldn't come in. you had this unexperienced jep who was supposed to deal with ground work and deal with -- one of the quotes was -- >> what page are you on? >> 106. >> of power or de lair. >> de lair. this writing i think goes with the conversation we're having where he says i also thought that planting the flag would serve the same symbolic purpose was my flag rising. in kanere. he says we were still having endless administration and resource problems. later he says colonel did not have paper to write with. they had been denied for budgetary reasons.

it is maddening i was forced to fight a war over office supplies. it was a struggle to get soldiers in the first place. the fact that they don't have resources to maintain a decent living style. these are failures. >> accept for the belgians. how did they get nice quarters and end up in the situation that they were in. >> it was written in their contract. >> yes. their contact with the united nations that they had to be housed in brick and mortar buildings. this was not for the comfort or the soldiers. it was to put on a good show in front of africans who were inferior people in their eyes t.

was a blatant show of colonialism. that hadn't disappeared in the 1990s even though they had been gone for 35 years. >> i think what'sfru frustrating about this is the denying to resources. all they had to do is sign off on them. when it comes down to where de lair is going to be housed he wants him to be in this nice mansion because he is the force commander and has to keep up appearance. it's ridiculous that he's willing to spend those resources to keep up appearances but not on the resources that they need to be effective in rwanda. >> when we're talking about the bul belgium -- i struggled on how they wanted to partake with the un just to help out rwanda

because they said up the political landscape that allowed this genocide occurred. as i'm reading the book they want to have their own houses spread throughout the town which is a logicalal nightmare. you'd rather have all of your soldiers defenning each other. i don't understand what he were doing back in ree wawanda. they didn't seem like they had a moral reason to be here. they just wanted to come and cause a problem. i think it's also striking coord

the sense of superiority they had and if not a blank check, but the ability to resort to violence. his ability to sort of negotiate in this delicate moment and again, right, the legacy of all of this just weighs so heavily on the circumstances. >> matt raises a very important point here. that is this legacy that the belling yons has makes it puzzling. they instituted the system of identity cards. once they left and rwanda people had to register. this was -- this identification card the people had to carry was really a signal for persecution.

the government placed quotas on certain professions, teachers, government ministers, physicians and people in other professions could not be -- only a certain percentage of them could be tutsi. they kept in place this relic but at the same time, when people find out the belgians are coming in, they are concerned because this is the entrance of their old depressor. there are strange motivations going on all over the place. de lair talks about that. how concerned he is they would react inside the country. what i was going to say is i think it's important to note that the un when we say this was a un kind of mission, that almost sounds like the whole weight of the un member state was behind it but that's not

obviously the case. he writes here when he sent -- >> there are more more obstructionists than there are those aiding. >> when he dinsends it in, he s most countries didn't have positives or negatives or any comments. they probably didn't even read it accept the countries he points out is belgian, canada had concerns about using their own troops so it was almost as if the un were kind of seeing -- you could imagine them saying we are going to go to rue oned r wand rwanda. it has the un name on it so being part of that organization, a total failure and void of leadership. >> elizabeth sorry we passed you over. >> that actually brought me to another question.

how convince are they in the global complacency and the french's idea to remove the upper echelons of the government. >> the local community has been so complacent up to this point. the frechbl see this was a green flag. we can go in. we have this contract. we need to appear superior. >> it was rally disturbing how the colonial legacy has maintained in africa through global complacency that has been there for generations, years, hundreds if of years and how it's not looked at as such in a modern era because we see ourselves as a modern people. the leg acies of slavery in a

modern time and how reluctant we are to face that:the frenchs were getting their old friends out. >> right, exactly. the french are constantly supplying the rgf and supplying that government in the first place. they are getting supplies in. they are getting weapons in. part of the story that is not well known about you. >> aub salubsolutely. that's created tension between rwanda and france. >> it's interesting. in the context of french politics at the time the decision to intervene takes off. you know, there's a couple of key events. one is when nelson mandela sortly after being elected as president of south africa begins

to urge that there needs to be action and intervention. we know that internal french government sources are anxious at that point that the that part of the continent will now demonstrate leadership and they see it as they need to step in and intervene. in the french system you have a president and prime minister. at this moe moment, a got a internal discussions mon the leadership that hey, we're the party with the heart and this is an opportunity to demonstrate that they are, again, cost calculating and aggressionive action at this moment can

demonstrate that we have these moral commitments. it's interesting too. some of this taps into comments that professor young made and david and andrew refers to. when the scope of the genocide becomes increasingly clear by early june that is when you start to get a constituency in the developed world for intervention. one of the real tragic dimensions of this ends up being that significant ben efisharyies of this. consequences of this lead to the displaced camps in ziere at the time the legacy of that continuesed to destabilize the entire region. >> as he says about this and this is in the power book where he is quoted. my mission was to save rewounda. their mission -- he is speaking about the international mission.

their mission was to put on a show at no risk. right? unfortunately, i fear this is actual too often the case with international aid in general. >> uh-huh. >> but particularly in this case, right? these are not oe opportunities nor so many people in the international community that we are doing something about the tragedies that are occurring in africa. let's send diplomats and political figures. president clinton makes it there a few weeks aof the genocide has stopped. these are photo ops but there's no risk involved in any of these things. delair and very few others are left with the entire burden of risk through this entire story. >> drawing from this idea sort of in ters of the intervention i found myself by his colleagues constantly bring up the fact that there are so many other

issues going on in terms of the global community trying to face former oyugoslavia in particula. it was so hard to read that and think what were they doing in the former yugoslavia and bosnia amounted to nothing de lair says i can't help that yugoslavia maybe somebody outside of rwanda would have cared. there's almost this sense that it came to nothing. rwanda got so little attention from the global community and meanwhile the global community and people from the un are saying yeah but we're doing all of this great stuff in the former yugoslavia and we know, of course, that wasn't the case. >> if you go on in that passage, i mean this comes directly to the united states. i certainly remember 1994

exactly what i was doing at this time. it was a pivotal moment in my life. i personally was preparing to go to africa at that point. i was a freshman in college. i was exactly where some of you are, you know? declare says as it happened, the ree wand rue and y rue and youa was having a hard time knocking the south african elections and american figure skater tonya hearting's criminal charges off the front pages. it struck me that this is the 20th anniversary year and there have been multiple specials on tonya hearting and nancy karrigan this year, too. i don't watch a whole lot of television but when i turn on

the bbc, i see stuff with rwanda. when i turn on american television, i don't see anything. this is terribly concerning, i think, that 20 years on something as big and fundamental to international identity is this still takes a backseat to the tonya hearting/nancy kerrigan soap opera that happened 20 years ago. another story that received attention is curt cobain's death. that also was on too. in the film he may have caught that reference. june twelfth is the murder of nicole brown simpson so the o.j. simpson saga. >> well, nothing will displace that. >> internationally, too, i was in africa during the trial of o.j. simpson. it was all over the news in

south afr aicca the entire time it wad going on. even there people talked about rwanda more than in the u.s. >> it was our oscar apestorius. >> yeah, i guess so. >> i think power encapsulates that really well. he mentioned that one of his main missions was to get media feedback on the crisisesicrisis >> he had mark doil sending out stories on his satellite feed. >> we really gave no attention to this whatsoever. it's also interesting because our interest was reflected in our government so powers mentioned if we would have put

up more of a flight about going over to rwanda our government would have followed what we wanted. >> at this point i was really struck in the power -- in hear n -- her analysis. it ties into something that there's a recognition on the very top members of the american government in materials of policy making that there will be no costs for failure to take action. one of the things that becomes so central to american policy and the way it develops and unfolds and failed to intervene in any meaningful way at all is the calculations that are ultimately made and the way the policy process unfolds. it gets dominated primarily in the white house. it gets -- they don't defer to the pentagon. they give the pentagon's voice

on the danger of any intervention. some of that is a legacy of s m somalia or back to vietnam. >> the way that process unfolds, you know, in essence, the sort of silence of the american people and american interest groups looms so hard. it's interesting compare this to the dar 4 for example, a decade later, even though it is not getting massive amounts of attention across the news, where it is getting attention is among certain key political constituency in congress, in the african-american community that begin to exert pressure on the state department and white house and just as critically in congress. there you end up with pressure effectively opt government to

take a more forth right posture. i don't know if aggressive is the right word. so there we get the united states government in september of 2004, identifying the events in dar four as genocide calling it unequivocally in fact even before the united nations does so. i this it goes to the lack of political will that there is no -- there is no political pressure mobilized really in any way. now, h now, i think one of her main points leadership could have mobilized. that presidents don't have responsibility simply to be buffered in the wind by sentiment on the ground. >> i think it was de lair mentioned or power that the only rwanda historian in the united states who actually was able to know what was going on was a

private party person. a quote from power on this. just to show that they there was no will on the part -- of course congress will respond to constituents. on page 375 of power, we have patricia shrader, a democrat of colorado saying there are some groups terribly concerned about the gorillas. this, of course, is a reference to the gorillas in the mist. the movie that came out in the 80s. this was film partially in rwanda. this is the heartland. there are some groups typically worried about gorillas that something will happen to them. it sounds terrible, she says but people just don't know what can be done did the people.

right? so, i mean, it's just horribly brutally tragically ironic that we have these interest groups in the united states in 1994 who were calling their congressmen and saying please proteblgt tct silver back gorillas but 800,000 people are killed by mashety at the same time anyway. >> one thing that stood out to me was 1994 when they first got reports that cia intelligence predicted the ability of a genocide happened. it talks about how they didn't encourage him to study rwanda and how it mentions -- >> they couldn't find information. >> how his knowledge of rwanda was a small back that she picked up and gave to him.

the whole concept bf colonialism to take the time to slightly understand what they were going into. by the time he got there it was like oh, crap, this is a lot more serious than everyone else is. even off the fact he came back b -- my feeling was the disbelief that how -- the circulation of no desire or interest because of proximity. >> it builds upon itself. it's this vicious circle for sure. >> i was going to talk about constituency groups. what i got from powers was that the u.s. leaders use what she calls micro victories by focusing on people like the rue

and youa academic. it was kind of weird to see how -- >> metaphor of a doll that a child protects its doll. it doesn't have this global vision of everything that is going on around. >> it was frustrating to use these micro victories to validate their semi inaction in there. >> the physical isolation of the country, the un and isolation of his troops in the field and other groups within there. i thought it might have contributed to the lack of will. nobody wanted to listen to him. he couldn't communicate. >> at one point he couldn't get through the airports.

lonl i logistics do not allow him to travel around without serious danger. he cannot contribute to anyone without access to a phone. isolation a very important theme here. >> i think it is ironic. he is sitting here with one satellite phone. he gives it to the bbc guy, get the story out. you would think with all of the foreign countries not wanting to send troops in there in fear of something happening to them, you would think the outside countries are trying to get to him and make contact but it's like people are saying, yeah, he's over there. they don't seem too worried about him. >> here is his wife and children stuck in canada in québec city desperate to find out. this is one of the haunting things about the de lair book is this -- it's not frequent but

sporadic attention to his situation at home. it's never fully resolved. i mean, psychologically this destroyed de lair. these regretted about his family and about the hell he put them through, right, over and over again here just bleeds through at times into the narrative in a way, some of the most hart breaking stuff because it's so readily identifiable, i think. >> there was that one government figure that went to de lair's wife just the way he started the senten sentence. it was almost as if he died nobody would have noticed almost. it was like oh, that problem is done. >> i fear that's all too accurate. at least that's the per spespec. power backs him up. i think it's probably true. >> another frustration with this

is one of the excuses that the american government gives for not being involved but they don't want another mogadishu. they lost what, 14 men? >> 18 marines. >> they lose 18 marines in mogadishu but in rwanda they lose 14 men. >> is this the same phenomenon repeated in rwanda really? of course there's the intervention. this is a chapter 7 intervention in somalia. they break out into anarchy fighting between war worlds in the early 1990s and interventional aid marshals itself to try to diffuse the

crisis to get aid to the people who need it. we have almost street to street or neighborhood fighting in mogadishu between war lords. the international community rallies. the united states gets involved. i think i was a senior at the time when this was happening. >> it was december of 1992. >> that's exactly what i would have been. it date me. >> not as much as it dates me. >> i remember better than i do. i remember my u.s. history teacher in high school had this political cartoon that showed sapt a santa claus on a sled with his

elves having machine guns. that's kind of the international perspective on somalia that this place is worth -- if santa claus is going to pay attention to this, right, than we should, too. there was actually a will there until the tragic events of which -- >> october of 1993 in an effort to relief another part of the fint vengs forces f the pakistanis who were there. u.s. forces get into a fight with forces in mogadishu. 18 get killed ultimately. this had repercussions unfortunately that they strippe

them. mutilated them. dragged them behind vehicles through the streets of modadishu with the cameras of the internainte international community rolling. this became a paradigm of course, for what happens or a lesson for what tries to intervene in the developing world or more specifically in africa, right? this becomes a caricature of africa. of course the chapter seven intervention is going on in the former yugoslavia as well. as we talked about this this class is a different situation. >> just about to finish the point how this is related to 9/11. people like osama bin laden were

watching the events unfold in mogodishu and the perspective was the western world does not have the will to fight. when they are punched in the mouth, they will turn around and walk away. so the idea was if they punch them in the mouth they will not retaliate. the punch in the mouth ultimately was 9:0011. >> that message was perceived. >> that was part the plan. he knew about this via intelligen intelligence. >> the political context about somalia is also very important. november, 1992, president bush loses the intersection to if clinton. >> we're in that that it's late

november. there are images and the story is coming back that the food aid is simply sitting on the dock in mogodishu are being exploited by criminal gangs and using it for political purposes. what i also vividly member about that and the somalia situation is that u.s. sources came ready for combat. they crawled along the beach. at that point there was no combat but they were filmed up close and personal by cnn cameras. i remember there was this odd moment of cnn showing cameras and people in the faces of u.s. soldiers coming ashore. it gives it this way strange feeling. i think it becomes -- the perception of the american people is we will be there. we will sort this out.

the good guys from the bad guys, deliver the food and this will be easy. of course during the summer of 1993, it becomes increasingly complicated. from a policy making perspective, i think we do ourselves a disservice if we underestimate how many somalia looms in people's minds because what starts to develop within the white house and the policy making process is the notion if there is an insufficiently un effort we will be called to pick up the tabment so that's why you get things like presidential decision directed 25 authored by richard clark that outlines minimum criteria before the united nations will agree to participate in anything whatsoever. clark says these are the strict guidelines for u.s. participation but in fact until

we prove a mission led and funded by others where the united states plays a per peripheral roll, so the hurdle to get over becomes extremely high as we move through the events and string of 1994. yeah, elizabeth. >> just a couple of points. i think the under funding of the un's relief to rwanda is outlined in the beginning of delair when he talks about going to the offices in new york -- they are sexier than the peace keeping effort. the dpko. the unicef reaches out to children. that's something people are familiar with. when you have these peace

keeping efforts that go into rue on , rwanda we know children can be taken and educated in the way we want them to be educated. the second point was we were very much -- the aid there was reflecting a cold war aid mentality where we did the derl berlin air lift and we're not participating the motivations that these people have. i think that that refers back to my point about them being out of touch and knowing what is happening in developing nations because they have only developed with what's going on in the developed world.

>> they don't even know what's happening for de lair. he was down to having a glass of water a day to wash himself. he says there was an odor he had picked up. most of his rations went bad. he didn't even have food t. he would try to get more resources and then be denied. this is like the -- he's expected dwhsh they come in to be all proper and stuff and have this front for it. seep not allocating enough resources in general to him just to actually survive. not even to help out but for them to actually survive in there. the madness where he says we're at the end of our water supply and he says you need to get three competitive bids to fill those bids. >> in that situation. >> i just need 20,000 liters of

water that can be brought in easily. >> i'm not a huge proponent of the un. i don't think they are an extremely effective body but i think that is seen in the inability and give them resources because you need competitive bids. theys peop these people don't have clean drinking water and they have to go through bureaucratic red tape to survive. it's bizarre. >> this is just the disconnect that happens over and over again where the people of new york do not understand or make any effort to understand what's going on in rwanda. there's being it.

>> this is a complete failure of the international community but i think we have this idea that we can blame the un and de lair says this is a failure of the member states, not the un itself. this is uncommitted as dave was saying earlier to an ideal but only going halfway. >> it gets in the way as a result of that. it gets in the way of things that might have been done without -- >> it will always be trouble given the circumstances on the ground. the un becomes an enabler fore the pull out given that belgium, after they lose their soldiers zie to pull out. ins the calculation of the rg dprks that

f, that if they killed a few belgium people they would withdrawal. >> this is one of the most damming peaces fieces for the international community here. she pointed out that belgium didn't want to pull out and be the sole bad guys. what did they do. >> they asked everybody else to leave with them. >> yeah. let's call up the united states and tell them we don't want to be the only ones pulling out the here and turning chicken so to speak, right? so let's put pressure on the entire un, this whole operation is botched and going nowhere and dangerous and so, now, let's pull out -- let's pull everybody out. the u.s. buys this. i mean this is our ally. they don't have a invested interest in rwanda. they begin to put pressure on the un to put out.

they are instrumental on the decision to leave. it's really us pressure that causes that. this is one example how it is the constituent members of the un perhaps -- the organization as i think elizabeth pl puloint that there's this bureaucratic tape that just gets in the way. bureaucracy is the enemy to all progress. leon trotski, i think he's right in this situation. even more, i think jason's point is valid that it's the individual member states. perhaps we need to point the finger most strongly at the united states here and say they are the ones that precipitated the shameful acts that the international community had. >> it's so striking.

we know the belgium prime minister early on appeals to secretary christopher and says exactly what you are saying and a couple of other people noted, we can't be the ones who are seen as leaving rwanda to some fate and we jump right on board and say we will support that to pair down the force and veto any effort to expand it and have any more prominent effect. it is a couple of weeks where de lair is getting signals that belgium is thinking of taking a more aggressive role. he is completely unaware -- in a series of private conversations and a closed door april 15th

meeting, the united states is making it clear that there will be no expansion of the international role. again, it sees in part to reflect the experience of somalia but i think it has more issues than that. >> i think that's probably the most troubling thing with that is that the international community can't agree on aid and supporting it but the only thing they can agree is abandoning the country. that's the only thing that gets their full commitment. >> which is the easiest and most problematic thing to do in the first place. tiffany. >> i did want to talk about what surprised me and stood out to me too was the complacency of canada. its inaction because it volunteered de clair to be part of this mission. >> doesn't send out of their own troops. >> wouldn't provide any other troop besides him. they forced him to pick through

a list of people who had no experience in french or rwanda. >> what does this say? this always struck me. i'm not a military person. i don't perhaps understand the mentality but what does that say about de lair other commendable or critical? what can we say about him given the circumstances that he places himself in here? what's going on with de lair and his own motivations? do you want to comment on that, tiffany? >> well, at the beginning he's hoping this will be really good for his career. it will be the first time he will be on the ground. up to some point his men have been involved in peace keeping but he hasn't exactly been to the different peace keeping missions. for him he sees it as a step forward with his career. after he is actually involved in this, he decides, he realizes that