Ep 272. - Why Shadi Hamid Defends American Power | Hats Off with Imam Tom
Introducing Hats Off! the newest show from The Thinking Muslim featuring Imam Tom. In our debut episode, we sit down with Shadi Hamid for a candid conversation on U.S. hegemony, America’s role in the world, and the evolving experience of Muslim Americans.
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Transcript - This is an automated transcript and may not reflect the actual conversation
Introduction
0:00
This book is a kind of love letter to America despite all of its faults. I mean, the United States has left a wake of a lot of dead bodies. We want to fight harder for the
0:09
American project. There is no genocide without the United States. The world did get better post
0:14
World War II. For who did it get better? We have to remember in the 1980s, the US finally started
0:23
to live up more to its ideals and it started to distance itself from these right-wing dictators.
0:29
Maybe not in the Middle East. The Middle East has been the exception. I I'm just going to state I don't agree. Can America be an instrument for Muslim values? They would say that that's the
0:39
fantasy. It's hard to be proud to be American right now. I'm not convinced that the US is overall moving in a more positive direction. It's not. It definitely isn't now. Let's not pretend
0:49
about that. Despite everything, I'm a believer in America and I think it's worth fighting for.
0:59
Bismah, welcome to the thinking Muslim. We've got a brand new program called Hats Off where we're going to be talking about some of the most pressing issues facing the ummah today and we've
1:07
got a very special guest here in Washington DC, Shahi Hamid. Thank you very much for joining us. Thanks so much for having me. My pleasure. Yeah. So, you've got a new book and I think most of our
1:16
discussion today wants to take uh place around your new book, The Case for American Power. Um,
1:21
can you tell us a little bit about the idea for this book, the need for this book? was the motivation for writing this book in the first place. Despite everything, I'm a believer in
His Book
1:30
America and I think it's worth fighting for. And I think that message is especially important now.
1:35
I mean, so many young people, progressives, Arabs, and Muslims are losing faith in the
1:40
American project, understandably, considering our role in Gaza enabling a genocide. So, I think that
1:47
it's a time of reckoning, and I guess there's two different paths you can take. you can actually
1:54
lose faith completely and say that America will never get better and America is a failed endeavor.
2:01
I think that is a kind of dead end and we'll talk about that. I think the other option is
2:07
to say that America for all its faults is able to regenerate itself and renew itself. That it
2:14
can go in very bad and dangerous directions. But it's up to us as American citizens to say, well,
2:21
we get the government we deserve. We get the policies we deserve. We're still a democracy, however flawed. And a democracy means that we have avenues for redress as citizens. that we can
2:31
actually make our country better by organizing, participating, advocating, and opposing. So,
2:38
this is sort of this this book is a kind of love letter to America despite all of its faults. But
2:45
it's also, I think, a description of reality that American power is still uncontested. Obviously,
2:53
there are challengers, but China simply is not China is not in a position to overtake the US
2:58
on any of the main metrics. military or economic. And China is also extremely weak when it comes to
3:06
its cultural appeal in the broader world. Very few people say, "Hey, we want to move to China cuz we
3:12
want to live a better life in China." So, I think that if American power is going to be the name of
3:17
the game for the next few decades, then we got to work with that. Someone's got to wield power, and
3:24
if it's us, then it's us. Okay. Yeah. So, there's a lot there. So um so let's let's unpack things
Morality and American Power
3:30
maybe one one at a time. I definitely I think I'm sympathetic to the argument and and you make this argument in the book that that morality requires power in order to enact it. Uh that's I think well
3:41
articulated and I I definitely agree with that. And I think in another book I think you you tried
3:46
to um I think the one where you're you're talking about Islamism and you're trying to explain
3:51
uh what are Islamists really hoping for? uh there's almost a similar ethos there. Am I correct
3:58
in saying that? That there's two paradigms for they they both have a commonality and
4:04
realizing that you have to have a certain degree of power in order to protect or enact morality. Um
4:10
and really then the differences are in details and frameworks as to how that morality looks,
4:17
how it should be enacted, what are the means, uh etc. But I think that a lot of people would um
4:23
would push back on on this notion particularly I think a lot of people might accept the the general notion that that power is required for morality to exist. Yeah. Um I think the open-ended question is
4:36
what is the nature of American power? Or does American power have a particular nature? How plastic is it? Right. Um or is there something in its DNA that makes it particularly um ills suited?
4:50
Right. For for true morality, it's a separate question whether whatever would replace it is
4:55
worse. Yeah. Right. But I think the first question is is American power such that I mean because
5:02
because even just leftists, not even Muslims, leftists will say America was founded on the
5:07
slavery and the extermination of Native Americans. So what about American power is redeemable? like
5:14
why do we why do we expect that American power in particular can be redeemed from this sort of uh
5:19
original sin of of the American state or project? Is it just a bunch of high flutin language and
5:25
idealistic language? A cynic would say that this is just a legitimizing discourse for really a more
5:32
sinister game that's going on. How would you like respond to that? Well, I think first of all one
5:37
thing that should be maybe it's obvious, maybe it's not. I'm an American. If we're Americans,
5:43
this is our country. So, at some level, we have to want it to be better. It's I think there's
5:49
something very odd about being an American who is secretly wishing for America's demise. And um
5:56
I just wouldn't want American Muslims to to lean in that direction. Is there a third option though?
6:01
Is there like Cuz I get you. Yeah. I mean, like there's some people that are calling for like an accelerationist like we want it to all fall apart. Exactly. But you think that there's probably a
US Hegemony
6:10
middle ground in there where they're saying, "Well, right now we have American power. It's it's hegemonic. Um, it's funding and producing the genocide in Gaza. It's intervened in over 20
6:22
countries since world since the end of World War II, right? um that maybe that a a defanging or a
6:31
a degree of defanging could at least create people are talking about multipolarity like that there's
6:38
a middle ground maybe is there a middle ground in between having America as the hegeimon that's running everything and therefore our only hope is to is to redeem this this force or American
6:48
demise maybe there's something in the middle of those look there could be I think it's hard to see how would the defanging of America actually work and who would gain more power as a result of
7:02
that? And that goes back to the question of who the competitors are and whether they're worse or better. And I think that they're worse, China, Russia, other authoritarian powers. But to go
7:10
back to your previous question which is really important. I think we are for for all of our
7:16
original sins. America is I believe founded on a set of moral ideas and convictions that are
7:25
universally appealing. Now we haven't always lived up to them but we have lived up to them sometimes.
7:31
You have some examples maybe for the skeptic. Yeah. Well, I mean, the very fact that my parents
7:37
chose to come here and so many people who have who were born and raised in authoritarian regime say
7:44
at the end of the day, we want to get out of our we we don't want to live in our countries anymore because they are oppressive and don't have opportunities. And then often times America is the
7:54
choice because they see that America offers that promise of freedom and opportunity unlike other
8:00
Western European countries. The fact that you can become American and to see my own parents
8:06
the process of them becoming American has been a beautiful thing to see where in say France or
8:13
Germany it's very hard to become French or to become German. You can have a German passport
8:18
and become a German citizen but you're never going to be fully accepted as German. So the beautiful
8:26
thing about the American project is that you can actually become American and that's in part
8:32
because of our founding documents that allow for that process. The Declaration of Independence,
8:38
um the Constitution are documents that really enshrine certain moral ideals that provide an
8:45
open space for people to come into America if they subscribe to American ideals and the
8:51
American project. And anyone can do that. it's not ethnically or or religiously based. And the
8:58
fact that also America is religiously open, that you can be fully practicing as a Muslim and that
9:06
doesn't detract from your Americanness. That again is a very unique thing. Also, and this is maybe
9:11
more controversial, the world did get better post World War II. So, kind of coinciding with American
9:19
dominance and hegemony. For who did it get better? Oh, for the world more broadly. I mean, if you
9:25
look at if you look at just the incidents and this I lay this out in the book, the preponderance of battlefield deaths of um interstate wars of violent conflict more generally,
9:37
all of that declines significantly post World War II because there is because there is this growing
9:44
America American hegeimon. Especially when the Soviet Union falls and you have one hegeimon,
9:50
one superpower. I mean, the 1990s were sort of the peak of peace and prosperity. Not for everyone and
9:58
not certainly not for everyone in the Middle East. But if you actually look at what happens just
10:03
the third wave of democratization as you as you probably well know that we reach a peak of about
10:10
53% of the world um 53% of of the total countries in the world being democracies and it's dropped
10:18
a little bit since then but it still hovers at around 50%. At the end of World War II it was
10:24
just about 8%. Why did that happen? And we have to ask ourselves why that happened. Because there
10:30
was a powerful America that was appealing to a lot of the world. And there was a demonstration effect
10:36
where people had two choices. You could either go in the direction of the Soviet Union and communism which wasn't very appealing to most people. And then there was this kind of um uh this beacon,
10:49
let's say. I should say the beacon didn't, again, this should go without saying, but in case people don't know much about me, I've been very critical throughout my career about the
10:59
fact that we didn't live up to those ideals during the Cold War. We supported right-wing
11:04
dictatorships throughout the developing world, Latin America, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.
11:10
But we have to remember in the 1980s the US finally started to live up more to its ideals
11:18
and it started to distance itself from these right-wing dictators. Maybe not in the Middle East. The Middle East has been the exception. But for in much of the developing world, we started
11:28
to put pressure whether it's dictators in the Philippines, Brazil, Chile, there started to be
11:36
a positive move and saying that we went too far. We did really bad things during the Cold War. Now
11:43
we're going to try to atone for our sins. And then there was there were these democratic transitions
11:49
throughout the developing world because of American partly because of American pressure.
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American Power
13:17
Sure. Okay. I I'm just going to state I don't agree, but I'm but there's this is very important
13:23
to to wade through all this. Uh and there's a lot of threads that are open. I'm going to try to keep track of them in my head. One of the things that that's interesting of what
13:30
you said is the the difference between the US project and becoming American versus say
13:37
uh Europe and what we might be able to call the postethnic nation state. Though it's true
13:43
I think that the US doesn't have quite a monopoly on that. They actually many people would say that Canada actually is the the poster child of the post ethnic nation state. Um, and that gets to a
13:55
separate issue that you raised, which the the idea that there's a dichotomy between American hygieny
14:01
versus Soviet or or Chinese authoritarianism. I think that even liberals would say that,
14:09
well, we really just want a liberal world order, a rules-based order, more Canada-esque human rights,
14:15
international systems that work. taking some of the sovereignty, yes, away from actual nation
14:21
states, uh, and putting more sovereignty into international bodies. That that would, I think, be a third way that people would maybe advocate for because to be frank, I mean, the United States
14:32
has left a wake of a lot of dead bodies. And and I think that one of the things that I I don't agree
14:38
with is the way, you know, they say that there's there's lies, there's damned lies, and there's statistics, right? like the way that we measure battlefield deaths and security and these things.
14:49
I'm aware of the way in which um over time we have been able to externalize a lot of the the hardship
14:59
and consequences and violence so that they don't become measurable because once they're measurable
15:04
then they're a problem and people then get organized and push back against them. So it's true you don't nobody declares war anymore. We have quote unquote low inensity conflicts. We have,
15:15
you know, uh, man-made famines like what's going on in Gaza right now. We've got a lot of tools to
15:21
inflict violence and suffering on people that are indirect that aren't classic battlefield deaths
15:26
like World War I and World War II. So, you know, so there there's that vector. You you mentioned
15:34
the other vector is you mentioned, you know, becoming um American and your parents and seeing that happen. Obviously, my my family's Italian, you know, came in 1905, so that's a well-known
15:44
story. Um, but at the same time, like, don't you don't you find the irony in that specifically for
15:52
Egypt? Like, the United States is backing the authoritarian regimes in those places. And so,
15:58
we would say that's that's a racket in the mafia, right? It's like the mafia comes and they say, "I hear you've got a plumbing problem." And then you say, "What plumbing problem?"
16:07
then they make the plumbing problem. So to what to what to what can we ascribe that's the the thing like to what can we ascribe and and this gets into the the other issue about you know Latin American
16:17
countries maybe okay maybe the Middle East not yet but at least in Latin American countries people transitioning to to democracy how much of that can we actually ascribe to the benevolence of
16:26
the US how much of that is that more of a realist conception of power where people are pushing back
16:32
and not accepting that anymore and maybe the US is transitioning to a more soft power. We see a
16:37
lot of the programs that Trump is cutting that Biden and the Democrats had put in place uh US
16:43
aid and others in addition to being relief they're they're tools of soft power right they have policy
16:48
things that have strings attached and things of that nature. So these things I think complicate complicate your thesis. I'm not I'm not convinced that um I'm not convinced that the US is overall
17:00
moving in a more positive direction. It's not it definitely isn't now. Let's not pretend about
17:05
that. Look, a couple things I would say and really good points you raise. I would say that there is
17:11
nothing structural about America or American power that requires it to be bad. Okay. Where leftists,
17:17
as you pointed out earlier, would say that there's something inherent in the exercise of American power that leads to destruction. Right. I just don't know how you can make that argument
17:27
considering that America is not some abstract unified force that just does things. It's made
17:34
up of people, individuals, competing agencies, and factions, and ultimately individuals have
17:43
agency. So, when we abstract out and say America isn't always will be one thing, I think that just
17:50
doesn't make a whole lot of sense because we've seen how American policy changes depending on which administrations in power. And we see that certainly with Donald Trump. You have
17:59
new personnel. They have very different views of how to exercise American power. And now we've seen what some of those results look like. Um, and that I think we can say now that the Democratic
18:11
Party and the Republican Party are not equivalent. Maybe they're both bad in different ways, but one
18:16
is clearly worse. I think I'm comfortable saying that now because we've seen about um, you know,
18:24
uh, 9 10 months of the Trump administration and it's worse than we thought. Um, I would I would
18:32
say that um, so yeah, I think a lot of this hinges on whether you think America can change or whether
18:40
it's set according to one thing. I would I don't want to create a self-fulfilling prophecy where
18:48
a lot of us as American Muslims and progressives say America is tainted by original sin and then so
18:56
many of us exit the political system, right? we stop participating, stop voting, stop trying to
19:02
change like trying to advocate within the system and then obviously that's going to seed the ground
19:08
to people who don't share our values and if you believe America is a democracy then you also
19:14
have to believe that it can change otherwise it's not a democracy that's the whole idea
19:19
of democracy that democracies have to be at some level not totally but they have to be responsive
19:26
to their voters and their constituents The other thing that I would say is America is not a human
19:32
rights organization. So we have this notion in the book I call it the Nirvana fallacy that we're not
19:40
comparing the US to the realistic alternatives. We're comparing the US to some imaginary wonderful
19:49
um benevolent state in our own minds. There has never been such a state in human history. um like
19:55
Muslim caliphates have not been perfect benevolent actors. The exercise of power require like at some
20:01
level it means you're going to do some bad things that you are going to oppress people. Um and I
20:08
don't think there's any religious tradition or any political tradition that can prevent that
20:13
from happening. Do you think the prophet sallall alaihi wasallam oppressed people? No, I'm talking
20:18
about the caliphate. It wasn't I'm talking about Abu Bakr Omar. Um I mean there there were there
20:27
were fittas. There were civil wars after the I mean I think on granted I I I mean there were
The Caliphate
20:33
profound disagreements among the Sahaba. Yeah. And they did fight against each other even before
20:39
the you see even even theoretically like there is a possibility to oppress because no one is
20:44
infallible. Is that kind of okay? Yeah that's what I'm saying. Yeah. I mean obviously it's a spectrum
20:50
and I think the four the four righteously guided califfs were among the peak of humanity but were
20:57
they 100% perfect no and so I think we have there has to be a sort of acknowledgment of
21:04
there is something fallen about this world not to use overly Christian language but if we sin
21:10
is inevitable and at some level we as human beings as mere mortals will be broken by sin And Mhm. We
21:18
try to aspire to be better, but we're never going to achieve perfection. That's something we have to accept in this world. And I think that that's a hard thing for us to accept. Yeah. Our has written
21:31
in his fascinating piece on the case for the caliphate, which I'm sure many of your listeners
21:36
will be aware of. He talks about an asmtote in mathematics. He uses that to talk about the idea
21:44
of the caliphate that you you um an asmtote in mathematics is something that is always it's
21:52
always um sort of it's just out of reach. You're always approaching it, but you're never actually it's it's always out of reach. You you're getting closer to it, but it's never going to intersect.
22:02
Exactly. So, there is this this elusiveness about aspiring to greatness and perfection.
22:09
And I think that America is in some ways maybe not quite like a caliphate in that regard, but there
22:15
is this idea of aspiring to something that can never be met, right? And I think that's embedded
22:21
in the American project. We are a lot better than what we were a 100red years ago. it or even for
22:27
that matter 70 years ago where we were in Jim Crow when black people were secondass citizens and were
22:35
being separated from the rest of the population like that was that was in living memory sure for
22:42
a lot of Americans and and even the fact you know until Donald Trump I would also say that American
22:48
Muslims and even now to some extent American Muslims are in a stronger position now than they
22:55
20 or 30 years ago because America that's embedded in the project. We as American
23:01
Muslims have asserted our democratic and political rights and we I think our future in this country
23:09
is might seem odd now to say it now but to see how we're organizing to see how Muslim candidates are
23:16
running for office throughout the country to see that we might actually have a Muslim mayor in in
23:22
one of the greatest cities if not the greatest western city in the world and then we'll have
23:28
two Muslim mayors you know, in the two greatest western cities in the world. That's a remarkable
23:35
thing. And that's I mean, let's just be honest, if there was a Muslim caliphate, you probably would not have a Christian mayor of I don't know of Cairo. It just it's it's not going
23:49
to happen. I mean, so there is something pretty incredible about that. That's interesting. So, I mean, I this this still keeps us dancing around, I think, the main controversy or open-ended
Changing the American System?
24:00
question of of the whole interview so far, which is that how much of that can be ascribed to the
24:05
American system and ideals and how much of that was despite the the government and the hegemony
24:12
because especially if we talk about civil rights movement and African-American uh you know, civil
24:18
liberties like those were paid for with blood. those were paid for with with jail sentences,
24:24
right? It was not um to to what extent can we suspect or at least fear that this is almost
24:33
like a uh quicksotic uh attachment to something that it's it's well, let me put it differently.
24:43
Why are we ascribing that to the ability of the American system to change for the better when
24:48
actually it was more like a process of pulling teeth and trying to wrench it and force it in that direction. And this gets into my other uh point which is um I I I see what you're saying
24:59
when it comes to and I definitely agree actually when it comes to strategically when it comes to democracies in general and this is actually a paper I presented to the American Muslim
25:08
jurist association this summer. Democracies, the way that they're set up, love them or hate them,
25:13
they require a high level of participation. They require a high level of organization and
25:19
discipline from a community perspective. And um we absolutely have to be getting in the game,
25:26
organizing power. Like these are things that I believe in. Um, I'm not so sure that to diagnose
25:36
uh the American system or even American hegemony as fundamentally flawed, I don't know that that
25:42
necessarily leads to disengagement. Okay. Um, I'll say from my own personal thing like it doesn't for
25:50
me. rather I think that it might just inform what type of engagement and the philosophy of
25:56
the engagement that we're about to embark upon. So for example, when you get into office or you start
26:03
running or you start work canvasing or you start doing activism, whatever your intervention is,
26:09
right? Um what's your conception of power when you start doing that work? What's your conception of
26:15
how does history move? Does history move by making moral appeals to the people who are currently in
26:21
power? Does history move by America eventually ironing itself out, right? because it's got these
26:27
great ideals, which I have to actually another point on that in a second. Or is it more like
26:33
a dialectic and a counter struggle where there's this ship, America's a ship, and it's moving in
26:39
a direction and it's got a lot of bombs and a lot of guns and a lot of, you know, power and there's
26:45
people at the helm that are doing bad things with that power and we're not even necessarily trying
26:51
to we're trying to reduce harm. I think that that's that middle ground that I made it mentioned earlier between like complete collapse uh versus American hegemony is one in which we're trying
27:03
to reduce the harm of American foreign policy and reduce the harm of American domestic policy like to be frank. Um just speaking personally for myself I do think that there is something that is
27:14
dark that's in the DNA of American power. Like I know enough political theory. I know that if you go into lock So tell me where does that come from? Darkness like like let's let's talk lock. Okay,
27:24
a good book uh ugly freedoms by by Elizabeth Anker goes into how many of these ideals that
27:32
purportedly are universal ideals now they didn't start as universal ideals right when Lach was writing about autonomy and he was talking about individual liberty he was talking about the
27:42
liberty and the autonomy of the slave master he had no conception that that extended to anybody else okay now historically over time we've kind of retrofitted to try to make it expand universally.
27:54
But there's an open-ended question that has to be asked. Can that type of freedom can that type of
28:00
and if we scale it to society, does it work for everybody? Like is this something where
28:07
um or is there something that is still tainted in this original idea that makes it insufficient or
28:14
inadequate for for justice, which is what we all want. We all want justice. We may disagree about
28:20
how we get there and what are the ideological tools and the conceptual tools and the philosophy that we need to ground our action in but um so if this thing starts from a of a place of
28:30
actually like baked into dominance and and lock wrote the constitution for Barbados the slave colony of Barbados and then he uses the same uh he templates it out to make it the state constitution
28:40
of South Carolina right so many of these people you know they never intended these ideas to be
28:46
universalized not saying they shouldn't have been like but I'm saying that like is there something in which the let's even take the the idea of dominating nature manifest destiny like
28:57
even go back to the enlightenment and and you know torturing nature for its secrets is there
29:02
something in the gusto of theore Roosevelt and you quot you quote Roosevelt in your book right who is
29:09
I think a perfect example of this tension is that he's a he's a person with a lot of warts that says a lot of things that maybe you'll be like okay that that sounds good but then you watch how he
29:18
he impl implements it and it's like someone's got to stop this guy. He's going to do some messed up stuff, right? So, that's I think the the overall question. I'm much more skeptical um for American
29:30
power and I'm also more skeptical for the way that the United States I don't necessarily see I I do
29:36
agree that there are and this is the difference and you mentioned this the difference between uh the United States as a purported democracy versus Egypt, right? like like you do have
29:46
vectors of influence that don't exist. A a realist could come and say, "Yeah, well, you can still do
29:52
a revolution in Egypt, right? So there's that ve that's the vector. You don't have a vote. Here you
29:59
have lobbying. You have Apac. You have whatever." So it's true you have democratic institutions, but there's several ways in which they're subverted. You have media, you have Zuckerberg and and Musk,
30:08
and they're controlling public opinion. So, you know, and I'm not saying that you are that you're naive to that, like you've already said how, you know, these are not perfect things, but I guess
30:17
rather than draw very clear lines, I would I would hesitate to draw clear lines and say it's like
30:23
there's the American way and here's the hedgeimony and then here's the author authoritarian way and here's the other. I see that people need power and I I think that the governments if they're allowed
30:36
which is where I agree agree with you if they're allowed if you concede that ground and they're allowed to do what they're going to do it's going to be bad. I don't think they're going to iron
30:44
out anything. I think it's going to get worse. I think we're going to see more Gaza the '90s Bosnia
30:50
uh even if it was the high point maybe in some international spaces like US power was still
30:55
Somalia right there were still things that US power was doing that it's worth noting American power stop was what stopped the genocide in Bosnia but if you talk to the Bosnians if you waited too
31:05
long they waited too long not just that if you talk to Bosnians they will say Americans only got involved when we started to win because they were afraid of a Muslim nation in Europe that's what
31:15
That's what they told me in Bosnia. Okay, fair. Like, you know, Bosnians, if you're watching, hit the hit that comment button and get get involved. And Uduk had a lot of Bosnians. Like,
31:24
so, you know, we had a lot of Bosnians up there. And their claim was that, you know, once they had organized themselves, start producing their own weapons,
31:30
they were gaining grounds and they were actually going to take it to the Serbs. That's when then the Americans got involved and like, "All right, all right, let's do a peace deal." Right? So,
31:38
I'm talking too much. I mean the the idea is I'm still very skeptical uh to ascribe even the
31:46
positive changes to American power. I I guess I'm more of a Howard Zen type. I see that the
31:52
people need to build power in order to check the government and reduce harm. Yeah. I'm afraid of
American Hegemony
31:58
an authoritarianism of other people. I don't I don't look with rosetinted glasses to any other,
32:04
you know, major system that's out there. But I don't trust American hijge he h he h he h he h
32:09
he h he h he h he h he h he hijgemony either I think that reducing the harm especially I think Israel is the perfect example there's like the strings need to be cut like the United States
32:18
props up Israel and everything that it does um there is no genocide without the United
32:23
States yeah that's true um they admit that yeah right so what does our role then become like I
32:30
think that's a very type good example for we stop normalization we stop. We we boycott,
32:37
we try to to punish, you know, electorally like the people who are supporting these uh you know,
32:43
Israel first policies and stuff like this and then we reduce harm and then they're able to figure out
32:49
something and we've done our job. That's at least how I conceive of like a a moral and ethical way
32:55
to interact with US power that's not necessarily calling for US hijge he h he h he h he h he h
33:01
he h he h he h he h he hijgemony that's going to redeem itself or save the world or be better than an alternative uh I'm not sure that's that's where I'm at a lot of good threads there okay thinking
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33:22
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33:51
Well, on on the civil rights struggle, I would just say that civil rights icons
The foundations of America
33:57
uh Martin Luther King, Megar Evers, that that whole movement, at least appe the the more sort of
34:05
um the non-Malcolm X side of the kind of civil rights struggle was much more about appealing
34:12
to American values and American constitutional protections. and seeing that as a fulfillment
34:21
of the founding documents and it I I think that that empowered them and that's what helped to
34:29
allow their own vision to align eventually with that of so many Americans because they were speaking to something that Americans felt was in their DNA. And so you could that's two different
34:41
ways of looking at the DNA question. You can say that we're tainted by original sin or you can say
34:48
that in our founding documents there is a seed of progress that was implanted by at least some of
34:54
the founders and they saw it that way. They were conflicted about slavery and some of them wanted
35:00
to to prohibit slavery but the context of a time didn't allow for it. So what they did instead,
35:08
they put things into the founding documents that could later be used to prohibit slavery.
35:16
Not to make a direct analogy here, but I think in some ways um obviously slavery in the time in the
35:22
preodern period at time of the prophet was very different. And I um I don't think it's comparable.
35:29
Jonathan Brown and others have written about this, but I do think there's something similar that if a context does not allow for the full prohibition of slavery, then what Islam did,
35:41
it provided the seeds of the liberation of slaves and their manumission. So I think that that's
35:51
sometimes how progress happens. M and you'd also say the same that Islam had seeds of progress on,
35:59
you know, women's rights. There were limits to how far you could go in 7th century Arabia, but
36:05
there were things in there that were revolutionary for the time that later generations could kind of
36:10
use to say women deserve and and um deserve and require more rights and so on and so forth. So I
36:19
think there's something I see some of that in the American project and I think it's very unique for
36:25
countries to have that built into their founding documents. And again we have to ask ourselves why
36:32
is there this appeal? How how has America been able to tap into the moral imagination of so many
36:40
people over time even those who end up leaving America? I mean, J I I mentioned this in the book,
36:46
James Baldwin's famous quote, and he left America for Paris. He's just like, I'm done with this. But
36:52
he said, um, I love, uh, I love America, and it's for exactly that reason that I insist to criticize
37:01
it perpetually. So, there is something about loving America and criticizing it. And that's what
37:11
so many of us have done. And I not to, you know, not to say that I'm I'm like James Baldwin, but I
37:16
do think there's I'm inspired by that message. No, we care that. Yeah. If we didn't care,
37:21
we wouldn't be having this conversation. Exactly. And that's why we should be as American Muslims,
37:26
and this this also troubles me. In the book, I do mention a lot of statistics and polling on this.
37:32
younger Americans when you ask them if they're proud to be American, the numbers have plummeted
37:40
to record lows. It's hard to be proud to be American right now. But that's that's the problem that I'm trying to point towards. Why is it really that hard? This is our country. I think it's hard.
37:56
Um well, that that's a problem, I think. Um I mean, it would be nice to be proud. I mean I won't
38:01
you know shy away from that. It would be nice if I thought these that's a choice we can make. We have agency there. We can decide to be proud. Al the one other thing before I forget that I wanted
38:11
to just gesture at here. The question is do moral appeals to America's better nature work? Even now
38:20
during the genocide in Gaza, it is pretty it's it's not it's not nearly enough but it is vague.
38:29
It's somewhat encouraging that almost half of the Democratic caucus in Congress is now calling for
38:38
blocking bombs to Israel and suspending military aid. It's a progressive caucus which is about a
38:45
100 members and they're speaking forcefully on this as a collective group in Congress. It shows
38:53
that the work that so many of us have done over the past two years, the organizing, the speaking
38:59
out, despite all the odds, the message is getting through and the Democratic Party is shifting that
39:09
despite the fact that we're completely outnumbered when it comes to, you know, donations, you know,
39:17
donations to Apac versus donations to whatever the equivalents are in the kind Arab Muslim
39:23
progressive space that tells me there is something about being American that's like wow you know what
39:31
we can't like we have ideals and we and there's a disconnect there is hypocrisy we recognize
39:38
our own hypocrisy and that we have to find a way to close the gap between the ideals we claim to
39:45
believe in and the reality and that's animating a growing number of Congress people and policy
39:52
makers and politicians even in the Republican party to see someone like Marjgerie Taylor Green
39:58
calling it being one of the first lawmakers to call it a genocide. It's not just one. I mean,
40:05
Democrats are a lot better on this. But still, even within MAGA, within the Republican party,
40:11
there is a sense that we shouldn't be killing all we shouldn't be facilitating the killing of all
40:16
of these people. And again, that shows that there is progress. It is at least the public discourse
40:25
in America on Israel, Palestine, and Gaza is better now than it was two years ago. It's better
40:31
now than it was 10 years ago. And that tells me something important about who we are as a country.
40:38
This is just simply unsustainable. But at the end of the day, it's going to be up to us to kind of
40:45
conclude that change. And my hope is that in 10 or 15 what what I want my book to be I mean God
40:51
will like inshallah this would be wonderful if I can get it in the hands of enough young people and
40:57
Muslims and progressives where it kind of awakens something in them where they say you know what
41:03
actually we want to fight harder for the ideals that we believe in we want to fight harder for
41:09
the American project but for that to happen they have to get over their sort of I self-hatred might
41:16
not be the best phrase, but I do think there is a bit of self-hatred sometimes. I I mean, this has happened so many times with me when I'll say something like I'll use the word love
41:25
to describe my relationship to America, which I think is totally reasonable. You should like I think for a country as great as ours and for a country that has given so much to my family, love
41:35
is precisely the right word. But then especially white liberals will say that. They're like, Shy,
41:41
what did you just say love? You love America? like love and Yeah. Yeah. And someone's got to
41:49
make the case for it. And I'm maybe not the person you would expect to make the case for, you know, a brown Muslim who's been very critical of American foreign policy. My entire career has been built on
42:01
my criticisms of American foreign policy and what America has done to the Middle East and supporting
42:07
dictatorships. So, and I I should say too, I mean, I wrote parts I wrote parts of the book before
42:13
October 7th, and then I had to reckon with do I feel comfortable do I feel comfortable with my own
42:20
argument post October 7th? And I had to wrestle with that. That was hard for me. And I'm like, how can I how can I go to my fellow Arabs and Muslims and make a case for American power? There
42:32
was also a debate a debate in my own head and with the publisher about what the best title would be.
42:39
I had mixed feelings about the case for American power, but ultimately I felt that if I'm making a
42:45
case, I got to own it and I shouldn't hide behind euphemism or sort of downplay my my own arguments.
42:54
I want it to be in the title ultimately because that's what I'm making. I am making a case for
43:00
American power. I do think that America I do think American power at least for the rest of my life I
43:08
can't this is maybe another interesting thread in a 100red or 200 years maybe there's an argument
43:14
that there could be some like hypothetical I know Muslims would like to think this like some Muslim
43:20
caliphate that could be an alternative that's not going to happen in our lifetimes it's not
43:26
viable and this is where I disagree with OAN there is no realistic case for the caliphate
43:32
for the time being. So, does it really help us to fantasize about something that won't happen
43:38
or do we work with what we have? What we have is American power. Let's work with that and within
43:45
that and try to make it better and try to make it an instrument for Muslim values in some ways. Can
43:51
America be an instrument for Muslim values? The things that we believe in as American Muslims?
Post October 7th
43:57
they would say that that's the fantasy and that even though the the caliphate is maybe far off,
44:06
the um is alive, right? And but uh that that's just uh you know just a funny reversal,
44:12
but there's an irony here which is I think there's a similarity in between some of the things that
44:19
you and I are calling for, but we get there very different route uh roots uh and ways. Um, going
44:26
back just for to a second for I I want to get more on the the the moral conundrum of of having
44:32
to write a book that spans, you know, pre-occtober 7th and post October 7th because I'm sure there's a lot there. And actually, I had to do the same thing, though my book was not uh calling for
44:41
American power as a history book, but but just the emotional and psychological difficulty of writing
44:47
anything uh with what we we've witnessed. Um but first I mean there's an argument that people have
44:52
made in some sociologists and historians um that the the Malcolm X's and the Black Panther parties
45:00
were the whole reason that American society eventually made a deal with the Martin Luther Kings that rather than being opposing forces that they're complimentary forces one of which forces
45:12
uh power to the table to negotiate. So again, like this is how we conceive of of power. I
45:18
think discursively I can I can imagine like an argument for what for what you're saying,
45:24
which is that this is aspirational. Like we're trying to appeal to people. This is where people
45:31
are. This is what they claim to value. And so we want to speak through that and with that in
45:37
order to mobilize a certain action. I can in a in a instrumentalist way like I can I can get behind
45:44
that. But you know I think in in other ways when I think about motivating Muslims in particular maybe
45:53
we just move in different circles but I don't necessarily see a lot of Muslims being super
45:58
ingrained with um the Declaration of Independence and the foundational ideals of the American
46:05
project. I see I see a love for Islam and I actually made my pitch at the jurist association
46:15
through a similar thing. Get involved. You have to get involved. You have to. But the language and the and the discourse that I used to get there was if you want to have a viable,
46:25
let alone thriving Muslim community in America in 10, 15, 50, 100 years, you have to get involved.
46:32
You can't seed the space to people who would love to turn America into France, let's say,
46:38
right? And outregulate us and make Muslims such a pariah that we can't even uh live here, right? So,
46:46
I think it it depends if we're if we're just saying h I hate to say disingenuously or wink wink
46:53
nudge nudge, it's like come on guys, like let's do the democracy thing, right? Um I can almost I can I can have sympathy for that. I guess I'm I'm especially after October 7th, I can't really
47:06
see US power as a in in its current construction, as a force for good. And if it possibly could be,
47:19
can the world afford to wait? I think that's the other question. It's like, can the world afford to
47:24
wait for the US to figure itself out? all these things that are happening slowly slowly slowly and we've got hundreds of thousands of people mass what's alternative in the time being there
47:32
is the only country that can stop Israel is the US Israel won't listen to anyone else that's true and
47:39
and the and that's where American power uh if we used our power for good if we used the power that
47:47
we have with Israel if we used our power with the so-called pro-western dictatorships in the Middle
47:55
East and we said, "Look, if you want our aid, then you got to give us something in return, and
48:02
you got to respect basic human rights. You got to stop killing people. You got to stop imprisoning people." If we used our power in that way, I mean, that to me is the promise. We we have leverage.
48:14
Mhm. Um, and my my critique for a long time has been in these bilateral relationships with
48:23
countries like Egypt, the UAE, Saudi, and so on, we act like we're the junior partner. We're like,
48:29
"Oh, we can't put too much pressure on Egypt because that'll anger them and alienate them,
48:35
and then they'll do this and then they'll do that." We are the superpower. Let's act like
48:41
it at some level that if we could if we could fuse that sense of confidence and security with our own
48:50
power and say like don't mess with us. But you said yourself that it's also a function of the
American Muslims in government
48:57
quality of the individuals that we have. Yeah. So imagine the individuals we have now adopting
49:02
this attitude. But that's why it's good that more American Muslims are going into government, right?
49:07
And I want to see more of that. And but I also did see a sense of that sense of loss of faith towards
49:17
the end of the Biden administration where even some of my Muslim friends who were in the Biden administration saying we're done. Yeah. We just we don't know how we can do like we can't do this
49:27
again. And and how I want them to find ways to get back into government when there's a new democratic
49:34
administration. It's going to take time. There has to be patience. And we are a religion of patience.
49:41
We have to accept that there won't be victories right away. This is a long struggle. And that's
49:50
how we got to think about it. Will it take 10, 15, 20 years? Perhaps. And I I should note that
49:57
I think the Zoran Mandani model is is a very impressive one. And you it does sort of hearken
50:03
back to Martin Luther King and the civil rights struggle. this idea that you have to be impeccably
50:10
presented. He always wears a suit. He's not using foul language. He's not sounding like a militant.
50:18
He is he is there's a kind of idealism fused with pragmatism with someone like him. And that model,
50:26
it's a delicate dance, but I think that is the model that Muslims should take inspiration from.
50:35
like we have to be on our best game. We can't be saying things that are just like crazy and
50:41
alienating and that are not in line with the American ideal. Once we start talking like
50:48
once we go into America is bad, America's e like the founding is has like this touch of evil like
50:57
the kind of woke stuff that we heard a lot from you know 20 2016 to 2022 that kind of peak woke
51:06
period if you will that put off a lot of Americans and that led to a real backlash. Americans don't
51:13
like it. Yeah. when you speak so negatively about the American founding, it just doesn't
51:19
have a big audience. I do agree and actually I've I've developed a lot of messaging around the idea
Islamic Redemption
51:24
of redemption and I think that Islam is unique in that uh it offers redemption for anybody like even
51:32
Trump even anybody that you hate could be redeemed with repentance and contrition and these sorts of
51:37
things which is very anti-woke, right? It's just going to brand you and tar you and feather you.
51:43
Um, but I I think the the sticking point here is is still about when it when it comes to power that
51:50
I can imagine other alternatives. And you ask like how could we get a particular policy change in in
51:57
Israel or in the Middle East. Um, I can think of other ways to do it without American power and the US throwing around its superpower. Wait, like even sometimes because there's there's presence
52:06
and there's absence, right? Look at what happened in Syria. Look at the Syrian revolution. I think it was an interesting situation in which the lack of political will for the United States to get
52:15
involved and the lack of political will for Russia to get involved created a a sort of opportunity
52:20
there. Right? So sometimes if the if the US had been more heavy-handed in its involvement, I
52:28
think it would have been worse. I I you know, not to say, you know, I know that the jury's out on Sharat and everything that's going on and people are concerned about normalization and what's
52:36
going on. We'll see how things develop. But I do think that there's a concern that where even if
52:44
we just say where the US is right now, especially concerning the Middle East, whatever it gets its
52:50
hands into, it usually doesn't end up very well. And so, um, it's not necessarily that we need an
52:57
alternative power to come in and do it, but let's just take the example of Israel. If we really organize for however long it takes to get um you know divestment from the government, divestment
53:10
from universities, we have a functional boycott sort of maybe a South Africa situation completely
53:17
isolated. I guess is this semantic at this point? Is that American power or is that actually a lack
53:23
of American power? withholding American power and then having a a very evil entity that's doing very
53:29
evil things uh fall or have to reconsider at least have to to reconcile with its new reality because
53:36
it's not going to be propped up. So there's two avenues there. I think the one that you laid out seemed to be more like let's get Egypt and Jordan and leverage this to like or our own direct
53:45
influence over Israel to say hey you have to stop doing this. But I can imagine other other roots. I can imagine other roots that are cutting the strings and saying that's like yeah well this is
53:55
your your body of work and these are your policies and we're cutting these strings and until you stop
54:01
right does so I'm not I'm not sure I'm convinced I guess when it comes to the dichomous uh you know
54:06
situation and look don't get me wrong I'm not you know I'm not against people power and for folks to find ways through civil society to put pressure on Israel by withholding you know relationships
54:18
with universities and that sort of I think in the end um you probably need both paths. I think one
54:26
path is more important than the other ultimately cuz I feel like Israel will feel like it can get
54:33
away with anything including murder unless it starts to see America's political class with
54:40
withhold military assistance. If Israel's military can't function in the same way. Yeah. if they feel
Israel and America
54:47
like they're losing their closest ally, that to me is the path forward. I will also say that
54:53
um on Syria, the US didn't use its power in August 2013 when the Assad regime crossed the red line,
55:03
the so-called red line, and used chemical weapons against its own people. But even before that, when
55:08
it was killing tens of thousands, by that time it was well over a 100,000 killed. And the fact that
55:21
the US just kind of stood back and allowed that to happen. Syrians themselves were calling for
55:30
America to step in and they were surprised when America didn't because when Obama said Assad must
55:37
go, people thought maybe he means it like maybe he'll do something, maybe it's not just rhetoric,
55:42
right? And this is where I think the absence of American power can also be destructive. We focus
55:49
so much on the presence of American power being a problem. But when the US decides not to involve
55:55
itself, it can also lead to destruction. When people are being killed in such massive numbers,
56:02
the US is the only country often that can step in and stop the killing. And that goes back to
56:10
what we talked about with um Kosovo at the very least. And I would even say the first Gulf War
56:18
when Kuwaitis were being killed, when Kuwait was being occupied, there was no other country that
56:24
was going to be able to stop that. So it it does I also am still a supporter. I I still think that
56:30
what the US did in Libya was the right thing to do at the time. We there was a mass there was already
56:37
mass killing under Gaddafi. It was about to get worse. Gaddafi was moving into Benghazi and then
56:43
the US and its allies stepped in and prevented Gaddafi and his forces from killing. I think
56:50
that Libya was very likely to become something similar to Syria under asset. It's not great
56:56
now and there's there's an ongoing civil war, but if you actually look at the number of fatalities,
57:02
it's multitudes less than what we saw in Syria where over about over 500,000 were killed.
57:09
So, I just think that at some level when people when mass killings are happening,
57:15
American power is the first and last line of defense. We don't always use it. And that's
57:24
part of the tragedy. And Obama, I think, was very reticent to use American power in that way.
Principe and interest
57:29
I think it might be there might be something else going on as well which is that what is
57:35
the metric or the logic behind when it is used and when it's not used because it seems like
57:41
it's in very self-s serving real politic ways. And I've got people that have told me, you know,
57:47
from the inside that the way that these decisions tend to happen, it's not based off of ideals,
57:52
right? It's based off of um, you know, is this in our interests? How does this advance our our security? How does this advance our our vision? Sure. But is that unreasonable? I mean,
58:01
it's not unreasonable, but but but I'm saying that if we're talking about appealing to people through ideals to make a case for American power, but American power is being deployed or withheld
58:13
uh only when it benefits the US, then how much can we expect from it? How much or is there a larger
58:20
thing that needs to be changed? I guess that's that's what that's what I'm I'm trying to get at. Is there a larger thing that needs to be changed which is um you know when how are we deciding when
58:32
power is used or when power is withheld and is it reasonable and this is where it comes into like the skeptic versus the optimist is it reasonable to expect any nation state let alone the United
58:42
States to not just use or withhold its power based off of its own self-interest is it reasonable to
58:50
expect it to do that based off of principle based off of higher ideals I think it's hard to separate
58:56
between principle and interest because in the minds of a policy maker the two are operating
59:02
simultaneously and it's always complicated how people make decisions. We do know in the case
59:08
of the intervention in Libya that people like Samantha Power um and and others who were kind
59:16
of younger and more humanitarian inflected in their kind of ideas lobbied hard on a on Barack
59:23
Obama who was reluctant at first to get involved in Libya and they said we got to do this because
59:31
our ideals are on the line. These were people who were animated by that. Of course they were also
59:36
taking into account American interests but you can never I think separate one from the other. It's
59:43
a question of like what is the kind of percent 20% 80 80 20 but I'd also say like let's imagine
59:50
the counterfactual of like a Muslim caliphate. If there was a Muslim caliphate with as much power as
59:56
America has today that caliphate would be making decisions also based on its interests as well.
1:00:02
It wouldn't be pure Muslim values or Muslim principles. Yeah. Um and again going back to
1:00:09
how Muslim some Muslim caliphates did pretty bad things at different points and oppress their own
1:00:16
people in ways that were very contrary to Islamic principles. I mean I guess maybe maybe we'll find
1:00:22
out in 500 years like what this hypothetical Muslim caliphate will do when it has a lot of power. Okay. No, that's that's good. So we're starting to close some threads, I feel like. Um,
Pushback from Muslims
1:00:32
let's see. You you mention in your book that when people from within uh your own community
1:00:39
hear your thesis that they grimace. Yeah. What's uh h how is that like? I mean the talk about the
1:00:46
reception of the book, the push back that you've gotten cuz let's be real. I mean after 9/11 we are criminalized. We're securitized as a as a population. There have been people who I mean
1:00:55
some of the Holy Land 5 are still in jail. You've got political prisoners. You've got people who have been intimidated and targeted and trapped by FBI and things like that. So, it's a it's
1:01:05
quite a hard cell, right, to to tell them that more American power is actually what what is needed. Um because they're not even just cons, you know, thinking about the foreign policy. They're
1:01:14
thinking about the what's happened at home. So, how have you navigated that? It's tough. I mean,
1:01:22
sometimes it makes me like not as enthusiastic to get in certain kinds of debates with people.
1:01:28
I have I, you know, I have provocative ideas on a number of different topics and I guess I'm used to it. I've developed a thick skin, but I'm I'm also I don't love conflict. Yeah. So,
1:01:38
for me to get in c certain kinds of arguments where people are questioning my Muslimness or
1:01:43
they're wondering if I'm a sellout or that sort of thing, that hurts obviously. And that's why I have
1:01:50
to kind of like get back to myself and and try to remember why am I doing what I'm doing? Do I
1:01:57
think that my arguments can help make my country better? And if my arguments can help people see
1:02:05
things from a different perspective and inspire them to activism, inspire them to get involved,
1:02:10
inspire them to have another look at the American project and the American idea. So I have to kind
1:02:16
of reconnect with my own purposes in that regard because ultimately I wake up every morning and I I
1:02:23
have to ask myself, you know, I feel sometimes exhausted. It is a very dark time. Sometimes
1:02:28
I just want to hide away and like live on a farm somewhere. And sometimes I don't feel like writing
1:02:35
about politics all that much. And so every day it's about renewing my purpose and thinking to
1:02:42
myself, is this in line with my Islam? Is this in line with my commitments as an American citizen?
1:02:49
Is my intention maybe I mean is my intention I also you know you want to sell books but is my
1:02:56
ultimate intention a pure one and I have to I have to reconnect with that intention and make sure
1:03:02
that it's there and that's like a daily kind of practice that we have to sort of meditate on and reckon with. So, it hurts that in some ways I've never I haven't been fully accepted by everyone in
1:03:15
the American Muslim community. And some people see me negatively, some people see me positively. And
1:03:21
that's just something that I have to live with. We say at Yen Institute that, you know, it's baked into the stats. Like statistically, there's going to be a certain percentage of people that just
1:03:29
hate your guts. Yeah. And in some ways, that's a testament to what you're doing. if everyone liked what you were doing, then that would probably raise questions like that would be kind of weird
1:03:38
if everyone agreed with you. Um, so that's kind of how I see it. But, um, I I I had to rethink parts
1:03:46
of my argument and Gaza did end up figuring more prominently into the book as I re rewrote certain
1:03:53
parts and rethought certain parts. I wanted to be very clear about my position on Gaza. Yeah.
1:03:59
And that's why I hope that even like, you know, I'm trying to appeal to people like centrists,
1:04:06
conservatives, Republicans, and if they can see my argument on Gaza, cuz I think that people will
1:04:14
see the case for American power, and they'll be like, "Oh, here's one of those good Muslims going to say things that we like." But when they actually read the book and see my criticisms of
1:04:22
American foreign policy and my extended discussion around Gaza and Israel Palestine, I hope that will
1:04:29
challenge people when they're not expecting it. They'll go in expecting one thing and and be like,
1:04:34
"Huh, they're maybe not used to hearing um that argument all the time." And that's what I hope
1:04:41
that I can do because I'm sort of mainstream and I'm, you know, I'm a columnist for the Washington Post. I'm in a lot of mainstream venues that I can help get in arguments that otherwise wouldn't get
1:04:52
a hearing. Sure. Would you say that your book is targeted more to towards non-Muslims or to Muslims
1:04:57
or is it equal both? Oh, non-Muslims because there just a lot more of them. Sure. Sure. Sure. Yeah. I mean 1% of the American population. You don't want to like bank too much on that. Yeah,
1:05:06
absolutely. Um Okay, so we'll we'll wrap up. uh just uh you've pretty much I was going to ask
Policy on Gaza
1:05:13
a couple more questions about October 7th and how that played in, but I think you've already kind of addressed that. Um I guess the the the last the last obstacle I think that some people
1:05:26
would point to October 7th and everything that's unfolded after it and say that this represents
1:05:32
an impossibility of American power. Like this is the logical conclusion of American power.
1:05:37
So your your last pitch for why this actually is a possibility and not an impossibility. Look,
1:05:44
I think that our terrible policy on Gaza was not inevitable. There's nothing that required us to be
1:05:50
as bad as we were and we as bad as we still are. Again, choices were made by individuals. If Bernie
1:05:57
Sanders had won in 2020 instead of Joe Biden, I think we'd have a very different policy in Gaza.
1:06:04
Unfortunately, Democratic primary voters with some involvement from the Democratic National Committee
1:06:12
in terms of tilting the scales a little bit, we end up with unfortunately Joe Biden. And I think
1:06:18
the whole I mean the whole country and Democrats are realizing how that ended up being a disaster
1:06:24
for our country because it paved the way for the return of Donald Trump. But it happens to be the
1:06:31
case that Joe Biden was ideologically committed to Israel in a way that made him very blinkered
1:06:37
on these issues. He had this fantasy of an Israel that no longer exists because he's super old and
1:06:42
he has this of like Israel the underdog from the 1960s and 70s. That's those were his formative
1:06:49
years in terms of understanding what Israel was. And there were other people, some of his top aids,
1:06:56
who unfortunately um were maybe morally compromised in their views. It could have been
1:07:04
different. In other words, if there were different figures, different individuals at different times making different arguments. So there's nothing intrinsic about American power or about the
1:07:16
structure of the American government that requires pro-Israel people to always be the ones making the
1:07:23
final decisions on these questions. And it's totally plausible that in 10 or 15 years there
1:07:31
could be a Democratic candidate for president who actually has who's actually motivated by these
1:07:38
questions and has a deep and abiding sympathy for the Palestinians and wants to do something about it. That's where democratic voters are. So if you want to be responsive to your own voters,
1:07:47
your own base, your own constituents, you're going to have to be somewhat critical of Israel. If
1:07:52
you're an unquestioning apologist of Israel, you're probably not going to win, right, the
1:07:59
Democratic nomination in 2028 or 2032 or whatever. So that to me is a sort of a sort of rejoinder
1:08:09
to the structural argument. I don't believe in structure in that way. What when we talk about the
1:08:15
DNA or the structure of a country or a government, we're still talking about individuals who make
1:08:22
choices. And that gives me some degree of hope. We are all individuals. We have agency and we will
1:08:31
ultimately be responsible for what America becomes or doesn't become. And we'll have no one to blame
1:08:36
but ourselves if it doesn't become what we want it to become. Excellent. Well, thank you so much. Uh
1:08:41
I think that it's it's safe to say that while we don't agree on everything, it was great to hear uh your explication of your views and uh thanks so much. Yeah, thanks so much Tom. It was a pleasure
1:08:51
to be with you. Thanks so much for being on Shad. I really appreciate you explaining. Yeah, thanks so much Tom. Really enjoyed this. Asalam alaikum. Now you've reached the end of this show and the
1:09:01
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1:09:13
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