How the world sees Americans

For example, you can't solve most of the environmental threats as a single actor. Let's say that the United States had a complete change of heart and decided to change our global warming policies. If the whole rest of the world said no, it wouldn't matter what we did. Likewise, with disease and the breakdown of the public health system around the world, which again, is completely overlooked. Immigration is another huge issue that we're finally beginning to grapple with. You can't solve these things as a superpower. Terrorism is the same way. The Rumsfelds and the Cheneys of the world think that you just go out and shoot enough people. Guess what: There are always more people out there than you can shoot.

And the argument to this is that Saddam is a real and persistent threat -- to the world and certainly to his own people -- and that we are the only ones that have the resources and the will to dismantle his government. Ignoring the other motivations we have for attacking Iraq, let's just look at that argument. Do we have that responsibility?

That's an important question because it gets to the heart of this issue. I agree, as you said, that Saddam Hussein is a dangerous menace. There are a number of us who have been saying that for a very long time now, long before the first Persian Gulf war. This is a bad guy, and we should not be in bed with him. Dick Cheney, when he headed Halliburton three years ago, should not have been doing business with Iraq. Yes, that region would be much better off if Hussein was not in power. Personally, I have no doubt that Hussein would love to have nuclear weapons and other weapons to use.

I also agree that the United States, because of its enormous power, is uniquely situated to do something about the Iraqi threat, but it's at this point that we have to be careful. The way that Bush is doing it is going to make it worse. Instead of the unilateral approach, you've got to have the world's cooperation in dealing with the problem of Hussein. The idea that because we have the power, we have the responsibility to take him out -- I don't buy that. He is a world problem, and we have to get the world to deal with him collectively. That does not mean that the U.S. coerces everyone on the U.N. Security Council into doing what we want by saying that we're going to do it anyway. There's a fine line between having this responsibility and deciding it's OK if we act unilaterally.

In a case like Bosnia, did you ever hear anyone say that it was good that we intervened in conflicts like that one?

Occasionally, but that was from fairly sophisticated intellectual types, whether they were journalists or political types. It would be in Europe too. You did not, for example, in Japan hear about Bosnia. Nor Rwanda, for that matter.

And, by the way, I want to make this clear: I take America and Americans to task for being provincial and self-centered in my book. But I also say that that's true of all 30 countries I've been to. The difference is that none of them have the power that we do.

You spend a lot of time in the book on the deterioration of the American media due to corporate consolidation. Who did you write that for? Americans or for people overseas?

In particular, overseas people. That is one real blind spot. Even in very sophisticated foreigners' analysis of America, they just don't get it. They'll say, "How is it that you guys don't know about Sept. 11 in Chile?" Or, "How is it that you don't know what your government is doing overseas in Iraq, that you are imposing economic sanctions that have killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi kids? How do you not know that?" Sorry, they actually say, "Why don't you care? Where are the American people on this?" I keep having to say to them, "Don't blame the American people. They aren't told this information. And if you were an American and you were exposed to the same media diet that Americans get, you wouldn't know it either. So don't be so self-righteous."

You mentioned that before Sept. 11, the press knew about bin Laden's plan to launch a major attack on the U.S.

Isn't that something?

Was it just the American press that didn't mention it or was it everyone? Did they mention it in European papers?

That's a good question. And I have to confess that I did not check that out. That would have been wise. I can tell you this, though: Because it was both Reuters [which is British] and Agence France-Press that had the story and then UPI, I tend to think that it was more widely covered in Europe but I can't confirm that.

So what was the story? That bin Laden was planning an attack?

Yes, that he and his lieutenants were planning an attack. It wasn't specified when or where, but it was all the stuff about chatter in the system.

The sorts of things that we take so seriously now.

So to me it was so ironic that the press ... the first time they really started criticizing the Bush presidency was this summer over this very issue. "Bush ignored all these signs that the attacks were coming!" Well, you know, pot and kettle. Our guys were doing this in the press. How hypocritical is that?

But does that reflect the fact that the government wasn't taking it seriously? If there had been a peep out of the Bush administration then the press might have jumped on it.

Oh, sure, because basically our media is a reflection of the government agenda. That's the main point. The far-left critique of the American media is not right in the sense that they are a mouthpiece. It's subtler than that. It's that they follow the Washington agenda. There will be criticisms within that agenda, but if Washington is not paying attention to something the press never will pay attention to it. There will be a story here or there, but they'll never make it a daily story, which is the only thing that really has an impact on the popular mind and the public debate. Had Washington been taking that kind of thing seriously in a sustained way, then yes, we would have seen that coverage.

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