Robert Crews: Afghanistan, Taliban, Bin Laden, and War in the Middle East | Lex Fridman Podcast #244

Lex Fridman 0:00 The following is a conversation with Robert Kruse, a historian at Stanford specializing in the history of Afghanistan, Russia, and Islam. This is the Lex Fridman Podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description, and now, here's my conversation with Robert Kruse.

Lex Fridman 0:20 Was it a mistake for the United States to invade Afghanistan in 2001, 20 years ago?

Robert Crews 0:26 Yes.

Lex Fridman 0:27 As simple as yes? Why was it a mistake?

Robert Crews 0:30 I'm a historian, so I say this with (laughs) , you know, some humility about what we can know. I think, you know, I'd still like to know much more about what was going on in the White House, you know, in the hours, days, weeks, you know, after 9/11. But I think the George W. Bush administration acted in a state of panic, and I think they wanted to show a kind of toughness. They wanted to show some kind of resolve. You know, this was a horrific act that played out, you know, on ev- everyone's television screens, and I think it was really a, fundamentally a crisis of legitimacy within the White House, in the Oval Office. And I think they felt like they had to do something, and something dramatic. I think they didn't really think through, you know, who they were fighting, you know, who the enemy was, what this geography had to do with 9/11. I think looking back at it, I mean, some of us, not to say I was, you know, clairvoyant or could see into the future, but I think many of us were, you know, from that morning, skeptical about the connections that people were drawing between Afghanistan as a state, as a place, and, you know, the actions of Al-Qaeda in Washington and New York and, and Pennsylvania.

Lex Fridman 1:33 So, as you watch the events of 9/11, the things that our leaders were saying in the m- in the minutes, hours-

Robert Crews 1:42 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 1:42 ... days, weeks that followed, maybe you can give a little bit of a timeline in, of what was being said. When was the actual invasion of, of Afghanistan? And also, what were your feelings in the minutes, weeks after 9/11?

Robert Crews 1:59 I was in DC. I was, you know, on the way to American University, uh, hearing on NPR what had happened, um, and I thought of the American University logo, which is red, white, and blue. (laughs) It's an eagle. And I thought, you know, "Washington is under attack, and symbols of American power are under attack." And so, um, you know, I was quite concerned, and at the time, lived, you know, just a few miles from the Capitol. And so, um, you know, I, I, I felt it, you know, it was, it was real. So I appreciate the, you know, the, the sense of anxiety and fear and panic. And for two, three years later in DC, we were constantly getting reports, you know, mostly rumors, un- unconfirmed, about all kinds of attacks that befall the city, so I definitely, um, appreciate the sense of, of being under assault. But in watching television, including Russian television that day, because I just h- I had just installed a, a satellite thing, so I was trying to watch world news and get different points of view, and that was quite useful to have an alternative, you know-

Lex Fridman 2:56 In-

Robert Crews 2:56 ... set of eyes.

Lex Fridman 2:57 In Russian?

Robert Crews 2:58 Yeah, in Russian, yeah.

Lex Fridman 2:59 Okay, so your Russian is, uh, is good enough to understand, uh, Russian television.

Robert Crews 3:03 The news, yeah, the news-

Lex Fridman 3:04 The news?

Robert Crews 3:04 ... and the visuals that were coming that were not shown on American television.

Lex Fridman 3:07 Mm-hmm.

Robert Crews 3:08 I don't know how they had it, but they had- they were not filtering anything in the way that the major networks a- and cable televisions were doing here. So, it was a very unvarnished view of, of the violence of, of the moment, you know, in New York City, of, of people diving from the towers or being just, you know, it was really ... They didn't hold back on that, which was quite, you know, fascinating. I think much of the world saw much more than actually the American public saw. But to your question, you know, amid that feeling of imminent doom, I watched commentators start to talk about Al-Qaeda and then talk about Afghanistan, and one of the experts was, um, was Barnett Rubin, um, who was at NYU, who was a, you know, kind of long, very learned, um, Afghanistan hand, and he was brought on with Peter Jennings on ABC News to, to kind of lay this out for everyone. Um, and I thought, you know, he did a fine job, but I think it, it was formative in submitting the view that somehow Al-Qaeda was synonymous with the space Afghanistan. Um, and I think, a- again, I was no Al-Qaeda expert then, and I'm not now, but I think my immediate thought went to war and ... because my background had been with, at that point, mostly Afghans who had been displaced from decades of war, whom I encountered in Uzbekistan, who were refugees and so on. I thought immediately, you know, my mind went to the suffering of Afghan people, that this war was going to sweep, sweep up, of course, the, the, you know, the defenseless people who have nothing to do with these politics.

Lex Fridman 4:31 So we should give maybe a little bit of context-

Robert Crews 4:33 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 4:33 ... so you can speak, too.

Robert Crews 4:34 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 4:35 So assume nobody's an expert on anything.

Robert Crews 4:38 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 4:38 So, let's just say-

Robert Crews 4:39 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 4:40 ... um, you're, uh, you and I are not experts on anything.

Robert Crews 4:42 Right.

Lex Fridman 4:43 What, as a historian, were you studying at the time and thinking about

4:47 Yeah.

4:48 Uh, is it j- is it the full global history of Afghanistan? Is it the region? Were you thinking about, uh, the mujahideen and Al-Qaeda and Taliban? Were you thinking about the Soviet Union, the proxy war through Afghanistan? Were you thinking about Iraq and oil? Like what-

Robert Crews 5:09 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 5:09 ... what's the full space of things in your heart, in your mind at the time?

Robert Crews 5:14 I mean, just at the moment, of course, it was, you know, there's the, the sense of, m- you know, the suffering and the tragedy of the moment of, you know, the, what, the deaths, and that was, I think, I was preoccupied by, by the violence of the moment. Um, but as the conversation turned to Afghanistan as a kind of theater, to somehow respond to this moment, I think immediately what came to mind was that little I knew about Al-Qaeda at the time suggested that the, the geography was, was inaccurate, that this was a, a global network, a global threat, that this was a kind of, you know, a movement that went beyond borders. And I think the ... It felt early on that Afghanistan was going to be used as, as a scapegoat. And just intellectually at the time, you know, I was teaching at American University. My courses, m- uh, d- uh, you know, touched on a range of subjects, but I was trying to complete a book on, um, Islam and the Russian empire, actually.

Lex Fridman 6:00 Mm-hmm.

Robert Crews 6:01 But in doing that research, which took me across Russia into Central Asia, purely by accident, I had developed an interest in Afghanistan, because...... uh, just, again, a series of coincidences. I found myself in Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan, without housing, through an American friend who was, like, the king of the market in Tashkent. He knew everyone. He ran into some Afghan merchants there. They found out I didn't have a place to live. I didn't know where Afghanistan was, honestly. This was 1997. I had a vague idea it was next door.

Lex Fridman 6:30 Wait, you lived in Uzbekistan?

Robert Crews 6:32 Yeah, in Tashkent. Doing, doing dissertation research. Yeah.

Lex Fridman 6:34 Okay.

Robert Crews 6:35 Because it was, you know, the hub of the Russian empire in Central Asia.

Lex Fridman 6:37 Yeah.

Robert Crews 6:37 So just by accident, I met with these young Afghans who took me in as roommates. And that, I think, that... The sense of that community shaped my idea of, of what Afghanistan is. It was my first exposure to them. They were part of a, a trading diaspora. They brought... They had brought matches from Riga, Latvia. They had somehow brought, um, flour and some agricultural products from, from Egypt. And they were sitting in enclosed containers in Tashkent waiting for the Uzbekistani state to permit them to trade. So these guys are mostly hanging out during the day. They would get dressed up. They would put on suits and ties, like you're wearing. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 7:15 Mm-hmm.

Robert Crews 7:15 They'd polish their shoes, and they would sit around offices, drink tea, pistachios. Then they'd feast at lunch, um, and then at night, we would go out. So, part of my research... Because I also had a bottleneck in my research. I was going to the state archives in Tashkent.

Lex Fridman 7:31 Mm-hmm.

Robert Crews 7:31 And because of the state of Uzbekistan, you know, that was a very kind of su- suspicious thing to do. So, it took a while to get in, so I had downtime in Tashkent, just like these guys. So, I got to know them pretty well, and it was really just a, a, an accidental kind of thing, but grew quite close to them, and I developed an appreciation of, um... Which now I think, again, thinking of the seeds of all this, um, these people had already lived... Young guys, you know, in their 20s, they'd already lived in six or seven countries. They all spoke a half dozen languages. Uh, one of my best friends there had been a, um, a kickboxer, uh, and breakdancer trained in Tehran. His father was a theater person in Afghanistan. Um, he told stories of escaping death in Afghanistan during the civil war, going to Uzbekistan, escaping death there. Um, and these were very, you know, real stories.

Lex Fridman 8:21 Can you also j-

Robert Crews 8:21 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 8:22 ... just briefly mention-

Robert Crews 8:23 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 8:23 ... uh, geographically speaking-

Robert Crews 8:25 Yes.

Lex Fridman 8:25 ... Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Tajik- Tajikistan. You mentioned Iran.

Robert Crews 8:29 Right.

Lex Fridman 8:30 What, uh... Who are the neighbors of all this? What- what are we supposed to be thinking about for people? I- I was always terrible at geography and spatial information, so can you lay it out? Like...

Robert Crews 8:40 Yeah, yeah. No, sure, sure. So Tashkent, you know, is, uh... Is the capital of Uzbekistan. It was, um, a hub of Russian imperial power in the 19th century. The Russians take the city from a local kind of Muslim dynasty in 1865. It becomes the city, the kind of hub of, um, Soviet power in Central Asia after 1917. It becomes the center of the Soviet Republic of Uzbekistan, which becomes independent finally in 1991, when the Soviet Union collapses. Yeah.

Lex Fridman 9:10 So the- these are all like... These, uh, republics are the fingertips of Soviet power in Central Asia?

Robert Crews 9:18 That's right. That's right. And they've been independent since 1991, but they have struggled to disentangle themselves from Moscow, from one another, and now they face very serious pressure from China to form a kind of periphery of, you know, the great machine that is the Chinese economy and its ambitions to stretch across Asia. Um, for Afghanistan, where my roommates, my friends hailed from, um, yeah, Afghanistan had fallen into civil war in the late 1970s, when leftists tried to seize power there in 1978. The Soviet Union then extended from Uzbekistan, you know, crossing the border with its forces in 1979 to try to shore up this leftist government that had seized power in, in 1978. Um, and so for Central Asians in the wider region, you know, their, their fate had for some decades been tied to, to Afghanistan in, in a variety of ways, but it became much more connected in the 1980s when the Soviet Red Army occupied, um, Afghanistan for 10 years. And here, I refer your listeners and viewers to, um, Rambo III as the guide to-

Lex Fridman 10:28 The historically accurate guide-

Robert Crews 10:30 The historically accurate... The, the Bible.

Lex Fridman 10:31 ... to the occupation of-

Robert Crews 10:32 The Bible of Afghan history is Rambo III. Yeah.

Lex Fridman 10:34 Yeah.

Robert Crews 10:34 As, as a fantastic, um, window onto the American view of the war, right?

Lex Fridman 10:38 Mm-hmm.

Robert Crews 10:39 But for us Afghans, you know, there are people who fought against the Soviet Army, um, but of a certain generation, the guys I knew, you know, their mission was to survive. And so they fled in waves, you know, by the millions to Pakistan, to Iran. Some went north into Soviet Central Asia later in the 1990s, um, and some were displaced across the planet. So California, where we're sitting today, has a large community that came in the '80s and '90s in the East Bay. Um, yeah.

Lex Fridman 11:09 Can I ask a quick question that's a little bit of a tangent?

Robert Crews 11:12 Yep.

Lex Fridman 11:14 What is the correct or the respectful way to pronounce Afghanistan? Afghanistan? I- Iran? Iran? So as a Russian speaker, Afghanistan.

Robert Crews 11:28 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 11:30 The en versus the an?

Robert Crews 11:32 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 11:32 Is it, uh, different country by country? As an English speaker in America-

Robert Crews 11:37 Yeah. Yeah.

Lex Fridman 11:37 ... is it pretentious and disrespectful to say Afghanistan?

Robert Crews 11:41 Mm.

Lex Fridman 11:41 Or is it the opposite, respectful to say it that way? What, what are your thoughts on this?

Robert Crews 11:45 That's a fascinating question. Um, I defer to the people from those countries to, of course, sort out those politics. I think, you know, I think one of the fascinating things about the, the region broadly is that it is a place of so many cultures and, and it's really quite cosmopolitan. So I think people are mostly quite forgiving about how you say-

Lex Fridman 12:02 (laughs)

Robert Crews 12:03 ... Afghanistan, Afghanistan.

Lex Fridman 12:04 So it's not like Paris? (laughs)

Robert Crews 12:05 Yeah, yeah. Right, right.

Lex Fridman 12:06 The French are not forgiving. (laughs)

Robert Crews 12:07 Yeah. No, no, no. Yeah, yeah. Exactly. No, I think people are very, very forgiving, and I think that, you know, Iranians are a bit-... you know, more instructive-

Lex Fridman 12:16 Yeah.

Robert Crews 12:16 ... in suggesting Iran rather than Eye-ran, right?

Lex Fridman 12:19 Mm-hmm.

Robert Crews 12:20 Iraq, Eye-rack. You know, I, I, I think there's, there's, there's come to be a fit between certain ways of pronouncing these places and the position that Americans take about them. Right? So, it's more jarring when people say Iraq-

Lex Fridman 12:36 Yeah.

Robert Crews 12:36 ... and it comes with, you know, a, a claim that a certain kind of person, you know, should be the victim of violence or-

Lex Fridman 12:43 Yeah, it's fascinating.

Robert Crews 12:43 Right. So there's that, yeah.

Lex Fridman 12:44 It's kind of like, uh-

Robert Crews 12:45 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 12:45 ... talking about the Democratic Party or the Democrat Party. It's, uh-

Robert Crews 12:48 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 12:48 ... sometimes using certain kind of terminology to make a little bit of a sort of, uh, implied statement about your beliefs. That's fascinating.

Robert Crews 12:59 Yeah, I mean, I think when I hear Iraq and Iran, I mean, I think it... yeah, is it intentional in the case of a Democrat or is it just a, you know, and it's whatever. I think, again, I think most Iranians and Afghans people I know have, have been very cool about that. What annoys Afghans now, I can say, I think it's fair to say, I don't mean to speak for-

Lex Fridman 13:17 Mm-hmm.

Robert Crews 13:17 ... millions of people.

Lex Fridman 13:19 Entire group of people.

Robert Crews 13:20 Entire group of people. But I can just share with our, our non-Afghan friends, um, the term Afghani, uh, is, is a kind of term of offense, because that's the name of the currency. And so lots of people ask, you know, why having... especially, again, this is more directed at Americans because, you know, we've been so deeply involved in that country, obviously, for the last 20 years, right? So Afghans ask, "Why, after 20 years, are you still calling us the wrong name?"

Lex Fridman 13:45 What is the right name, or somebody who-

Robert Crews 13:47 This, th- they, they prefer Afghans.

Lex Fridman 13:48 Afghans.

Robert Crews 13:49 Yeah. And A- and Af- Afghani is the name of the currency. And so...

Lex Fridman 13:52 I just dodged a bullet 'cause I was gonna say Afghani.

Robert Crews 13:54 That's cool. No, no, no, yeah, I, I hear you. I know.

Lex Fridman 13:56 That's really great to know.

Robert Crews 13:57 Yeah, yeah. And it's, and it's... a- again, I think... but I would emphasize that people are quite open and, and, you know, it's a, it's a whole region of incredible diversity and, and respect for linguistic pluralism, actually. And so I think that... you know, but I also appreciate that during the... in this context, um, when there's a lot of pain, you know, in the Afghan diaspora community, in particular, you know, being called the wrong name after 20 years when they already feel so betrayed at this moment, you know, just kind of... I, I... i- if one follows this on social media, that is one kind of, um, hot wire, right?

Lex Fridman 14:32 Yeah, so the reason I ask about pronunciation is because, yes, it is true that there are certain things when mispronounced kind of reveal that you don't care enough to pronounce correctly.

Robert Crews 14:44 That's right.

Lex Fridman 14:44 You don't know enough to pronounce correctly.

Robert Crews 14:47 Right, right.

Lex Fridman 14:47 And you dismiss the culture and the people, which I think-

Robert Crews 14:50 That's right.

Lex Fridman 14:51 ... as per your writing, is something that, if it's okay, I'll go with Afghanistan.

Robert Crews 14:56 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 14:57 Just because I'm used to... I say Iraq, Iran, but I say Afghanistan.

Robert Crews 15:01 Yeah, yeah, it's great.

Lex Fridman 15:02 Is, is, as you do in your writing, uh, Afghanistan suffers from much misunderstanding from the rest of the

Lex Fridman 15:08 world. But back-

Robert Crews 15:09 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 15:10 ... to our discussion of Uzbekistan-

Robert Crews 15:12 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 15:13 ... Tajikistan, the whole region, that gives us context for the events of 9/11.

Robert Crews 15:18 Right, right. So yeah, if we go back to that day and the weeks, you know, that followed, um, you know, my mind went to the community I knew in Tashkent, um, which was interesting. It was... I mean, they were... so Islam was the focal point of our conversation in the US about 9/11, right? Everyone wanted to know what was the relationship between this horrific violence and that religious tradition with its, you know, one billion plus followers across the globe, right? That became the issue, of course, for American security institutions, for, you know, local, state and police institutions, right? I mean, it became the, I think it was the question that most Americans had on their mind. So again, I didn't imagine myself as someone who had all the answers, of course, but given my background and, and coming at this from Russian history, coming at this from studying empire and trying to think about the region broadly, you know, I was very alarmed at the way the, the conversation went. It was-

Lex Fridman 16:12 Can I ask you a question?

Robert Crews 16:13 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 16:13 What was your feeling on that morning, um, of 9/11? Who did this? Isn't that, isn't that a natural feeling? There's a... it's coupled with fear-

Robert Crews 16:23 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 16:24 ... of what's next, especially when you're in DC.

Robert Crews 16:26 Right, yeah.

Lex Fridman 16:27 But also who is this? Is this an accident?

Robert Crews 16:30 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 16:30 Is this a deliberate terrorist attack? Is this, uh, domestic? Like-

Robert Crews 16:34 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 16:35 What were your thoughts of the options and the internal ranking given your, um, expertise?

Robert Crews 16:41 Yeah. I mean, I suppose I, I was taken by the narrative that this was international. I mean, I, I'd also lived in New York during one of the first bombings in '94 of the World Trade Center. So it was clear to me that a radical community had really fixed New York as part of their imagination of... and I, I immediately, you know, thought it was a, it was a, a kind of blow to American power. And, you know, I was drawn in by the symbolism of, of it. You know, if you think of it as an act, it was a kind of, um, an act of speech, if you will, a kind of, a, a way of speaking to... from a position of relative weakness, speaking to a, you know, a, a, an imperial power. And that I saw, I saw it as a kind of symbolic, you know, speech act of, of that, with horrific, you know, real world, um, consequences for all those innocent victims, for the firemen, for the police, and just the, you know, the horror o- of the moment. Um, so I, I, I did see it as, as transcending the United States, but I did not see it as really having anything necessarily to do fundamentally about Afghanistan and, and the history of the region that I'd been studying and the community of people that I knew, who were not particularly religious, right? The, the, the guys I hung out with actually wore me out because they wanted to go out every night. They wanted to party every night. We had-

Lex Fridman 17:57 Drinking?

Robert Crews 17:58 Yep. We had discussions about alcohol. I mean, Uzbekistan is famous for its, you know-

Lex Fridman 18:02 Drinking.

Robert Crews 18:03 Its drinking, you know, its... and-

Lex Fridman 18:04 That's something to look forward to. So I, I do wanna-

Robert Crews 18:07 And it's... yeah.

Lex Fridman 18:07 ... travel to that part of the...

Robert Crews 18:08 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 18:08 When, when was the last time you were in that part of the world?

Robert Crews 18:11 Early 2000s. Well, in the mid-2000s.

Lex Fridman 18:13 Yeah.

Robert Crews 18:14 2010s. Yeah, yeah.

Lex Fridman 18:14 So, wait, so, uh, by the way, what drinking? Vodka? What, what's the pre-

Robert Crews 18:18 Yeah, I mean, the-

Lex Fridman 18:19 What's the weapon of choice?

Robert Crews 18:20 ... is Pakistan has incorporated vodka as, as the, um, the choice. Um-

Lex Fridman 18:26 (laughs)

Robert Crews 18:26 And that, and it, and it-

Lex Fridman 18:27 Yeah.

Robert Crews 18:27 ... it informs, you know, and it's ... But, but the, the fascinating thing, you know, as a student is what you're observing as a non-Muslim, you know, I'm a, I'm a non-Russian. I'm ... This is all, you know, culturally new to me, and I'm, you know, a student of all that, right? As a grad student doing my work there. Uh-

Lex Fridman 18:42 So you're like the Jane Goodall of vodka in Russia.

Robert Crews 18:45 That's right. That's right.

Lex Fridman 18:45 You're just observing. (laughs)

Robert Crews 18:46 That's right.

Lex Fridman 18:46 Studying.

Robert Crews 18:47 Yeah, yeah. And then you, you get the, you get the samogon, the grass vodka. You get, you know, I have ... I've had some long nights on the Kazakhstani frontier-

Lex Fridman 18:56 Yeah.

Robert Crews 18:56 ... that I'm not proud of, um-

Lex Fridman 18:58 (laughs)

Robert Crews 18:59 ... you know. Uh, yeah.

Lex Fridman 19:00 But you got to know the people and some of them from, from, from Pakistan.

Robert Crews 19:03 Yeah, yeah. But, but intellectually, so the, so the thing, I mean, the, the, the fascinating thing there was that, and just as a ... I mean, there, there, there's a whole ... You know, I'm an historian, right? But there, there are great contributions by, you know, anthropologists and ethnographers who, who have gone across the planet and tried to understand how Muslims understand the tradition at different contexts. So, many Uzbeks will say, you know, um, "This is part of our national culture to drink and eat as we please," right? And yet, I'm a very devout Muslim, and so, of course, you encounter other Muslim communities who won't touch alcohol, right? But it's become kind of, I think it's very much, um, you know, Soviet culture left a, a deep impression in each of these places. And so, there are ways of thinking, ways of, uh, performing, ways of, you know, enjoying oneself that are shared across Soviet and former Soviet space to this day, right?

Lex Fridman 19:54 And you've written also about Muslims in the Soviet Union.

Robert Crews 19:57 That's right.

Lex Fridman 19:58 Uh, the, there's an article that, uh, there was a paywall so I couldn't read it.

Robert Crews 20:03 Oh.

Lex Fridman 20:03 And I really want-

Robert Crews 20:04 Sorry.

Lex Fridman 20:04 ... to read it. Is, uh-

Robert Crews 20:05 Happy to share it with you, yeah.

Lex Fridman 20:06 ... uh, Moscow in the Mosque, or-

Robert Crews 20:09 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 20:09 ... something like that.

Robert Crews 20:10 Right, right.

Lex Fridman 20:10 Um, by the way, just another tangent on a tangent.

Robert Crews 20:14 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 20:14 Uh, so I bought all your books.

Robert Crews 20:16 Oh.

Lex Fridman 20:16 Love them very much.

Robert Crews 20:17 Thank you, thank you.

Lex Fridman 20:18 B- one of the reasons I bought them and read many parts is, uh, because they're easy to buy, unlike articles.

Robert Crews 20:25 Okay, okay.

Lex Fridman 20:26 Every single website has a paywall.

Robert Crews 20:28 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Lex Fridman 20:28 So it's, it's very, very-

Robert Crews 20:29 I hear you, I'm sorry. Yeah, yeah.

Lex Fridman 20:30 ... frustrating to read brilliant scholars such as yourself.

Robert Crews 20:33 No, no. No.

Lex Fridman 20:34 Um, I wish there was one fee I could pay everywhere. I don't care what that fee is-

Robert Crews 20:38 Right, right.

Lex Fridman 20:39 ... where it gives ... allows me to read-

Robert Crews 20:41 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 20:41 ... some of your brilliant writing.

Robert Crews 20:42 No, no, I think I hear you. No, I think moving toward more kind of open source-

Lex Fridman 20:47 Yeah.

Robert Crews 20:47 ... formatting stuff, I think is what a lot of journals are, are thinking about now. And I think it's definitely for the kind of democratization of knowledge and scholarship, that's definitely an important thing that we should all think about. And I think, um, you know, we need to exert pressure on these publishers to, to do that, so I appreciate that.

Lex Fridman 21:02 And this, this is what I'm doing here.

Robert Crews 21:03 Yeah, yeah.

Lex Fridman 21:04 (laughs)

Robert Crews 21:04 Good, good. Yeah, no, I appreciate it, appreciate it.

Lex Fridman 21:05 So, uh-

Robert Crews 21:06 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 21:06 So your thought was Afghanistan is not ge- it's not going to be the center-

Robert Crews 21:13 Exactly.

Lex Fridman 21:13 ... the source-

Robert Crews 21:14 Exactly.

Lex Fridman 21:14 ... of where-

Robert Crews 21:14 It's not the center of this, and invading that country isn't gonna fix, isn't gonna fix the, you know, toxic maelstrom of politics that produced 9/11, right? Again, just thinking of some of the personalities, just thinking about going back to the Tashkent story which I'll end with. I mean, just observing, you know, real Muslims doing, doing things and then asking questions about it, and, and trying to understand through their eyes what the tradition means to them. And then, you know, you have a ... We had, we had a very narrow conversation about what Islam is that, you know, generated, immediately exploded in, you know, on the day of 9/11, right? Um, and then, of course, um, I think the antipathy toward Islam and Muslims, you know, was informed by, by racism, informed by xenophobia. So it became a perfect storm, I think, of, of demonization that didn't sit with, you know, what I knew about the tradition, and with the actual people that I had known. Because then going back to, I mean, there were other friends and encounters and so on, but just thinking about Afghanistan and, and Tashkent for a moment, I mean, just the, the th- thought about my friends who had been, who had suffered a great deal in their short lives, who had been, you know, cast aside from country to country, but had found a place in Tashkent with some relative stability. And, you know, they wanted to go out every night. And, you know, they explained, you know, one friend, we talked about it, with the alcohol and all that, and he, he didn't get crazy, but he was like, "You can drink, but just don't get drunk. That's, that's permissible within Islam," right? Um, and he was, you know, ethnic Pashtun. Ethnic Uzbeks had a different view, you know. Often the more vodka, the better, you know?

Lex Fridman 22:49 Mm-hmm.

Robert Crews 22:49 And it doesn't violate, as I understand, Islam. So even, you know, it's, it's kind of a silly example, but it's just an illustration of the ways in which different communities, different generations, different people can come at, at this very complex tr- tradition in so many different ways. So obviously if ... Whatever kind of scholar you are, any kind of expert, whatever, you're, you know, it's always disconcerting to see your field of specialization be flattened, right? And then be flattened and then be turned to arguments for, for violence, right?

Lex Fridman 23:18 Mixed up with, uh, natural human-

Robert Crews 23:20 Right.

Lex Fridman 23:21 ... feelings of hate.

Robert Crews 23:22 Yeah. That's right.

Lex Fridman 23:23 And, uh-

Robert Crews 23:23 And hurt-

Lex Fridman 23:24 ... derision.

Robert Crews 23:24 ... at that moment, and, and pain. So I, I-

Lex Fridman 23:25 Yeah.

Robert Crews 23:25 ... you know, I mean, that day I, I vividly remember I sat with, um, other PhD historians in different fields. We, you know, we oddly enough had lunch that day in a kind of deserted Washington, some place was open, we went. Um, and we just thought, you know, this is gonna kind of open up like a great maw of destruction, and, you know, the American state is going to destroy, and it's gonna destroy in this geography. And I thought that was misplaced for lots of reasons, and then I think if one ... You know, I'd been doing some research on Afghanistan then, I was kind of shifting to the south, and I'd been looking at the Taliban, um, from afar for some years, and, you know, I think it's clear now that in retrospect there were opportunities for alternative policies at that moment.

Lex Fridman 24:16 So what should the conversation have been like?

Robert Crews 24:20 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 24:20 What should we have done differently?

Robert Crews 24:23 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 24:23 Because-... you know, from a perspective-

Robert Crews 24:27 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 24:27 ... of the time the United States was invaded by a, a foreign force, what is the proper response?

Robert Crews 24:35 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 24:35 Or what is the proper conversation about the proper response at the time-

Robert Crews 24:38 Right, right.

Lex Fridman 24:38 ... you think?

Robert Crews 24:39 You know, I know my colleague at Stanford, Condoleezza Rice, would tell me this is above my pay grade. And, um, you know, she makes a point in her classes to talk about how difficult decision-making is under such intense pressure, and I appreciate that. Um, you know, I am a historian who sits safely in my office. I don't like battlefields, I don't like taking risks. Um, so I can see all those limits. You know, I'm not a military expert. I've been accused of being a spy (laughs) wherever I've gone because of the way I look and because of my nationality and so on. But I'm not a spy, so I defer... You know, I respect the expertise of, of all those communities. But I think they acted out of ignorance. They acted, I think, because... I mean, if you think of the... In a way there was a compensatory aspect of this decision-making. I mean, the Bush administration failed. This was an extraordinary failure, right? So if we start-

Lex Fridman 25:30 In which way? If we... Can we break down the nature?

Robert Crews 25:31 A failure of intelligence. I mean if they... You know, if you follow the story of Richard Clarke, um ...

Lex Fridman 25:36 Who's Richard Clarke?

Robert Crews 25:37 He was a national security expert who was tasked with following Al-Qaeda, who had, uh, produced a dossier under the Clinton administration that he passed on to the George W. Bush administration. And if you look at the work of Condoleezza Rice, she wrote a very famous, I think, un-paywalled (laughs) , uh, foreign affairs article that you can read announcing the George W. Bush foreign policy kind of outlook. Um, and it was all about great powers. It was about the rise of China, it was about Russia. I mean, there's definitely a kind of hangover of those who missed having Russia as the bogeyman, who spoke... You know, the Clinton administration repeated again and again the idea of making sure the bear stayed in his cage. Um, which is why the United States threw a lifeline to these Central Asian states, hoping to have pipelines, hoping to shore up their national sovereignty as a way of containing Russia initially, but also Iran, you know, which sits to the south and, and west.

Lex Fridman 26:41 Mm-hmm.

Robert Crews 26:42 And then peripherally, looking down the road to China, to the east.

Lex Fridman 26:45 So the, the bear is what, like Russia? Or is, is it kind of like some weird combination of Russia, Iran, and China?

Robert Crews 26:55 No, the bea- the bear is Russia. And, and Russia is this, um... Again, I'm s- I'm trying to characterize the imagination of some of these-

Lex Fridman 27:02 Yeah.

Robert Crews 27:02 ... national security figures. Um, this is an image formed in the Cold War. I mean, it has deeper seeds in European and Western intellectual thought that go back at least to the 1850s in the reign of Tsar Nicholas I, when we first get this language about, um, the Russian Empire as this kind of evil, uh, polity. Obviously this was, uh, uh, a kind of pillar of Reaganism. Um, but the Clinton folks kept that ali- alive. They wanted to make sure that, you know, American power would be, you know, unmatched. And they, being creatures of the Cold War themselves, they looked to Russia as a resurgent power, well before Putin was even thought of, right?

Lex Fridman 27:45 Yeah, I mean, this is-

Robert Crews 27:46 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 27:46 You mentioned one-

Robert Crews 27:47 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 27:48 ... deep, uh, profound historical piece in Rambo. It's probably, uh, the C- this, this conflict has to do with another Sylvester Stallone movie, Rocky IV, which is also historically accurate and based on, uh-

Robert Crews 28:01 Right, yeah.

Lex Fridman 28:02 It's basically a documentary. So, um-

Robert Crews 28:04 I agree, yeah.

Lex Fridman 28:05 There, there is something about the American power, even at the level of Condoleezza Rice, these respected, uh, deep kind of, uh, leaders and thinkers-

Robert Crews 28:15 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 28:15 ... about history and the future, where they like to have competition with other superpowers-

Robert Crews 28:22 Right.

Lex Fridman 28:22 ... and almost, uh, conjure up superpowers even when those countries don't maybe, at the time at least, deserve the label of superpower.

Robert Crews 28:33 That's right, a great point. Yeah, they all, all excellent points. So yeah, I mean, Russia was... I think many, many experts... I mean, my, my mentor at Princeton, um, Stephen Kotkin, you know, was then writing great things about how, you know, if you look at Russia's economy, the scale of its GDP, you know, its capacity to actually act globally, it's all quite limited. Um, but Connie Rice and the people around her, you know, came into power with George W. Bush thinking that, you know, the foreign policy challenges of her era would be those of the past, right? Richard Clarke and others within the administration warned that, in fact, there is this group that has declared war against the United States, and they are coming for us. The FBI had been following these people around for many months. And so, you know, by the time George W. Bush comes to power, lots of Al-Qaeda activists are... Well, not lots, but, you know, uh, uh, perhaps a dozen or so are already, you know, training in the United States, right? Um, and what we knew immediately from the biographies of some of the characters of the attackers of 9/11, it was a hodgepodge of people from across the planet, but mostly they were Saudi, right? And that was known very early on, or, or presumed very early on. So again, if we go back to your big question about the geography, why Afghanistan? It, it didn't add up, right? It seemed to me that Afghanistan was a kind of soft target. It was a place to have explosions, to seemingly recapture American supremacy. Um, and also I think, you know, there was... I- in many quarters there was a, a deep urge for revenge, and this was the place to have some casualties, have some explosions. And then I think, you know, restore the legitimacy of the Bush administration by showing that we are in charge, we'll pay. And I think there was a very old-fashioned punitive dimension, which rests upon the presumption that if we intimidate these people, they'll know not to try this again, right?

Lex Fridman 30:23 Mm-hmm.

Robert Crews 30:23 All these, I would suggest, are all misreadings of a-... of an organization that was always global. It had no real center. I mean, it called itself the center, is one way to, to translate al-Qaeda. But that center was really-

Lex Fridman 30:34 Yeah.

Robert Crews 30:34 ... in the imagination. Um, bin Laden bounced around from country to country. Um, and crucially, I think, uh, a dimension that I don't claim to know anything new about, but has endured as a kind of doubt, is the role of Saudi Arabia and the fact that, you know, the muscle in that operation of 9/11 was, was Saudi, right? I mean, this was a A Saudi operation with, if one thinks, again, just on the basis of nationalities, Saudis, you know, an Egyptian or two, a Lebanese guy. And the Egyptian guy, you know, had been studying in Germany. He was an urban planner, right? Um, so if one thinks of the imagination of this, I mean, and in fact if you look at the, the kind of typology of the figures who have led this radical movement, I mean, if you think of the, the global jihadists, they are mostly not religious scholars, right? Bin Laden was not a religious scholar. His training was an engineer. You know, some biographers claim that he was a playboy for much of his youth. But really the, the, these ideas, and I think that's probably why they chose the Twin Towers, I mean, this is, uh, an imagination fueled by training in engineering. I mean, a lot of the, you know, the sociology, if you do kind of a prosopography of, of a lot of these leading, um, jihadists, their backgrounds are not in Islamic scholarship, but actually in engineering and kind of practical sciences and, and professions.

Lex Fridman 31:57 Mm-hmm.

Robert Crews 31:57 Medical doctors are, are among their ranks. Um, and so there's long been a tension between Islamic scholars, who devote their whole lives to study of texts and commentary and interpretation, and then what some scholars call kind of new intellectuals, new Muslim authorities who actually have secular university educations, often in the natural sciences or engineering and technical fields, who then bring that kind of mindset, if you will, to what Muslim scholars call the religious sciences, which are, you know, a field of kind of ambiguity and of gradation and of subtlety and nuance, and really of decades of training before one becomes authoritative to speak about issues like whether or not it's legitimate to take someone else's life.

Lex Fridman 32:43 With the relation to Afghanistan, who was bin Laden?

Robert Crews 32:47 Bin Laden was a, a visitor. Um, if we look at his whole life course, part of it is an enigma still. You know, he is from a Saudi elite family, but a family that kind of has a, a Yemeni Arabian Sea kind of genealogy. Um, so the family has no relationship to Afghanistan, past or present, except at some point in 1980s when he went, like thousands of other young Saudis, first to Pakistan, to places like Peshawar, on the border, where they wanted to aid the jihad in some capacity. And for the most part, the Arabs who went opened up hospitals, some opened up schools. The bin Laden family had long been based in engineering, construction, so it's thought that he used some of those skills and resources and connections to build things. Um, you know, we have images of him firing a gun, uh, for show, right? It's not clear that he ever actually fired a gun in what we would call combat.

Lex Fridman 33:52 Mm-hmm.

Robert Crews 33:52 Um, again, I could be corrected by this, and I think, you know, there could... There are competing accounts of who he was, so he's kind of a... I mean, many of these figures that... Who, who sit at the pinnacle of this world are, you know, fictive heroes-

Lex Fridman 34:05 Mm-hmm.

Robert Crews 34:05 ... that people, you know, map their aspirations onto, right? And so people like Mullah Omar, who was then head of the Taliban, was rarely seen in public. The current head of the Taliban is almost never seen in public. I mean, there's a kind of studied air of, um, mystery that they've cultivated-

Lex Fridman 34:23 Mm-hmm.

Robert Crews 34:24 ... to make themselves available for all kinds of fantasies, right?

Lex Fridman 34:27 Do you think he believed... So his religious beliefs, do you think he believed some of the more extreme things that enable him to commit terrorist acts? Maybe put another way, what makes a man want to become a terrorist?

Robert Crews 34:47 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 34:47 And what aspect of bin Laden made him want to be a terrorist?

Robert Crews 34:51 Right, right. Um, I mean, let me offer some observations. Uh, I think, you know, there are others who know more about bin Laden and, and have far more expertise in, in al-Qaeda. So I'm coming at this in an adjacent way, kind of from Afghanistan and from my historical training. So this is my two cents, so you know, bear with me. Um, I, I don't have the authoritative account for this, but-

Lex Fridman 35:12 Which, which in itself is fascinating, because you're a historian of Afghanistan. And the fact that bin Laden isn't a huge part of your focus of study just means-

Robert Crews 35:24 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 35:24 ... that bin Laden is not a key part of the history of Afghanistan, except that America made him a key part of the history of Afghanistan.

Robert Crews 35:32 I, I would endorse that. Definitely, that's... I mean, you've, you've put it in a very pithy, pithy way. Um, yeah, so listen, he was... He was a... So he was an engineer. He was said to be a playboy, um, who spent a lot of cash from his family. You know, like many young Saudis and from some other countries, he was inspired by this idea that there was jihad in Afghanistan. It was gonna take down one of the two superpowers, the Soviet Union, who, you know, the Red Army did murder hundreds of thousands, perhaps as many as two million, um, Afghan civilians during that conflict. It, it's very, you know, plausible and very, you know, uh, completely understandable that many young people would see that cause as, you know, the righteous, pious fighters for jihad, who called themselves mujahideen, arrayed against this evil empire, right? Of a godless Soviet empire that... I mean, there was even confusion about what the Soviets wanted, right? Now, now we know much more about like what the Kremlin wanted, what, what Brezhnev wanted.... and how the Soviet elite thought about it, because we have many more of their records. But from the outside, you know, for Jimmy Carter and then for Reagan, it looked like the Soviets were making a move on, on South Asia, because they wanted to get to the warm water ports, you know, which Russians always want, supposedly, right? And it was kind of a, a move to take over our oil and, you know, to assert world domination, right? So, there are lots of ways in which this looked like good versus evil. In Congress, it looked like, um, you know, kind of Vietnam again. But this time, it- this was our chance to get them, and there are lots of great quotes, uh, I mean disturbing, but really revealing quotes that, uh, American policymakers made about wanting to give the Soviets their Vietnam. So, the CIA funneled, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars into this project to, to back the Mujahedin, you know, who Reagan called freedom fighters. And so bin Laden was part of that universe. He's part of that, you know, he's swimming in the ocean of these Afghan Mujahedin, who out of size, you know, did 95% of the fighting. They're the ones who died. They're the ones who defeated the Red Army, right? The Arabs who were there did a little fighting, but a lot of it was for, you know, their purposes. It was to get experience. It was to kind of create their reputations, like bin Laden began to forge for himself, uh, being spokesman for a global project. Because by the late '80s, when bin Laden, you know, I think was, was more active and began conspiring with people from other Arab countries, the idea that... You know, when Gorbachev came to power in '85, he's like, "Let's get out of here. This is, this is draining the Soviet budget. It's an embarrassment. Uh, we didn't think about this properly. Let's focus on restoring, um, the party and strengthening the Soviet Union. Let's get out of this costly war, you know, it's, it's, it's a waste. Um, it's not worth it. We're not gonna lose anything by getting out of Afghanistan." Um, and so their, their retreat was quite, uh, effective and successful from the Soviet point of view, right? It's not what we're seeing now. Um-

Lex Fridman 38:35 What, uh, what year was their retreat?

Robert Crews 38:37 Um, I mean, it began ... So Mihail Gorbachev came to power in 1985, you know, he was a generation younger than the other guys. He was a critic of the system. He didn't want to abolish it, he wanted to reform it. He was a, a true believer in, in Soviet socialism and in the, and in the party as a, a, you know, a monopolist, right?

Lex Fridman 38:55 Mm-hmm.

Robert Crews 38:56 Um, but he was critical of the old guard and recognized that the party had to change and the whole system had to change to continue to compete. And so Afghanistan was one element of this. And so he pushed the Afghan elites that Moscow was backing to basically say, "Listen, we're gonna share power." Um, and so a figure named Najibullah, who was a Soviet-trained intelligence specialist sitting in Kabul, um, agreed. And he said, "You know, we need to have a more kind of pluralistic, accommodationalist approach to our enemies, who are backed by the US mainly, sitting in Pakistan, sitting in Iran, backed by these Arabs to a degree, getting money from Saudi." And he said, "Let's draw some of them into the government and basically have a, a kind of unity government-"

Lex Fridman 39:47 Mm-hmm.

Robert Crews 39:48 "... that would make some space for the opposition." And for the most part, with US backing, with Pakistani backing, with Iranian backing, and with Saudi backing, the opposition said, "No, we're not going to reconcile. We're gonna push you off the cliff." And so that story goes on from at least 1987. The last Soviet Red Army troops leave early 1989. Um, but the Najibullah government holds on for three more years. It, it is the, um... I mean, they're still getting some help from the Soviet Union. Its enemies are still getting help from the US mainly. And, um, it's not 'til 1992 that, that, um, that they lose. And then Mujin- Mujahedin come to power. They immediately, you know, they're deeply fractured and-

Lex Fridman 40:33 And that's where bin Laden is watching all of this unroll.

Robert Crews 40:35 That's right, and he's, he's part of the mix, but he's also mobile. So he go- he at one point, you know, goes, um, you know, is in Sudan, you know?

Lex Fridman 40:42 Right.

Robert Crews 40:42 He's, he's moving from place to place. His people are all over the world, in fact. They, I mean, if you think of the ... Once the Mujahedin take power, you know, they, they have difficulties with the Arab fighters too, and they don't want them coming in and, you know, messing with the Mujin- Mujahedin regard this as like, you know, "This is an Afghan national state that we're going to build. It's going to be Islamic. It's going to be an Islamic state, but you can't interfere with us." And so there were always tensions. And so the Arabs were always kind of ... I would say they were... The Arab fighters were always interlopers. Um, yes, the Africans were happy to take their money, send patients to their hospitals, um, take their weapons, but they were never gonna let this be like a Saudi or Egyptian or, or whatever project.

Lex Fridman 41:22 Mm-hmm.

Robert Crews 41:22 Um, but then many of those fighters went home. They went back to Syria, they went back to Egypt. Some wanted to go back to Saudi Arabia, but the Saudis were very careful. I mean, the Saudis always used Afghanistan as a kind of safety valve. In fact, they had, you know, fundraisers on television. They chartered jets. They filled them with people to fly to Pakistan, um, get out into Peshawar and say, you know, "Go fight." And it was one way that the, the monarchy, the Saudi monarchy, um, very cleverly I think, created a, a kind of escape valve for would-be dissidents in Saudi Arabia, right? Just send them abroad. You want to fight jihad? Go do that somewhere else. Don't, don't bother the kingdom. But all this became dicier, um, in the early '90s when some of these guys came back home and some of the scholars around them said, you know, "Let's... We've defeated the Soviet Union," which is a huge, huge boost.

Lex Fridman 42:11 Mm-hmm.

Robert Crews 42:11 And I think part of the dynamic we see today is that the Taliban victory is a, a renewed inspiration for people who think, "Look, we beat the Soviets. Now we beat the Americans."

Lex Fridman 42:21 Mm-hmm.

Robert Crews 42:22 And so already watching the Soviet retreat across this bridge, back into Uzbekistan, if you see these dramatic images of the, the tanks, you know, moving, a lot of people interpreted this as like, you know, "We are going to change the world, and now we're turning it to the Americans. And our, our local national governments are backed by the Americans, so let's start with those, start with those places."... and then let's go strike, let's go strike, you know, the belly of the beast, which is America, which is New York. And going back to bin Laden, your question about, you know, what motivates him, what motivated him, you know, again, he was not a rigorously trained Islamic scholar. And that, I think, you know, when I, when this, when this comes up in our classes, you know, I think, especially young people, I mean, people who weren't even born on 9/11, I mean, they're, they're shocked. They, they see, they see his appearance, they see him pictured in front of a, a giant bookshelf-

Lex Fridman 43:10 Mm-hmm.

Robert Crews 43:10 ... of Arabic books. He's got the Kalashnikov, and he's got what looks like a religious scholar's library behind him, right? But if you look at his words, I mean, one fascinating thing about just our politics, and just one thing that kind of sums all this up, I mean, the fact that on 9/11, we had to have a few people, a few experts, people like Barnett Rubin, who was an Afghanistan expert, so that was one way in which I think, you know, I'm not faulting him personally, but it's just one way in which that relationship appeared to be, you know, formed, right? Of looking Afghanistan to that moment. Um, if one looks actually at, you know, what bin Laden was saying and doing, people like Richard Clarke were studying this. There were Arab leaders, the Arab press was d- was watching this, because he gave some of his first interviews to, uh, a few Arab newspaper outlets. But speaking of our American kind of, you know, monolingualism, a lot of what he was saying wasn't known.

Lex Fridman 44:02 Mm-hmm.

Robert Crews 44:02 And so I think, for several years, people weren't reading what bin Laden said. I mean, experts are reading, reading it in Arabic, but there was great anxiety around translating his works. So, you know, we have Mein Kampf, we have all this other stuff. You can buy, like, collected works of Lenin, Stalin, Mao, whatever you want, in whatever language you want. But bin Laden was taboo for American publishing, and so it was only Verso in the UK that published a, a famous volume called Messages to the World, which was the first compendium, compendium of, of bin Laden's writings.

Lex Fridman 44:33 So, he has a Mein Kampf. He has a ti- does he have a thing where he-

Robert Crews 44:38 I mean, it's a kind of collected works, it's a collected works-

Lex Fridman 44:40 Okay.

Robert Crews 44:40 ... uh, of his, yeah.

Lex Fridman 44:41 So he had, he had a, well, like a, like a blog. (laughs) Like-

Robert Crews 44:44 Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Lex Fridman 44:44 ... just a col- collection of articles versus-

Robert Crews 44:46 Yeah, these are interviews.

Lex Fridman 44:47 Right.

Robert Crews 44:47 These are his, his missives, his, his declarations, his, um, his decrees, right? Um, it would... But I think, just in terms of, you know, if, if we zoom out for a second about, you know, American policy choices and so on, the powers that be didn't trust us to know what he was really about. I, I'd put it that way. And I don't say that in a conspiratorial sense; I just think that it was, you know, it wa- it was a, uh, a taboo. And I think people-

Lex Fridman 45:12 Yeah.

Robert Crews 45:12 ... you know, there was, there was a kind of consensus that, um, you know, "Trust us. We know, we know how to fight Al-Qaeda."

Lex Fridman 45:19 Right.

Robert Crews 45:20 "And you don't need to know what they're about because they're, they're crazy. They're, they're fanatics, they're fundamentalists, they hate us." Remember that language?

Lex Fridman 45:26 Yeah.

Robert Crews 45:27 Uh, it's, uh, us versus them.

Lex Fridman 45:28 Yeah.

Robert Crews 45:28 But if you read bin Laden, that's when it gets messy. That's where the bin Laden's argumentation is not fundamentally about Islam. And if you're, you're sitting here with an Islamic scholar, he would say, you know, depending on which Islamic scholar, they would tend to go through and dissect and negate, you know, 99% of the arguments that bin Laden claimed was in Islam, right? But what strikes me as an historian who's, again, looking at this adjacently, um, if you read bin Laden, I mean, the arguments that you make are, first of all, they're sophisticated. They reflect a, a mind that is about geopolitics. He uses terms like imperialism. He knows something about world history. He knows something about geography.

Lex Fridman 46:14 So, imperialism is the enemy for him? Or what's the nature of the enemy?

Robert Crews 46:17 It's a, it's a, it's an amalgam. And he, like a good politician, which is what I would call him, he is adept at speaking in different ways to different audiences. So if you look at the context in which he speaks, if you look at Messages to the World, if you look at his writings, and it, we can zoom out now, and we now have compendia of the writings of Al-Qaeda more broadly. You can purchase these, you know, they're basically primary source collections. Um, we now have that for the Taliban. I mean, th- what's fascinating about, I think, if you like this culture, acknowledging it's very, you know, diverse internally, is that these people are representatives of political movements who seek followers. They speak... They often are very, I'd say, skilled at, at visual imagery. And especially now, I mean, what's fascinating is that, I mean, the Taliban, you know, used to shoot televisions. They used to, you know, blow up, uh, VCR, um, you know, videotapes. Um, they used to string audio and video cassettes from trees in kind of ceremonial hangings, right? That we're, we're killing this nefarious, infidel technology that is doing the work of Satan. And yet, today, in plus- I mean, one of the keys to the Taliban's success is that they got really good at using media. I mean, brilliant at using, uh, the written word, the spoken word, music, actually. Um, and, you know, Hollywood. Hollywood is the gold standard, and these guys have studied how to create drama, how to speak to modern users. I mean, Islamic State did this. I mean, the, the role of media and new media. I mean, I am, I follow and I am followed by senior Taliban leaders, which is, you know, bizarre. You know, on Twitter. They-

Lex Fridman 48:06 On Twitter?

Robert Crews 48:07 I don't know why they care about me. I'm, I'm, I am, I'm nothing. Uh-

Lex Fridman 48:10 They fol- they fol- they follow you on Twitter?

Robert Crews 48:12 I don't know why. This is no joke. This is no joke. So it's-

Lex Fridman 48:15 It's a...

Robert Crews 48:15 They are part of our modern world. It's how they talk and it's how they recruit, and this is part of the, this is why they are... You know, so, so bin Laden, if you read bin Laden, he, he speaks multiple languages, I would say. It's, uh, it's environmentalism. You know, "The West is bad because we destroyed the planet. The West is bad because we abuse women." So in, in class, you know, uh, especially, you know, female students are very surprised to learn and actually say, you know, this, this feminist argument is not...... you know, we start with, you know, this is a murder. This is a person who has taken human life, innocent life, over and over again, and he is, um, you know, aspirationally genocidal, but let's try to understand what he's about. So we walk through the texts, read them, and people are shocked to learn that it's not just about, you know, quotations from the Quran strung together in some irrational fashion.

Lex Fridman 49:07 Mm-hmm.

Robert Crews 49:08 He knows, um, I mean at the core I'd say is the problem of human suffering, and he has a geography of that that is mostly Muslim, but he talks about the suffering of Kashmir. All right, so if you have a student in your class who's from South Asia who knows about Kashmir, you know, he or she will say, "That's not entirely inaccurate," you know?

Lex Fridman 49:26 Yeah.

Robert Crews 49:27 The Indian state commits atrocities in Kashmir, uh, you know, Pakistanis doing that too. You know, Palestine is an issue, right? So you have in the American university setting people across the spectrum who get that, you know, Palestinians have had a raw deal.

Lex Fridman 49:43 Mm-hmm.

Robert Crews 49:43 And so it's a, victimhood is- is central, and it's Muslim victimhood which is primary, but as a number of scholars have- have written, and I'm, you know, I- I definitely think this is a- a framework for it that's useful, I mean, in this kind of vocabulary and this sa- this framing of this narrative, um, today, in today's world, if we think of today's world being post-Cold War, '91 to the present, looking at the series of Gulf Wars and seeing the visuals of that, I think that, you know, I think the American public has been shielded from some of this. But if you look at just the- the carnage of the Iraqi army that George H.W. Bush produced, right? Where you think of, you know, the- the images of the suffering of Iraqi children under George H.W. Bush's sanctions, US-British airstrikes, then you have Madeleine Albright answer a question on 60 Minutes saying, "Do you think, you know, the deaths of half a million Iraqi kids is- is worth it? You know, is that justified to contain Saddam Hussein?" And she says on camera, "Yes, that, it- it's worth it to me." If you put that all together, I mean, American kids and of course the American public, they're not always aware of those- those facts of global history, but these guys are, and they- they very capably use these images, use these tropes, and use facts. I mean, the fact, I mean, some of these things are not- are not undeniable. I mean the- the, I mean these estimates about the number of Iraqi civilian children dead, you know, that- that came from, I think The Lancet, and it came from, you know, those are- those are estimates. But looking at this from the point of view of- of- of Amman, of, you know, Jaffa, of Nairobi, you know, just think around the planet. Um, and if you see yourself as the victim of this great imperial power, you know, you can see why especially young men would be drawn to a- a road of- of- of self-sacrifice. And the idea is that in- in killing others, you are making them feel how you feel.

Lex Fridman 51:46 Yeah.

Robert Crews 51:46 Because they won't listen to your arguments reasonably because they won't, you know, recognize Palestinian suffering, Bosnian suffering, right, Chechen suffering. You go across the planet, right? Because they won't recognize our suffering, we're going to speak to you in the only language that you understand, and that's violence. And look at the violence of- of the post-1991 world, right, in which American air power really becomes a global, you know, kind of fact in the lives of so many people. Um, and then the big mistake after 9/11, among many, I mean, fundamentally was taking the war on terror to some, you know, 30 or 40 countries, right? So that you have, uh, more and more of the globe feel like they're under attack, right? And the- and the logic is essentially, it's not- it's not... For bin Laden, it's not, "We're going to convert you and turn you into Muslims, and that's why we're doing this." That- that appears, that claim does appear at times, but it's, if you look at any given bin Laden text, I mean there are 40 claims in each text. I mean, it's kind of, it's dizzying, but he's a modern politician. He knows the language of- of social equality. We know that there's a class dimension to it. There is an environmental dimension to it. There's a gender dimension to it. And yes, there are Quranic quotes sprinkled in. And when he wants to speak that language, he knew that, you know, he's not a scholar, so he would often get a few recognized scholars to sign on.

Lex Fridman 53:13 Mm-hmm.

Robert Crews 53:13 So, some of his declarations of jihad had his signature kind of sprinkled in with like a dozen other- other signatures from people who are somewhat known or at least, you know, with titles, right? Um, so as a kind of intellectual exercise, it's fascinating to see that he is throwing everything at the wall in one level. Um, that's one way to see it, that it's a- it's a, these are kind of testaments toward recruitment of people who, yes, they're angry, yes, they're unhappy. And this is what, you know, I think for our broader public it's hard to get, you're like, "Well, bin Laden didn't suffer. He wasn't poor."

Lex Fridman 53:51 Mm-hmm.

Robert Crews 53:51 Like, yeah, I mean, Lenin, Pol Pot, I mean there's-

Lex Fridman 53:55 They're speaking to-

Robert Crews 53:56 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 53:56 They're empathetic to the suffering of the landscape.

Robert Crews 53:58 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 53:58 The full landscape of suffering.

Robert Crews 53:59 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 53:59 It's interesting just-

Robert Crews 54:01 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 54:01 ... to think about suffering. You know, America, the American public, American politicians and leaders, when they see what is good and evil, they are often not empathetic to the suffering of others. And what you're saying is bin Laden perhaps accurately could speak to the ignorance of America, maybe the Soviet Union, to the suffering of their people.

Robert Crews 54:28 That's right.

Lex Fridman 54:28 And, I mean, if you look at s- the speeches and the ideas that are public of Hitler in the 1930s...... he spoke quite accurately to the injustice and maybe the, the suffering of the German people. It, I mean, charismatic politicians are good at telling accurate stories. It's not all fabricated, but they emphasize certain aspects.

Robert Crews 54:55 Right.

Lex Fridman 54:55 And then the problem part is the actions you should take based on that. (laughs) That, that's-

Robert Crews 55:00 Right, right.

Lex Fridman 55:01 So, the, the narratives and the stories may be grounded in historical accuracy.

Robert Crews 55:06 Right.

Lex Fridman 55:06 The actions then cross the line-

Robert Crews 55:09 Yeah. Yeah.

Lex Fridman 55:10 ... the ethical line.

Robert Crews 55:11 Yeah. If I had to, I mean, it's, uh ... Again, if you pick up just one of these texts, I mean, it's, it's a kaleidoscope. So, the Hitler analogy is interesting because it's, you know, Hitler spoke to, he could speak to things like inflation, right? Which really existed. Um, but he also appealed to the irrational emotions of Germans, right? He sought out scapegoats, you know, Jews, Roma, um, disabled people, homosexuals and so on, right? I mean, that's also there in bin Laden too. I mean, the idea of, um, you know, a, an anti-Semitism, uh, the constant flagging of Zionists and crusaders. It's a kind of shotgun approach to a search for followers, but I also hasten to add that it's, for all of the things that we could tick off saying, "Well, yes, Kashmiris have suffered, Chechens have suffered," and so on. Um, bin Ladenism never became a mass movement. I mean, it never really ... I think the ... I mean, this is the encouraging thing, right? About ideology. I mean, I think the, the blood on his hands always limited his appeal among Muslims and others. Um, but bin Laden did have, I mean, he had a, there's a, there's a great book by, um, a great scholar at, at UC San Diego, um, Jeremy Presthold, who wrote a gr- great book about global icons in which, uh, he has bin Laden, he has, um, uh, Bob Marley, he has Tupac, you know. He asked why, you know, when he was doing research, uh, in East Africa, why did he see young kids wearing bin Laden shirts. They're also wearing, like, Tupac shirts. They're wearing bin, Bob Marley shirts, and basically, it's a way of, of looking at, um, a kind of partial embrace of some aspects of the rebelliousness of some of these figures, some of the time, by some people under certain conditions.

Lex Fridman 57:05 Well, the terrifying thing to me ... So yeah, there is a longing in the human heart to belong to a group and a charismatic leader is somehow, especially when you're young, just a catalyst for all of that. And, and I tend to think that perhaps it's actually hard to be Hitler. So, a, a leader so charismatic that he can rile a nation to, to war. And bin Laden, perhaps we're lucky, was not sufficiently charismatic. I, I, I feel like if his writing was better, if his speeches were better, if his ideas were stronger-

Robert Crews 57:41 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 57:42 ... uh, better, it's like a more viral and then there would be more people-

Robert Crews 57:48 Right.

Lex Fridman 57:48 ... kind of, um-

Robert Crews 57:50 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 57:50 ... young people uniting around him.

Robert Crews 57:52 Right, right.

Lex Fridman 57:52 So, in some, in some sense, it's almost like accidents of history of just how much charisma-

Robert Crews 57:57 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 57:58 ... how much charisma a particular evil person has.

Robert Crews 58:01 Oh, yeah. I mean, it's-

Lex Fridman 58:01 A person like bin Laden.

Robert Crews 58:03 I think it's fair. Evil, evil, evil works, I think. Um-

Lex Fridman 58:05 So you think bin Laden is evil?

Robert Crews 58:07 Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I mean, he was a, a mass murderer. Um, I'm just saying that, you know, his ideas were ... They're more complex than, than we've tended to acknowledge. Um, they had, they have a, a wider potential resonance than we would acknowledge. I mean, and also, I guess, what I'm, the, just one final point is that, um, thinking about the complexity of bin Laden is also a way of removing him from Islam. Um, he is not an Islamic thinker. He is a cosmopolitan thinker who plays in all kinds of modern ideologies which have proven to mobilize people in the past, right? So, um, you know, anti-Semitism, um, populism, environmentalism and the kind of, and the, the urging to like, you know, do something about humanity, do something about suffering. That's why I think the actual, you ask about like what motivates people to do this kind of stuff. I think that's why if one goes below the level of leadership, and this is being reported, if you look at the, the trial ongoing now in Paris of, uh, the Bataclan murders, I think. Um, the court allowed some discussion of the backgrounds of the accused, and they come from different backgrounds, but if there's any common bond, it's kind of that they had some background in, in petty crime. Famously, in the 7/7 bombings in London, the metropolitan police, you know, the UK authorities looked at all those guys, and what people want is this idea that like they must be very pious. They must be, you know, super Islamic to do this kind of stuff. They must be fanatical true believers. But what they found with those guys was that some were nominally Muslim, some went to mosque, some didn't. Um, some were single, young guys with, like, criminal backgrounds. Some, you know, were like, sorry, they were, you know, kind of misfits who never succeeded in anything. Uh, but others had, you know, at least one of them had a wife and family, who he, you know, widowed and orphaned. And so there's no, I mean, for policing, I mean, if you're looking at it through that lens, there is no kind of typology that will predict who will become violent. And that's why I think we have to move beyond thinking about religious argumentation narrowly or by itself, and think about things like geopolitics. Think about how people respond to inequality, you know, the, the existential threat of, of cri- of, uh, you know, climate crisis, of, um, a whole host of matters, of ... And, and think about th- th- this is a mode of political contestation. I mean, it's a violent one. It's one I condemn. I- it is evil, right?... but, uh, these are people, uh, that are, they're trying to be political. They're trying to change things in some way. It's not narrowly about, like, "I wanna impose Sharia law on you, you know, you must wear a veil, you must eat this kind of food." It's, it's not that parochial. But what one, another quick thought about your interesting claim about charisma in this, I think that the one self-limiting feature of this subculture is that definitely, you know, I mentioned the enigma of, of not wanting to be seen, and that the, the kind of invisibility is a productive force of, of power. You know, which I, a, a colleague of mine who knows ancient history (laughs) far better than I, you know, said, uh, this is, you know, when she looked at, at Mullah Omar initially, or T- Tumip bin Laden, I mean, this kind of studied posture of staying in the shadows, you know, is also a source of authority potentially, because it, it, um, it invites the idea, and this probably dictatorships do this as well, I mean, it invites the idea that someone's working, and maybe it's the, it's the basis for a lot of QAnon or other conspiracies today-

Lex Fridman 1:01:48 Mm-hmm.

Robert Crews 1:01:49 ... that someone's working behind the scenes, and things are gonna go the right way. You can't see it, but that's almost preferable because you can kind of feel it.

Lex Fridman 1:01:57 Mm-hmm.

Robert Crews 1:01:58 And so not having someone out front can may be, may be more effective than having someone out in front constantly. Then the whole-

Lex Fridman 1:02:05 Maybe, maybe.

Robert Crews 1:02:06 And then the whole bin Laden, you know, Mullah Omar thing, like, "You can't see me," or if you look at, you know, bin Laden's photographs and his video stuff, I mean, he's, he's coy. Uh, some observers have noted that he's kind of effeminate. He doesn't strike this kind of masculine... He's not a Mussolini, he's not a Hitler, macho, "I'm standing here thumping my chest." He's not doing the theatrical chin, you know?

Lex Fridman 1:02:28 Mm-hmm.

Robert Crews 1:02:29 That theater people tell us is so aggressive. Um, y- you know-

Lex Fridman 1:02:32 Oh, a chin? What, bringing-

Robert Crews 1:02:34 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:02:34 ... your chin up is-

Robert Crews 1:02:35 Oh, I, I saw a great, uh, BBC theater person, it was kind of a, it was a makeover show about, uh, how to become a better-

Lex Fridman 1:02:42 A dictator? Oh, no, uh, just a powerful, uh, uh, yeah, leader, authoritarian figure?

Robert Crews 1:02:47 No, just how to, how to, like, get ahead in life. And then, uh-

Lex Fridman 1:02:50 Oh, okay, cool.

Robert Crews 1:02:51 And just, and just, like, about acting, like, how you, how you can act differently, right? So it was, it was a BBC thing. Um, and this woman claimed that, um, you know, sticking your chin out like a wrestler does, right, is the most, like, male...

Lex Fridman 1:03:03 I love this kind of-

Robert Crews 1:03:04 Most aggressive.

Lex Fridman 1:03:04 ... hilarious analysis that people have about power.

Robert Crews 1:03:08 So watch the chin, watch the chin.

Lex Fridman 1:03:09 It's the same as analyzing, like, in wrestling, styles that win, or fighting or so on. There's so many ways to do this.

Robert Crews 1:03:17 Well, the chin, I mean, th- the chin is a, could be interesting verbal gesture. And I, uh, I've watched enough Mussolini footage for my classes to try to pick the right moment. And the chin is, Mussolini is all about the chin, so.

Lex Fridman 1:03:30 And I have watched human beings and human nature enough to know that there's more to a man, a powerful man, than a chin.

Robert Crews 1:03:38 Yeah, no, no, no, I'm saying, no, it's, I'm saying it's an act of aggression. I'm not saying it's-

Lex Fridman 1:03:41 Well, it's one of the many tools-

Robert Crews 1:03:42 Yeah, yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:03:42 ... in the toolkit.

Robert Crews 1:03:43 Yeah, yeah, sure.

Lex Fridman 1:03:44 So, so he def-

Robert Crews 1:03:44 It's not, I wouldn't... It's not all about the chin, but it's, it's, uh-

Lex Fridman 1:03:47 But that's what I'm trying to tell you-

Robert Crews 1:03:48 Yeah, yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:03:49 ... about bin Laden. I don't think he was-

Robert Crews 1:03:50 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:03:50 ... deli- deliberate enough with the way he presents himself.

Robert Crews 1:03:54 But he, what he, what I'm saying about bin Laden that makes him different from these other characters is that because he played at being the scholar, he played at being a figure of, of modesty and humility. And that meant-

Lex Fridman 1:04:06 Uh-huh.

Robert Crews 1:04:06 ... that he was often... A- and again, if you watch his visuals, I mean, yes, there's one video of him firing a gun, but if you watch how he moved, how he wouldn't look at people directly, how his face was almost... I mean, he appears to be incredibly shy.

Lex Fridman 1:04:20 Mm-hmm.

Robert Crews 1:04:20 He's soft-spoken, you know, his voice was low. He attempted to be poetic, right? So it wasn't a warrior kind of image that he tried to project of, like, a tough guy. It was, "I'm, I'm demure, I'm humble, I'm," you know, "I'm, I'm offering you this message." And that, and, and that, the, I think the appeal that he was going for was to see, um, to, you know, to project himself as a scholar. His knowledge and humility, the whole package, carried with it an authenticity and a valor that would animate, inspire people to commit acts of violence, right?

Lex Fridman 1:04:56 And-

Robert Crews 1:04:56 So there's, there's a different kind of, like, logic of, like-

Lex Fridman 1:04:58 Yes.

Robert Crews 1:04:58 ... go and kill, right?

Lex Fridman 1:04:59 So he, he put, he presented himself in contrast to the imperialist kind of, um-

Robert Crews 1:05:06 Yeah, sure.

Lex Fridman 1:05:06 ... macho power-

Robert Crews 1:05:07 Yeah, bombastic-

Lex Fridman 1:05:08 ... super powers, yeah.

Robert Crews 1:05:08 ... whatever, yeah. Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:05:09 Yeah, so that's-

Robert Crews 1:05:10 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:05:10 ... just yet another way of, uh...

Robert Crews 1:05:12 But, yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:05:12 A- and you have to have facial hair or hair of a different kind that's recognizable. He had a very recognizable look too, or at least later in life. So-

Robert Crews 1:05:20 Yeah. No, he, he, he tried to look the part.

Lex Fridman 1:05:22 Yeah.

Robert Crews 1:05:22 Um, yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:05:23 (laughs)

Robert Crews 1:05:23 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:05:24 But I'm saying we're fortunate that whatever-

Robert Crews 1:05:27 Right.

Lex Fridman 1:05:27 ... calculation that he was making, he was not more, um, effective.

Robert Crews 1:05:32 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:05:33 I mean, there's, the, the world is full of terrorist organizations, and we're fortunate to the degree any one of them does not have a, an incredibly charismatic leader that-

Robert Crews 1:05:46 Right.

Lex Fridman 1:05:46 ... attains the kind of power that's very difficult to m- m- to manage at the geopolitical level.

Robert Crews 1:05:52 Yeah, and we, and we credit the f- we credit the publics, you know, who don't, who don't buy into that, right, who see through this. We credit the, the critics, you know. Um, fairly on, pretty much 9/11 itself, one of the problems was that US government officials kept kind of leaning on Muslims to, to condemn this, as if all Muslims shared some collective responsibility or culpability. And in fact, um, dozens of scholars and organizations, hundreds condemned this. But their condemnations never quite made it out. But it created a, a tension where, you know, if you wore a veil, you must have been one of them and you must be on team bin Laden. So a lot of the, you know, I think a lot of the popular violence and discrimination and, and profiling came out of that urge to see a oneness, which, you know, bin La- bin Laden projected, right? He wanted to say, "We are one community, you know? If you are a Muslim, you must be with me," right? But I think the...... that's where the- the diversity of Muslim communities became important, because outside of small pockets, I mean they didn't, they didn't accept his leadership, right?

Lex Fridman 1:06:59 Mm-hmm.

Robert Crews 1:07:00 People wore T-shirts in some countries. I mean, non-Muslims wore T-shirts 'cause he was like, he stuck it to the Americans, so-

Lex Fridman 1:07:04 Mm-hmm.

Robert Crews 1:07:05 ... in Latin America, people were like, "Yeah, that was sad, but, you know, finally..." I mean, there was a kind of schadenfreude in that moment.

Lex Fridman 1:07:11 Yeah.

Robert Crews 1:07:11 Internationally.

Lex Fridman 1:07:12 It's like Che Guevara or somebody like that -

Robert Crews 1:07:13 Che, yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:07:14 ... is-

Robert Crews 1:07:14 Che's the other character in, uh, Pissahule's book, yeah. Yeah, that's right, that's right.

Lex Fridman 1:07:17 Yeah, I was going to say.

Robert Crews 1:07:17 Yeah, yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:07:17 It's just a symbol-

Robert Crews 1:07:18 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:07:18 ... it's not exactly what he believed-

Robert Crews 1:07:20 Exactly.

Lex Fridman 1:07:20 ... or the cruelty of actions he took.

Robert Crews 1:07:23 Right.

Lex Fridman 1:07:23 It's more like he stood for an idea of revolution versus authority.

Robert Crews 1:07:28 That's right. And that's, and that's a great way to understand Bin Ladenism and the whole phenomenon, but it, I think looking at the big picture, it's also, you wonder, you know, will that ever end, right? I mean, is that, I mean, that's the- the risk of being a kind of hyper power, um, like the US, where you, in- in insisting on a kind of unipolar world in 2001, 2002, 2003, I mean, that created, um, an- an almost irresistible target, you know, wherever the US wanted to exert itself militarily.

Lex Fridman 1:08:00 Before we go to the history of Afghanistan, the people, and I just want to talk to you about just some fascinating aspect of the culture. Let's go to the end.

Lex Fridman 1:08:13 Withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan. Uh, what are your thoughts on how that was executed? How could it have been done better?

Robert Crews 1:08:24 Yeah, an important question. I mean, I would preface all this by saying, you know, as I noted, I think the war was a mistake. Um, I had hoped the war would end sooner. I think there were different exit routes all along the way. Again, I think there were lots of policy choices in September and October when the war began. Um, there were choices in December 2001. So, we could look at almost every six month stopping point and say, "We could have done differently." As it turns out, though, I mean, the way it played out, um, you know, it's been catastrophic. And I think, um, the Biden administration has remained unaccountable for the scale of the strategic and humanitarian and ethical failure that they're responsible for.

Lex Fridman 1:09:16 Well, okay, let's lay out the full... There's George W. Bush-

Robert Crews 1:09:21 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:09:21 There's Barack Obama. There's Donald Trump.

Robert Crews 1:09:25 That's right.

Lex Fridman 1:09:25 There's, uh, Biden.

Robert Crews 1:09:27 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:09:28 Uh, so they're all driving this van and there's these exits and they keep not taking-

Robert Crews 1:09:33 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:09:33 ... the exits, and they're running out of gas.

Robert Crews 1:09:36 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:09:36 I do this all the time thinking, "Where am I gonna pull off?"

Robert Crews 1:09:39 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:09:39 "I'll go to the very, till it's empty." How could it have been done better and what exactly, um, how much suffering have all of the decisions along the way caused? What are the long-term consequences? What are the biggest things that concern you about the decisions we've made in both invading Afghanistan and staying in Afghanistan as long as we have?

Robert Crews 1:10:03 I mean, if we start at the end, as you proposed, um, you know, the horrific scenes at the airport, you know, that was just one, one dimension. Um, I think in the weeks to come, I mean, we're gonna see Afghanistan implode. Um, there are lots of signs that malnutrition, hunger, starvation are going to claim tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of lives this winter, and I think there is really nothing, there's no framework in place to forestall that.

Lex Fridman 1:10:39 What is the government, what is currently the system there? What's the role of the Taliban? So, there could be tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands that starve, uh, e- either just-

Robert Crews 1:10:51 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:10:51 ... almost a famine, or starve to death.

Robert Crews 1:10:54 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:10:54 So, this is economic implosion.

Robert Crews 1:10:56 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:10:56 This is political implosion.

Robert Crews 1:10:58 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:10:58 What, um, what's the system there like, and what could be the one, you know, some inkling of hope?

Robert Crews 1:11:05 Right, right. The Taliban sit, sit in control. That's unique. When they were in power in the 1990s, from 1996, 2001, they controlled some 85 to 90% of the country. Now they own it all, uh, but they have no budget. The Afghan banking system is frozen, so-

Lex Fridman 1:11:28 So, the financial system's a mess?

Robert Crews 1:11:31 And it's frozen by the US, because the US is trying to use that lever to exert pressure on the Taliban. And so the ethical quandaries are of course legion, right? Do you r- release that money to allow the Taliban to shore up their rule, right? The Biden administration has said no, but the banks aren't working. Uh, if you're in California, you wanna send $100 to your cousin so she can buy bread, you can't do that now. It's almost impossible. There are some informal networks that are moving some stuff, but there are bread lines. The Taliban government is incapable, fundamentally just o- of ruling. I mean, they- they can discipline people on the street, they can force people into a mosque, they can shoot people, they can beat protestors, they can put out a newspaper, they can have... They're great at diplomacy, it turns out. Uh, they can't rule this country. So, essentially, the hospitals and the kind of healthcare infrastructure is being managed by NGOs that are international. Um, but means people had to leave, and- and the Taliban have impeded some of that work. They've told, uh, adult women essentially to stay home, right? So, a big pa- big part of the workforce isn't there. So, the, I mean, the- the- the supply chain is-... you know, is kind of crawling to a halt. Trade with Pakistan and its neighbors, I mean, it's kind of a transit trade economy. Um, it exports fruits. Pakistan has been closing the border because they're anxious about refugees. They want to exert pressure on the international community to recognize the Taliban, because the Pakistan want the Taliban to succeed in power, because they see that in Pakistan's national interest, especially through the lens of its rivalry with, with India. So the Pakistan, the Pakistani security institutions are playing a double game, and essentially the Afghan people are, are being held hostage. And so the Taliban are also saying, you know, "If you don't recognize us, you're gonna let tens of millions of Afghans starve."

Lex Fridman 1:13:39 So to which degree is Taliban... Like, who are the Taliban? What do they stand for? What do they want? Obviously, year by year this changes. So what is the nature of this organization? Can they be a legitimate, peaceful, kind, respectful, uh, government sort of holder of power, or s- or are they fundamentally not capable of doing so?

Robert Crews 1:14:06 Yeah. I mean, the briefest answer would be that they are a clerical/military organization. Um, they have ... this is kind of a imperfect metaphor, but years ago a German scholar used the term caravan to describe them.

Lex Fridman 1:14:29 Mm-hmm.

Robert Crews 1:14:29 And that, that has some attractive elements, because different people have joined the Taliban for different purposes at different times. But today, and people tell us, you know, scholars who know more about the movement than I has said, "Listen, the Taliban is this kind of hodgepodge of different actors and people and competing interests." And I think ... so we have a lot of scholars who say, "Listen, they're, they're ... it's polycentric. It's got people in this city and that city and so on." I think actually, I was obviously skeptical. You know, how do they know this? I mean, this is an organization that doesn't want you to know, um, where their money comes from and so on. But I would say now that we have a clearer picture of what has happened, I'd say they are a astoundingly well organized clerical military organization that has a, a very cohesive and enduring ideology, which is quite idiosyncratic. If we zoom out and continue the conversation we're having about Islam and how we think about radicalism, and you know, who's drawn to what, um, people throw different terms around to describe the Taliban. Some use the term that links it to a kind of school of thought born in the 19th century in India, the Deobandi school. Uh, but if you look at their teachings, it's very clear now, I think that these labels, it's like saying, you know, you're an MIT guy. Well, what does that mean? I mean, MIT is home to dozens of different potentially kinds of intellectual orientations, right? I mean, attaching the name of a school doesn't quite capture ... I mean, you know, so sh-

Lex Fridman 1:16:07 Y- it, it, it's complicated.

Robert Crews 1:16:08 Yeah. Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:16:08 I mean, actually MIT is interesting 'cause-

Robert Crews 1:16:09 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:16:10 ... it's, it's ... I would say MIT is different than Stanford, for example.

Robert Crews 1:16:12 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:16:13 I think MIT has a more kind of narrow-

Robert Crews 1:16:16 Yeah. I hear you.

Lex Fridman 1:16:17 Um-

Robert Crews 1:16:18 Bad analogy on my part maybe. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 1:16:19 Well, no, it's interesting because I would argue that there's some aspect of a brand like Taliban-

Robert Crews 1:16:25 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:16:25 ... or MIT-

Robert Crews 1:16:26 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:16:27 ... no relation, that has a kind of, uh, interact ... Like, the, the brand results in the behavior of the pe- like, enforces a kind of behavior in the people, and the people-

Robert Crews 1:16:40 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:16:40 ... feed the brand and, like, there's a loo- I think-

Robert Crews 1:16:42 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:16:42 ... S- Stanford's a good example of something that's more distributed. There's sufficient amount of diversity-

Robert Crews 1:16:47 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 1:16:48 ... in, like, all kinds of, like, centers and all that kind of stuff that the, the s- the, the, the brand doesn't become one thing.

Robert Crews 1:16:54 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:16:54 I mean, MIT is so engineering. It's so-

Robert Crews 1:16:57 Yeah, no, I, I think-

Lex Fridman 1:16:58 ... more than that. Okay, Taliban-

Robert Crews 1:16:59 Scratch (laughs) scratch MIT. Scratch Stanford too, 'cause I, I think Stanford's more like MIT than-

Lex Fridman 1:17:04 Yeah.

Robert Crews 1:17:04 ... than, than you might imagine. But, uh, yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:17:06 But isn't Taliban, isn't it pretty ... I don't think there's a diversity.

Robert Crews 1:17:10 So, yeah, so, uh, sorry. So the, just to rephrase. So, so people say, "Oh, the Deobandi school," and like, what is that? I mean, the, the Taliban are ... they're an ethnic movement. They represent a vision of Pashtun power, right? The Pashtuns are a people who are quite internally diverse, who actually speak multiple dialects of, of Pashto, who reside across the frontier of Pakistan and Afghanistan. There are Pashtuns who live all over the planet, right? There's a community in Moscow, California everywhere, right? So it's a global diaspora of sorts. Pashtuns have a kind of genealogical imagination, so that lots of Pashtuns can tell you the names of their grandparents, great-grandparents, and so on. And that's kind of a ... there's a sense of pride in that. Pashto language is a kind of core element of that identity, but it's not universal. So for example, you can meet people who say, "I am Pashtun, but I don't know Pashto." So as you, as you claw away at this idea, it, it, it's amorphous. It also means different things to different people at different times. So saying the Taliban are, are Pashtun requires lots of qualifiers, because lots of Pashtuns will say, "No, no, I, I, I have nothing to do with the Taliban. I hate those people." You know? So the Taliban tried to mobilize other Pashtuns with limited success, but their core membership is almost exclusively Pashtun, and they say, "No, no, we represent Afghans. We re- we represent pious Muslims." And so in recent two, three years, they've gone further to say, "No, we have other, other groups. We have Uzbeks, we have Tajiks, we have Hazaras." And in the north of Afghanistan, in recent years, they did do a bit better-... at drawing in people who were very disaffected because of the government, and they able- were able to diversify their rank somewhat. But if you watch the, August 15, and who they've appointed, what language they've used, how they've presented themselves, it's clear that, you know, they are Pashtun, they are male, and they are extremely ideologically cohesive and disciplined, I'd say, right? So, I think that a lot of the polycentrism, blah, blah, blah, some of that stuff was a way to fight a war. Um, they are, they are fundamentally, you know, a guerrilla movement. They see themselves as kind of pious Robin Hoods. The rhetoric is very much about taking from the rich, taking from the privileged, giving to the poor, being on the side of the underdog, fighting against evil. And so, I mean, their, their, their bag, if you like, their thing, their, their central theme, their brand is about public morality. And so their origin story, going back to 1994, is that they interceded, they broke up a gang of criminals who were trying to rape people. And so there's a very interesting kind of, like, emphasis on, like, sexuality and on, on public morality, and really being the core of, like, you know, "We're gonna restore order and-"

Lex Fridman 1:20:14 Yeah.

Robert Crews 1:20:14 "... and public morality." And how that translates into governance is something they've never sorted out. I mean, how do you run a banking system if your intellectual priorities are really about, you know, the length of a beard?

Lex Fridman 1:20:25 (laughs)

Robert Crews 1:20:25 And then, and then their path to power in a, in a kind of abstract sense, I mean, a lot of that was very much driven by, um, if you like, propagating the promise of martyrdom.