the serious issues and sometimes the cops and robbers stories that came out after inspecting iraq after the first gulf war. ultimately what i talked about was the serious question of can we get rid of nuclear question. the usual question today, what about iran. as if a country that has not figured out how to build a bomb is as much of a threat to the world like a major power. like the united states which has at least 1200, 2,000 maybe 5,000 bombs. we tend to think we're the good guys. that make it is okay. it's a basic imbalance in the world that we maintain large nuclear arsenal but say other countries can't. that was the kind of issue that i discussed in talking about how we get to zero. >> the book, "the twilight of the bombs: recent ch

.. ♪ >> professor dower, it's an

honor to have you here. i've been an admirer for your work for two decades now. and your latest book, "cultures of war," is something that's so sweeping and so impressive that i want to thank you for this opportunity to sit down and be able to have this conversation. >> guest: thank you. >> host: could you start by telling us how you -- you're a historian of japan, both imperial and post-war japan. how is it that you came to write this book that links both pearl harbor, hiroshima, and 9/11 and then the iraq war? what gave you the idea to make those linkages? >> well, in this case, i think it was that moment that all of us remember exactly where we were. it was 9/11. and i happened to be at that time in vermont, in rural vermont. 9/11 occurred and i saw it in a store in a little town and then the newspapers came out, the local newspapers, and both

newspapers had headlines saying infamy, day of infamy. i've written on world war ii, pearl harbor and japan after the war. and infamy is the pearl harbor word. and suddenly the word "infamy" was up everywhere. i did look at all the newspaper headlines that came out on 9/11, september 12, september 13. i would say 10 or 15% use the word infamy or president roosevelt's famous phrase, a date which will live in infamy. and so there was the immediate association with japan, stab in the back, treachery. and because it was airplanes crashing into the buildings, suddenly we started talking

about kamikaze attacks and japan was pulled into it even though kamikaze had nothing to do with pearl harbor. and then you begin to get things like, we will never forget there was a billboard outside of chicago, for example. and on one side it had department 7, and on the other side it had september 11 and in the middle, we will never forget. nobody needed a footnote to understand that. pearl harbor and 9/11. we will always remember these dates. which is true. and then there was a great sense of revenge, we will pull together. and, of course, if you thought about it and what was very clear at the time, there were real similarities, the surprise, the shock and the fact that when pearl harbor happened, president roosevelt was presiding over a

very dicited country, isolationists, people who felt we should do more. in the war in europe. and when 9/11 occurred, president bush was just beginning an administration after an election that had really fractured the country. and so the country pulled together on both occasions. so this was the first thing where people were using japan and al-qaeda -- the poor japanese, you know, they had tried for so many decades since pearl harbor, six decades -- or five decades since the end of the war to be our good friend and suddenly, voom here it is again. remember pearl harbor. the second thing that came quickly on the heels of that infamy, what a colossal failure of intelligence. on the part of the united states. so you had another level there

where how could the americans been caught by surprise in this manner? and then you started to get other people coming in with different things, nonwestern country, non-christian culture, nonwhite peoples have attacked us. and you began to get into the rhetoric of clash of the civilizations again. this is a great clash of civilizations, clash of cultures. and i found it interesting because you could see why it was happening but there were all sorts of problems with it. and the problems got more complicated when suddenly 9/11 and its great symbol, the world trade center became ground zero. now, i've written a lot on world war ii. i've worked on the war.

and i come from the japanese side. but i've also worked on the atomic bombs as you have in great depth. and i've seen it from many perspectives. and to me, ground zero was a world war ii term. and ground zero meant ground zero, hiroshima and sagasaki and that's where we started using it. when we go back to the test of the first atomic bomb in new mexico in july 1945, for years thereafter there was a little wooden sign saying, ground zero. and we always used that word for ground zero meant hiroshima nagasaki. suddenly it had been appropriated and almost expropriated for the world trade center and the funny thing was -- i kept waiting for

someone to say, ground zero? weapons of mass destruction? for someone who thinks historically, where has this word come from? and, of course, it came from world war ii and weapons of mass destruction. that terrify us, come out of that experience but no one made the connections. it was as if we had just taken it and there was no way of thinking about the original ground zero. and then you began to have the language of terra bombing. now, any historian of world war ii just routinely has used the word "terror bombing" for world war ii. and it occurs primarily in conjunction with the anglo american air war, first in europe and then finally in

japan, that culminates in hiroshima, nagasaki. and it's a concept we address in terms of psychological warfare. in modern war, you must destroy the morale of the enemy. that's one of the weapons of war. you destroy the industry, you destroy the armies, you destroy the morale of the enemy and it became standard operating procedure in world war ii. to deliberately target densely populated urban areas. so we tend to think of hiroshima, nagasaki, if we think of them at all in isolation but that was the culmination of a campaign that began against germany and then was carried out by the americans in japan that

targeted over 60 japanese cities before the atomic bombs. but that kind of thinking of terror bombing in terms of what we do in our modern wars -- part of the culture of our modern wars -- that did not get into the discussions or the discourse. what you did instead was say this bombing was done by nonstate actors so this made them different than the past and it shows us -- and if you go back to right after 9/11, i mean, it was a ghastly crime against humanity but all of a sudden into the present day, you keep having people writing that show us the barbaric nature of the islamic, the koran, the

fundamentalist and this is a true clash of civilizations. and so there was so many issues coming up here for me. i've i said i've got to try to sort all a this out. why do you have -- you know, the real similarities that the failures of intelligence -- why do we have these faults analogies? why -- why -- what do we make of ourselves as people in the modern world? and the way i've come to think of it over the years but was crystallized then was not in terms of clash of civilizations. but in terms of or clash or cultures but that modern war of self is of culture. we're trapped in the coils of war. we're in wars and wars and wars and wars.

the technology is getting more and more sophisticated. and that's why the book i wanted to do was called "cultures of war" 'cause i wanted to sort this all out. it doesn't mean it's all relative. obviously, it's not all relative. but it's dynamic in the modern wars. and this threw me into it. and so i said, well, i'll do a little book on this after 9/11 and i had written about world war ii. i have written and i avowed never to do with war again because as you know, when we throw ourselves as researchers in this, it's in its own way -- you know, it's nothing like what people experienced at the time. there's no comparison, whatsoever. but it's exhausting. it's so exhausting. and i didn't want to go on but i did. >> host: no, this is wonderful.

you talked about recovering memory which is what history is in many ways. and you point out in your book that the terror bombings actually began prior to the u.s. entry into world war ii. that the japanese bombed chinese cities and japanese boomed and even the zepplins in world war i were a form of terra bombing and they were universally condemned astera bombing and yet as the war progresses, the allied powers do precisely that. and can you talk about the cultural shift that takes place? >> many years ago, in the 1980s, i finished a book which was about the u.s. and japan, world war ii in the asia pacific. and i called it a war without mercy. and i almost got into that book by accident. we often stumble into our projects by accident. i sat down to write a book about

japan after world war ii and i got to write a few paragraphs on the war and the prelude and it was wonderful that japan and america became friends and allies after the war. this was wonderful because it was such a horrid war and then i said i better write a few paragraphs about the war and then the paragraphs became a chapter and the chapter became a book. and i called it "war without mercy" and one of the things that was stunning to me at the time was to go back into the response of the western world to the terra bombing, the targeting of civilians by the germans and the japanese in the late 1930s. and our most famous recollection of that in the west probably most burned into our minds is picasso's which was the bombing in spain.

of civilian -- of a -- which was the bombing in spain of a civilian community. the most famous photograph that convinced us that the japanese were barbaric and which is reproduced in "cultures of war" is a photo of a chinese babysitting in a bombed-out railway station in shanghai in 1937. and many people have called that the most powerful propaganda photo of the war in asia because that was what made the americans say they are barbaric unlike ourselves. and what was fascinating at the time for me as a young researcher was to go in and read the condemnation of german bombing and fascist bombing and

japanese bombing of civilians by the league of nations, by the united states president and state department. the u.s. wasn't in the league, by winston churchill and the british government. and it's very explicit. deliberately targeting civilians is beyond the pale of civilization. this is barbaric behavior the great sea change took place as america became involved in the war in europe first -- as the british began to regain an offensive against the germans and as the concepts of strategic warfare began to develop and as concepts of psychological warfare and total war began to be concretely expanded, that it is not enough to just go in and

target factories and military-related industry. it's not even efficient. it's very hard to hit those targets. so we've really got to do carpet bombing in these areas but also psychologically this will destroy the morale of the enemy because the fighting force knowing that the wife and children and family back home is being destroyed. the doing that will also boost the morale of our side. and so this became a standard ingrained part of the war in europe. and then the british led and the americans participated in it in europe. they were deliberately going after urban areas. those were the targets written, the urban areas of this city or that city. then they would rewrite them

somewhat for public relations, we were attacking the railway station in city x or the shipyards in city y. but reports were clearly urban targeting. then it moves to japan and the americans very early began alone in japan to target the cities. now, while this is going on, the americans were -- and this was something that comes up in this book, were doing their experiments in how to develop napalm and how to develop fire bombs. and they begin doing these experiments in 1943. and 1944 and they do it particularly in the proving grounds in utah and they bring in people to reconstruct the homes of ordinary german and ordinary japanese workers.

and this is way before the news of baton. and this is way before -- this is beginning very early in the war because there is a momentum in this thinking. we have this capacity. and they bring in people to recreate in the case of japan workers homes that are like the workers homes in japanese cities. and they actually go to the extent of bringing in to tommy straw mats from hawaii, putting in cushions that people sit on in the houses, recreating the storm doors and testing what it's like when the explosion takes place when they're open. what it's like when they're closed. trying to find wood that is as close as possible to the kind of cypress and other fir trees that

the japanese used. getting stucco that is as close as possible from the southwest as close as possible to japanese stucco. they are making workers homes, ordinary people's homes. this isn't collateral damage. this is part of the deliberate targeting. so, you know, in doing this book, a lot of this -- there's been quite a bit of writing in europe about this. none of this has anything to do with minimizing the atrocities of hitler or the holocaust. it's just the way war was conducted. and the numbers -- you can never get the numbers, but the best numbers for europe, 400 to 600,000 civilians were killed in the anglo american air raids. i did mostly from american documents, i did the same kind

of calculations for japanese. the 60-plus cities that are bombed before hiroshima, nagasaki, plus hiroshima, nagasaki. and the numbers come out about 400 to 600,000 civilians were killed in the air war in japan. so the total figure is about a million civilians were bombed in those two wars. culminating in hiroshima, nagasaki. had i been living at the time, i have no reason to think i wouldn't have supported that. but when we suddenly learn the terra bombing or here that the terra bombing is something peculiar to an alien culture, it's those people that don't respect individuals; whereas, we do. that they have different standards, i think, then that's where we have to really start asking deeper questions.

>> and yet to take an 18-year-old, whether it's a u.s. or japanese or german or chinese and be able to turn an 18-year-old into someone who is capable of doing truly horrific things to complete strangers for reasons of state is a very unnatural act. it takes a lot of conditioning. and so there's a lot of dehumanization that goes on, both of the perpetrator as well as the victim. and i think the weight -- it carries over into the way -- in order to do these things you have dehumanize, but if you dehumanize you can't really get into the mindset of your adversaries. and if you can't get into the mindset, you can't understand what's might them. -- motivating them and you can't get them stop doing what you wanted them to stop doing in the first place. and so could you talk about that process of misunderestimatetion,

the psychology of the enemy, if i could quote bush but the whole way we approach our adversaries and that whole mentality. >> guest: well, in the book i wrestled with these -- under several concepts and this goes goes back to our failure of intelligence and i have a chapter called the failure of imagination and this is where i go back to pearl harbor. and why did the americans' failure to anticipate the japanese attack? why did the americans' failure to anticipate the japanese military capabilities? you can turn that around, which i do. and say why do the japanese fail to imagine the american response. and they totally missed how the americans would respond as well as our capacity and will to

remember pearl harbor and get revenge. that was one of the posters of revenge of pearl harbor. that was the standard phrase. and the same thing occurs in the case of al-qaeda and 9/11. and then it transfers -- and this is where my book which was going to be a short book suddenly became a big book because i began trying to wrestle with these various different questions before the u.s. invasion of iraq. now, when the u.s. invasion of iraq took place 18 months after 9/11 in march, 2003, we had another colossal failure of intelligence on the part of the united states. and a colossal failure of imagination on the part of the united states. so if you come back to the u.s. perspective you say there was an

incredible intelligence and imagination failure in 1941. there was another in 2001. and instead of that, getting us to think about who is this adversary to know the enemy, we get into an even more disastrous war in the case of iraq where the intelligence failure is simply colossal and that involves an inability to imagine the other side. and it is not to sympathize with the other side. that's not the point. the point is to imagine the other side and one to imagine the nature of their grievances. and, of course, the argument after 9/11 and still pretty much, they hate us for our freedoms. they have no legitimate grievances.

the argument was, you know, the iraqis are under a brutal dictator which they were. they will create us as liberal rarities totally overlooking as the nature of that society and the fact that nobody likes to be invaded and occupied. totally missing those kinds of things. and the second thing was a failure of imagination. to imagine the capabilities of people we look down upon because they were materially inferior and that's where racism and ethnocentrism came in. and we did not think they had the capacity to wreak havoc upon us. and we went into the war on terror and the war in iraq still thinking we could win with big war. and we could win with shock and awe. and, you know, shock and awe --

which this is all of the things started ricocheting in my mind that i was trying to publish -- to write something -- to figure it out myself shock and awe is one of the key phrases comes iraq. in journalism everywhere. we will go in, we will so shock and awe them with our massive display of firepower. that they will cave. psychological warfare. shock and awe is a doctrine that is kind of a bible in pentagon circles. it's a formal book in study. very well known. and the model is, hiroshima, nagasaki, explicitly. not necessarily using nuclear weapons. but our superior firepower will so intimidate these other people that they will give in. they will realize it's hopeless

to fight against us. we're not able to imagine insurgency movements. we were not able to imagine people who were motivated not necessarily by islamist fundamentalism but by hatred of being occupied. we were not able to imagine the way they viewed recent history. right or wrong, the way they remembered history is very important. and it just didn't enter into planning and thinking at the top-most levels. so then you get into why people think the way they do. and why they -- people at the top fall into these patterns, these apparently rational people fall into patterns of thinking which are irrational and then i began to wrestle with the concept of rationality and

irrationality among people who are, in fact, very intelligent and knowledgeable. the japanese in world war ii, the americans in, you know, the bush administration. they are smart people. why was it so irrational and then you get into of a concept which fascinated me which is -- >> host: that's something i want to come back to at the end because i think that's one of the most important chapters in your book. it's short but it's beautiful and so rich. but again, we fall into this pattern of thinking that our bombs are virtuous bombs. our bullets are virtuous bullets. and people won't mind if we destroy their homes or wedding parties or whatever. they'll somehow forgive us and they have a way -- bombs have a way of uniting people under a common threat to experience a common trauma as 9/11 was to the united states to have bombs drop on your head in some other countries is also quite unifying in many ways. and just the psychology -- if i

lose electricity from a thunderstorm in my building, i get furious. if i lose water pressure, i'm upset. i can't imagine what it's like to have bombs fall in the city and destroy your infrastructure and have to live through that year after year. we'll wait for a short break and we'll come back and pick up on these things. >> why when we hear the president and others talking about the fact that we must make government efficient for the people did our founding fathers actually design the government to be inefficient.

ask yourself that question. because this is a model for inefficiency. but it was done deliberately. why? because in order to have basic liberties, you have to have the government with very little power. the more efficient the government is, the more the liberties the individual has to give up to give to them. they cannot do their job efficiently unless they have the power to tell you what to do. it's very interesting, isn't it? and yet our society today generally believes that we have to have an efficient government because we've been told time after time after time we must make the government efficient. but that is the road to loss of freedom.

>> to watch this program in its entirety, go to booktv.org. simply type the title or the author's name at the top left of the screen and click search. >> "after words" with john dower and sanho tree continues. >> host: so when we think about the kind of tactics that were used in iraq against the united states, the occupiers, we think of asymmetrical warfare and ieds and others these roots go much deeper. can you talk about those parallels. >> guest: well, the more you dig into this the more astonishing it was, the more to me at least. and the type of things we chose not to remember.

and the extent to which we became involved in a kind of what i call in the book "faith-based secular thinking." in which we had our certain dogmatic ideas that were almost religious ideas but they weren't religious but they were secular about war-making and the whole issue of underestimating the enemy -- we can take this way, way back in history and, in fact, you know, some of the people came up belatedly with their counterinsurgency ideas. they go back to ancient china to say, wait a minute, we got about how a person can be successful against a stronger person. one of the striking things that emerged even after 9/11 was that the americans -- the american government -- i must make a

distinction here. it's very -- it's a mistake to say the americans and the japanese and the muslims and so on. one of the striking things was there were many people in the u.s. government all along at lower levels who were saying, this is crazy. first, we should be doing more against al-qaeda and then after 9/11, they were saying, invading iraq is crazy. and they are saying this in the cia and they are saying this in centcom. they are saying this in the defense college. they're saying this in the state department. but it's not reaching the top-most level of government. one of the ideas that they couldn't get through was the whole concepts of insurgency, counterinsurgency -- what we refer to as the weapons of the week. what it is that will mobilize people to, in fact, fight and

die for a cause not necessarily being religious. one of the major things is being occupied. which is exactly what americans would do if a foreign power occupied our cities and occasionally mistakenly obliterated a wedding party. we would go rightly so. we would become outraged. we would mobilize. we would mobilize and give our lives to drive out this person who is occupying us. in the united states -- and this is now clear in the people who are doing counterinsurgency doctrine, and this is a questionable area in itself. they point out the fact that the united states was defeated in vietnam. essentially. and it was defeated by materially interior forces. -- inferior forces.

and those forces were driven in very, very great part by nationalism and by effective tactics of opposition. after the vietnam war, the u.s. ceased to teach counterinsurgency in the military academies. it disappeared. the handbooks were not rewritten. there are insurgencies going on all over the world. we don't study it. vietnam -- we got to put vietnam behind us. we will only fight big wars in the future. we're not going to get involved in that again. then we get the soviet union and afghanistan. i mean, what an example, this colossal power goes in with conventional military power, moves into afghanistan. causes enormous loss of life and

destruction in afghanistan and is defeated -- the soviet union collapses, you know, almost immediately thereafter. we don't bother to study how could these people -- i mean, ronald reagan calls them freedom fighters. you know, we're supplying them with weapons. but we don't study it and then we go in to afghanistan. the united states goes in to iraq and there's no thinking about any of this. why do these insurgencies come up? why are they successful? and it becomes -- it's just an amazing level of irrationality on our part. and an amazing inability to put yourself in the position of the other side and understand why they are acting as they are. why they may regard you not as a

liberator but as an oppressor. the japanese made exactly the same mistake. they go into china, you know, in 1937. they go into china. they call in the general in 1937. he says to the general, how long is this war going to last? the general says, we'll be finished in six months. four years later, they go in and they say, we're going to attack the united states. and it's totally irrational, and they totally -- the japanese totally missed the element of nationalism on the part of the other side. they totally missed the way in which guerrilla movements and insurgency movements and the weak have weapons of their own that can be extraordinarily effective. and so there is a kind of -- and

here, i think, what you get into is the concept of holy wars. every war is holy. a jihad is holy to the islamist terrorists and fundamentalists. the japanese word was holy war. they were out to protect their country and to liberate asia. americans -- the general in world war ii at the end of the war says the holy mission is now completed. george bush and others talk about our holy war are against terrorism. and in holy wars you get into a black and white world. we are in a -- you are evil. we are pure japanese or the islamists. we are the pure, you are the corrupt. we are the innocent. you are the evil. we are the victims. you are the victimizer.

and nobody is able to understand how complex all of this is. i actually wrestle in the book a lot with the evil because i believe in evil. i just don't think anyone has a real monopoly on it. and i think it's a very powerful force just mentally. >> you talk about kind of a religious faith, not religion but a faith-based ideology. that the people believe in the condition so strongly that they think -- it's almost like religion or faith base perhaps. but the idea, you know, when we go to war in iraq, it's kind of the pinnacle of the conservative domination of american thought. and a lot of think tanks including a lot of liberal one, not my own but most think tanks in this city bought into that war including most of congress and a lot of other people many of whom may have been private dissenters but the group-think takes over. and i think one of the great tragedies is -- if i were a

staffer in the national security council during the run-up to the war i could wake up and get my news from fox news. i could get my newspaper and read "washington times." i could drive to work and listen to right wing talk radio and by the time i get to the office there will be dozens reports from neoconservative think tanks same group of people but they were so effective at constructing their etho chamber that they forgot to leave a reality check and it became this chorus that took over the narrative. and there are dissenters as you point out. could you talk about some of the patterns of dissent and how group-think takes over. >> guest: well, it's faith to me at two levels. because i've spent so many years on research on japan, the favored phrase for japanese is -- it's certainly in the war years was herd behavior. the obedient herd. that was probably the most popular phrase.

and it's the old notion, you know, that the japanese -- there's no dissent. they are home ogenius. -- homogenous. there's no room for individualism. there is no room for dissent. whereas, and this is part of the clash of civilization; whereas, we -- particularly we americans -- the japanese are unique in their groupieness and their backwardness at that time. we are exceptional in our virtue. we're exceptional in our values. and what is one of the keys to that individualism? what is one of the keys to that principled dissent? what is one of the keys to this really rational give-and-take that you listen to various ideas and you really debate them. and if someone comes in and

really disagrees with you and it's a principled disagreement, you listen to it and you transparent. that did not map. -- did not happen. and that it didn't happen at the highest levels of government is interesting. and that's where i became interested -- we speak of the imperial presidency. as someone who worked on japan, i'm very familiar with a real emperor system. we have the records incidentally of all the top level japanese meetings concerning war for 1941. they survived the war almost miraculously. all the meetings of the top leaders including meetings with the emperor and we don't have the same thing for the bush administration and we probably never really will. but we can recreate from memoirs, from leaked documents,

from a variety of sources in the bush administration. and i did a lot of comparison of just how the decision-making went. and i saw the japanese as very similar to the bush administration. in other words, a very smart, rational men and they could give you many, many reasons why it's necessary and no dissent is tolerated and this is true in the united states is well. dissent is called lack of patriotism. and first it's you don't have the secret information we have. why aren't you going along at this moment of national crisis? to the point where it becomes near treason. near freeing. -- treason. you're not going along. and in japanese terms, it's lez majesty. in that environment the lower level people were squashed out

and what was fascinating to me was how many interesting -- you know, lots of people outside the government academics and that were writing don't do this. i wrote an op-ed piece don't go into iraq. they were doing better stuff inside the government, cia and others were saying much -- the arguments were all there. they couldn't get to the top. and then what was shocking was the mainstream media in the u.s. just bought it, hook, line and sinker. >> host: and the simplicity of the argument that somehow we had these -- the magic beans of democracy that we'll go in and remove the top -- the headed -- head of state and plant these beans without considering the soil condition, whether there's water, whether there's enough sunlight or air or whatever. that kind of lack of thinking through what happens after the initial kinetic operations which we usually succeed at.

but when these wars drag out to periods of months and years, the group-think and the quagmire, it's almost inherent in that system and yet when i compare it to the post-war planning for the occupation of japan, it was a completely different experience. i remember walking in the archives and looking at the civil affair documents. there's massive files starting as early as 1942 as you mentioned. they were thinking very thoughtfully how are we going to occupy japan? i mean, could you talk the contrast of those? >> guest: well, i did before this the other book that took way longer than i had dreamed it would take was a book on japan medium after the war when the japanese took over the country. so again because watching what's going on in the u.s. and how history is being used, we're

fascinated as historians by the uses of history and by the way memories, so-called memory, is used. and the bush administration and many people used pearl harbor and world war ii are constantly of as a proper analogy to the war in iraq and the war -- it was an absolutely improper misleading analogy but then before the invasion of iraq, beginning around october, 2002, so maybe five months or so before the actual invasion of iraq, the government -- the bush administration began to float lines like, iraq will be like germany and japan after the war. but we can turn this horrendous authoritarian, brutal dictatorship.

into a peaceful prosperous ally to ourselves and model for middle east. and that became another mantra and it was a misuse of history. and i at that time but loads of other people, the military was doing their own studies of occupations and occupied areas. japan was and germany were special cases. incidentally not a single gi was killed in the occupation of germany or the occupation of japan by hostile germans or hostile japanese. not one. we look back on that now and it's just unbelievable. but we said at the time, look, people like myself but many of these people in the government, they did terrific work. they just couldn't be heard.

japan -- iraq is not japan and, in fact, what you see that made japan successful or germany but particularly japan -- japan was a great image because it was nonwestern. you see iraq can be like japan. that's not western. it's non-christian. everything that made the occupation a success in japan is absent in iraq. the occupation will not be legitimate. there will be no existing government to take over. we're going to go in and decapitate the government. who's going to take over? what's going to -- who's going to take over? there was no real tradition of civil society to keep going. there was all sorts of things -- in japan, everything carried on including the emperor. it was a formal surrender. the entire world saw that occupation including japanese as legitimate. it was formal. it was all missing in iraq with its sectarian schisms.

it's a lack of a real democratic tradition comparable to what germany and japan had. it's a lack of an ongoing administration, which was all missing in iraq and that was clear before. and people used history as they wished to use history. the old saying is that the politician uses history the way a drunk uses a lamppost, for support rather than illumination. [laughter] >> guest: and so anyone -- and this was coming also from a lot of people who were middle east in iraq experts. they were coming in -- they were saying, al-qaeda is, you know -- is an atrocious threat and al-qaeda has to be defeated. what does that have to do with iraq. saddam hussein was a brutal

dictator but this, this, this and this reason you cannot go in and expect to have just a smooth takeover. and so when i look back and things about japan and other places, the people in the bush administration are saying, well, here's our -- here our war plan. here's plan a. we're going to go in, topple iraq and get out quickly. in quickly, out quickly, leave a small footprint and then the existing government will take over. there is no plan b. i really have read extensively and everything we can get -- you know, there will never be a u.s. investigation of iraq. the way there was after pearl harbor. we'll never get all of those documents. but i've read -- a lot of it has come out including people like douglas feith and others who have really pushed out a lot of documents.

there was no plan b. it sounds just like that general who said we're going to get in and out of china in four years. you know, i mean, the joke was plan a is to get in and out quickly. plan b is the hopes that plan a works. that's just how the record suggests. >> host: at relatively high levels there were two thoughtful individuals who knew better and who saw a lot of these problems coming, you know, well in advanced and i would like you to compare the two, one was yamamoto and the other was colin powell. >> guest: you're very astute. it's a big book but i threw -- i actually threw away one gigantic section in the book in which i compared japan's holy war with the islamic holy war. and antiwestern sentiment. i mean, it took about a year or a year and a half when i decided it was too much and then i threw away paragraphs here and there

and one was comparing the japanese policymakers and the american policymakers to show the diversity and the capabilities within each side. also to show the small cabuls who were making policy on both sides in the imperial presidency and within the emperor system and the comparison that i then removed from the book was colin powell and admiral yamamoto, the man who conceived and masterminded the attack on pearl harbor. and the point is that in both cases, you have very, very smart people who on principle were opposed to the wars. admiral yamamoto said, you're absolutely making a terrible mistake. he tells his superiors to go to war against the united states. you can't win.

and yamamoto had been at the u.s. on two occasions as a naval attache. he knew washington very well. you know, he was a pro. he went back to the russo japanese war in 1904 and 1905 and he was a very, very -- he was also a very innovative tactician. he says you're crazy to do this. colin powell and, of course, others can speak to colin powell better than i also had grave reservations. when the japanese said we're going to attack america, yamamoto said, okay, if you're going to do that, i think we have to attack pearl harbor because the japanese really wanted to control southeast asia. they needed the resources of southeast asia so they could prolong the war in china which had become a quagmire. quagmires always produce quagmires.

you know, there's never an end to this. and yamamoto said, well, if you attack southeast asia there's the philippines down there and america in all likelihood will come into the war, we have to have a preemptive attack on pearl harbor so that we can delay the american fleet from coming over. and i think if we can pull that off, we can delay the american response for six months or a year. that will give us the time to consolidate our position in southeast asia and our hope is that this will demoralize the americans and instead of pursuing a long war against us in asia, they will cut a deal and leave us with some of the things we need for our national security. but he made it very clear that he thought it was a big mistake.

once the war had been decided upon, and he could not control that that decision, he would do his best to ensure success in that war. his great contribution incidentally was he was an aircraft carrier advocate. and most of the japanese army was ballotship admirals and it was yamamoto who saw the future lay with air power and the aircraft carriers and persuaded them they should do this incredibly daring, incredibly bold attack on pearl harbor. and, of course, the americans said technically and psychological the japanese aren't capable of doing this. my impression of colin powell, who, you know, has been such a great american hero in many ways is -- and i think he says this. he says, well, i talked to the president. i told them my reservations once. on one occasion.

it was clear i wasn't going to win and when your president says to do something, all you can do is salute. and so then we get into nationalism, love of the country, patriotism that once the machines get going, people get on board. so you get on the whole machinery of gearing up to war, which is both material and psychological. and at a certain point you're supposed to get aboard and principled criticism is not acceptable. and i think that's another culture of war, you see? and unless we grasp these machineries of these pathologies, well, the coil of war will be with us forever. >> host: now, that's a depressing note to -- we have five minutes to wrap this up and that's what i wanted to focus on, this intersection we now

have not only the group-think and the bureaucratic momentum, the sheer size of the pentagon, and the way we waged war combined with the viciousness of our domestic politics now. we're in election season, the kinds of smears and negative ads, attacks goes on back and forth. makes it difficult for legislators who are concerned first and foremost with getting re-elected with dealing with serious problems and the most serious problems are the ones that very often have counterintuitive solutions, that are difficult to communicate to the electorate. but one of my favorite philosophers, bart simpson, runs for class president in one of the episodes and he begins by attacking his opponent in his speech and he says my opponent has no easy answers and he says i'm not looking hard enough. and that's one of the problems we have with domestic politics today.

that they are playing to the lowest common denominators and the one the electorate will understand the easiest and that will get you the most votes but counterintuitive is having a rational discussion that's complicated and you'll be attacked by your adversaries. it seems to me is this new or is this -- has this always been around with us? and what lessons do you have for the critics in the future and the politicians of today? >> guest: i wrestled with this a lot because the more -- i've worked on the book from shortly after 9/11 and it just came out now so it took quite a few years. and i really was trying to puzzle out a lot of this. and when it came time to wrap it up, i was trying to find a way out to say this is -- this is the path that can be taken. i couldn't -- i couldn't find it because the concepts thatep