I Wouldn't Say I Was Part Of

At Baalbek Nuts I Bought Pistachios From The Lebanese Owners, Who Answered My Request For Their Thoughts On The War With The Typically Lebanese Response Of No Problem. It's A Lie, As We All Knew.

Osama Bin Laden Is Very Shrewd. But He Struck Me, Even In 1997, As Being Remarkably Out Of Touch. I Remember Thinking This Does Not Look Like The Type Of Guy Who Walks To The Top Of A Mountain With A Mobile Phone And Says, "operation B, Attack."now He Is America's Number One Enemy. He's Always Wanted To Be That.

We Live In A Society In The West, Where, When Men Do Violent Things, They Do Them Under Orders. They Are Soldiers Carrying Out Orders Or Mafia Men Carrying Out Killings For Bosses. But The Way Things Happen In The Middle East Is Not The Same As In The West.

People Turn To Violence, Because They Have No Other Avenue Left.

After The Allied Victory Of 1918, At The End Of My Father's War, The Victors Divided Up The Lands Of Their Former Enemies. In The Space Of Just Seventeen Months, They Created The Borders Of Northern Ireland, Yugoslavia And Most Of The Middle East. And I Have Spent My Entire Career — In Belfast And Sarajevo, In Beirut And Baghdad — Watching The People Within Those Borders Burn.