 I'm Claudia McBride, President of the World Affairs Council of Philadelphia. Before we begin, please take a moment to silence your cell phones and other devices, but we do encourage you to tweet if you are so inclined. Was that about tweeting? I'd like to bring your attention to our outstanding lineup of programs for this fall. We have on September 27, Rami Corey, who will discuss events in the aftermath of the Arab uprisings. On October 17, the Council and the Pyramid Club will welcome Ken Feinberg. You may not know the name, but he is the renowned attorney known as the Compensations are, who mediated the 9-11 Victim Compensation Fund as well as the BP Spill Settlement. It should be quite interesting. Two major events scheduled for the fall include Jeb Bush, who will discuss his agenda for America, very timely obviously, and that's on September 21. On October 26, the Council will host Pundit Palooza, an in-depth look at campaign politics and the presidential election. And we have Donna Brazil, a longtime Democratic strategist, along with Michael Smirkonnish, a TV and radio host. What will follow that discussion is the star-spangled celebration and mock election. It's a lot of fun. If you haven't joined us for an election you're part of, please do so. Our mock election is a bellwether for the real deal. We haven't missed in five elections. We sell votes by the way. These events, along with the support of our members and partners, enable the Council to offer its most important work. And that is the programming for a diverse group of over 2,100 middle and high school students in 80 schools in this region. And what we do is we foster the skills and the sensibilities that they will need in order to thrive and compete in a knowledge-based global economy. So your support really does help in a very, very meaningful and consequential way. We would like to take a moment to acknowledge, and I'm back to tonight's event, a moment to acknowledge David Silverstein. Thank you, David. And Suzanne Kurtz of the Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa. And we're thanking and acknowledging them for their support and cooperation in presenting this evening's program. Thank you. And thank you for making the trip up from DC. And Professor Lewis is the chair of the organization. Sorry, I didn't make that connection. An important one. Professor Lewis, we are delighted and we are honored to have you back at the World Affairs Council. Thank you very much. We have a very eager audience to hear more about your notes on a century. I am going to forego the introduction because I know Buncie is planning to provide some context and background on your very rich life and your incredible legacy. But I do have to introduce Buncie. I am so happy to have my mentor and my friend Buncie Ellis Churchill. Buncie is President Emerita of the World Affairs Council of Philadelphia where she served for 23 years as president and many years before that. Buncie was also the host of a daily radio show World Views for 10 years and she is the co-author of Notes on a Century. On a personal note, I've already alluded to the significant role that Buncie has played in my life professionally and personally. So it is both ironic and bittersweet to be introducing Buncie at one of the last events that I will be chairing as the president of the World Affairs Council of Philadelphia. Where, of course, our relationship started and evolved. So Buncie, Professor Lewis? You've done a great job. Thank you everybody and thank you for coming. Before I go and introduce you more formally to Bernard, I do want to say just a word or two about the writing of this book and why my name is on the title considering it's a memoir of him. And by the way, I have to tell you he's gotten fabulous reviews for this book, except one. In Publishers Weekly, the reviewer said, it's solipsistic. Why do I have to go and double check with solipsistic? It means pertaining to self. What is a memoir? Anyway, the way this book was done is Bernard didn't want to do it and he protested. And I took a pile of at least three feet high of the paper of interviews and articles and stuff that we had and cut it into pieces. It was building the biggest jigsaw puzzle you ever saw and then we shuffled it. I remember on a bed in the fellow people apartment, shuffled it. And no, no, he didn't like that. And there were pieces I could have won in six different areas. But it finally came through and his memory for the anecdote is amazing. At the end of the process, he is in his anecdote-age. If you want to make nice comments, you have to. At the end of the process, when we finally got it off to the publisher, and the editor did a good job of sort of smoothing out some of the transitions, he said to me, I should give you a box, an empty box as a present. Well, it's not often you get a present. It's lovely, but why an empty box? So you can put your whip away. So, on to the program. So, every word in the book is his. It's the organization and if any of the juxtapositions seem a little strange, that's my fault. But the words are his. Bernard was born in 1916. For those of you who's at the addition isn't so good, it's 96 years. He was born in London. He learned French, Latin, and German in school. And when he got through school, his headmaster wanted him to go to Oxford. But his father said no, he couldn't go to Oxford because he thought that Oxford and Cambridge were party schools. So he went instead to the University of London to study Middle East history. Which, by the way, was not then taught at Oxford or Cambridge. They taught Arabic, but not history. And in his undergraduate years, he learned Arabic, Greek. And because a girlfriend made real demands on him, he also learned Yiddish. You must have really loved her. He wanted to be a poet and he loves translating verse. And I have to share with you, for those of you who have the book, you will enjoy it. But my favorite poem, which is from Yehuda Ha'laibi, I will read to you. Because it applies to the number of you who are in this room. One gray hair appeared on my head. I plucked it out with my hand. It answered me, you have prevailed against me alone. What will you do when my army comes after me? So Yehuda Ha'laibi was the 11th, 12th century? Not bad for a thousand years ago. So he loves poetry, he loves writing it, he loves translating it. And he also wanted to be a writer, but at some point in the course of his undergraduate years, he figured out that you have to be able to write about something. He got his BA in 1936. And I love, this is one of my favorite stories. A graduation. His father was really concerned about whether he was going to graduate because he had been spending way too much time with a girlfriend. And in the course of the graduation ceremonies, he found out that not only was he first in Middle Eastern history, he was first of all the history specialists. So he got first of the firsts. And with that was a prize to continue his studies. And he spent the first graduate year in Paris studying with a very famous Middle East historian, Louis Massignon. And the wonderful, I will tell you is to, Louis Massignon Bernard didn't get a loan very well. And the question is, why not? Come on. Louis Massignon was a very distinguished French historian and a privilege to be his student. But he generally had a rather hostile attitude to me. And I was never quite sure which was my offenses, whether it was as an English one for Burning Joan of Arc, or as one of the Jewel-fuckers that I killed. I was sort of amazed to find out that Bernard learned Turkish in Paris in French. Imagine learning Turkish. And for those of you who have some knowledge of Turkey or Turkish, the first famous Turkish female novelist, the woman named Halideh Adeeb, was the wife of his teacher of Turkish. For Turkish, that's a very impressive connection. Anyway, in his 1938, I'm not going to go through every year, Gibb, his great teacher, Sir Hamilton Gibb, said, you've been studying the Middle East for four years. Isn't it about time that you went? And this was a, as a depression was sort of coming to a close, but Bernard's family had no way of sending him to the Middle East. And Professor Gibb arranged for him to get a fellowship from the Royal Asiatic Society, and he spent six months of 1938 in the Middle East. 38, 39. In 1940, just as the war was starting, Bernard's first book, which was his dissertation on the Ismailis, was published. It's his least favorite book because he never had a chance to edit it properly. During the war, at the beginning of the war, ah, Bernie, you have to tell that story, when he was signing up for the war, he had to fill in a form. The form asked his name as it addresses. Yeah, when I was registering for military service, I had a number of, there was a form to fill in, a number of lines, and one of the lines was race. Now, that was the first time, indeed, it was the only time I ever saw the word race in a British document, and I just didn't know what they meant. And we used the word race in many different senses. The only people who told me what race at that time was the Germans, and I knew perfectly well what they meant. So I said to the sergeant who was presiding, I said, what am I supposed to put here? And he gave me the look of mixed pity and contempt, which sergeants reserved for new recruits. I said, don't you know what your race is? So I said, wait a minute, I'm not sure what that means. I said, am I supposed to put Jewish? And he said, no, he said, that's your religion, we have another line for that, we don't ask the same question twice. So I said, what am I supposed to put here? He asked me various questions about my family and so on, and he said, obviously your race is English. Then when they explained to me that the part of the British Army was concerned, there are four races, English, Scottish, Welsh and Italian. And I said, what am I supposed to put here? Well, with the cleverness of armies, Bernard was assigned to a tank regiment. This is a man who can't find his terrible sense of direction. So whether it was because it is ineptitude with tanks or as aptitude with languages, he was then assigned to the intelligence service and it was in that department that he spent the rest of the war. He doesn't like to talk about it, though if you... He still feels bound by the Official Secrets Act. But there's a little bit about it in what we were able to pull out of it. When the war ended, he went back to the University of London and you became the first teacher in Middle Eastern history in the UK. Four Middle East history. In a history department. In 1950, he was extraordinarily fortunate and was the first Westerner to be admitted to look at the Ottoman archives. And from that he wrote a very major book called The Emergence of Modern Turkey, which is still in print and still in use today. In 1974, because his marriage was dissolving, he accepted an appointment in Princeton to get away from London and is about to be ex-wife. It was the only time there was a joint appointment between Princeton University and the Institute for Advanced Studies. He was at Princeton for 12 years and then in 1970 he was forced to retire and at his retirement party with the economist Charles Asawi made the comment that for them, both of them were retiring at the same time, retirement meant a new set of tires and full speed ahead. And that is in fact what happened with Bernard. He spent four years after his retirement at the Annenberg Center for Near East Studies, which happened to be at 4th and Lawn, right around the corner from then the World Affairs Council's offices. And Bernard and I met at a party of the Philadelphia Committee on Foreign Relations and at that time I had done all my graduate and undergraduate work about Egypt and he was doing Turkey. So I had no idea who he was and so we just had a great time and we started to have lunch together. The great lot, he hated this job. He was there for four years. I'm a corporate board and as an academic institution these things do not go well together and Bernard was having trouble and so we met and I had been dealing with a board for a long time so explain to him how boards worked and that a board could have one of the three W's work, wisdom or wealth or it could have one of the three G's give, get or get off and Bernard like this came back and said my board has the three I's incompetence, interference, ignorance. After four years he left Annenberg and he does say that the best thing that happened to him in Philadelphia was meeting me with the third he puts the whole microphone so we say that. Absolutely. It was in his retirement that he ended up writing more than a dozen books he has written 32 books they've been translated into 29 languages hundreds and hundreds of articles and one of the things that I argued with the editor of this book most was that I insisted that she have a complete curriculum of his works at the back of the book because it nowhere does it exist even the Princeton University website is 15 years old in terms of what he had accomplished he has received many many honors including 15 honorary doctorates and one of the nicest comments about him was made by Henry Kissinger with whom he used to have lunch once or twice a year and Kissinger said you know I really enjoy having lunch with you and Bernard said why and Kissinger said well for me it's a unique experience I listen. He does know 15 languages though he will argue as to what he knows and what he doesn't He knows what you mean by knowing I say it depends what you mean by knowing well some of these he knows he's very fluent and I have been with him in Turkey and in Italy when I have heard natives say to him what part of the country are you from so he knows English, French, German Latin, Greek, Danish, Norwegian Swedish, Italian, Russian, Yiddish and of course the four Middle Eastern languages Turkish, Hebrew, Arabic and Persian and he makes very convincing noises even in languages that he doesn't know I will never forget he was talking to a waitress when we were ordering and it turned out she was Hungarian and so you said to her KZ CHOCOLM which means I kiss your hand and she was so excited and so she started talking to him Hungarian he said it beautifully but that was the extent of his Hungarian I think the expression KZ CHOCOLM I wonder what would happen if you said yellow or crazy strawberry and no idea what they be kissing I have lots of questions written here but I've given you a very brief synopsis of Bernard's life it's been an extraordinary life he's met extraordinary people and but I'd like to open it up to any specific questions that you may have you certainly are welcome to question him about what he has done or who he has met but also what he what he thinks about certain elements of what's happening in the Middle East the only thing he really doesn't want to talk about is what happened yesterday in Syria or because he feels that his knowledge on those subjects is not as deep as it once was because in the olden days he had students in every capital in the Middle East from the School of Oriental American Studies London and also Princeton but so he doesn't have the contacts that he once had so does anybody want to start with yes sir the United States has had a rather rude experience in its attempts at nation building attempts at nation building is there something about fundamentally about that makes a difference say from Germany Japan where sometimes we point to that as examples of successful nation building at World War II why isn't that possible in the Middle East why is a nation building possible in the Middle East could also add to that perhaps is democracy possible in the Middle East yes sir well and the Middle East has had a very difficult time remember is going through a series of conquests long periods of foreign rule and sometimes something even worse than foreign domination is liberation which can be very difficult and painful and the peoples of the Middle East have had great difficulty in adjusting to the present situation and above all they have had great difficulty in accepting responsibility for their own affairs and for so long there's been normal and well grounded to blame others for everything that went wrong they still do that although it's no longer the case Bernard there's a what for fine okay I'm going to continue with that question if I may for 500 years the Ottoman Empire imposed authoritarian rule on much of the Middle East what's the difference between the rule of the sultans and the rule of the tyrants well we have to be careful when we use the term authoritarian to understand what we mean authoritarian rule doesn't mean the same thing as dictatorship the traditional form of governments in the Middle East and the old and the pre modernized Islamic regimes was authoritarian but the actual authority was limited and very often and in many important respects authority came not from above but from within the group and there's a remarkable group of books written by a British naval officer called Slade who saw much of the 19th century traveling around the Middle East in the new Middle Eastern languages and his books about the Middle East are extraordinarily good and he makes this point very clear he says that what the change is brought about by modernization catastrophic in two respects they greatly increased the powers of control and repression of the government and they greatly reduced the power of resistance by virtually eliminating all those other sources of authority that existed under the old order for example there's a passage designed very much like and I often quote written by a French ambassador in Istanbul in about the exact day but it was shortly before the French Revolution when the French monarchy was still alive and seemed to be quite well and the French government had given him certain instructions to proceed with negotiations and the negotiations were proceeding very very very slowly and the French government sent the ambassador a rather nasty letter saying why are you taking so long why don't you get on with it and the ambassador replied I think the historic document of major importance he said here he said being here in Turkey here in the Middle East it is not like in France where the king is so master and that's what he pleases he said here the sultan has to consult he has to consult with the holders of office he has to consult with the retired former holders of office he has to consult with the heads of the cloth girls he has to consult with the heads of the trade corporations and so on and so on and so on and this was absolutely true at that time in the traditional Middle Eastern order they did have to consult because there were all sorts of institutions where authority as I said before came from within and much from above modernization ended that he greatly reinforced the power of the state and virtually eliminated the capacity of resistance the modern dictatorship is the result of modernization or if you like to be more specific the result of westernization is a sad and tragic result yes please could you address the issues of Turkey in looking at ascension to the EU is it a good thing is it a bad thing what is your opinion if Turkey get into the EU is it a good thing or a bad thing and if they don't is it a good thing or a bad thing at the moment the way things are going in Turkey I don't think it's very likely I mean the present government in Turkey he wants to go in the opposite direction they are thinking in terms of reviving the Ottoman Empire and Majid said they don't want to pay the Greek debt please do you see a resolution to the conflict between Israel and Palestine and if so from what terms do you see a resolution to the conflict between Israel and Palestine between the Israelis and the Palestinians that is one of the crucial questions in the region I think the first question one has to ask is what is the issue what is the conflict about what I mean is this is the question the existence of Israel or is it the size of Israel is the issue should Israel exist or should it not exist in that case obviously there is no solution there is no compromise decision between existing and not existing and the conflict will continue until the Arab states either achieve their purpose of destroying Israel or renounce their purpose and so far there hasn't seen much prospect of either if on the other hand the conflict is about the size of Israel which it would be if they have a duke about that of destroying Israel then it becomes a nice simple normal conflict like ourselves for renaissance which means that after centuries of struggle, conflict, battle, diplomacy soon or later some sort of compromise solution may be worked out we are not there yet I think it's possible to move that trend imagine it's been about 16 years since spring in the Arab world with the changes in pressure that were placed in our country do you think this will continue in other countries such as Saudi Arabia or Jordan is there a chance for the Arab spring to spring in Saudi Arabia or Jordan or has it sprung in my historian I deal with the past I really can't predict the future you remind me of in so many years ago I was attending an international congress and at some point we were in the discussion you used the expression at some point the expression Islamic terrorist and you do exceptions to that he interrupted he said there is no such thing as an Islamic terrorist he said Islam is totally against terrorism if anybody commits an act of terrorism he is not Islamic and he said well what he meant of course was that if a Muslim commits it is not terrorism no Bernard who is the most impressive leader that you have met most impressive leader the Pope I think which one the Polish one I met him a number of times I when he became Pope when he became Pope he very naturally wanted to do something to help his country Poland but it was very difficult Poland was then under communist dictatorship and he had to be very careful what he did and then he had what I thought was a brilliant idea the Vatican has a summer home in the mountains in the north of Italy where they could spend a few months during the summer and what he did was this that each summer he invited a number of people from Poland to come and stay as his house guests even the communist authorities in Poland couldn't really object to that there was nothing political about it there was no public statement they just went there and stayed there for a couple of months at the same time he invited a number of house guests from the western world carefully chosen to match the Polish gifts the same interests the same I was part of that process for a number of years and I did in the first year they found me helpful so they asked me to come again and again and help them in choosing the people to come and it was an extremely interesting experience and at that time as I say I got to know the Pope very well and formed an extremely positive opinion of him I think he was a truly remarkable man he was he asked at least one when he was asked what did he think of the Jews well, he wanted to give both he wants to give both two particular you may recall that at one point the Pope went on a visit to the Caribbean and to everyone's astonishment he was invited to go and see Castro and when he came back I was there, shortly after that I was with him having lunch and one of my fellow luncheers said will my Castro invite you to go there does that mean he wishes to return to the church the Pope said, no I wouldn't say that he said, I think that Sencha Castro is looking for what I believe you call in English a soft landing I thought the recollection was under and again at one of his lunches somebody asked him what was his attitude to Jews and Judaism and without a moment's hesitation he answered as to an elder brother that's really profound Bernard I only want to ask you about one or two others when you were in the Secret Service during the war the head of the Secret Service was the very famous C did you ever meet C? I did, just once and what happened? I'm not allowed to talk about it and then I want to ask you about who was the most impressive person that you didn't meet? I really have worked on this book the great tragedy of my life was that on one occasion during the war Prime Minister, Mr Churchill visited the unit when I was working and it just so happened on that occasion I was on leave I would have been able I would have been able to save the rest of my life but I had met Mr Churchill but I couldn't I was just on leave and the head is the great tragedy of my life but there were one or two stories about Churchill during the war that are she had a lot of stories about Churchill and you may recall that during the war we had a number of governments in exile in London and after the Germans invaded and conquered Greece we also had a Greek government in exile in London along with all the others and the Greek government in exile had an uneasy coalition of different parties and that is often the case of coalitions, kept on breaking up and reforming, breaking up and reforming and then at a certain point a military strongman a Greek general you may recall the name he played some role in post-war Greece General Plasiras and the hope was that he would be the great regal so Churchill went in to inform the cabinet of this and the way he did it was such that within minutes it was circulating all around the network he even reached my level Churchill went in and said to his cabinet colleagues the gentleman he said we have a new Greek Prime Minister General Plasiras let's hope he hasn't got feet of clay too I'm not joking I really have the other one was when Churchill decided to invade the Soviet Union we suddenly became allies and Churchill set a military mission for Moscow headed by a rather dual Scottish general named if I remember right he was not first and they would set up in a hotel in Moscow and the Russians in true Soviet style showed them nothing told them nothing, took them nowhere and General McPherson being a dual Scottish since he had nothing to report he set no reports days passed, weeks passed no reports Churchill got really angry and he had this military mission in Moscow and he wasn't getting anything so even he said an angry message Prime Minister London the direction to head British General commanding British military mission in Moscow all that we know is that it's raining in Moscow would welcome further information and the reply came back immediately General commanding British military mission in Moscow to Prime Minister London interested to learn from your message that it's raining in Moscow we are not allowed to go out of the window that's what Churchill really has to say Colonel, I'm going to turn to the audience again do any of you have any questions or I have still plenty to go but I want to give you a... Can I check one other story? How can I stop? I said one other story every minute you know when the Germans invaded Russia we I mean the British we did everything we could to help them by sending supplies Russians very soon ran out of everything they were totally unprepared for the war so we sent by the Arctic route to the Arctic port of Arkhangelsk and we sent convoys, ships loaded with supplies of various kinds and escorted by destroyers of the Royal Navy and at a certain point Russians wanted to show their appreciation for this help so they gave two receptions in Arkhangelsk one for the officers, the other for the sailors of the Royal Navy to show their appreciation and part of the duty to pace and after the part is over they went back on board ship and not surprisingly the officers and the sailors began exchanging reminiscences exchanging their impressions of what they had seen one of them one of the comments immediately made the rounds everybody heard talking about the food one of the officers said what was the food like the sailor said well the food was alright but the jam had a fishy taste nothing like caviar for the I'm not going to joke that really happened I remember the time Bernard I want to being that half a Saudi and since female I'd like to, in Islam a woman is worth half a man in testimony, in compensation and in inheritance do you think that there's any hope that Islam will change its attitude toward women there are signs of change yes in Tunisia for example Tunisia is the only Muslim country where education for women is compulsory from the age of 5 in Tunisia women are literate and play a role in society without parallelism of the possible and there are signs of development in that direction and we're going to step further and say women are the best if not the only hope of the Islamic world some questions if you have any, please what you made here a few years ago you had indicated that Muslim schools, Muslim institutions in the United States have pretty much been radicalized do you see any any change in that or hope for change in the future the question is that a number of years ago Bernard made a comment that mosques and Muslim institutions in the US were radicalized because it was the Wahhabis who were setting these up and it's the most radical of the Islamic sects and so the question is do you see any change in that what's the situation I don't see any serious change Majid would like to respond Majid al-Sahab friend of the council I was born in Iraq originally to an Iraqi father an American mother and grew up with Christianity and Islam in my life but I am a Muslim and I was with a Jordanian friend a member of the royal family of Jordan just a few weeks ago and she was complaining that her Spanish husband had converted to Islam so mosques was not a good experience that he got a very negative impression of Islam and that it was quite not the liberal Islam so we have discussed and agreed that we're starting an Islamic group in Philadelphia that is liberal and it'll be co-founded with a woman from Jordan from the royal family and myself I will put he's an extraordinary man who has an organization and he calls himself an American Muslim he's really amazing I have to tell you in the cocktail party Majid raises horses so I said how are your horses doing especially in this heat he said they're Arabian questions from the audience please I'm a high school teacher so I'd like to have a teacher's question what do you think are some of the most important things for us to teach young Americans about this region that you devoted a lifetime to study what are the most important things that American teachers can teach our students today about the Middle East or Islam about its history and about the respects in which it resembles us and the respects in which it differs from us I mean it is a different civilization with a different history with one which has important elements in common with our Western civilization and I think it's important that there should be something about that civilization and its long and distinguished history I occasionally lecture on Islam don't get upset but since Bernard and I co-authored a book on Islam and one of the things I find when I'm lecturing is that Americans tend to assume that everybody is like us and they're not and the values are different I'm not saying they're better or worse but for example in America if you hire your nephew that's considered not such a good thing, that's nepotism in the Middle East it's considered a fine thing you're helping your family so who is to say but there are real differences in how these two civilizations look at things any other questions from the audience please should the United States and in fact the democratic process in voting in the Middle East even if it leads to the election of a radical group I'm thinking specifically of Egypt if we back the current process and there's a good chance the Muslim Brotherhood will take over the leadership and they're not a group and we want that to happen so what should be our position what should the US position be on the democratic process and your opinion about elections in the Middle East I think it's always a great mistake to assume that our way of doing things is the law of nature and the discipline of the world and that others that follow our example you know after World War I the Western world obliged the Germans to adopt a Western style electoral system and they elected Hitler people should be allowed to develop their own institutions according to their own traditions and in their own ways and not have things forced upon them from outside I think that the idea of imposing elections in the Middle East is a disastrous mistake it gives immediate advantage to the worst people in an election the Muslim fanatics have two immense advantages one is that they use a language which is meaningful and immediately understood the democratic and progressive parties have a terminology which is mostly modern translated from Western languages that doesn't resonate with the great Muslim population the language of the religious people does it immediately resonates and is understood and the second advantage that they have is that through the pulpit and the mosque they have a network of communication or the group can hope to equal so I would say it is very unwise to insist prematurely on democratic institutions they will develop their own institutions in their own way in their own time what do we do now that Egypt is having an election and it looks like the Islamists the Muslim Brotherhood will come to power remember that Hamas came to power in a free and fair election is there anything for us to do in Islam but is there anything that the US should be doing or do we just stay out of it I think we should refrain trying to impose our form of democracy any other questions please from your experience with Turkey and Iraq that region with the Kurds and the US relationship with the Kurds as well what can we learn from that where does that land up in terms of possible resolution this question that's enough to curdle your blood what happens with the Kurds it's a very important question the Kurds are a very distinct group they have their own ethnicity their own language and unlike the others they have not had their own state they had a large Kurdish population in Iraq a large Kurdish population in Turkey and smaller ones in some of the countries and the Kurdish movement is still very powerful and has very considerable support in those areas I remember talking once with a turkey friend of mine about the Kurdish question in Turkey a very large Kurdish population and I said to him why can't the Turks and the Kurds live together like the English and the Scots in the United Kingdom and he answered immediately he said the Kurds aren't Scots they're Irish a good answer but not an accurate one four months before the Americans went to war against Iraq in 2003 I was muttering things to a few friends that I couldn't understand the US position and there's a reason I still don't understand Saddam Hussein may have had weapons of mass destruction but he didn't have a delivery system he had no navy, he had no airports and I was saying he's no threat would you argue against that please Tom's question is that Saddam Hussein at some point may have had weapons of mass destruction but he had no delivery system and therefore was not a threat Bernard I'm going to let you answer that but first I have most many of these people are my friends so I have to share with you Bernard's best line ever that in 2001 when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and you remember we went after him and then left very quickly and didn't finish or in 1991 was it? 1990 but Bernard at that time they were talking about the Gulf War and should we have continued or not and Bernard said what they should have called the Gulf War is Kuwaitis Interruptus now could you answer Tom's question that Saddam may have had weapons of mass destruction but he had no delivery system he wasn't a threat and did we overreact or how do you want to follow that? I'd be much stronger than the word overreact was US policy then wrong to do what we did in Iraq at that time now I think Saddam Hussein was obviously a major danger we had to do something about it but I don't think that what we did was the right thing afterwards you may recall those Iraq was divided the two separate zones the northern zone was functioning very very well and at one point they had a proposal to establish a provisional government of free Iraq in Iraq a provisional government of free Iraq in Iraq would have been really meaningful and that I think we should help them with but we didn't another question towards Saladin in contrast to Richard the Limer the lesson of the Saladin the question is what do you think of Saladin and how the British respond to him or did respond to him it's not often you get a medieval question that's had a narrative Saladin and he was a very important, very distinguished and very successful leader and I think one of my other tea was according to the sense of the title an honorable and a decent man and he was a curd and he was a curd yes you'll remind me of an episode once I was sitting in the I forget which library in Istanbul it was one of the collections and there was a delegation from the Arab League with their catalogue the Arabic language and the argument started between the Turks and the Arabs about Saladin and the Turks said well Saladin was a Turk and the Arabs said no Saladin was an Arab and the Turks said no he was a Turk and I said I don't know if he invented his technicals eventually they turned to me and they said well you're neither a Turk nor an Arab nor a historian of the Middle East and which was he was he a Turk or an Arab and they said well he was neither he was a curd and both the Turks and the Arabs there were absolutely shepherds but the Saladin was sleeping in the floor they went around and gave me a look growing yes please a few days ago I heard Joe Biden speak in a Biden seminar in Wellington, Delaware and one of the things he said is that if the current administration loses the election in November it will be for one of two reasons what happens in Europe and what might happen in the streets of Hormuz if the Israelis bomb the Iranians I just wondered what your take might be on that last comment I'm a historian I only do it too fast yes sir why did why would the Arab world decline and why did the western world ascend there happens to be a superb book that he wrote on that subject he said why did the what went wrong was a Bernard's first best seller it came out about a month after 9-11 and everybody wanted to know who were these people and he wrote this book what went wrong why did western civilization ascend as Islamic civilization descended and Bernard in two seconds what went wrong they adopted certain basic policies which I think were profoundly mistaken they decided that at a certain point all the questions had been answered and there were no more questions and therefore no more no innovation of any kind and that was the doom of the civilization I should mention that that book was very successful and Bernard made money on that and he's always maintained that if he ran into Osama bin Laden Osama should get a part of those royalties because it was 9-11 that catapulted this book into the the best seller list we're going to conclude now but I would like to ask Bernard the last two pages of his book it summarizes in a way his life for my 90th birthday the World and First Council of Philadelphia sponsored a day-long conference attended by over 600 people on Islam and the West it featured an incombium by Vice President Dick Cheney and presentations by Henry Kizinger for Harajami, Ayah and Hirsi Ali and others Nancy says that when she called for water to tell him about my forthcoming milestone he exclaimed 90, oh don't tell him during my 90th year I have the usual messages of congratulation and goodwill including one from an Israeli friend using a common Israeli formula but with an interesting difference the common Israeli phrase when offering birthday greetings to the elderly is to say 120 the change of one Hebrew consonant made this at Mea Keisrim till 100 like 20 that's preferable on walks now I must use a cane or a walker I need hearing aids I take naps my short-term memory is not what it used to be Nancy says soon I will be normal I have deteriorated physically and mentally but not emotionally I have loved my life I have had a rewarding career 32 books translated into 29 languages isn't bad I have explored places and cultures and been able to play with 15 languages even those who dislike me or with whom I have heartily disagreed are usually interesting and sometimes even stimulating I have a family and devoted friends whom I cherish whom I cherish I have been and am very fortunate Thank you so much for this extraordinary treat this was one heck of an evening and if any of you and your memoirs you can now say that you met the great Bernard Lewis I have to tell you oh this is my copy and these are just a few of the notes it is extraordinary please take some time the sweep of history and how it is described the personal experiences the humor, the anecdotes I don't know how you have this recall but it is fascinating so please if you haven't received your book don't forget it on the way out thank you for joining us but most of all thank you so much Bernard Lewis and Buncie Churchill