Saundra Satterlee

9/11 changed the world. Has it changed the deeply held beliefs of Gore Vidal? As a novelist, historian, satirist and playwright, his views have been profoundly welcomed by anyone concerned with the corruption of democracy by corporate America. Branded an ?expatriate? by certain unsympathetic contemporaries on account of moving to Europe, he remained a potent critic of his homeland by never yielding to the diluting effects of distance. Throughout more than three decades in Italy, Gore Vidal?s subject continued to be the United States, which perhaps eased the process of repatriation upon return to California, where he lives today. Despite having held on to his native identity ? in Italy of all places, where hordes before him have been assimilated ? Gore Vidal claims on a cultural level to be as much a European as he is an American. With his views on world affairs as dynamic as ever ? in an exclusive interview for Guardian Abroad ? Mr. Vidal talks with trademark candour to journalist and fellow American, Saundra Satterlee.

The Interview

Q The US bombed Afghanistan as a direct reaction to 9/11. Five years on Osama bin Laden remains at large and the Taliban are ?back?. In Iraq where no weapons of mass destruction were found, a bloody civil conflict rages. And while Washington runs the Iraqi oil reserves show, post construction firms like Halliburton are said to have pocketed millions. The Palestinians are fast becoming a forgotten peoples and although a peace deal has been brokered by the UN and the EU, the Israelis remain in southern Lebanon. Then there is Iran and the nuclear issue. Overall events since 9/11 do not forebode well for conflict resolution. What over the next five years can individual governments and the UN do to promote a more peaceful world?
Gore Vidal  One cannot imagine the next five years of world history if the Bush regime manages ? through manipulation of electronic balloting machinery and the expenditure of vast sums of money ? to inspire the media to give false views of a world inhabited by Adolf Hitlers intent, for no clear reason, on our destruction. Thus primitive religion is imposed on a people totally at the mercy of a corrupt media and rulers bent on keeping us terrified, from orange to red alerts, as more of our liberties are removed in order to fight terrorism, which is everywhere and nowhere, a phantom our rulers have declared war on because a wartime emergency ? no matter how bogus ? gives a cover to their crimes against the American people, in whose name they fight wars around the world, wars profitable to the 1% that own the country and deadly to the rest of us.

Q 9/11 ? five years on, the anti-war movement and sectors of the European press suggest that far from curtailing terrorism, US policies in the ?war against terror? (and those of its UK ally) have fomented new sympathy and support for terrorism along side creating new recruits to the cause. Do you agree?
Gore Vidal Yes, I agree. But then the world?s principal terrorist is the Bush administration, which is opposed by a majority of the American people. But it has ? through corrupt elections and a relentless campaign of dis-information ? brought to a halt the machinery of laws and safeguards that was the old republic and in its place given us a quasi dictatorship of ?Homeland Security?.

Q The Lebanese war has left death and destruction in its wake, not withstanding over 100,000 unexploded cluster bomb devices on Lebanese territory and the radicalisation of scores of moderate Christian and Islamic moderates. What hope is there for a ?long-term? resolution for an Israeli peace with its neighbours?
Gore Vidal  What I have said above about the American seems to be true of the Israeli.

Q Iran?s President Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad has challenged Bush to a live television debate, but has been rebuffed. To what extent has the Iranian president been unfairly maligned by the west in general and Bush in particular?
Gore Vidal  The Iranian president is being reinvented as a clone of Hitler by the US propaganda machine. One interview did get through the wall of lies. Ahmadi-Nejad was allowed to speak to Mike Wallace, and Americans were stunned to hear the ?worst? that he had said when, accused of denying the holocaust, he asked politely, ?And where did the anti-Semitic holocaust take place?? In Germany, not in Iran. So why is Iran being vilified? Incidentally, his phrase about erasing Israel from the world?s map seems not to have been uttered: there is no such expression in his language. The Cheney, Bush, Rumsfeld axis is preparing for a war of aggression against Iran. It could be the last war.

Q What can be done to halt the seeming demonisation of the Islamic world?
Gore Vidal  Dramatise Christian world crimes.

Q Benazir Bhutto, among others, blames Pakistan?s current problems on its alliance with the US in the fight against Soviet-controlled Afghanistan in the 1980s, at which time the US funded Osama bin Laden as a freedom fighter. Was the US complicit in the birth of al-Qaeda?
Gore Vidal  The birth of al-Qaeda is clouded in mystery: did it, like Minerva, spring fully armed from the brow of Jupiter?

Q Katrina is described as one of the most politically disastrous episodes of Bush?s second term. Was it ineptitude or did Katrina reveal the priorities of the Bush administration?
Gore Vidal  Systematically, the Bushites have weakened (if not destroyed) a vast range of institutions from such rescue organisations as FEMA to Social Security, which they are longing to end through privatisation. All Bin Laden accomplished was to give an excuse for the Bushites to destroy the Bill of Rights and the rule of law as surely as Osama had destroyed two Manhattan skyscrapers.

Q A BBC news reporter recently posed the following question: ?Is the US going to collapse under the weight of its own contradictions?? How would you respond?
Gore Vidal  ?Contradictions? make nothing collapse. But bankruptcy of the state will. Soon.

Q According to Washington DC, one of the biggest dangers facing Latin America today is Venezuela?s President Hugo Chavez. Yet he was democratically elected. As a strategic resource, copper did not protect Chile?s Allende. Will oil help Chavez?
Gore Vidal Chavez?s Venezuela is richer than Chile ever was or indeed the US presently. I see the future in our hemisphere with him and his heirs.

Q Some analysts argue that new types of politics and new kinds of government in Latin America bode well for the future. Are we seeing new forms of democracy or merely updated forms of populism?
Gore Vidal  What?s wrong with populism? Yes, US populism at the South contained racists as does LePen?s party, but that is an anachronism today.

Q Your left-leaning political tendencies have altered little over the years. To what do you attribute your steadfastness?
Gore Vidal  I?m left-leaning only in the sense that I try to be right.

Q Would you like to be remembered for posterity as a great writer or a great political analyst?
Gore Vidal  ?What,? asked Groucho Marx, ?has Posterity ever done for me??

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