Excerpt from a talk given by Michael Hunt, professor of history, at the General Alumni Association forum "Understanding the Attack on America."

irst, the terror attacks should not be dismissed simply as psychotic acts by crazed fanatics. We might more usefully see them as an extreme expression of a broad-based regional reaction against deep U.S. entanglement in the Middle East spanning over a half a century.

That entanglement began with the cold war and the related campaign to promote stable secular, pro-Western regimes that would shore up the anti-Communist containment line in the region and assure the flow of oil. Washington thus acted on a vision of the Middle East tied politically and economically to the West. A variety of critics—from Arab nationalists to economic nationalists to Marxists to neutralists—challenged that vision. United States policymakers soldiered on and in the process made two critical decisions with legacies still playing out today: first, to support Israel and, second, to overthrow a neutralist, economically nationalist government in Iran in 1953 and replace it with a regime tightly tied to U.S. interests (that of Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi).

Since the 1970s, the Middle East has emerged for the United States as the chief zone of crisis and conflict. Over the last three decades we have remained an active player in the political, military, economic, and cultural life of the region. We have been on both the receiving and giving end of suspicion, misunderstanding, retaliation, and violence. Troubles began with an oil embargo in 1973; continued with the overthrow of an unpopular, United States-backed Shah and the taking of American hostages in Iran in 1979; support for Iraq in its long, bloody war with Iran in the 1980s; Reagan’s bombing of Libya; the dispatch of marines to Lebanon; the Gulf War of 1990–1991; the residual American military presence in the Gulf; continued containment of Iran; the isolation of Iraq; and the ongoing protection of Israel.

We do not need to decide now whether the positions that the United States took were good or bad. We do have to recognize that while most Americans may not be aware of this pattern of U.S entanglement, it is widely understood and resented in the Middle East.

Because of this interference, it has been easy for critics in the region to denounce the United States as an obstacle to economic development, social justice, cultural integrity, and democracy. It has also been easy to label as neocolonial the order promoted by Washington, in effect linking U.S. policy to the earlier British and French imperial enterprises.

We are a country of well-intentioned and generous people, and therefore it is difficult for us to imagine how our role might, at least among some, generate a hate that would inspire such a deadly and indiscriminate attack. But there is no alternative to this act of historical and cultural imagination if we are to avoid lashing back blindly.

Second, Americans have been highly ambivalent about the use of military force over the last half-century. The classic statement by secretary of defense Caspar Weinberger, issued in November 1984, included the following provisions: act only in defense of vital national interests, devise clear political and military objectives, commit to win, use the appropriate size and type of force, be sure of the support of the American people and Congress, and seek first nonmilitary solutions to the problem.

[Secretary of state] Colin Powell himself, while serving as chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, endorsed these propositions: "The use of force should be restricted to occasions where it can do some good and where the good will outweigh the loss of lives and the other costs that will surely ensue. Wars kill people."

Are we clear that we have satisfied these prudential conditions for applying the massive power available to us? Perhaps above all, as moral agents, we need to ask: Can we apply our military power in a way that does not multiply the human suffering?