[Saddam Hussein's execution] was a disaster, an unmitigated disaster. I was just so upset, even on the verge of tears. It was the antithesis of every… - Kanan Makiya

I think there's a less than 5 percent chance that what I'd like to see happen actually happens. But it seems to me an obligation, even if it’s a 5 percent chance, to try to make it happen. You could call it a triumph of hope over experience. But what else is politics if not that?

The Saudi government has been pumping money in a quiet kind of revolution to shape Islam in its own images since 1973, [with] oil price rises. It wasn't a noisy revolution like the Iranian revolution was. It didn't have so much hubbub and noise associated with it and all. But it was quietly done [with] Saudi influence, using money, and the building of [madrassas] -- that is, religious schools and mosques all across the world. ... The very particular kind of Islam associated with Saudi Arabia ... is an upstart. It was created in the 18th century. It was constrained and confined entirely to the Arabian Peninsula right through to the late 1960s. All of a sudden, this [Wahhabi] Islam -- which is espoused by these young men, which considers even a Muslim like myself, because of my Shiite background, to be dirty or not a real Muslim ... [is] probably the dominant form [of Islam] in the United States. It spreads from one end of the world to the next. It's been a quiet, silent revolution that's been happening, and suddenly exploded on the scene with Sept. 11.

Suggesting evil is human doesn't mean we can always understand it, or doesn't mean there's only one way of understanding it. It's sort of like a great work of art. You can never fully absorb it. It's got many dimensions. It lives on through time, in different ways.