Martin Amis

A possible war against Iraq is just another of the frightening new realities Americans have had to deal with since the attack on the Twin Towers.

For many, it has meant unquestioning support for military action.

But unsung and often unnoticed there are also many open minds in America's great open spaces.

Martin Amis has written eloquently on the impact of September 11th, and his new book Koba The Dread, on Stalin's terror, is to be published here shortly.

Gavin Esler interview Martin Amis and started by asking him if the opinions of ordinary Americans, not entirely convinced by President Bush's war on terror, are different from the kind of stuff you hear from Washington?

MARTIN AMIS:
It is. There used to be a restaurant called Windows on the World on the hundred-and -something floor of the World Trade Centre. The view from it was terrifying but it was only showing you Manhattan not the world. Now those buildings have gone but these little rectangles of empty skies are in fact windows on the world for America. They look at that empty space and realise they are connected to the world and that any idea of America's community unconnected with the world has gone. This empty space is full of meaning for them now.

ESLER:
A great deal of self-examination. I was really struck by those baseball players. They admitted that they didn't know a lot about the world, but they did want to know why does the world hate us so much?

AMIS:
There's been a tendency, America is convinced, has always been convinced of its own goodness. Good because American. It's immensely painful for them now but they are having to face the fact that they are widely hated and there are reasons for this.

ESLER:
Do you see as some of the members of the Bush administration see parallels with the 1930s and appeasement?

AMIS:
I can't say that I do. I can say that I do, I can imagine an argument that pictures Saddam Hussein as the Churchill today. It is all upside down.

ESLER:
You don't see George W Bush is the W standing for Winston?

AMIS:
When an American politician reaches for the example of Churchill you know he is in as George Bush's father would put it deep doo-doo. It is reaching for a universal legitimacy which clearly America doesn't have at this moment. The events of September 11th have entrained something that will perhaps take perhaps a century to work itself out. It would be surprising if America found its feet immediately. We are now witnessing America's battle with the temptations of irrationality. Magnified by the fact that their enormous prepotence in the world has been revealed by September 11th.

ESLER:
You're writing about Stalin and the evil of Stalin, I am interested why you think when we seek to demonise somebody, like Saddam Hussein we say he is another Hitler, this is like appeasement, we don't say he is like Stalin and Stalin was responsible for at least three times as many deaths?

AMIS:
That is right and in this case we are missing a trick because Saddam has modelled himself on Stalin right down to the moustache. His is a secular autocracy, very much along the lines of Stalin's. The connection we can make when Stalin and Lenin suppressed religion they didn't just massacre the orthodox church they went after Islam too. I have read that it was that suppression of Islam that radicalised and sent underground Islamic fundamentalism in South Central Asia. So what we are seeing is almost a result of Stalinist policies.

ESLER:
Where is the British left in all this? Part of what you are writing about is the British left is still slow, perhaps still haven't criticised Stalin enough and they are all over the place on Saddam as well?

AMIS:
It wasn't just the British left it was the world left, everywhere except the Soviet Union. I think anti-Americanism as I have experienced it at public meetings. You can get a laugh at once by mocking the intelligence of George Bush and the nature of this laughter, laughter is often revealing of attitude is a kind of easy snobbery, a cultural snobbery and also a kind of power envy you feel or power nostalgia that these vulgar brutes are now wielding the force we once had. I agree with what Blair said today, it's very unhelpful.

ESLER:
Just a final thought on the book. Why do you think so many critics have taken against it? A lot of them really seem to hate it, why?

AMIS:
I thought fiction and literary criticism were rugged areas but I have been shown that for politics you have to be made of harder stuff.

This transcript was produced from the teletext subtitles that are generated live for Newsnight. It has been checked against the programme as broadcast, however Newsnight can accept no responsibility for any factual inaccuracies. We will be happy to correct serious errors.