Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terror

In the conclusion of Good Muslim, Bad Muslim, Mamdani argues that terrorism cannot be simply addressed as a criminal issue divorced from politics. Unlike crime, terrorism often seeks public legitimacy and represents a political grievance. Thus, a military response alone, as seen in the US invasion of Afghanistan post-9/11, cannot solve the problem of terrorism; it risks becoming a symbolic act of vengeance rather than a real solution. Mamdani points to the “growing common ground” (230) between the tactics and ideologies of the 9/11 perpetrators and the US response. Both frame the conflict in terms of good and evil, justice and revenge, refusing compromise. US policy, in turn, meted out collective punishment and disregarded civilian lives, fueling cycles of revenge rather than quelling terrorism. For Mamdani, a more productive path would involve transforming grief into political reflection, turning tragedy into a moment for democratic deliberation on America’s role in the world.

Mamdani critiques how the Bush administration manipulated 9/11 to push a neoconservative agenda and revive Cold War battles. Rather than fostering a post-Cold War regime of international accountability, the administration expanded the “war on terror” to include Iraq, evoking Cold War-era language such as the “axis of evil” (231). The link between Afghanistan and Iraq, Mamdani argues, is not about terrorism per se, but about advancing a political agenda rooted in American unilateralism. Mamdani then delves into the Cold War’s legacy of political terror, particularly the US’s embrace of counterinsurgency and support for right-wing terrorist groups. Drawing from examples like British strategy in Malaysia and US campaigns in Vietnam, he shows how Western states targeted civilians to deny guerrillas local support. This logic evolved into a strategy where right-wing terror mimicked left-wing guerrilla tactics, deliberately attacking civilian soft targets to terrorize and destabilize.

He further details how apartheid-era South Africa studied and adapted Soviet and Maoist guerrilla tactics, blurring the line between insurgency and counterinsurgency. In some cases, such as Sierra Leone and Peru, leftist guerrillas themselves became isolated from the people and resorted to terror tactics, showing how political movements can degenerate when they lose popular support.

Mamdani explores the costs the US has incurred from supporting such covert terror strategies. These include the erosion of democracy domestically, the rise of a US-trained international terror infrastructure (including CIA ties to figures like Osama bin Laden), and the development of a parallel global drug trade that helped fund covert operations. Citing CIA complicity in drug trafficking during conflicts in Afghanistan and Nicaragua, Mamdani argues that covert foreign policy undermined domestic democratic accountability and empowered criminal networks.

He also examines the ways democratic empires, like the US, maintain democracy at home while practicing despotism abroad. While the Vietnam War revealed this contradiction, the post-9/11 press—due to corporate consolidation and ideological bias—has largely failed to scrutinize US foreign policy, especially regarding Israel. Mamdani critiques the exceptionalism with which US liberals treat Israel, noting a lack of critical debate even as Israeli policies defy international law. To understand this, Mamdani traces a deeper cultural and historical affinity between the US and Israel, rooted in settler colonialism. Americans often view Israelis not as colonizers but as returning natives, mirroring how freed slaves established Liberia. This settler sensibility justifies ignoring native rights in both cases. Zionism, in this view, functions as a civilizing mission akin to colonial ideologies, promoting democracy only among the settler group. Mamdani also critiques “what the Israeli government calls ‘the fence’” (247), built after 9/11 as a monumental act of collective punishment that devastates Palestinian livelihoods and entrenches apartheid-like segregation. Comparing the Gaza Strip to both Bantustans and concentration camps, Mamdani shows how the language of security is used to justify massive human rights violations.

Mamdani extends his critique to include US responsibility for enabling both Islamist and Zionist religious nationalism. Both projects emerged under “American patronage” (249) during the Cold War, turning religion into a political weapon. Whether in Pakistan or Israel, states built on religious identity inevitably marginalize citizens of other faiths. He cautions that politicized religious identity, when fused with intolerance and power, breeds terror. Mamdani reflects on historical responsibility, comparing the US’s constructive role in post-World War II Europe via the Marshall Plan to its destructive, covert Cold War interventions across the Global South. Instead of rebuilding, the US exported violence, undermining nationalist governments and fostering terror, particularly in Africa, Central America, and Central Asia. Mamdani insists that Cold War terror directly caused today’s terrorism. He identifies three routes to terror: imperial sponsorship (such as US backing of contras or mujahideen), internal degeneration of movements (like RUF in Sierra Leone), and social breakdowns producing apolitical, violent groups (such as the LRA in Uganda). Even local terror, he argues, was only possible because of the impunity granted by Cold War geopolitics.

The US has consistently refused to take responsibility for the consequences of its Cold War policies, justifying inaction under moral pretexts. Mamdani underscores the need to memorialize America’s founding crimes, “the genocide of Native Americans and the enslavement of African Americans” (253), to break the cycle of self-righteous forgetfulness that fuels foreign interventionism. He criticizes the Bush administration’s Manichaean worldview that divides Muslims into “good” and “bad,” echoing Osama bin Laden’s own absolutist vision. Both Bush and bin Laden reject compromise, and both claim religious authority for political ends, turning politics into a holy war where dissent is criminalized. The way forward, Mamdani argues, is not more war, but a “global movement for peace” (258) akin to the anti-Vietnam War movement. The post-9/11 imperial war, particularly in Iraq, echoes the neoconservative desire to militarily reshape the world. Privatizing war, as seen in the US’s heavy reliance on military contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan, allows the US to circumvent democratic oversight and accountability. Mamdani asserts that the US must learn the lessons of Vietnam: Military might cannot suppress nationalism, and occupying powers will always face resistance. To defeat terrorism, America must accept a changed world where sovereignty and democratic self-determination cannot be replaced by imperial force. Understanding terror means understanding history and taking political, not just moral, responsibility for it. America cannot occupy the world, Mamdani says, “it has to learn to live in it” (260).