The Paikin Podcast - World on Edge: Is 9/11 the Most Significant Event of the 21st Century?

Episode Date: September 10, 2026

Canada's foreign minister during 9/11, John Manley, joins Janice Stein on World on Edge to look back on the attacks, whether they were the most significant event of the 21st century, how they reshaped the global order, the war on terror, the forever wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and PM Jean Chrétien's decision not to join the coalition that attacked Iraq.They also discuss Canada's involvement in Afghanistan, the Canadian relationship with the United States in the early 2000s, the revival of George W. Bush's legacy, Canada's role in the post-9/11 world, and how the world saw America in 2001 versus how it sees it today.  Support us: patreon.com/thepaikinpodcast Follow The Paikin Podcast: YOUTUBE: http://www.youtube.com/@ThePaikinPodcastSPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/1OhwznCIUEA11lZGcNIM4h?si=b5d73bc7c3a041b7X: x.com/ThePaikinPodINSTAGRAM: instagram.com/thepaikinpodcastBLUESKY: bsky.app/profile/thepaikinpodcast.bsky.social Email us at: [e-mail] Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hi, everybody, Steve Paken here. We are devoting two programs to the world-changing events of 25 years ago on September 11, 2001. Last week, we spoke with David Cullenette, who is Canada's transport minister on 9-11, and gave the order to ground all flights with very few exceptions. Today, we'll talk to another former cabinet minister who was one of those exceptions, because he was in Europe on business as Canada's foreign minister when terrorists attacked the World Trade Center. on this episode of World on Edge, John Manley and Janice Stein on how the world changed after 9-11. Coming right up on the Paken podcast.

Delighted to welcome back, our homegrown observer of all things foreign affairs. There's Janice Stein, the founding director of the Monk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto. And our special guest this week, John Manley, he was Canada's foreign minister 25 years ago and worked very closely with his American counterpenter. parts in the George W. Bush administration to establish new security protocols between our two countries and deal with a world that changed so dramatically after those terrorist attacks on September 11th, 2001. Janice, good to see you again. You're in Toronto. Mr. Manley, where do we find you today? I'm in Rito Lakes in eastern Ontario, Steve. Sounds like a beautiful place to be. Now, before I get both of you on your personal stories of what you were doing on 9-11 when the first tower

was hit. Let's start with this. I think for our parents and grandparents, World War II was likely the most important globe-changing event of their lives. For our generations, in terms of changing global alliances, in terms of coordinated international responses, in terms of impact on the lives of individuals, Mr. Manley, you first. Is it 9-11? I think it was until the second election of Donald Trump. He's disrupted alliances, reconfigured the global order in ways that I personally don't find desirable, but are very impacted. Interesting. So you think the second election of Trump even more than the 4,000 people who died on that day 25 years ago? I think so. In terms of the way you frame the question of its impact, obviously, if you're one of the people that died or your family member, then that is a different story.

But I think in terms of the broad geopolitics that stem from those moments, I would say that Donald Trump's return to office has been the bigger impact. Interesting. Janice, how about you? Maybe I can take John's thought and frame it this way. I think the roots of Donald Trump's election

are traceable to 9-11. How so? I think it's starting. parts in 9-11 where the United States changes the way it, polices changes the way it uses laws, suspends, process. And we saw that in the way some of the U.S. Army folks behaved. And it was the first of the modern forever wars. Afghanistan followed that radical.

so many people who felt left behind as spending shifted. And many of those people are Donald Trump voters. So I think it can trace a direct line between 9-11. 9-11 is when the United States first really turned inward and said our problems take precedence over everybody else's. So it starts with 25 years ago and perhaps gets to its, Nader or Zenith, depending on which way you want to look at it. I don't know if we're there yet.

I'd love to hear what John thinks about that, but I don't think we've seen the final act yet. I think there might be worse to come, Frank. Okay. We will presage that later in our conversation. Let's get to what, you know, again, if you're of a certain generation, the question is, where were you when John F. Kennedy was assassinated?

But then for more recent generations, the question is, where were you when that first jet hit the first tower in New York City. Mr. Manley, where were you? I'll tell you that, but I'd like to riff off the way you frame the question first, because in my lifetime, there are those two moments when everybody absolutely knows where they were, when President Kennedy was assassinated and when the towers were hit. And it's interesting because in both cases, the world was in total sympathy with the United States. After 9-11, I think the French president said, today we are all Americans.

You some Tule and some Rican. And it was that global coming together in unity with the United States that was fundamentally important. And then within a very short number of years, following those two events, the world had fallen out of love with the United States as they pursued wars that did not have global support in the 60s in Vietnam and of course in Afghanistan, but particularly in Iraq following 9-11. So it's, which is an interesting thought, and it's interesting how you framed the question. But where was I? As you said in the introduction, I was in Europe. I was, we were beginning to

shape the 2002 G8, as it was. was then known summit. I was in Berlin with Yoska Fisher, and I got up in the morning, went to the airport, flew from Berlin to Frankfurt, where I got on the air Canada flight from Frankfurt to Toronto. So I settled in to watch a movie. I watched Enemy at the Gates, the story of the siege of Stalingrad. And I was just toward the end of it when one of the flight attendants, we were on the upper deck of a 747, which wasn't my assigned seat. There had been somebody assigned to it who was disabled and couldn't get up the stairs, so I agreed to go up there. And one of the flight attendants came and asked to speak to me at the back in the little kitchen area at the back of that

upper level. And she told me this story about a plane hitting the World Trade Center, which, of course, like everybody else. I thought, oh, some poor fellow doing his private pilots license flew a Cessna into the building. And a few minutes later, she came back and said, the pilots want to see you. So I actually went and sat in the cockpit of the 747 Air Canada, and we, they had the feed from BBC radio on. I put my big headset on and listened to the story that was unfolding, totally incredulous at what was being described, which included what everybody knows, but also some of the things that turned out not to be true.

Like there were suspicious packages planted outside the State Department building in Washington and other rumors and stories of that. sort that kept us kept us really glued to this for the hours of that flight. Well, there were more of those kinds of stories like the hijackers came through Canada to get to the United States.

Anyway, Janice, how about you? Where were you and how'd you find out? Just before I go there, where did you land? How did that flight land? No, that comes later. Hang on. No, don't go there yet. Okay, okay. Because he needed permission from his cabinet colleague to land.

He wasn't allowed to land. So, Janice, okay, where were you? And how did you find out what was going? You know, it's really interesting because I haven't thought about it in a long time, Steve. I was the Massey Lecturer that year. And I, they invited me to give the Massey Lecture. And they were sure I was going to talk about international politics. And I said, no, and they were not happy.

And they fought with me. No, no, no, no, no. That's what you need to do. And I actually wrote the cult of efficiency for the Massey Lectures, which turns out to be a very survivable title. as it turns out. Well, I was on my way to CBC to record the third of the Massey lectures. And I had a cake for my son because he was away in university that I packaged up.

And I stopped in the post office and put that cake all wrapped up in a package in the post office. He was in his first year. It sent it off and went down to CBC. and there was this first story that Sean just described and everybody thought, well, that's the one off. And then the second flight hit and everybody understood. And I remember thinking, oh, my God, because it was really the first attack on the U.S. homeland since the war, since Pearl Harbor, if you think of Pearl Harbor, which it was. but really since 1812. And at CBC, Peter Manzbridge came in.

Really quickly, they called, he came in, and they canceled the recording, and I remember thinking of myself, if I had written five lectures on global politics, I would have to throw them all in the garbage. Well, let me follow up on that quickly, because that was my next question. Did you, how long did it take you to understand that basically, whatever the rules were beforehand, throw them out, we're in a whole new era now.

Really, really, really quickly because it's just so stunning for Americans. Yeah, and look, Canadians in some sense share the same sense. There's an ocean between us and all those wars, right? Those wars are fought over there, that famous British World War, Tucson. over there, over there. And that was over the English channel. For Canadians and Americans, this notion that there could be a direct hit like this,

and as John just said, 4,000 Americans killed in hundreds of Canadians. I knew then that everything changed. And, you know, in some senses, and this is a provocative thing to say, John, but bin Laden did it in fact, provoke, right? And the same thing happened on October the 7th in 2023 when Hamas attacked across the border in these very visual brutal ways and

you provoke a response that is not thought through, that it's not well considered, that was the attack on Iraq. And that was the beginning of the turning away that John described from the United States. Okay, let's get you an answer to your question now, Janice, which is to say John Manley's plane is coming back from Europe. It has to land somewhere in Canada, except that his cabinet colleague, David Cullenette, has already said, given the order, no more planes landing.

We're shutting down airspace above Canada. So what happened then, John Lange? Let me interrupt for one second, because this is a great story about a deputy. David wasn't there. David, Colin, did he tell you this, was in Montreal, he wasn't in autumn? Yeah, he was, oh, yeah, we got the, I'd invite everybody to go look at that interview. It's on our website.

Did you talk about Margaret Bakes, the deputy? Yeah, of course he did. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, she's the one who said to him, you're allowed to shut down the skies, we think. But anyway, that's for the other interview. John Manley, how did you, how were you allowed to land when the skies were shut down? Well, we were first told that we were being redirected. We thought somewhere in Atlantic Canada, and that was the plan.

And the pilots announced to the passengers that there was an issue. They didn't tell them what had happened. They just said there's an issue at Pearson Airport. We may have to land elsewhere. And we'll keep you informed, which I wasn't clear that they actually did, but I didn't necessarily hear all of the announcements. what was happening on the ground was that the Prime Minister, the Parliament wasn't sitting then,

so ministers were all over the place. And the Prime Minister was meeting with the then governor, or Premier of Saskatchewan, Lauren Calvert, when this all happened. And he quickly found out that he was the only minister in Ottawa that day. So David, as Janice has said, wasn't too far away, was giving a speech in Montreal, so he was able to come to Ottawa by car. And the prime minister said he wanted as many ministers as he could get together

to meet on Wednesday morning the next day. And they started calling around, immediately found out where I was and what flight I was on. And I didn't even know it at the time. I learned this a year later from Peter Mansbridge that in fact, Transport Canada had singled out our plane and allowed us to land. I never knew why we landed. I knew we were the only one. It's very weird flying into Pearson and landing when there are no other planes on the ground or taxiing and exiting into the airport and going to the luggage area where there's there are no people other than the passengers from your flight. It was very weird.

but some things were reliable. One of my bags didn't make it. Regrettably, it was a bag full of wet, sweaty, running shoes and running gear. It didn't make it to my home for two weeks, so you can imagine what that was like when it arrived. It could have gone to a toxic waste site directly, but it didn't. But that's how it happened. then Transport Canada, again, David, sent a plane to Toronto, one of their planes, a small private plane that flew me and my team back to Ottawa so that we were there for the meeting

with the prime minister and a few other ministers the next morning. All right, let's take the story the next step, which is to say, you'll both remember George W. Bush got elected not that much before 9-11, right? he'd been elected, he got sworn in, I guess, in January of that year, and now we're in September. And, you know, he pledged an American foreign policy that was going to be more humble, more modest. He didn't want getting bogged down in overseas wars and so on. He had very little foreign affairs experience to start with. But now he has this devastating event hoisted upon him. And, of course, his most famous line, which was written by a Canadian, David,

from the speechwriter was that America is now into a war on terror against an axis of evil. And you are either with us or you're with the terrorists. Janice, do you first, what did you think about the advisability of dividing up the world that way in that speech? Well, I'm not a fan of that line. I've told that to David. I am not a fan of that line. I actually think George Bush and John will remember, whether it was two nights or three nights, after the attack. He went to New York City, right? He had a megaphone, and he was speaking,

and he said, we are not at war with Islam. And that, to me, was far more consequential. He distinguished between these radical elements who were seeking to provoke exactly that, and he stood on a platform with one of those megaphones speaking to a craft, and said that. I thought that was the signature line. Yeah, but he also said in that speech, Janice, that, you know, the people who knocked down these buildings are going to hear from us plenty soon. Yes, there's no question about that. Yes, that was the beginning. But he made it very clear that it was not directed against Muslims worldwide.

It was directed against the people who knocked down those buildings. That's very different. And that, you know, that's gotten lost in a way. and if you think about some of the talk we hear from this president of the United States right now, we don't get those distinctions. John Manley, talk to us about how, I mean, you obviously representing Canada in the world, how did you begin to engage with your American counterparts into what was now clearly going to be a very new world and a new way of doing business? Well, first of all, I had the same reaction that Janice did when I got the news, which is, oh, oh, the world is changing.

And the context for me was concern around the border because we had had the case of Ahmed Raseem, who became known as the Millennium Bomber, who was apprehended entering the United States from Canada late in December 1999 with a vehicle packed full of explosives, with his intention to set them off at the Los Angeles airport on December 31st, which is why he became known as the Millennium Bomber.

He was on our watch list and we lost him. And so my immediate fear was, as was later alleged, that these people had come in from Canada and that they had succeeded this time and that we were going to have a serious problem at the border. So our first task was try to find out everything we can. And then once we determined that, no, they had not come in from Canada, we went around the United States like, you know, a junior fire department, trying to squelch every time one of those flames lit up on some local newscast

that they had come in from Canada. That included sending me to the U.S. Senate to talk to Hillary Clinton about her saying that that's what had happened. And her reaction was, yeah, well, it could have, which I didn't find very satisfying. But anyway, we did try to suppress that idea. But I was still very concerned about it. There was never an order to shut down the border on 9-11. But for all practical purposes, it did close because nobody on the U.S. I knew what to do. Nobody was giving orders, and they didn't want to, I mean, what border guard wants to let a truck in in those circumstances and find out they let somebody else in that was malicious. So it took days to get the traffic moving again. We ended up sending some of our border personnel to the U.S. side of the border to help them process the entries so that we could get things moving again.

I got to my home in Ottawa and immediately put in a call to Colin Powell, who was my counterpart at Foreign Affairs. And I went to see him very soon after that. And in fact, the day before I saw him was the President's speech to Congress in which he named Governor Tom Ridge from Pennsylvania as his White House Homeland. security advisor. I phoned Tom Ridge in the governor's mansion in Harrisburg that weekend. He still says I was the first international representative to call him when he was appointed to that role. I was down to see him within a few days. He hadn't even set up his office yet. I took our whole team had a CIS. I had Commissioner Zachardelli from the RCMP there in his full red uniform. The only thing he didn't bring was his horse. We wanted them to know that we were all over this,

that we were intent, that we would support them every way we could, that we were there to make sure that we were not a risk to them because of the importance of keeping the border open, which is kind of ironic in today's immediate context. But that was what we were trying to do. You know, that was an amazing performance, Steve. It really was. I think it's hard to recreate the tension and to have our Minister of Foreign Affairs go to the United States within days,

reach out to the Cabinet members in the United States who had responsibility. And it was a signal from Canada through John and his counterparts and Prime Minister, we are in solidarity, we are with you, we are going to do everything to help make sure. First of all, that nothing crosses our border, but more of it to help you with anything that you need. It was a total statement of solidarity.

It wasn't words. It was going and talking and putting practices in place. I want to ask Mr. Manley about that because, you know, needless to say, George W. Bush and his administration was, not popular in Canada. They were very conservative borderline evangelical Republicans. That was their approach to public policy. You, of course, Mr. Manley, were in a liberal government, and therefore, that ideological similarity that you might have had with, say, Brian Mulroney and Ronald Reagan was not there. So how difficult was it initially trying to sort of, you know, find common

cause and work well with your American counterparts? Well, first, I would say that's not an unfair characterization of their government, but I don't think you would put Colin Powell in that category, for example. Fair, absolutely fair. And I would say, nor would you put Tom Ridge in that category. He was, in fact, one of the first Republicans to sign the never-Trump letter back in 2015. So, you know, and then, I mean, I said to our cabinet, whoever your counterpart is, I don't care what you think of them, make them your best friend.

So Lawrence McCauley from Prince Edward Island, a fine rural PEI guy, was a Solicitor General at the time, and his counterpart was Attorney General John Ashcroft. Now, he was one of those quite conservative people. They became such close friends. They visited back and forth. They became, I mean, Lawrence took my advice to heart, and he, he, he, you know, it's hard not to like Lawrence. So Ashcroft was completely taken by him. So we worked at it.

But also, remember this, a couple of things. One is we were in Washington soon after the inauguration. We had dinner. Both teams were there. And I was told by our ambassador, Michael Kiergen, expect to come to that dinner because there's no way George Bush is going to have a dinner with one of the other heads of government, the G8, without having Colin Powell there. Because he just doesn't know enough about foreign affairs. And he had Colin Powell. He had Zellick. He had Cheney. He had Condoleezza Rice. He had his whole team. Ironically, the ambassador in Ottawa was still Gordon Giffin.

So he had a Democrat as part of the team. But anyway, that's a – and there's a photograph of Gordon Giffin clearly introducing the Prime Minister of Canada to the president, who neither one of them had met before. Anyway, that's for the book, Steve. At that dinner, George Bush ran the dinner. He had clearly a complete checklist of things in his head that he wanted to ask the senior leader in the G8 about. You know, what do you think about what's happening in Venezuela with Chavez? What do you think about NATO membership for the Baltics? What are we going to do with Africa?

how do you think NATO should develop? Should we let the Baltics into NATO? I mean, he was on top of everything. The other thing not to underestimate is Mr. Kretchen is a lot like George Bush. He's a way smarter than he wants anyone to know. And George Bush is similar. He's just a plain Oshops guy. they bonded over baseball.

George Bush had been the owner of the Texas Rangers. Little did I know, Mr. Kretchen, who had a very good mind for the numbers when I was Minister of Finance, also knows baseball statistics in incredible detail. So they became capable of having those. It wasn't Mulroney Reagan, but they had a very good and friendly relationship. In which case? That day after, finish with this story, the day after 9-11. So I go back, we're a small number of cabinet ministers.

We're talking about how to commemorate what has happened. The prime minister wanted to have a big event to recognize the enormity of it and to show our solidarity. And the security people said, well, have it in the cathedral and the basilica, have it in the arena, that lands down park, but not outdoors. And Mr. Kretchen said, it's going to be outdoors. I'm not hiding. He sent a government challenger plane to Western Canada to bring the U.S. Ambassador Paul Saluucci back to Ottawa because there were no flights going.

And we had 100,000 people on Parliament Hill the Friday following 9-11. That's like one in nine people in the entire city of Ottawa, in the National Capital Region. A couple of weeks later, I go for my first meeting with Zacherdelli and his uniform and everybody at the White House, and we go by the Oval Office. And they always post photographs outside the Oval Office of recent trips by the President. There he is in this place, here he is in that place. When I was there, and I don't think they knew that I was going to be anywhere near the Oval Office,

so I don't think it was for me, all the photographs outside the Oval Office. were the event on Parliament Hill in Ottawa. So it was master diplomacy, some of it completely by accident. But I think from the get-go we were seen as not part of the problem, but part of the solution. You know, just to become on one thread of that, because Sean mentioned that Bob Zellick,

who was the trade representative. the senior trade representative for George Bush at that time was part of this. Well, three days ago, the same Bob Selig wrote a very strong piece in the Financial Times coming to Canada's defense and excoriating the Trump administration for the way it has treated Canada. So those seeds that got planted that week were 25 years later, And Bob is still empathic to Canada, understands the dilemma and will speak out. He's one of the few people that has spoken out on behalf of Canada.

And we'll be back right after this. Let me follow up on this angle here because Mr. Manley, I certainly did not know Jean-Cretchen was that much of a baseball fan because you think baseball, you think prime ministers, you think Lester Pearson. You don't think of Mr. Crichan. But having said that, the relationship that you say that he had with George W. Bush, I wonder, and Janice, maybe let me get your outsider's historians view on this first, Janice, and then we'll get Mr. Manley to take us to the cabinet table. When George W. Bush made the decision to attack Iraq, even though there was no proven connection between anything in Iraq and 9-11, Jean-Cretchen made one. what I think many people consider to be the most important and best decision of his prime ministership, which is to say Canada was not going to join in that effort.

Janice, as you look at that decision from all these years later, 23 years later, obviously the decision stands up, but what do you think it did to Canadian-American relations at the time? You know, if I could take a minute to tell a story that the prime minister told me years later, And, you know, I just want to build on John's point. Prime Minister Craigat was so smart that he never let you know how smart he was. And that was, George Bush was smart too, right? And in retrospect, you know, you look at the relationship, for instance, George Bush has with Michelle Obama, which is just extraordinary.

It's good, yeah. Yeah, they are, when they get together for presidents, it's those two. They are really close personal friends, those two. Do you remember what Bush said to Michelle Obama after Trump's first inaugural address? No. He leaned over to her, whispered her in her ear. That was some crazy shit. Yeah.

So they have a good, funny, jovial relationship. They do. And that shows you. There's dimensions to Bush. I think John is completely right that don't show up in the public stairs. Anyway, I happen to be with Prime Minister Kretchena. long evening and there was considerable wine. Let me put it that way at the table. And so I said to him, Prime Minister, can you tell me what made up your mind about not going to war? I mean, because

that was a courageous decision, which it really was. And it didn't lead to a breach between George Bush and the Prime Minister, which is also remarkable. So he told me the following story, She should always stay with me. And he said, you know, Madam Stein, as he used to say, you know, they think I don't read. Well, sure, right? He said, but you know, I do, I do read. And I would go home at night with a briefcase full of papers. And I actually put my feet up and I would read the papers after Aline went to bed.

So he says to me, I take out the briefcase. case one night and I see a picture of a flatbed truck with a missile on it. And he said, I say to myself and he swore. I won't do it on the air because you won't let me do it. But he swore in very colorful language. He says, that guy in Baghdad, if he had the real stuff, I can tell you, there's no way there would be a picture of a missile on a flatbread truck. So I knew this was BS. You think how absolutely smart he was, despite all the intelligence briefings,

because our intelligence briefings, as John knows, were much more ambiguous than that. There were differences of opinion. And in retrospect, Steve, you say there was absolutely no evidence. Well, that's easy to see with hindsight after the inspectors went. But that wasn't the Russian view. That wasn't the French view.

That wasn't the British view. And it was not entirely art view either at the time. But his intuition, he made that decision based on it. He just looked at that and he said, there's no way. And he used the most colorful language. I get you. But every Canadian prime minister who makes a decision,

decision to break with the president of the United States in such a high profile and important case for America runs the risk of damaging our relationship with the United States. And Mr. Kratchen made it anyway. Lester Pearson did it with Lyndon Johnson. Right, on Vietnam for sure. So John Manley, can you take us to, I know there's Cabinet solidarity and all that business, but I mean, it's 23 years after the fact.

You don't have to name names, but can you give us a sense when you discussed at Cabinet whether to join America in its fight in Iraq and how much support there either was or wasn't around that table for what Mr. Kretchen ultimately decided? Well, first I'd say that the conversation was thorough in looking at the downsides and the risks. I'd also say that although his statement in the House of Commons was very definitive,

we did try to cushion that a little bit. So, for example, we had already, we were the first international partner in Afghanistan. We were there within weeks of 9-11 with special forces. We followed up with a continuing presence in Afghanistan. And truthfully, what the Americans were looking for from us was not military engagement in Iraq. they were looking for political support because they basically knew we were topped out in Afghanistan. We weren't going to be able to supply them much. But even then, the prime minister framed the issue around UN support. He explained publicly that he didn't say what Janice said, but he did say

that he thought that the weapons inspectors should complete their work. and they were not being permitted to do so. He said, which was a little bit, I guess a little bit of an exaggeration, that we wouldn't support an action that had not received UN Security Council approval, whereas we did so in a few years before in Kosovo. So that was a little inconsistent with recent practice, even under the same prime minister. He did not have a good feeling about this.

And I don't think he ever explained it to cabinet and the way that Janice has described it. But, you know, it didn't... He had an intuition. Don't you think Johnny. He had an intuition, and it was politically, it was exactly right. If you watched, my worry was he wasn't going to get the whole explanation out

because we did other things. Like we had ships in the Persian Gulf at the time. We actually allowed them to move closer to the border of Iraq as part of a preventive measure. We had some Canadian forces personnel who were embedded in U.S. forces. They were not withdrawn. So some Canadian military personnel did, in fact, participate in the, Iraq conflict, even though Canada officially did not. We didn't do anything extra to kind of poke him, poke President Bush or his intentions.

But I think the political rhetoric, particularly among some cabinet and caucus members, afterwards got a little bit more hype than anything that the prime minister said. But, you know, I mean, I had become deputy prime minister by that time, and Bill Graham had become the foreign minister. And Bill was talking about getting a call from one of the real hawks in the U.S. administration that wanted to talk to him urgently. And he called him and thought he was going to be given hell for our decision. and he said it was not that at all. He said, do you know this Canadian general that was in Rwanda that, you know, did that amazing work in Rwanda? And Bill said, yeah, of course I do.

He said, could you introduce me to him? I'd really like to meet him. So nobody stopped, you know, buying Canadian goods, nobody imposed. restrictions on Canadians, nobody showed, I think they would have been happier if we'd said, we're not sending troops, but we support it. Prime Minister of Norway got the best of both worlds because he said no, which he said at home, no, but the interpreter misunderstood and told President Bush that he had said yes. They were never expected to send troops, so they got the best in both worlds. They said no at home and yes in Washington. You know, they weren't counting heads,

but I think there's something important here in the context of what's been happening in Iran. George Bush, with all his faults and the foolishness of this conflict, did reach out to build an international coalition of the willing. He did seek UN support, even though he didn't get it. He followed a process. He reached a conclusion that we didn't agree with. but he didn't try to go it alone. And as you know, the British and others, the Australians and many other countries did become part of that coalition of the willing. This is not something that happened in Iran.

Definitely. Well, it's a credit to Mr. Bush then that he did not let a know from Jean-Cretchea affect his relationship with the Canadian Prime Minister or between America and Canada more broadly. He didn't. That's fair to say, right? He didn't. And that's why I'm saying there's more to draw. Bush. I actually think that as a result of President Trump, there's been a rehabilitation of

George Bush, even among the American public who look back now. I would wish for, you know, the chunks of the American public would wish for George Bush right now in the Republican Party, frankly. Because he was a disciplined decision maker. And John's right. There was a process. I want to go back here. And you two are. both going to have to help me with my history because I may be a little fuzzy on this. But if memory serves, the two of you did a mission together in Afghanistan. We did. That dealt with, right, that dealt with the question of how much longer our participation in a military mission in Afghanistan.

Okay. Janice, I see you champing at the bit already. So come on in and tell me. John ran the Manly Commission at the request of the prime minister to, and that was really, really important to answer that question. John and I went separately to Afghanistan to look at humanitarian aid that was flowing into the country, both in Kabul and in South. So those were two separate answers. But the Manley Commission was remarkable. John will tell you about it. Well, you got a remarkable vote from Janice, so let's see. How come? Well, we, I mean, it was at the request of Prime Minister Harper. We were deeply engaged already in Afghanistan. We'd already had Operation Medusa, which was a very, perhaps the most significant military conflict that Canadian forces have been involved in since the Korean War. And the question was, should we renew our commitment? Should we go or should we stay?

assembled a report. I had four co-panelists, but we wrote a report that was extremely critical of how the Canadian mission had been managed by the government of Canada and what it was doing. And I'd say that, and the Prime Minister, Prime Minister Harper gave me free license. my conditions were I wanted to approve the others that were on the panel, that we held the pen. Nobody in the government did. I hired an outside writer to help us write something, and that he wouldn't be informed what we were doing nor would anyone in the government until we were done. In fact, I gave him the copy of the report the day before it was relieved, and I released, and I tore the cover off it.

So it wasn't really the final report, had no cover on. But he agreed to all your conditions? He implemented almost everything, I think everything that we recommend it. Now, the mission in Afghanistan, I think Canadians wrongly look back as a failed exercise. I think that it was, the way it was framed, Again, by our friend President Bush was inappropriate. He framed it as an exercise in building a democracy. Well, Afghanistan, you know, as Janice and I saw it, is and was extremely primitive.

You know, very low literacy rates. No tradition of democratic exercises, very tribal, very divided as a society. and it was to all intents and purposes of a medieval civilization. When you think about our civilization, it took us 700 years from Magna Carta to give women the vote. And here we were a bunch of do-gooders in Western clothes in Afghanistan without really understanding the tribal nature of the country, trying to set up a functioning democracy, when what they needed was, was food, medical care, security. They wanted to be left alone. And they didn't want somebody from Kabul in many cases telling them what to do either. Now, their problem was, and this had arisen,

by the way, well before 9-11, that al-Qaeda had, it was essentially a failed state. And al-Qaeda had used that as a place to grow. And, you know, of course, 9-11 wasn't there for exercise at that. And I know for a fact, U.S. State Department officials had met with Amula Omar, the leader of the Taliban in Kandahar, well before 9-11, after the USS Maine had been attacked off the coast of Africa and said, the next time, you will pay if anything else happens. That was also after the first attack on the World Trade Center a number of years before, which had, you know, people died, but not very many. It was an underground explosion in the parking garage. So the response in Afghanistan was predictable, but its motivation. I was there,

I'll give you another story, Steve. I was there with G8 foreign ministers in North. November 2001, we were all in Washington, New York for the UN General Assembly, which was delayed that year because of 9-11, normally in September. And we sat together in a restaurant in New York when the news came in that the Taliban were fleeing from Kabul. And immediately the mission had to change. The mission had been disabled Al-Qaeda, make it impossible for Afghanistan to be a base of operations for another terrorist act. And now the people who were the motivators of that terrorism were running out of town. They just abandoned it. The Northern Alliance, we saw, you know, in the basis that the enemy of your enemy is your friend that we were more or less allied with,

were approaching Kabul, they were basically warlords with private armies. And we had to decide what to do. And that's when the mission changed into one of how do we provide governance for this otherwise failed state, which could again disrupt the rest of the world if we don't do something about it. So that mission to Afghanistan was, I think, from the get-go, poorly shaped and ill-defined. But once our panel was looking at it in 2000, beginning of 2008, we were also facing what I called at the time the burden of past decision. We were there,

we were committed. We had taken on undertakings. It was a UN-authorized mission. It was a NATO mission. every acronym that we belonged to had supported this mission. For Canada to act unilaterally to not continue, would have been in my view at the time, and I still hold it, it would have been an abrogation of our international responsibilities. Well, given that you've put it that way, let me actually quote you back to you

because we discussed this on that TV show on TVO I used to host called The Agenda. I remember that. We talked about your recommendation to extend the mission in Afghanistan, and you said, quote, unfortunately we are now living in a world which is increasingly dangerous and inhospitable and we are a country that's going to have to play a role. Now, you said that 16 years ago. Would you say that that basic mission philosophy is still operative today for Canada? Totally. If not even more so, because we're no longer doing that

as a wingman for the United States. Janice, how about you? I think there's no question the world is more dangerous now than it was then. If you just look at the incidents of war and violence, the magnitude is not comparable between what we're experiencing today and what we experience then. And for Canadians, the most fundamental issue is that we do not have right now a friendly administration in Washington. And how we manage that and how we think about our future and what kind of economy we have, what kind of security relationships we put in place? These are probably the biggest

questions this country has faced in modern times. And the answers are not yet clear, frankly. In which case, let's come full circle and come to today. There clearly was, as you've both alluded to, a tremendous amount of sympathy for the United States after 9-11. I well remember Jerry Grafstein, the senator, organizing that trip that went down to New York City, brought thousands of Canadians with him to show our support. People were buying flags, American flags, to put up on their homes. I mean, this clearly is not the case today. Most Canadians today look south and, you know, maybe I'll get a little colorful with my language here. They see a mafia state, which is run by a family of grifters, and they wonder what in the heck has gone on. Let's do the

counterfactual here. What steps? Janice, start us off. What steps could the United States have taken 25 years ago in the aftermath of 9-11 that might have made, that might have taken the country in a different direction and allowed them to maintain the international support and respect that they clearly do not have today? You know, there's so many could have been, some should have beens when you look back over the last 25 years. But I think John put his finger on it in November of that. year the Taliban fled, right? And there was a critical decision

to be made. Was this the moment where you have reduced your footprint? And it's a very light footprint and it focuses only on Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. And you effectively pull back

some of the forces. The reason I say this is this was the beginning of 20 years of warfare, where the American public became deeply disillusioned about what the United States could do overseas with its military on the ground. The people who fought in the American military were not the college educated and the more affluent ones. They were generally kids from poor families. And, you know, with some exaggeration, that's what the Russian army is like today.

It pulls from the periphery, from poor communities that were deindustrializing at the same time. And I really believe that much of the, if you remember what President Trump ran on in his first campaign, no more forever wars. No more forever wars, for sure. And that struck accord, frankly, with those communities. that paid a disproportionate price. It struck a cord with parents. And it fed the distrust that some parts of the American population had of their government. And that's why I started us off by saying,

I can trace Donald Trump to 9-11, frankly. There's a threat that connects. I think we needed, I'm with what John said. I think we needed a later footprint. we needed to understand that it wasn't our business to tell people how to live their lives. And in some senses, there was a disrespect of their culture as well as insufficient attention paid to younger people who were paying the price for this. Those were not New Yorkers and Bostonians and San Franciscans.

No, they were from Red State America, that's for sure. Yeah. John Manley, can I get you to weigh in on that and talk about where, with a turn to a different fork in the road, America might still have the respect and admiration of the world in a way it clearly doesn't today. Well, I think, first of all, I think even with our, you know, fudging the mission in Afghanistan, it could have ended much more, in a much better place, have the invasion of Iraq not occurred.

When I was first there, we were welcome. with open arms. I mean, people were celebrating the arrival of Westerners into, certainly into Kabul, where they've been living under this, you know, dark cloud for so long. When Janice and I were there a couple of years later, the, first of all, their hospitality is legendary, but the real progress being made by some of the aid agencies, we were there for care, but, you know, the Aga Khan Foundation, save the children, others were making huge difference in helping people just get food. You have to remember, they'd had years of civil war. Many of the families, large families were led by women who were not allowed to work under the Taliban.

I used to say, look, I was getting letters about the Taliban as foreign minister from Canadians concerned about what was happening there in Afghanistan long before 9-11. I mean, this was a problem that was festering that the world needed to figure out how to deal with it. Had we done so in a collaborative, cooperative way, had we dealt with the bad people and basically not tried to take over governance, had we looked after their need for food and medicine and shelter and, you know, the basics of life, I think that mission could have been seen as successful. What disrupted it was the diversion of American attention to Iraq. We didn't have

IEDs or suicide bombings in Afghanistan until after the Iraq war started. That wasn't part of their, they didn't do that. So I think that was a big part of it. the failure. That was a path that should not have been taken. And we could have been having a much different conversation had it had it not occurred. And I don't think that that thread to Donald Trump would have necessarily been there. It would have been a much more limited engagement. It would have had global support. And it would not have ended in the fiasco that Iraq did. I'm going to have one more question for our guests, but first, you two get comfortable for a minute because I want to point out that. Some of you who are watching or listening to this have been very generous to us and have supported this little venture through our Patreon page.

That's patreon.com forward slash the Paken podcast. And I'll drop just a few comments here. Somebody who didn't want their name given, but they live in Oakville, Ontario said, you're doing a great job of educating Canadians and helping to maintain our democracy. I also appreciate that you keep your interviews apolitical. Please keep Janice Stein as long as possible. She's amazing. He says, I also really liked your David Collinette and Martin Short interviews.

Okay, from Oakville, thank you for that. Graham Loughton also has pledged his support. Graham, we're grateful for you doing that. Apparently, you really like the last episode we did on World On Edge. I think Janice, you really like, excuse me, Graham really liked you taking on Kamran Bukhari the way you did. And here's another person who's kind of. and to say, all I can say is thank God for Janice Stein and her skill at adding context and truth

to the segment. In any case, keep up the good work. He says, me and my dog Ivy will keep listening on our daily beach walk. As I recall meeting you at Queens Park when I was a very earnest EA to Hastings-Pedarborough MPP Jim Pollock. Okay. So thank you for all of those. Once again, patreon.com forward slash the Paken podcast if you want to support what we're doing here, all of our episodes are archived at the website, stevepeakin.com. Here's my last question for both of you. Janice, do you first?

What are you going to be doing on September 11th, 2006 at 8.45 a.m.? You know, it's interesting when John was thinking back, you know, his clothes came home two weeks later. My cake never got to my son. because it was in the mail. So, you know, I think about all the people that died that day, the Americans, the Canadians, others.

And I think it's just on my memory is people jumping from those towers because they were desperate, desperate, and most of them died. and I, you know, it renews my commitment, in a sense, to the importance of process. John described, I mean, just to take a moment, John described the Tory prime minister who appointed a panel to look at a problem, appointed a liberal foreign minister and deputy prime minister, gave him full authority to choose as colleagues did not intervene, right? Provided the resources to do the work. Those were better days.

Yeah, that's how it's supposed to happen. That's how it's supposed to happen. And, you know, if we, this is, I will tell you this, for me, is the core we just started a new semester. And I've said to all the students who are starting this year, the core of a democracy is the capacity to listen to somebody you disagree with in a civil and respectful way and engage the issues, not the person. I think that's more urgent today than it's ever been. Great.

John Menly, what will you be doing on 9-11 at 845 a.m.? I'll be like Janice, I'll be thinking about the victims. You know, 2001, 2002 is early days when you could find things online. So my staff would often look my name up to see what, you know, people like you were saying about me just in case, you know, just so we wanted to know. They came in one day and they'd found a reference to, with a photograph of John Manley taking his daughter Sarah. down the aisle for her wedding. And I have a daughter, Sarah. This one was spelled a little differently.

She was S-A-R-A. But she had died in 9-11. Two weeks after her wedding. There were wedding gifts that were unopened. And a few, you know, after the memorial opened, the 9-11 memorial opened, I was there before it opened, thanks to Brookfield, who were on the site and he showed me around,

but I went back after it opened. I don't know if you've been there, Janice or Stephen, but it's powerful. It is. I can tell. First of all, I found Sarah Manley's name. I wept. You know, sometimes I say my bladder's too close to my eyes. But there's no, there's no shame in tears.

But those were people's daughters. and sons and friends and parents that died. And in such horrific circumstances that, you know, every year they need to be remembered. Well, I did an interview last week, as I indicated earlier, with David Cullenette, your cabinet colleague. And when we talked about those moments of 25 years ago and some of the decisions he was responsible for making, and as he looked out the window of his office to see the Peace Tower, we're wondering whether or not a plane was about to hit it.

He choked up 25 years later and just thought about how awful that day was. I want to thank John Manley, former Deputy Prime Minister for Canada, foreign minister on 9-11 for Canada and Janice Stein from the Monk School for their very important thoughts on this ominous anniversary that we are all about to observe. Thanks so much, you too.