From Anti-War Activist to Defender of American Power — Shadi Hamid

 

Airdate: December 10, 2025

Julie Rose: When's the last time you took a hard look at your own side?

Shadi Hamid: There has to be self-criticism and a kind of self-awareness. If everyone was just a little bit more focused on their own political tribe or their own group, I think we'd all be better off instead of always putting blame on the people who oppose us.

Julie Rose: Hey there, it's Julie. Welcome to Uncomfy, a show about sticking with moments that challenge us even when they're uncomfortable. And I get it, nobody likes to be uncomfortable, but I've learned from experience, and maybe you have too, that sometimes a little discomfort has benefits if we can stay open and curious about it. And that's what we're here to explore, so let's get Uncomfy. Changing your mind about something is often uncomfortable. Admitting that change publicly? Even more Uncomfy, especially when it's a political topic and you're going against the grain of your own team, which is why I'm really intrigued by a new book from foreign policy expert Shadi Hamid. You may know him from his columns in the Washington Post. He's also a senior fellow at Georgetown University's Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding. Now, Hamid is politically progressive, but his new book, which is called "The Case for American Power," makes an argument you wouldn't typically expect from someone on the left, and Hamid says his hope in part is to persuade other progressives to change their minds as well. So, I have invited him here today to talk about the inevitable uncomfiness in all of this. Shadi Hamid, welcome. It's so good to have you here.

Shadi Hamid: Hi, Julie. Thanks for having me.

Julie Rose: If we could back up just a bit to put this book in context, um, you write about how the 9/11 terror attacks were a formative moment for you, as they were for a lot of us. What was going on in your life in September 2001?

Shadi Hamid: Yeah, well, I was a freshman in college. I was two weeks in at Georgetown, and I was trying to figure out who I was, who I wanted to be, where I belonged, all those kinds of identity questions, which are quite challenging, so it was really a kind of transition moment, and then to have 9/11 happen, it changed my life and it put me on the course that I'm on now. Um, I don't think I would've gone into politics and policy really if it wasn't for that. I wanted to understand why 9/11 happened, who did it, what was animating them, and how could people hate America, at least some people hate America so much, so those questions were intriguing to me.

Julie Rose: And, um, what was your view of American power, of America's position in the world at this point as a freshman in college?

Shadi Hamid: I was very skeptical, against, opposed.

Julie Rose: Hmm.

Shadi Hamid: I got involved in the anti-war movement during the Iraq war, two years after that, and I was organizing die-ins and tent-ins on campus. I considered myself a kind of leftist, sort of socialist. I was reading people like Noam Chomsky, the famous critic of, of US foreign policy pretty much everywhere, um, and I blamed America first. I thought America was a font of evil and destruction in the world, and, yeah, I, I changed my view on that over time, but at that time I was very intense about it.

Julie Rose: You're also, you're Egyptian American, right? Your parents are Egyptian immigrants to the United States, and you're Muslim, so how did that aspect of your identity, also, do you think, play into the way you were perceiving what happened with 9/11 and, and America's role on the global stage?

Shadi Hamid: Arabs and Muslims have often been on the receiving end of American power. They've seen the dark side of what we're capable of doing as Americans, so I think in that sense, my dual identity, it creates a kind of tension or even conflict. I mean, I love America, it's my country, and I think it's the greatest country in the world. I'm comfortable saying that, but at the same time, it's done awful things. So, how do we reconcile that? That's always been an interesting question to me, similar to the question of, "How do otherwise good people do evil things?" Those kinds of seeming contradictions of good and evil being sort of combined in one thing.

Julie Rose: That's a place of cognitive dissonance that's uncomfortable for a lot of us, and so what, what began to change for you, um, going from, uh, "America has brought this on itself in some respect," perspective, um, and opposing the war in Iraq and then shifting to a place now where you're, of course, writing a book that encourages, well, makes the case for a powerful and dominant America in, on the global stage? Was there a turning point for you? What changed?

Shadi Hamid: I think I thought to myself, increasingly, "I didn't wanna be powerless. I didn't wanna be on the outside looking in for the rest of my life. I didn't wanna be one of those people who's always protesting outside of the White House with a sign." I felt that to change America, to change American power and how it's used abroad, that I, I had to be part of the system. I had to become closer to power, and power wasn't something to be shunned and seen as inherently compromising and dirty, but we had to actually think as progressives, as people on the left to kind of hold power ourselves if we wanted to see a better world, and my book is partly about that. It's about using American power for more moral and just ends, and I think that if we want a better world, if we want a more peaceful, just world, it can't happen without American power, but not American power as it's been necessarily, but American power in a kind of renewed sense, and I think moral people, they have to stay in the game and be in politics and elect leaders who align with their values, and that's how change happens. So, I think my view of power was going from being on the outside to wanting to be on the inside.

Julie Rose: You write in the introduction to the book, actually, that, "This is a story about my own progression from opposing American power to resigning myself to it, and then finally accepting it, however reluctantly, as the only moral option in a world beset by tragedy." So, I hear even in the way you're describing your position, that this is, you're, you're still very frustrated, I guess maybe even, you know, find some of America's actions deeply, what, reprehensible, immoral around the world, um, and yet also, you're, you're making this argument that it's better than the alternative kind of in the book? So, so talk me through kind of how you came to that position, right, because I, I could, like, why wouldn't you just have stayed on the, on the path of like, "America has done evil things. America can't be trusted," as you were sort of believing before, right, "And therefore, we need to see America weaker so that we can let some better, more moral power kind of take the reins of, of this."?

Shadi Hamid: The problem is there is no better, more moral power that can take the reins. There is no alternative. The only alternatives are, well, there, there are alternatives, they're just not good: China and Russia, which are brutal dictatorships, and I think that I came to appreciate the fact that we are a democracy, however flawed, and that makes us better, and I became more comfortable thinking of America as a better country because of how we conduct ourselves at home. We have a lot of flaws, that's for sure, but to see my parents come from an authoritarian regime, that's the alternative that a lot of children of immigrants have to contend with, that, "It could have been a lot worse if I was born and raised in Egypt. I wouldn't have the freedoms that I have here in the US," and also living in Egypt and Jordan, um, being in the Middle East for several years during the Arab Spring, I've seen what it's like for people to live under a repressive regime, and it's very frightening, and I don't think we should take our democracy here for granted. We have something that is special and different as Americans, and I just worry that a lot of Americans who haven't lived abroad, who haven't come from families that lived under dictatorship, they don't realize that. I realize it, so I think that's one part of it, but as even in the excerpt that you read from, I still wrestle with these questions, and it's, the book is kind of an anguished manifesto. I wanted the reader to walk along with me and to feel the tensions and to feel the internal contradictions. What looms over all of this really is Gaza, 'cause I've been, you know, fierce, fiercely outspoken about America's role in enabling what I consider to be a genocide against the Palestinian people, and then how do I make sense of the fact that my own country was complicit in that? That's been a preoccupation of mine for the last two years, and that's why I say in the book, "There were moments that I thought about just not, just not writing it." I mean, there were moments where I didn't know if I could really continue because I was wondering, "How do I tell, you know, young people, progressives, my fellow Arab and Muslim Americans to believe in American power when America's doing things or not doing them, in the case of Gaza?" America refused to stop Israel from doing what it did, so the, that's what I, that's what I kind of have to sit with a little bit, this kind of uneasy situation.

Julie Rose: Well, what do you say to today's Shadi Hamids who were in college and protesting and reading Noam Chomsky and, and, and, you know, feeling very much like America has let them down, has let the world down? So, how, how, what's your pitch to them?

Shadi Hamid: Yeah, well, the pitch is that we get the government we deserve and we get the foreign policy we deserve. Up until now, pro-Palestine voices have not been influential in our politics. That's partly our fault, but once we get more involved and insist from our leaders that they have a more balanced approach on questions like Gaza, if we insist on that, then we'll have different leaders who are more aligned with our values. So, I think young people shouldn't give up on America.

Julie Rose: I just don't think that's a good way to live, even if things are bad, to resign yourself to that hopelessness. First of all, it's depressing, and it probably will affect your happiness and your life satisfaction, but what does that give us? What are you left with when you give up hope in your own country? This is, for most of us, the only country we have. We don't have an option to become a citizen of some random country abroad, so if this is what we have, let's make the best of it and organize. I mean, we have had examples throughout our history of how seemingly impossible things became possible. Before the Civil Rights Movement, civil rights seemed impossible. Before women had the right to vote, it didn't seem like they would ever have the right to vote. Now, we are a more, we're not perfect, but we are a more racially equal country than they, than we were back then, so there is a kind of arc of progress. Now, it's uneven, it's maybe not as progressive as we might like, and sometimes we have real steps back. I mean, I think that the election of Donald Trump, he attacks the foundation of what I think makes America great, but then what do we do about that?

Shadi Hamid: I think that optimism is the way forward. It is true that our democracy is not fully responsive to its citizens, but it's partially responsive to its citizens, and there have to be systemic reforms in terms of campaign finance, in terms of having sturdier checks and balances, of making sure Congress plays a role again, instead of abdicating its responsibility to the president, but those are things that can change.

Julie Rose: As you've written about frequently, the American public, though, is, is, is very divided. I mean, half of the country voted for a vision of America that Donald Trump promised, and many, many, many of those voters are very pleased with the actions that President Trump has taken in his second term. So what I wonder is, I'm, I'm very clearly hearing you say you're making a case to, this book is in part written as a plea to, to progressives in America, to, to not stay on the sidelines, to not bail out or give up. Um, and I guess what I wonder is, do you think there's a version of American power on the global stage that people on the left and the right should both be able to agree on, could, could agree on?

Shadi Hamid: Yeah, I think they can agree on something like, for example, there's growing anger in both parties about our policies in Gaza. I think there's a general sense that supporting right wing dictatorships in Latin America during the Cold War and overthrowing elected governments in the developing world, also in Africa, Middle East, Asia, the list goes on, that maybe we shouldn't have done those things, but at the end of the day, we don't all have to agree, and one thing that I've been, I think, pretty consistent on in my work is Americans don't have to have the same idea of the common good. They can in fact disagree on foundational questions. That's part of what it means to live in a democracy, to not expect that other people will share your view, and to say that if, you know, more than 70 million people voted for Donald Trump the second time around, then presumably they did so for a reason. They had legitimate grievances, and I think it's our task, I'm just speaking for myself here, to actually ask, "What made people vote for him? What was going on there? Why couldn't Democrats field a candidate who was inspiring?" So, I think those are the things we really, there has to be self-criticism and a kind of self-awareness about our own side, and I think it's worth, like, so I can't, I'm not gonna change MAGA people, but I think I have a better chance of changing minds on my own side, and if everyone was just a little bit more focused on their own political tribe or their own group, I think we'd all be better off instead of always putting blame on the people who oppose us.

Julie Rose: Shadi Hamid is a columnist with the Washington Post. Thank you so much for taking time today.

Shadi Hamid: Thanks so much for having me. My pleasure.

Julie Rose: Hamid is also a senior fellow at Georgetown University's Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, and the new book we've been discussing is called "The Case for American Power." And thank you for getting Uncomfy with us today. That was a little more political than we typically get here on the show, but these issues are the ones that divide us in the world right now, and I think it's so valuable to hear someone thoughtful, like Shadi Hamid, kind of talk through how he works with the cognitive dissonance of shifting his view on some things and doubling down on some other things and trying to figure out how we as citizens can live together peacefully in a democracy while also expressing our views firmly and standing by the things we hold dear. I would love to hear if you have changed your mind about a social or political topic, something that you once felt very strongly one way about and, over time, maybe you've softened or maybe you've actually done a full 180. I would love to hear how you have grappled with that discomfort, that cognitive dissonance. Send an email to uncomfy@byu.edu, or, if you dare, you can reach out on social media, and we can continue the conversation there; we are @uncomfy.podcast on Instagram. Uncomfy is aBYUradio podcast. Samuel Benson produces it, and the team includes Hyobin Kim and Sam Payne. Our theme music was composed by Kelsey Nay. I'm Julie Rose. Can't wait to get Uncomfy with you again next week.