I did some embedded stuff. And if you are embedded, the only things you see are what the soldiers see, and if the people talk to you, they talk to you as if you are a soldier, because with your flak jacket and your helmet, they can't tell the difference between you and the soldier next to you, and they obviously won't tell you what they really think because they are afraid of you.

Well, it's a problem in general with the American military. If you are the biggest and the strongest military power in the world, you have this natural reluctance to learn the quirky ways of the natives in faraway lands.

In a country like Iraq with its culture of blood feuds - is that the more locals are killed, the more motivation there is for the insurgency, for the insurgents the more feelings of revenge there are, and in the end the more the operational security of the soldiers suffers, because any soldier who kills an infant today is grooming the killer of his mate tomorrow.

Now as to the behavior of the soldiers: occupations always corrupt the occupiers.

So our own actions sometimes have undermined our safety, in our efforts to fight terrorism. The only way this can work is if we are aligned with liberals, with moderate Muslim forces. But if our war on terrorism is seen - as it is seen by many Muslims - as a war on Islam itself, it's very hard for us to have Muslim alliances, because America and the West have become so toxic.

Even if you look at Iran, those campaigners for human rights there, they don't want to have anything to do with America, because they are afraid that having American support will be the kiss of death for their movement. And that's really tragic.

In the occupation in Afghanistan, there are tragedies as well. It's not as bad as in Iraq because there are fewer American troops. But, as I describe in the book, going out on patrol and coming into a village, the soldiers found a stash of documents and decided this was Taliban propaganda.