For example, many of us watched President Jimmy Carter lose his bid for re-election in 1980 because the new Iranian government had held American hostages that he appeared too ineffective to retrieve.

The background of this event was that for decades after World War II, the U.S. had developed a friendship with Mohammed Reza Pahlevi Shah (commonly known as the Shah of Iran). In 1953, demonstrations by the Iranian people forced the Shah into exile in Italy because of the popularity of his prime minister, Muhammad Mosaddeq. The CIA, however, overthrew Mosaddeq and the Shah returned after only one day in exile.

Again, in the late 1970s, the Iranian people opposed the corrupt and dictatorial rule of the Shah. He was especially opposed by the clerics. Finally, after a series of demonstrations, the Shah fled the country on Jan. 16, 1979, and the Ayatollah Khomeini came back from exile in France to become the leader of the country. Then, on Nov. 4 of that year, Iranian militants stormed the U.S. Embassy and took 53 American hostages. The Shah died in Egypt on July 27, 1980, and the hostages were released on Jan. 20, 1981, the same day as the inauguration of Ronald Reagan. Nevertheless, the U.S. has not enjoyed close relations with Iran since.

Now you would think that we would learn from this history. Yet the Bush administration is again seeking to script the leadership of Afghanistan in the post-Osama bin Laden era.

On this trip, Powell consulted with Musharraf on behalf of Bush, who wanted to give Pakistan a role in the shaping of a new regime in Afghanistan in exchange for the risk the Pakistani leader took to support American actions there. One would think such a public show of U.S. support for Musharraf�s accession to America�s wishes would automatically make him a target of the Taliban�s radical wing, which assassinated the charismatic military leader of the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan.

In that context, was this public show of bargaining with Musharraf wise? Probably not, but then these are military men who deal in heavy weaponry, not the subtlety of Anthrax and other means of destruction.

The point here is that the U.S. is, once again, attempting to shape the leadership of another Middle Eastern country. Suggestions hold that they are working on a "coalition government" consisting of such players as moderate elements of the Taliban, the Northern Alliance and the former king of Pakistan, Zahir Shah. Knitting together this coalition, however, depends upon a much deeper and active role than Pakistan is now willing to play.

In fact, Musharraf has signaled to Bush that the shaping of a regime in Afghanistan acceptable to the Pakistani people will be more difficult as more people are killed in the American bombing. There are, then, severe limits to the role the Pakistani government is able to play if the war continues. In fact, if it continues, the intensity of demonstrations there indicates that the current Pakistani government may be deposed and the Bush administration will have to start over again.

This history lesson is important if the average American citizen wants to know "why those people hate us" and why they should become familiar with the deep content of the roots of the current crisis. Moreover, if people want a guide to how it will turn out in the long run, I suggest that the new scenario of involving Pakistan, a nation with a sizeable Taliban population, in the decision to choose which Taliban elements will be suitable to join the post-bin Laden regime is fraught with danger.

It is dangerous precisely because, either way, it feeds into the alienation machine that has been the source of the attack against the U.S. and will most surely have the result of producing more and more individuals with substantial grievances against this country. Thus, it again re-creates the motivation for the use of terror; it also, consequently, is a line of diplomacy that makes the lives of Americans less secure.

The smart thing to do would be to run the risk of letting the Afghans choose their own leadership and, like Iran, let them know that there would be dire consequences if the regime sponsored revolutionaries bent upon the destruction of the U.S. This would give the new government the "wiggle room" to establish a legitimate people-supported government with the potential strength to resist the internal pressures of radical forces and, like Iran, the space to deal with the U.S. on their own terms.

(Dr. Ronald Walters, Distinguished Leadership Scholar in the Academy of Leadership at the University of Maryland at College Park, is the co-author of the book "African American Leadership.")