09/17/13 – M.J. Rosenberg – The Scott Horton Show

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Alright, y'all welcome back to The Thingamajig.
It's my radio show, I'm Scott Horton.
ScottHorton.org is my website.
I keep all my interview archives there, almost 3,000 of them now going back to 2003.
And I've got some good ones lined up for you today.
Adam Morrow and Mohammed Sahimi are coming up, but first, M.J. Rosenberg.
He used to work, and I'm sorry to always bring this up, M.J., I don't mean to embarrass you, but he used to work for the American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee, and now he's one of America's greatest critics of their politics.
And it's great to have you back on the show.
Welcome back.
Oh, the website is MJRosenberg.com.
J like the blue J, like the name J.
Not just the initial, MJRosenberg.com.
Welcome back.
Thank you, Scott.
Glad to be back.
Well, man, I was having the greatest time reading your blog this morning.
I mean, I had already read a couple of things in the last week that made me want to have you on the show, but then I decided to go back and read a few more, you know, kind of in preparation.
And I was just laughing at They Suffer Alone and all of your reveling in the neocons pain this week.
I know.
I just thought, I think that this has been a really good couple of weeks for those of us who cannot stand the neocons and their influence on American foreign policy.
I mean, it's almost separate from what happened in Syria or what isn't happening in Syria, which is a whole, which is a separate issue on its own.
The big thing that happened domestically is that AIPAC, you know, the lobby just fell flat on its face.
They could not deliver a single vote to support the idea of bombing, which is just like awesomely amazing.
OK, now, what exactly do you mean by that couldn't deliver a single vote?
Because there were some people who were willing to vote for it.
Yeah, but they were willing to vote for it before AIPAC went up there.
I mean, they what happened was, you know, Obama read the handwriting on the wall so that he didn't he didn't have the votes.
In fact, he didn't have he had, you know, hardly any.
I think in the House, in the House, he had well under 100 who were committed to supporting and a couple of 200 who were opposed to supporting the bombing.
So he turned to AIPAC in a really kind of an unprecedented way.
I mean, he the administration went to them directly and asked them to lobby for this because, you know, as you know, they can put over anything.
And it got lots of press attention.
I mean, the AIPAC called for a big lobbying day in which, you know, the day that they thought the day before the vote, what they thought the vote was going to be.
And the hundreds of people came to Washington to, you know, descend on the Capitol and see every single member of Congress, both, you know, both House and Senate.
And the numbers changed not at all as a result of their visits.
In fact, some people who are usually on their side, you know, like Ben Cardin, Henry Waxman and the leader of the of the no forces, the no bombing forces, Alan Grayson from Florida, who's a good progressive, but is usually just awful on this issue.
I mean, always on the issue of, you know, always supporting AIPAC.
He was the leader against them.
So, I mean, this is like this has never happened before.
Had they been able to deliver the way they normally could, the president would have been able to bring this thing up for a vote and pass it.
But they couldn't deliver.
And Alan Grayson, when asked why not, he acknowledged all their power.
He also acknowledged he's very close to them.
He said, but when the people speak in a clear voice, AIPAC can't do anything about it.
In other words, the polls overwhelmingly show the public against it.
So AIPAC couldn't didn't have an impact, even with all the votes that they buy and all that.
Couldn't do it.
Right.
Yeah, it's really something else.
It just goes to show how much power the American people have if they're good on something all at the same time.
I mean, that's pretty unprecedented.
I know it's kind of unfortunate that we couldn't.
You know, another issue that the American people feel just as strongly about is sensible gun control.
Unfortunately, the NRA gives no indication that it's wobbly at all.
See, that's funny, because I'm exactly on the opposite side of that argument.
I'm for disarming the state, not the people.
Actually, if you disarm the state.
OK, I can see it.
Yeah, and they're the most violent force on the face of the earth, as you might have noticed.
I think I noticed, but they're a little bit less violent as a result of the people speaking out in the last couple of weeks.
And what really is good about this is if AIPAC couldn't put over what was it that John Kerry called like a teeny weeny little...
Yeah, miniscule or something.
A miniscule, so small you could barely see it with a microscope.
If they couldn't put that over, they think they're going to be able to sell the American people on a big regional war with Iran?
That ain't going to happen.
Of course, they're now trying to get more sanctions, which they'll be able to get, which are terrible.
Sanctions are just terrible, totally punish the Iranian people, don't do anything about proliferation or anything like that.
But AIPAC can get that, because it doesn't involve war.
So they've got a big sanctions thing passed, and they'll have Obama's support and all that, and they'll say, look, we can still get a war with Iran any time we want it, but they can't.
They can get everything except a war, and what they want is a war.
Well, and yeah, that was the war party, John McCain especially, him and Lindsey Graham, that was their big argument was if we don't follow through with this red line threat that we made against the Syrians, then the Iranians won't take us as seriously when we threaten them.
And so then Obama had to come out and say, oh no, believe me, my threats against Iran all still stand, regardless of what we do here in Syria.
And Kerry, the first place he goes to explain the U.S. position on all this, so yesterday he was in Israel, standing there with a very glum and threatening looking Netanyahu, and the people we always have to appease, the Israelis.
Kerry's a disgrace.
He's a buffoon in my opinion.
I mean, he bloviates one way and he bloviates the other way.
But the point is, maybe America just won't be able to draw as many red lines.
Maybe we've taken away their magic marker, I don't know.
I mean, this is really good.
Well, I wonder, how bad do you think that this really will hurt them?
Do you think that, for example, like on the case of Iran, that this has really cut their legs out from under them?
Well, first of all, you can never underestimate them in terms of what they can do and what they can make happen.
I mean, Israel was ambivalent about the Syria thing, and for good reason, because Syria, under Assad, basically has left Israel alone.
I mean, it's been a peaceful border for over 30 years.
It was more like the lobby was the one that was pushing this, because they were doing it for Obama and to show their strength.
But when it comes to Iran, Netanyahu is out of his mind.
He definitely wants a war.
And what he's going to be doing now, what he's actually doing already, he's saying, well, the United States is not going to do it, we're going to do it.
And here's the thing.
Suppose the issue could be that we wake up one morning and Israel has attacked Iran.
And then what happens?
It's a fait accompli for them, but they can't finish the job.
So what happens?
The United States then has to make a decision.
And at that point, who knows?
At that point, most – I hate to say this, because it goes against all my optimism before, but if the Israelis had just attacked first, all these people in Congress would go rushing down to the floor of the House and Senate and saying Israel's been attacked and we have no choice but to support them.
Yeah, I know, Israel would be doing the attacking, but that is not the way they – because they would call it a preemptive strike.
But I could see – so there are – I mean, the ways that the lobby operates are pretty tangled.
I mean, as happy as I am right now, I can – I put nothing past them.
Yeah, well – Or Netanyahu.
I mean, the man – I mean, it's really incredible, because there are all these videos coming out of Israel, I mean, on YouTube and everything, of people lining up for gas masks, and they were – the public was so worried about a war, but that – the Israeli government is about – Netanyahu is an ideologue.
He's not worried about what the people think.
He wants a war with Iran because Iran – Israel wants to be the only regional power, the dominant regional power, and it's going to be hard to get him off that, and it's going to be hard – and he's probably going to be in office for another four or five years.
You think, though, that he's better than the American neocons and the American-Israel lobby on Syria?
I mean, I would definitely follow your line of argument there that, geez, if you and me were running that country, we would certainly not want a regime change in Syria, because, as you said, Assad, geez, he might as well be Mossad.
He's fine.
Yeah, yeah.
But then again, you know, there's the whole Yanan plan and the clean break and expedite the chaotic collapse, David Wumser and all that kooky stuff about just smash the whole Arab world, and then they'll never be able to resist us again.
It seems like Netanyahu's been kind of flip-flopping back and forth on that to me.
All right.
Netanyahu is essentially an American neocon.
I was distinguishing between the Israeli government and the Israeli people.
The best way to think about it, he barely is Israeli.
He grew up here.
He was educated here.
His English is, as you can tell, impeccable.
So it would be like if you gave Richard Perle a state.
Yeah, exactly.
He's no more Israeli than Richard Perle.
He doesn't respect what Israelis think any more than Richard Perle.
Unfortunately, Israel does have the right wing.
It's been growing there just the same as it's been growing here.
I mean, it used to be one thing you could usually count on about Israel was that the military was not as right-wing as even right-wing governments.
The government institutions there are all right-wing, and the progressive types are leaving for wherever they can go.
I mean, they have more people leaving Israel these days than going to Israel.
I mean, and leaving from all places, not just the United States, which is hard to get into to emigrate here, but Germany, which is very easy to emigrate to.
You know, now the Jewish population of Germany is almost at the same point it was before Hitler.
Who would have thought that it would get so dismal in Israel that Israelis of German descent are wanting to go back there?
There's a lot of Russians, too, going home.
Yeah, it's just like, you know, people who went to Israel from Europe weren't going there just to have endless war and see their kids.
And a country that's biggest aspiration now is a gigantic war with Iran?
It's really nuts.
It's really nuts, but, you know, who knows?
If the American people seem to be waking up, maybe, you know.
I mean, that's what I really love about this.
So you have the progressive left and the Tea Party both against this?
That's kind of against the Syrian thing.
If we can have that same thing going on with Iran, we can really change this country.
I mean, I don't really care what the Tea Party thinks about other things.
If they're going to turn out and be anti-war, that's fine.
We can make a coalition with them on that one issue.
Well, we're going to have to keep Democrats in power for that to remain the same because you see what happens when Republicans are in power.
We go all of a sudden, you know, Republicans leave all that splendid isolationism behind and embrace empire and militarism again.
No, that's true.
That's true.
Don't give them a Jeb Bush to follow.
They'll follow him right off the edge of the cliff.
Yeah, I mean, that's right.
And also, it's not necessarily good that Obama is weakened so politically now.
I mean, he's got congressional elections coming up.
Who knows?
I mean, he really blew it.
His leadership over the Syria thing, well, there was no leadership.
It was totally inept.
At least it ended in him backing down.
That's what I was counting on.
It was not wisdom, but cowardice.
He backs down on everything.
Let's hopefully he'll back down on this horrible thing, you know?
Yeah, that's true.
Usually he backs down on good things.
Right.
Yeah, he'll follow through on escalating the war in Afghanistan.
Right, right.
And then he backs down on Larry Summers, which demonstrates that he's just not going to have the juice anymore to do all his coddling of the right and the banks and all that kind of stuff.
I mean, I just feel much better about the way things are going now today than I did a month ago.
I mean, the Syria thing is the first time that I can remember that the American public have spoken out against a war and made it so that it couldn't happen.
I mean, it happened in Vietnam, but that was way at the end.
They had all those years of war.
But it's just like Obama could make speeches, and everybody could make speeches, and he had his Republicans lined up, you know, the interventionist Republican types.
It didn't make a difference.
The public, it just seems to me the American public has absolutely no interest in any more wars in the Middle East.
Well, you know, on your blog you had that great quote from Aaron David Miller.
Is that right?
About the American people now have their own level of expertise and their own ability to judge whether they think a war is worth it or not.
They're not deferring to D.C. anymore, and they've decided, no, you can't have another one.
Right.
That's extraordinary.
Yeah, that's really something.
And a president, you know, I mean, the idea that a president can go, first of all, he couldn't even give the speech he wanted to give.
It's just like he had to give.
I don't even know why he gave that speech in the end.
But, you know, traditionally the president gives a speech, he says it's an international issue, not a domestic issue, but on the international issue he gives a speech, says this is in the U.S. interest, and the American people just say, well, we'll defer to the president on this.
Well, they didn't.
Now, you're right, the thing that's worrisome, though, is that you don't know that this would apply if there was a Republican president.
You know, it's like God knows the language, you know, the way they kind of get us into these wars.
It just could be that Obama isn't nearly as sophisticated as you say Jeb Bush would be.
Well, you know, the liberals, the progressive left, not necessarily the writers and the bloggers of the world, but the rank-and-file kind of Democratic Party supporters, they completely let Obama slide on Afghanistan and Libya and Somalia and Yemen.
I mean, you hear some criticism of the drone thing, I guess, but certainly they didn't rise up against the Libyan war, that kind of thing.
It was sort of like this two years ago.
It was the Rand Pauls types who were standing up against the Libyan war at all, and then they laid down for it anyway.
No, I agree.
It's just, you know, certainly I don't know what the percentages are, but I think most Americans, not people like us, but most Americans get their news from, like, networks and all that, and there are no progressives.
Who are the progressive voices you're going to get there?
I mean, you know, it's like people think of Rachel Maddow.
I mean, please.
I mean, it's like, but nonetheless, with that quote from Aaron Miller, it's like for the people, I mean, it's just.
This is, I think, this is Obama's Hurricane Katrina.
Remember how before Katrina you're a jerk if you don't like Bush, and the entire burden is on you to justify your criticism, and then after Katrina it was like, well, you know what, MJ, maybe you're right about this goofball, and maybe we don't have confidence in him.
I think maybe this is that.
Finally, and it is, you know, time-wise, it's virtually 2005 for Obama, right?
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Just in the second term.
Right, exactly.
It is pretty much the same time.
It's funny about how presidents just fall apart in second terms.
Good argument for one-term presidencies.
Yeah, no, no, no, no.
Good argument for three- and four-term presidencies.
Why?
Keep weak, pathetic presidents in there instead of strong, vigorous ones.
That way they fail all the time and do horrible stuff to people.
Well, that's a good point.
That was why Bush didn't bomb Iran back in 2007 and 8.
Exactly.
That's a good point, yeah.
I mean, the Israelis, you know, and Dick Cheney came to them and said, look, why not do it?
I mean, it's kind of, you know.
If it takes five years before we hate them, then keep them for ten.
Yeah.
That's a good point.
No, these are not good days for Obama, and now he's got this debt limitation thing coming up, and the Republicans are now feeling stronger, and the country's just, you know, oh, well.
It's like.
Well, now, so let me ask you about Lindsey Graham and John McCain and what they represent in American politics nowadays, because you do have the rise of Justin Amash and Rand Paul on the right, in the Republican Party, I guess.
Great.
And you have this thing where Lindsey Graham is saying he wants to basically pass a war resolution against Iran.
He's going to put together a bipartisan coalition, he says, in order to authorize war against Iran's nuclear program, if that's vague enough for you.
Yeah.
He and McCain are definitely AIPAC boys.
I mean, they are.
And Lindsey Graham is always, you know, Lindsey Graham is not all that secure politically.
He worries about two-party challenges and all, and he, I mean, and the other thing is he really is just a lapdog for John McCain.
I mean, so it's, but this is a, the Republican, I wouldn't make so much about this Republican Party split.
Watching Rand Paul, he seems to me like a big phony.
He goes for, he'll say the right thing, and then when he gets some pressure, he switches.
And his language is nauseating.
Came out on the Syria thing.
He made this whole thing and said something about Assad.
Assad defends Christians and the other side is against Christians.
He starts, he, you know, he invokes this kind of right-wing kind of language.
I don't trust him.
I think if he runs for president, he will go to AIPAC first.
I don't trust any of these guys.
I agree with you 100%.
And Rand Paul, I can just see he will go to AIPAC first.
They may not give him the blessing, but he'll do enough that he'll get 80% of what he needs.
He'll neutralize.
He'll neutralize them and he'll neutralize himself.
But I, so I don't put as much stake in this kind of like neo-isolationism among Republicans.
I see it just more as among the general public.
I don't trust any of the politicians at all.
Yeah, it's good politics for them, and especially while they're the party out of power.
Right.
But I just don't.
You know, I just think, you know, I'm 65.
I just, I don't, I just, I worked on the Hill for so long.
I don't trust any of them.
It's really, you know.
Hey, I'll tell you a story real quick, MJ.
In 1996, I heard Rand Paul on the radio a couple of times, but I didn't really know who he was or anything like that.
But in 1997, when he first came back to Congress, I saw him on the floor of the House in the middle of the night on C-SPAN reruns, saying, hey, look, the British papers have proven that George H.W. Bush was selling chemical weapons to Saddam Hussein, even up to and including during Operation Desert Shield, right before the war.
What the hell?
And I want to enter this into the congressional record.
And then I looked at the bottom of the screen and it said Rand Paul, R, Texas.
And I went, wow.
Because, you know, like that guy Trafficant, he would say some true outrageous things sometimes, but he's a raving lunatic.
He would say horrible things too, horrible stuff.
And wrong, wrong stuff.
But Rand Paul, to me, there's Rand Paul and then there's every other politician in American history.
There's only one of him who's that much of a truth teller.
And I wouldn't put any other politician you could name in all of American history in that category with him.
To me, the rest of them are all a bunch of Rand Pauls.
And Rand Paul learned from his father that if you're going to be a truth teller, you're not going to become president.
So Rand Paul is just, I think in his heart, he probably believes the same things his father does, but he's just going to play the political game.
I don't even give him that much credit.
I think he's just a conservative Republican, just like a conservative Republican.
Yeah, he probably is.
He's learned some of his father's rhetoric and what sounds good to people who love the best of Jefferson.
It's kind of amazing, though.
We have this ridiculous business with dynastic policies, dynastic politics.
So there's Rand Paul, who was the better of the two, but he never could go anywhere because he said things that were unacceptable.
And then using his father's name, his son is now a United States senator, and he probably has a good chance of running for president because he stands for nothing.
And he'll be in the primaries versus Jeb Bush, and then whoever wins between those two will take on Hillary Clinton.
And that's our system.
Exactly, that is our system.
We should call them all dukes and duchesses and all of that kind of thing and make it official.
I know.
They might as well have gone with the king.
I mean, it turns out to even be worse than that.
Kind of like a harmless monarchy is a lot better than this, where these families keep reproducing more and more people who inherit the rights of leadership.
This is democracy?
It's incredible.
It goes back to what we were talking about, how it takes five years for people to finally decide that they don't like the president.
If we just call them Duchess Hillary and Prince Jeb and whatever, then people would never respect them at all.
It would all be blatantly illegitimate without this veneer of democratic approval having anything to do with it anymore.
One might be better off.
I think that about, I'll never forget what some former Soviet citizen and refugee here said to me.
He said that in the old Soviet Union, no one believed anything the government said.
In other words, if the government said anything, it was a lie.
And he said, they were.
Everything they said was a lie.
But in this country, because you have the veneer of democracy, your default position is you believe the government.
So we were smarter in the Soviet Union.
And I think that's true.
What we have is the belief that we're in control is what keeps us in line.
And it makes us stupid.
It really does.
Exactly.
I hate to go back to it, but it's just so perfect.
Carol Quigley, Bill Clinton's foreign policy professor at Georgetown University, said back in 1966, the only reason we let there be two parties in power, one to supposedly represent the interests of the liberals and the other of the conservatives, is so that every eight or even four years, if necessary, the American people can throw those rascals out so they'll feel better about themselves.
But we'll just replace whoever's in power with a new team that has the exact same goals and policies in mind, but with a brand new, fresh-faced ability to carry it all out.
And then he lists the consensus.
And the consensus is maintain the Atlantic Alliance and support Israel and keep printing money and on and on and on, the establishment consensus.
None of it has anything to do with constitutional government, but it's what the wise men know is the best policy to follow.
Yeah, exactly.
They always win, and we always celebrate elections.
Yay, this guy won, that guy won.
It's always the same.
Just think about the tears of joy on the night Barack Obama was elected.
And I remember, I'm from Texas, and I remember I was driving a cab the night George Bush and Al Gore had their thing, and I remember at least part of the night before they announced they were going to have to keep recounting, the people, it was like almost a riot of joy in downtown Austin as all the young Republican sons and daughters were partying at the success of George Bush.
How wonderful it was, you know?
It's the same thing.
Yeah, I know, and it's just, we're just duped continuously.
But that's what the good news is about Syria.
I don't think that the general public paid all that much attention to it.
The thing is about the distinction between Syria and Iran that we'll have to be aware of and worry about is that with Syria, it's impossible, it was impossible to make a case that anything that was happening in Syria affected Americans.
I mean, it was just, you know, they were just having to sell it as a humanitarian thing that you were doing for another country.
That's not the way they're going to sell Iran.
They're going to make it a whole thing related to nuclear bombs and threatening us and threatening Europe and threatening Israel.
But basically they have to say it threatens us.
We're going to debunk all those lies about Iran's nuclear threat with Mohammad Sahimi next on the show.
Oh, good, good.
All right.
I don't even have to talk about it.
But I would worry about that the one way they could get America into a war is if somehow they can engineer a quote-unquote Iranian attack on an American ship or something in the region.
Yeah, never forget that.
Seymour Hersh said Dick Cheney had a plan like that.
All right.
Hey, thanks, MJ.
That's MJRosenberg.com.
Thanks very much.
Okay, Scott.
Thank you.
Follow him on Twitter, too, y'all.
We'll be right back with Mohammad Sahimi right after this.
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