03/23/09 – Philip Giraldi – The Scott Horton Show

For Antiwar.com, I'm Scott Horton.
This is Antiwar Radio.
Introducing Philip Giraldi, regular guest on this show, regular contributor to Antiwar.com.
He writes the column Smoke and Mirrors.
He's also a contributing editor at the American Conservative Magazine, former CIA and DIA officer.
Welcome back to the show, Phil.
How are you doing, Scott?
I'm doing good.
How are you, sir?
Pretty well.
Well, good, because I have a lot of questions about what you think about what Obama's foreign policy is shaping up to look like.
And of course, particularly in terms of the Israeli government's and the Israel lobby in America's influence on the direction of policy.
Now, I guess by the time anybody hears this, your new article, Tangled Webs, will be up at Antiwar.com.
I guess slash Giraldi should be.
And this is sort of you take a tour around basically Petraeus' zone, Central Command, the great game from the Mediterranean Sea all the way to India, I guess, and what Obama's trying to do there and what the different influences are.
It's a very interesting article.
So I want to talk about all of that stuff.
And I guess I want to start on the map with Iran.
Obama gave his speech to the people of the Islamic Republic of Iran, which apparently was supposed to be a big milestone that he addressed them with respect and that kind of thing.
But in terms of substance, what did you make of Obama's speech to Iran?
What do you think that it really portends in terms of real change in America's foreign policy toward that country?
Well, I really didn't discuss it in the article very much because I was writing it before the speech was really made.
It was made on Friday.
I think it's significant.
I'll tell you why.
I think that basically Obama is doing a couple of things that he promised to do.
And one of those things is that he's talking to people, which the Bush administration, of course, never did.
And secondly, some analysts who understand the situation in Iran have indicated that they think that basically Obama is telling the Iranian people that, look, at least for the unless things change, the the military option is kind of off the table and we want to talk to you.
And if that's indeed what it means, and that's the way Obama was trying to present it, I think that's a that's a for people like us in the anti-war community.
I think this is a pretty good step forward.
But what about the standard that they must cease enriching uranium because for them to enrich uranium at all is for them to be pursuing nuclear weapons in the president's own words?
Well, you're absolutely right on that one.
The fact is that none of the none of the issues have shifted.
And Obama is basically saying the same things that the the Bush administration was saying and and that the Israelis were saying.
But again, it all depends on to what extent you think it's significant that the president of the United States in his first 60 days basically came out with a with a speech like this.
I think that's I think we have to view it as a positive step.
Yeah, well, if it does amount to, you know, the the threat of war is off the table, if that's what it really amounts to, then that certainly is a positive step.
And I guess he didn't really address the specifics.
It was it was all about, you know, setting the tone for talks in the future, that kind of thing.
Right.
And I believe that might be the real significance of it.
And of course, the Iranian leadership then came back with, you know, a kind of noncommittal response saying, all right, we're waiting to see what what things you really will do rather than just kind of talk about.
And of course, that's that's kind of expected, too.
I mean, this is we're talking about 30 years of extreme hostility between the two parties here, and it's not going to go away in 10 minutes.
So I think, you know, I'm mildly optimistic.
I'm I'm a little bit concerned about the joker in the deck, which is Bibi Netanyahu.
I thought you were going to say Hillary Clinton.
Well, yeah, I'm not sure.
Hillary is I think Hillary is a secondary player on this.
I think that basically this is an Obama agenda that we're seeing here.
Hillary, I think if Hillary were calling the shots on this completely, we would be seeing a much more belligerent position vis-a-vis Iran.
Yeah, it seems like, in fact, a friend sent me earlier a collection of, I believe, all relevant quotes from Obama administration officials on Iran, beginning with Obama right after the National Intelligence Estimate came out in 2007, all the way through all of Admiral Blair's quotes saying that they're not pursuing nuclear weapons right now and that he stands by the National Intelligence Estimate from back in 2007 and compared and contrasted with numerous statements by Hillary Clinton where she sounds just like AIPAC, despite what the National Intelligence Estimate, the official estimate of what Iran is up to, says.
Well, Hillary is AIPAC.
I mean, I mean, Hillary and Bill are tied hand and foot to AIPAC and AIPAC positions and always have been.
I mean, so it's not not too surprising.
But, you know, in this case, she's working for somebody else.
And basically, he might have a different viewpoint on it.
And to give Hillary a little credit, I mean, what politicians say when they're running for office and what their common sense tells them a little bit later might be two different things.
Right.
Well, good.
Glad to start this off with a little bit of optimism.
So let's talk about Syria.
I guess in the past year, the Israelis and the Syrians have been having talks in Turkey.
And that was, I think, as you say, in your article over the wishes of or against the wishes of the Bush administration.
And yet, I guess the last I read, those talks had ceased since the war against Gaza.
Well, it's my understanding that the mechanism is still in place, but the substantive talks have indeed ceased.
The Israeli representatives from their foreign ministry are back in Israel now.
So the talks are kind of on hold.
And of course, they're also on hold because of the Israeli elections and the fact that the Israelis don't really have a government yet.
Right.
So these are all issues impacting on it.
Bibi Netanyahu has indicated flatly that there will be no trades of land for peace, which would mean that he's not considering any kind of agreement with Syria.
So it's, you know, I would say because he'd have to be willing to give up the Sheba Farms.
That's right.
He would.
He certainly would have to make some comfort.
Well, Sheba Farms is the Lebanese issue, but the but the the Golan Heights would be a Syrian issue.
Yeah.
And and same issue, though.
I mean, essentially, if he wants to come to a peace agreement with with Syria, he has to at least give back most of the Golan Heights.
And there are also, of course, water issues and other issues that are related.
So if if Bibi is not going to compromise in any way and there's no reason to think he's basically just pulling over, you know, election postures, I think Bibi does believe this.
Then obviously the talks won't go anywhere.
But, you know, the U.S. has issues with Syria, too.
And the acting undersecretary of state for the Middle East, for the Near East, was recently in Damascus.
And apparently the talks were not completely negative.
Well, that's good.
Tell me this.
Do you think that if the Bush administration had not been worse than the Olmert government in Israel on these talks, that Olmert would have been able to make this deal in the last year rather than have the whole thing thrown out the window now?
Well, I mean, there were reports back.
I'm sure you read them, Scott, over a year ago that the deal was all but signed and that the the Syrians and the Israelis were negotiating before they started the talks in Istanbul with their foreign ministries.
They were negotiating through some businessmen and other contacts.
And I'm sure you remember that.
And the deal was like 100 percent made over water rights and over land, you know, the land issues and border issues and everything else.
And at the last minute, there was pressure from Washington, I believe, from Dick Cheney, primarily.
And the Israeli administration got cold feet about the whole business and and said that the contacts had been unofficial.
But the Syrian foreign ministry said the contacts were serious and they had they had pretty much reached an agreement.
So it almost seems like the Israel lobby in Washington is a worse albatross than the government of Israel itself, at least sometimes.
Well, the Israel lobby in Washington obviously is doing a lot of things that most people with any common sense would say are not in the interest of Israel.
And, you know, they have a vision of I don't know where it comes from.
Is it religious?
Is it is it ethnic?
Is it tribal?
Who knows?
I mean, but they certainly have a vision for the future of Israel as a dominant military power supported by the United States, which really is at odds with Israel's survivability in a region in which it's a small minority of the population and resources.
Well, you know, I have a theory about motivation here, too, that you left off your list arm sales that really all these guys, many, many of the neocons anyway, are tied directly at the hip to Lockheed and Northrop Grumman and law firms that used to represent them and all those kinds of things.
Well, that's a fact.
I mean, the the neoconservatives and also let's not leave out the Israelis who are in their defense ministry and who are in their in their military.
These people are very much involved in this contracting and everything, too.
So so there's a very kind of cozy community of interest there involved with weapon sales and and the continued weapon weapon sales to the Middle East.
Yeah, there's no question about that.
Well, you know, right after 9-11, there was a big push by the Israeli government to try to convince the American people and apparently they had no problem convincing George Bush that, hey, look, terrorism is what we're at war against and that's what we face and that's what you face.
And so Hamas and Hezbollah and the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade and Al-Qaeda and I guess the Tamil Tigers and everybody else in the whole world that uses terrorism, most of whom are Israeli and not necessarily American enemies, are all really one in the same thing.
And yet it sort of seems like if you really wanted if the real goal is protecting Americans from suicide terrorists like what happened on 9-11, then you've got to recognize that there's quite a divergence of interest in our support for Israel.
That's part of the motivation of what gets us attacked in the first place.
Do you think that Obama even understands that?
I believe that asking George Bush to understand that would be asking for too much.
Yeah, well, I kind of hope that Obama's a lot smarter on these issues.
But to a certain extent, you know, a president works on filters and it depends on who's talking to him and what kind of lines they're presenting.
There certainly is a lot of confusion on the part of our administration, our recent administration, the Bushes, what constituted terrorism.
Because a lot of these terrorist groups, if you really look at them, like the Tamil Tigers, for example, PKK, Hamas, Hezbollah, these are basically kind of liberation movements, much more so than they are terrorists.
They're not Al-Qaeda type terrorists.
And when you're dealing with essentially as a liberation movement, you have a whole different set of motivations and you have a whole different set of capabilities and targeting and everything else that you have to consider.
And the Israeli gift to this discussion was to convince the Bushes, although it didn't take much convincing, that really all terrorists are alike.
And of course, that's convenient for the Israelis because it makes America or it makes their enemies our enemies.
Right.
And here's the thing, too, and I went back and checked this because I wanted to make sure that I wasn't just spouting off.
But when Osama bin Laden first declared war on the United States, the first outrage he cited was the Kwana Massacre of 1996.
It came out a couple of months later.
Yeah.
And that was Israel in Lebanon.
That wasn't a war that America fought, not, you know, by a degree of separation we did, but it was not titled the war against Israelis.
It was titled the war against the Americans because we're the ones supporting them when they do things like massacre people at Kwana.
Well, we've become very much their surrogates.
Like the most recent statement by Osama bin Laden referred, of course, to Gaza.
And of course, it also attacked the United States.
I mean, you know, but the fact is that Gaza was enabled by the United States.
Anybody who's anybody who's not a complete idiot realizes these things.
And the question is, OK, if the United States is going to be carrying the can for the Israelis, then we are going to become a target of the terrorist groups that are trying to, in at least in some cases, liberate their territory from the Israeli military.
And you know what else surprised me, actually, when I went back and read this was and I'd forgotten this is he basically claims credit for the Khobar Towers attack that killed, I think, 19 Marines.
And this is something that due to pressure from which groups in Washington, D.C. was pinned on Iran.
Yeah, that's that's interesting.
I know I noticed that, too.
And the fact there's always been some kind of dispute as to who actually was the major player.
The the interest groups in Washington immediately pinned it on on Iran, as you noted.
And there wasn't a whole lot of evidence for that.
And there have been suggestions through the years that it might have been Al-Qaeda.
And this seems to be at least confirmed in in their press statements.
Well, and, you know, there's this great article in The Village Voice about Rudy Giuliani's friend, a sheik named Al-Thani, and how Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Osama bin Laden were staying at his place.
And the the bomb materials went through there and the Khobar Towers were just on the other side of the fence.
And how in the official investigation they decided, oh, well, but that's a totally different country way over there.
And so they couldn't nothing that happened there could possibly have anything to do with this attack here.
It's not really the guy's property line was just on the other side of the fence there.
Well, that's interesting.
Giuliani has always had a gift for feathering his own nest, that's for sure.
I remember back a couple of years ago or a few years ago when he was given the job of cleaning up Mexico City he collected about 18 million dollars for doing it.
And what he did was he got in the helicopter, flew over the city, got back on his plane and flew back home.
Yeah.
Wow.
Government employment.
You know, the official line is that there's really no money.
It's all public service.
And that's why you don't get paid very much.
It doesn't really seem that way in practice, does it?
You know, these people are real princes, I'll tell you.
Yeah.
Giuliani is, you know, a king among them.
So let me see what I want to ask you about next.
I guess the future of the role in Afghanistan and Pakistan greatly hinges on the developments between America and Iran, really, and whether we're going to rely with them as we did right after September 11th in our war against the people of Afghanistan.
Yeah.
Well, it's my it's my understanding.
And, you know, I don't I don't know 100 percent if this is true, but I've been informed that Obama has sent had sent a kind of secret emissary to the Persian Gulf.
And and this emissary, Bill Perry, who was the secretary of defense under Bill Clinton, spoke with some Iranian, whether they were officials or or kind of designees, I don't know.
And this was indeed one of the issues he raised, that apparently the United States is interested in cooperating with the Iranians against the Taliban.
And this, of course, is, hey, this is a common sense thing.
The Taliban are the sworn enemy of the Iranians.
The Iranians could provide incredible help in terms of stabilizing Afghanistan.
There's a large Shiite population in Afghanistan.
And the interesting that these issues are kind of being raised, it would suggest to me at a minimum that Obama is getting some good advice.
Well, is that breaking news on the show that Perry's over there doing these negotiations?
Well, he's already in the American conservative.
Well, no, it'll be in the well, it'll be in the next issue of the American conservative.
I wrote it up for them.
And but I think given the realities of publishing that it will be on your radio show first.
All right.
Well, I'm not too sure how confident that makes me.
William Perry ain't my favorite, but I do see what you're saying that.
Well, and because we can't get our supplies through the Khyber Pass without all our trucks getting hijacked in Pakistan and all the bridges blown up, we really need the Iranians if we want to keep up our war in Afghanistan so that we can ship our supplies through their country.
That's that's that's very true.
The major route for getting stuff in if the Khyber Pass closes is from Turkey and across Iran.
Well, and how how much danger are our shipments?
And I mean, are they still going through Pakistan at all now?
Yeah, they still are.
My understanding is the Khyber Pass is still being used, but it's they've had a lot of problems.
And of course, now the the security costs for getting stuff up through the Khyber Pass have become enormous.
So, you know, it's funny, you know, we we were able to fight the Second World War for a lot less money than we've been able to fight Iran and Afghanistan, Iraq and Afghanistan, just because everything costs so much more in the way the the modern American army moves things and moves people and moves equipment.
You know, a GI back in 1944 probably cost about $50 a month.
I hesitate to think what it costs now.
Yeah.
Well, so tell me this, this guy, Hamid Karzai, who just reminds me of Lando Calrissian from the Empire Strikes Back with his flowing cape and his funny hat.
I don't think Lando wore a hat, but still the cape.
Anyway, is he the next D.M.?
Is John F. Obama going to shoot this guy in the head?
Well, there's there's been a lot of talk that they're going to work around him, Karzai.
I don't know exactly what that means.
I mean, you know, the last time I checked, Afghanistan was a sovereign country, more or less.
How exactly we're going to, you know, work around him when he's the president of the country and has been elected, even though the election was probably basically fraudulent and he's incredibly corrupt.
I'm not sure.
I tell you, my theory is, I think I might have even said this last time I was on your show, is I have a feeling that Obama is going to try to arrange things in a way, you know, keep up the pressure in Pakistan and hopefully get a good shot in and kill Osama bin Laden and then kind of, you know, put the lid on the situation in Afghanistan, pretty much like they tried to do in Vietnam in the latter phases, pretend there's a government there and then declare victory and get out.
You think they really do want to get out of there?
Oh, yeah, I think I think that's that's clear.
I mean, today they're talking about there has to be an end game.
Yeah, yeah.
60 minutes and exit strategies.
Yeah, I think I think these are clear signs that Obama realizes this is a mess.
Yeah, that's what Ray McGovern said, too.
He thought the surge of 17000 troops was just to try to prevent a helicopter on the roof of Saigon embassy type moment to, you know, forestall that kind of catastrophic humiliation and figure out a way to stabilize things just enough to be able to get out and make it not our fault when everything goes back to hell.
Yeah, that's right.
I mean, you know, you can always say, hey, we've won and we never we haven't lost a battle yet.
We've won.
The situation is stable.
Osama bin Laden is dead and we're going home.
So, you know, I I kind of see this as a viable strategy, really.
Well, do you think he really wants out of Iraq, too, as long as we're singing songs of happiness and optimism here?
Well, I think Iraq is they're seeing it as a different situation.
I think they they're seeing it as a situation which is now stabilized.
I think that's probably an exaggerated view, but I think that's how they're seeing it.
And I think they believe that maintaining a significant troop presence there will secure that situation for long enough for the Iraqis to get their act together.
So I think I think they're seeing it as two separate issues, two very different issues.
Yeah.
I wonder about whether they'll really abide by getting us out by the end of 2011.
Seems like a long time to come up with more excuses to stay.
And I guess as long as that embassy is there, they have to keep, you know, some kind of pretty large scale occupation just to defend the embassy at the bare minimum.
Well, they could they could, you know, bring in some Ferris wheels and things like that, turn it into a Disney World type situation.
I think that that way it would be paying for itself.
I think that might be the way to go.
Yeah.
Well, you know, someone said they could make it the Museum of American Atrocities.
And, you know, going back almost 20 years now, that's a well, in fact, you know, if you count the proxy war against Iran, when we were on the other side, it's 30 years of killing Iraqis.
That's a long, long time.
Although it's a big embassy, you could probably make do.
Yeah, well, you could have you could have rooms like Madame Tussauds, you know, where you have wax effigies of Abu Ghraib, that thing where they made all the Iraqis pile up like a pyramid and were abusing them.
You could have, you know, tableau vivant like that.
Yeah.
Have a right in the food court there.
Exactly.
Yeah.
All right.
Let's talk about Russia.
So I open up my New York Times and there's Henry Kissinger and James Baker, the third.
And they the way it's reported, they're not sent by Obama, but they called him and let him know that they were going like that.
And I guess, you know, this is like Lou Rockwell said back in the worst days of David Wombser and Scooter Libby running the show was it's a heck of a note to have to root for the Rockefeller guys.
But so here we are.
We got them back in the saddle there over there in Russia.
And Kissinger's actually at least leaking trial balloons along the lines of complete nuclear disarmament.
What's going on there?
Do you buy that?
Well, I think this is, again, part of the Obama, the way Obama is playing this.
He's got trusted emissaries of various types.
And Bill Perry was another one.
And these people are going to various places and they're speaking essentially off the record for the president.
I think it's kind of a clever thing to do, except that, as I noted in my article, which will be coming out tomorrow, you kind of lose focus and you lose you lose kind of a strategic sense by doing this kind of thing.
You have people going around saying this, saying that.
And there's there's very little in the way of accountability in terms of what goes on.
Too many chiefs.
Yeah, I think.
So I think Obama is this is maybe a game to play for a while, but it's not really a pattern he wants to get into or it shouldn't be a pattern that he would want to get into, because the problem with foreign policy is that you push in one place and something pops out somewhere else.
And you have to have that sense of, you know, what's going on across the board.
And you have to have a broader strategy to be able to make these things work right.
And if he's just if what he's trying to do is just kind of, you know, putting a finger in the dike here and a finger in the dike there and a finger in the dike there, it's ultimately going to be a self-defeating strategy.
Yeah.
Well, on the other hand, it does seem like if he can negotiate peace here and negotiate peace there and negotiate a reasonable working relationship here, there and the other place to that, you know, even if some of those powers where we stop intervening in some of those places, even if they have their own new conflicts, that would actually, at least from my point of view, would be progress if we weren't involved in them anymore, such as the disputes between the Arab sheiks and emirs and the ayatollahs in Iran, for example.
Yeah, I absolutely agree with you.
I mean, to me, this is a this is all, you know, if not being very well handled in all cases, it's still all to the good.
It's a willingness to negotiate.
It's a willingness to talk to people and to humanize them in a way that the Bush administration never had.
I mean, the Bush view was, you know, it killed them, killed them all.
But I would I you know, I would point out there was apparently a conference in Brussels this past week about Afghanistan.
And John McCain was the keynote speaker.
Did you pick up on any of that?
Oh, no, I had missed that one.
I'm sorry.
Yeah, look around.
It's it's appearing on the in the blog world, even as we speak.
But apparently, Holbrooke was there, too.
And they apparently the consensus at this conference, which, of course, was NATO type people, was that we're going to pound the shit out of them in Afghanistan.
That's the way to beat them.
And McCain was very much saying that.
And Holbrooke was saying the same thing.
And indeed, the assembled audience, which I guess are people that have vested interest in keeping defense money flowing.
We're all kind of cheerleaders for this.
So, you know, there are a lot of people that still have this kind of impression that America can kill its way to some kind of victory in these places.
And I think that's kind of unfortunate.
Yeah, I see the blog here at the American Conservative Magazine by Freddie Gray.
Video of John McCain speaking about Afghanistan to the Marshall Fund's Brussels Forum on Saturday night.
Yeah, well, I guess that's what they call bipartisanship and compromise.
You know, we'll just why not make John McCain himself give him Holbrooke's job and.
Well, you know, the thing that bothers me is, you know, you're not getting you're not getting any voices at a prominent level that we're seeing yet in the Obama administration that really are contrary to the general thrust of, you know, we're looking for military solutions or we're looking for this.
We're looking for that.
I guess that the woman, what is it?
Samantha Powers at the U.N..
Susan Rice.
Susan Rice at the U.N. and also Samantha Powers are people who would have had that kind of voice, but they've been they've been kind of marginalized.
Well, and see, here's the thing, too.
I'm sorry for being so flippant in this interview.
I mean, the reality is you can't just send in the Marine Corps and wipe out the Taliban.
There is no wiping them out.
Right.
Other than dropping hydrogen bombs all over Pashtunistan, these are the only people, the only political power organized that that tribe has at all, a tribe of millions of people.
Yeah.
Well, yeah.
And the Taliban obviously has a has a certain resiliency and the Karzai government is so corrupt that the good order that the Taliban maintained is being looked on as a golden age right now.
So, yeah.
And these and and as I talk about in my article, the these issues are very complex.
They go across tribal lines, religious lines.
They go there are historical elements to it.
And, you know, you come in and you try to you think it's just a matter of killing this guy or wiping out this tribe or something.
But it doesn't really work that way.
Yeah.
Well, and back to Russia here for a minute.
I mean, I don't know all the exact particulars, but it seems to me like Henry Kissinger and James Baker are kind of the architects of the policy of siphoning all the oil out from under the Caspian Basin without any of the pipelines having to go through Russia.
And that that seems like our biggest conflict with them is that kind of great game politics in the Caspian Basin.
And they're the ones over there doing the negotiating.
Do you think that they're really willing to concede or they're just trying to consolidate their gains they have so far?
Well, I think they recognize that that Russia is a serious player and that Russia has there has to be some kind of accommodation.
But I think I think the real issue here is that that we kind of lose sight of right at the moment because we're in in the midst of an economic depression is that energy policy and energy issues are going to be huge in the next 50 years.
Whoever controls energy supplies basically is going to control the ability to have a thriving economy versus having an economy that's in the pits.
So some of this stuff is kind of real in terms of our national interest.
And while I think some of the chicanery that went on and obviously enriching a lot of people in the private sector in the process was was really horrible.
The people who are thinking seriously about energy policies, the United States doesn't have an energy policy.
Now people are thinking seriously about that kind of thing and looking ahead are actually thinking in terms of a serious national interest.
Well, you know, that seems to have always been Dick Cheney's policy, right?
Was that for the long term, America has to have military bases all over the world, wherever oil is produced pretty much in order to make sure that, you know, at some point we can just cut off the other countries and make sure it all belongs to us.
That's that's exactly what Dick Cheney's point of view was.
Now, where I would differ with him is that you have to have an energy policy, which which basically means you you work in a cooperative way with other countries in the world that have energy resources and you don't have to do it by force of arms.
Now, Dick Cheney would argue the other way.
Well, I think all these people need to learn Austrian economics and it seems to me like once the oil price just gets higher and higher as it gets more and more scarce in a free market kind of way, then alternative energies become, you know, efficient for the price and then we switch to those.
And that's how human progress works.
We don't need to have an empire to to guarantee our access to these resources, do we really?
Well, I quite agree.
I mean, you know, Cheney obviously would argue the contrary.
But the fact is that, you know, oil and energy, whatever whatever your resources that create energy is, these are fungible items that are sold all over the world in an international market.
And and a country like the United States has has a vested interest in making sure that the market works.
But we don't necessarily have a vested interest in beating the hell out of every country that's a producer to keep the prices down or to or to make sure that we have access to it.
Have you seen any indications that Obama sees this policy any different in the in the long sense?
I mean, I don't know.
I mean, it seems to me like you can negotiate all you want.
But if you don't have a military presence in the Caspian Basin, then somebody else is going to, whether it's the Russians or somebody else, and you're just going to have to buy it at the market rate.
Yeah, well, I think that basically, ultimately, we're going to have to buy things at a market rate.
And the market rate once the Chinese and Indian economies recover is going to zoom up.
So there's no question about that.
But the question becomes, to what extent should it be a government interventionist policy to try to control this process?
I'm not so sure that that's a good idea or even a doable thing.
Yeah, well, and I feel sorry for the people of Africa, because it seems like this is where the war is really headed next is the new African command.
And, and there's so many humanitarian crises in Africa, the ones caused by America and not to take advantage of it to point to point out and say, listen, you know, we have to go into Sudan because of the poor people there, or we have to go into the Congo or Nigeria because of the strife that, you know, a lot of which is caused by America in the first place.
They have that excuse and just seems like, you know, train wreck in slow motion.
Here it comes the American invasion of Africa.
Well, I hope we won't be seeing that I hope Obama will not be persuaded that he has to become an interventionist in Africa to prove that he's not a wimp.
But you know, you're right.
I mean, there's obviously there's a lot of pressure building to play a more active role.
I think the only the only thing to bear in mind about Africa is Africa is so big and so populous, and there's so much political corruption, it's a lot harder to, to make anything happen in that on that continent.
And I suppose that so far, our military presence has been kind of small.
And it's not the kind of thing where having a base in a place like the Democratic Republic of Congo is really going to accomplish anything.
Yeah, well, I guess that's good.
The whole kind of herding cats theory where there's just there's not even a government strong enough to co-opt and use against the rest without it dissipating before it gets anything done.
That's right.
I mean, the only the only economies in Africa that are viable are the ones that have that sell a commodity like oil or copper or something like that.
And, and those economies are very subject to the ups and downs of the marketplace.
And there's not a viable economy in the whole place.
And if I were a terrorist, I certainly would not want to be hiding there.
Yeah, well, and you know, there's a lot of economic nationalism, especially in bad economic times, like we're experiencing probably just the very beginning of now.
And a lot of the propaganda from, from the right, there's a lot of anti Chinese propaganda from the right about the rise of their empire and yada, yada like that.
And of course, all the George Clooney's of the world complain that the Chinese government has all these deals with the Sudanese government where all the crisis is going on in Darfur.
And so it seems like there's kind of a convergence of interests of, of pressure groups saying that America needs to get in there to get the Chinese out.
Well, in fact, there was a, there was a, an op ed in the Washington Post about Charles Freeman by Congressman Frank Wolf from Virginia.
And Frank was, was making that very point that the China that Freeman's connection with the Chinese means that he was supporting atrocities in Darfur.
Yeah, I mean, you know, this is like idiot think, I don't know where these people come up with these ideas.
But clearly, some neocon must have been sitting back and thinking China.
And then he made a few connections here and there and figured out that, that if you have anything to do with the Chinese government or Chinese, Chinese company, you're obviously involved with atrocities.
You know, it's like, let's get back to reality here.
China is no threat to the United States.
China is going in various places in Latin America and, and in Africa and doing deals and putting in infrastructure in return for commitments to provide energy and that kind of thing, which are very much in China's interest.
And it doesn't mean that this is some kind of threat against us.
Yeah, in fact, as you say, they're putting in all this infrastructure, whatever, they're actually increasing our access to oil that is going on the market, thanks to them that that otherwise would be sitting in the ground.
That's, that's exactly true.
Yeah, I think a lot of people on the right just imagine that the Chinese have 500,000 troop ships that they're somehow going to move their million man army to North America someday or something.
I, that must be the fear.
I, you know, I was reading, you may have seen the article in the American conservative about the F 22 Raptor.
Oh, no, sounds good, though.
Yeah, well, you should read it because this, this should be referred to as either the flying elephant or the flying lemon.
Yeah.
And, and these things cost 137 billion, I think was the figure per airplane.
And for a threat that doesn't exist from anybody else.
You know, that so much of this stuff is just totally mindless.
And it's driven by corporations and people who have interest with corporations who want to keep this tap of money flowing.
And, and I think that's the way we we citizens should look at it.
And we should be saying now, hey, we can't afford this anymore.
Yeah, there you go.
War is a racket.
And see, here's the thing.
I think a lot of people mistakenly believe that war ultimately helps us because you know, we all learned that about World War Two and that kind of thing.
But I wonder with the economy collapsing now, do you think that anybody in DC is making the causal link or I mean, Ron Paul's on TV a lot saying, you know, pointing out how much we spend on our empire, and and how it's we spend a lot more than we make off of it and that kind of thing.
Do any of these people in the actual imperial court understand this?
Are they just impervious to this sort of knowledge?
Well, these people are essentially beneficiaries of the system.
So it's not up to them to criticize it.
They're not going to criticize it.
I mean, they got to live here, though, too.
I mean, they're they're running our society off a cliff here.
Well, you know, but you can make the same argument about people with global warming.
I mean, people who deny that global warming exists.
I mean, it's there.
I mean, the scientific evidence is that it's there and it's going to dramatically affect the lives of our grandchildren.
But these people who are arms merchants and everything like that, their bottom line is their bottom line is their their bank account and senior government officials who are on the take.
And when they stop being government officials will suddenly be on the board of directors of of an arms contractor.
They're looking at their own bottom lines.
I have a feeling that none of these people are really, really give a give a damn about the United States and about its people.
Well, their policies sure don't betray a lot of a lot of foresight or caring about the larger picture.
That's for sure.
Let's go ahead and wrap this up sort of where we started with the Israel lobby and their role in the imperial court, I guess.
The journalist Andrew Coburn said that the neocons really the definition of the neocons and a lot of people debate Strauss in this and Trotskyite that and whatever.
He said that the neoconservative movement is is where the arms industry meets the Israel lobby.
These guys, the merchants of death, the military industrial complex, they hired the neocons to be their intellectual eggheads to come up with excuses for selling their weapons.
And that's that's basically what the the and, you know, you think back to the Sybil Edmond story and that kind of thing.
That's what that's what APAC and the American Turkish Council and all these lobbying groups really are about is getting American weapons sold on the American taxpayers dime to these foreign countries, the satellites of our empire.
So but then I also wanted to make the connection there because you mentioned the fight over Chas Freeman and how obvious it was that they were bringing up red herrings like China when everyone knew that what bothered them.
I mean, them being the Israel lobby by name, Steve, beginning with Steve Rosen, the indicted spy.
Do you think that as just remandos written and now even John Mearsheimer have written that this is a really a pyrrhic victory for the Israel lobby taking down Chas Freeman because now their power, which they deny as they exercise it is out in front for all to see?
Is that even going to make a difference?
Really, I guess is my question.
Well, there are two issues there.
The first issue is, you know, what is the Israel lobby?
And I agree that to a large extent, it is this coming together of defense contractors and right wing politicians of various types, even if they were originally Trotskyite to basically continue this symbiotic relationship with Israel, which they see as protective of Israel, but also lining their own pockets because of the business nature of it.
So that's one thing.
I don't agree with Justin and John Mearsheimer.
As Stephen Walt, I agree with more.
I believe Stephen Walt said in an op-ed that he felt that anybody who thought that the Israeli lobby was weakened by this is delusional.
The Israeli lobby still controls the mainstream media.
The Israeli lobby still controls Congress, as the Freeman case clearly demonstrated.
Congress was the decisive player in this.
It was congressmen who came out against including both Republicans and Democrats who came out against Freeman and then were eventually joined by people like Pelosi.
This was a decisive factor in his withdrawing of denomination.
So I think anybody who thinks that the Israel lobby is because it came out in the open has somehow been weakened by this and it's a pyrrhic victory.
I think that's not true.
I think the debate is more open now and it's increasingly open about the Israeli lobby and what it does.
But the fact is, the Israeli lobby still controls all the levers of power.
Yeah, well, and they've proven that they will win if you're the next guy to try to stick your neck out.
Sure.
Try nominating me for Undersecretary of Defense or something like that and see what happens.
Right.
Well, I'm sure it'd be no problem.
You just sail right through confirmation there.
Absolutely.
All right.
Well, I really appreciate your time on the show today.
Always learn a lot.
Thanks very much, Phil.
Okay, Scott.
All right, everybody.
That's Philip Giraldi, Senior Contributing Editor at the American Conservative magazine, also regular contributor to Antiwar.com, former CIA and DIA counterterrorism officer.
And you can find what he writes at Antiwar.com, I believe it's slash or ridge slash Giraldi dot PHP.