04/30/09 – Gareth Porter – The Scott Horton Show

For Antiwar.com, I'm Scott Horton.
This is Antiwar Radio.
Alright, so on to our first guest today.
It's my good friend Dr. Gareth Porter, our regular guest on the show.
Expert analyst in America's foreign policy for all questions of our Middle Eastern and Central Asian occupations.
Welcome back to the show, Dr. Gareth.
How are you doing?
Thanks once again, Scott.
It's good to talk to you.
Alright, so we've got about, what they say, I haven't counted, but they claim on TV it's been 100 days of hope and change in Washington, D.C.
So the empire is over, right?
Well, the empire is not over, and it's just a nice opportunity for people to pontificate on the subject of U.S. politics and policy under Obama.
So I guess this is our opportunity to do that, too.
So let's, I guess let's talk about Iraq.
It seems to me that announcing a withdrawal plan of three years, with most of the troops to be withdrawn toward the end of that three-year period, is basically, or at least could be, a pretty brilliant propagandistic masterstroke on the part of the Obama administration.
Here's this war that everybody hates, but he promised to end it, but he has three years to live up to that promise.
And I wonder whether you think that he really intends to get out of there, or even if you do think he intends to get out of there, is he going to be able to overrule the Pentagon on such a question?
You know, it's really a question of how strongly President Obama feels about this issue.
Whether he has the courage of his convictions, ultimately.
And this is the question that I've been pondering and sort of re-evaluating over the past three months plus, because when he came into office, you know, there was this evidence, at least from my point of view, that he did have sort of strategic convictions about Iraq.
If he didn't have much more in regard to foreign policy, he certainly did appear to feel that, you know, there were very compelling reasons for withdrawal from Iraq, and a withdrawal relatively quickly from Iraq, certainly more quickly than the foreign policy elite, the national security elite, felt was warranted.
And he was very much at odds with the military brass, certainly the commanders in the field, and certainly the national media, the centrist media, on this issue.
Now, what happened when he entered the White House, it seems to me, now looking back in retrospect, is that he was advised to bring in the usual suspects, centrist center-right figures, such as Secretary of Defense Robert Gates from the Bush administration, and Rahm Emanuel, certainly a centrist center-right figure, and others.
And surrounding himself with such people, including his new national security advisor, General Jones, I think that he generally took on the coloration, in terms of his strategic views, that his advisors had.
So, you know, I think that for political reasons, he has changed his stripes considerably on issues relating to foreign policy, and Iraq really, to me, is the centerpiece of that shift.
I think that he has agreed to go along, to a considerable degree, with the military view of keeping troops there, and not giving up his desire and his aim of having them all be withdrawn by the end of 2011.
I think that he still has that as his goal, but I think he's put that goal certainly in greater danger, by going along with the plan that the military really had in mind all along, to back-load the withdrawal, and really to keep the majority of the combat brigade that they had when Obama came into office.
Well, you know, in his speech, too, where he announced all this, it seemed like he changed 16 to 18 months or something, just to show either us or to show the generals that, don't worry, I'm not bound by any of my promises.
But then the whole end of 2011 thing, he completely left out any discussion of the 200,000 private contractors inside the country, including, I don't know how many of those are mercenaries, and he left out any discussion of the bazillion dollar embassy, the size of Lichtenstein or something there in the center of Baghdad, the biggest imperial embassy any country, I think, has ever built in anybody else's country.
Well, he didn't talk about those issues.
Or air bases, either.
And this is something Hillary Clinton brought up during the primaries.
Well, maybe we'll just keep air bases up in Kurdistan.
And that's sort of leaking out all over, too.
In fact, we talked about this at the time, right?
You wrote this up in your article, how Jim Michalczewski, right before Obama gave his big speech, was saying...
Well, this is something that I've been thinking about.
No one has followed up on this, including myself, of course, to really look into whether there is, in fact, there are moves by the U.S. military to use the special tie that they have with the Kurdistan government to really establish longer-term military positions there, regardless of what happens within Iraq.
I think that certainly is a serious threat to a policy of withdrawal.
There's no question about that.
And, you know, let's face it.
I mean, you know, they are going to continue to keep air power in Iraq right up until at least the very end of 2011.
You know, the president has never promised to withdraw air power or even to reduce it.
That's going to be, apparently, a full part of the military presence of the United States.
No intention to withdraw the air power.
And that means they intend to continue to use it, as far as I'm concerned.
And I think there's every evidence that they will.
And, of course, we still have thousands of special operations forces who are not included in the withdrawal plan at all, either.
And as you well know, you know, there's another recent incident in which special operations forces went into Qutb, carried out an operation which turned out to be based on faulty intelligence.
They killed the wrong people.
The al-Maliki regime was up in arms.
Another political incident was created.
And the futility, the absolute stupidity of allowing special operations forces to roam around freely and operate basically on their own is once again demonstrated in this incident.
Well, you know, each time something like this happens, though, it reinforces Iraqi nationalism.
This is the kind of thing like around the Blackwater massacre.
When that happened, you had people saying, you know, you guys might be part of the Sunni war against the border brigade and everything, but at least you're not American mercenaries.
And there was kind of a political coming together in Iraq in reaction to atrocities like that.
I wonder if this helps really solidify Maliki's position.
You know, Patrick Coburn was on the show yesterday, and he said, oh, we're leaving by the end of 2011.
Or you guys are.
He's Irish.
America's leaving at the end of 2011.
They don't have a choice anymore.
Maliki is strong enough indeed to kick our ass out.
I've always believed that that is the case, that that is certainly the likelihood.
The only way around that, of course, is a coup d'etat against al-Maliki, you know, by Iraqi military figures, Iraqi generals, obviously prompted by the U.S. military.
And I think that's the greatest danger of all that we face.
I can't help but recall and take notice, bring to the attention of your audience the fact that a number of observers who were pro-war in Iraq, pro-intervention, pro-occupation, have been saying over the past year and a half that the prospect, the possibility of a military coup in Iraq has been increased by developments over the past couple of years, the military, of course, becoming more powerful, the other institutions in society being supposedly weaker.
The military is in a prime position ultimately to grab power.
Now, I think that that analysis happens to overlook a major political reality in Iraq, which is that al-Maliki has indeed consolidated his power far beyond what anyone would have imagined a couple of years ago when he was considered to be weak and wishy-washy and really on the way out in any case.
But what is important here is that there do appear to be people in the military leadership saying these things, raising the issue of a possible military coup, and that is certainly very disturbing because it does suggest that that's one of the things that they're thinking about.
And they certainly have the mentality, the incentive to try to do something like that, whether they have the opportunity, whether the Iraqi military is going to have some generals who would be responsive is another question, which I at this moment would not be able to answer.
You know, I had George McGovern on the show the other day, and he was saying, have them all home by Thanksgiving.
Why do we have to wait until 2012?
If you really want to end the war, then just end it.
Well, I think that that's absolutely correct, and that there's no legitimate argument that having troops there another day is going to contribute to stability, contribute to humanitarian aims, contribute to nation-building or anything else.
All it can do is provide a target for terrorism, an excuse for terrorism, and for instability in Iraq.
And it's very interesting that the al-Maliki regime itself was making that very argument.
In its initial year in power, al-Maliki and his advisors were arguing for a timetable for U.S. withdrawal and handing over full control over security institutions and responsibility for the entire country to the Iraqi government and military.
And the rationale that was being put forward is quite interesting.
They were saying that the cost of continued U.S. occupation includes really offering a rationale for terrorists within Iraq.
And, of course, they were referring primarily to al-Qaeda, but also to Ba'athists and Sunnis, who they regarded as their primary enemy, the primary threat to the regime.
So there certainly is a very strong argument to that effect, which has even been put forward by the government that we're supposed to be supporting there.
Right, and of course this was the CIA, not just the CIA, all 16 American intelligence agencies agreed in the National Intelligence Estimate a couple of years back that this is what's created our terrorist problem more than anything else.
It's our reaction to it since 9-11, most especially including invading and occupying Iraq.
Yeah, and of course the implications of this go well beyond Iraq to the Middle East in general and to the Islamic world more broadly.
And one observer who made the argument that the occupation of Iraq has an unseen or undiscussed cost to American security in terms of its providing the rationale or the impetus for recruitment of terrorists for al-Qaeda is the person who now is the President of the United States, Senator Obama.
This is an obvious contradiction between the policy decisions that he's made to prolong the U.S. occupation for three more years, and again, back-loaded as well.
And his earlier observation, which was absolutely correct, and based on an insight that went beyond, I must say, what was generally understood in the political leadership class of the United States with regard to the Islamic world.
He understood that the United States pays a price for every day of occupying Muslim lands.
And he's now simply set that aside, unfortunately, because, I think, again, of domestic political forces that he's decided to come to terms with.
Well, it seems like...
Well, I forget whether he publicly promoted the thing at the time or not.
I'm sure he probably did, but at least over the past few years, Zbigniew Brzezinski, who is identified as a major leader of the so-called realist school of foreign policy thought there in the imperial court, has complained that Iraq was a big distraction from the real war.
And that real war is the long war in the arc of crisis and whatever, which basically means that Eurasia is America's Old West, and we're going to fight there forever to, I guess, keep control of it from the people who live there or something.
Is that basically the way we're headed?
Is there any indication that Obama means to do anything different than what Brzezinski's talking about in terms of permanent occupation of the old world?
All of it?
I don't know that Obama thinks in terms of permanent occupation.
I think that, on the contrary, he has a kind of wishful thinking approach that tries to reassure himself that what he's doing can still be reconciled with a relatively early withdrawal from Afghanistan.
I think there are some indications that Obama's worried about getting more deeply involved in Afghanistan, but at the same time, he continues to take steps that take the United States more deeply into what was called the Big Muddy during the Vietnam War and certainly Afghanistan is at least as big a muddy as Vietnam ever was.
It really brings to mind, for me, what I think is a general principle of empires, that they automatically drift toward military engagements, which are certainly the worst possible engagements if they wish to maintain positions of power in the world, because they are in places which are bound to create failure, which are bound to fail, where they can't win.
Vietnam, of course, was one of those places where the United States drifted into war, basically believing that they could handle it without really counting the cost.
Afghanistan is simply another of those historic cases where the imperial power drifted into a place which was, of all the places in the world, the last place that you'd want to fight an imperial war, and it's sort of a perverse principle of the empire that you end up doing that.
Well, it's because the perverse interests of the, well, let's go ahead and call them fascists, who own the military industrial complex firms and provide all the resources.
You know, like Ron Paul talks about when they debate Plan Colombia, here come all the lobbyists for Bell Helicopter up there, saying, oh yeah, we've got to have a drug war in Colombia, because they simply want to sell Blackhawks, or whatever it is.
And that's the deal is, if you own a bomb manufacturing company, Gareth, you just as soon fight a war you can't win forever.
Well, of course, the companies that really put out the bullets, the bombs, and all the other military equipment certainly have a direct stake in wars that are long and big.
The longer and bigger the better, no doubt about that.
On the other hand, the military services themselves are in more ambiguous positions, or maybe I should say contradictory positions, in that there is a direct conflict between their primary interest, which is to maintain the health of the service, by which they mean ensuring the longer term future of the service, with regard to missions and roles, roles and missions, and its military budget and manpower allocations, and fighting wars, because fighting wars can, in fact, result in the opposite of what they fundamentally need.
And so I think every time there's a big war, whether it's Vietnam, Iraq, or Afghanistan, you're going to have those contradictions playing out within the military services, between some whose interests, I mean the commanders in the field, are purely interested in giving a good account of their own contribution, and they care less about the health of the service.
But the brass back home usually, if not always, have mixed feelings about allocating the maximum resources for the wars, because they're also taking away from other interests, which really are more important, fundamentally, to the long-term health of the service.
So I think one of the things that we need to do in terms of understanding the politics of wars, of imperial wars, is sort of the set of internal contradictions that always attend those conflicts.
And that the military, on one hand, is attracted to them, on the other hand, finds that they're inevitably, in a way, destructive of their own interests.
So when you're caught in the middle of a war, as we have been in Iraq and now in Afghanistan, you see the playing out of increasingly ferocious battles within the U.S. Army, for example, with the long war faction that might be called, led by Petraeus, basically pushing for more public support for the war, more resources to go to the war, but the chief of staff of the army basically hesitating and holding back, and really at odds with the commanders in the field.
That's what we saw playing out in Iraq in 2006, 2007, and now I think there's bound to be the same effect in Afghanistan as well.
Well, it seems like the American empire as a whole would rather bribe a local politician, buy off a political party or something with the CIA, do a color revolution, and then make a quote-unquote wink-wink deal to have a base in a newly friendly country, rather than invade and do a regime change.
That's only if they really have to.
There is something to that.
This, of course, is the Eisenhower strategy.
Eisenhower relied on covert operations all over the world, was very much opposed to going to war, really opposed the military services trying to build up budgets and build up the manpower and the weapons and so forth to be able to fight local wars, and he incurred their wrath by doing so, but he was in favor of empire through covert operations.
Well, that's been the Bush model, too.
The Bush years were replete with color revolutions all over the place.
Yes, Bush, of course, did both, but his primary contribution will always be the long war, but mainly the big war.
Well, so if we look at a map of Eurasia and put little red dots where all the bases are, there are hundreds of them all throughout, and a lot of them, I guess, are very small lily pads, like Donald Rumsfeld called them, to be put into use quickly, supposedly, as part of his military transformation and all that.
I guess in the largest sense, do you think that all that's coming to an end, too, or do you think maybe they just kind of wash their hands of Afghanistan and keep all their bases everywhere else?
And then secondarily to that, what are they for?
Are they for Russia and China, or are they simply just for Iran?
Because, boy, what a waste if they're all just about hassling Iran, right?
Well, those are two fundamental questions.
And the first question, which is a much longer discussion, I'm convinced that the United States has no assurance that it's going to be able to continue with anything like the present array of bases that it has in the Middle East and Central Asia.
I mean, obviously it will have something there.
It will have some bases in the Gulf sheikdoms for a long time to come.
I think Iraq, Afghanistan, and some of the Central Asian bases are almost certainly going to fade away, and I think the military is going to be severely disappointed, and it's going to do its damnedest to try to avoid that fate.
And as for what the bases are meant for, you see, I think this brings us back to the fundamental interests of the military.
The fundamental interest of the military is not to fight any particular enemy.
The enemy is less important than the positions of power.
There are, of course, some bases and military positions which inevitably involve war with a specific power.
I mean, for example, in East Asia, you know, in the early period of the Cold War, the U.S. bases in Northeast Asia were clearly aimed at fighting a war with China.
I mean, that was without question understood to be the purpose, and there was a great deal of unity about that.
But today, in terms of the Middle East and Central Asia, I think it's much more ambiguous, or perhaps I should say much less important whether those bases are going to be used against Iran or whether they could be used to put down local rebellions or subversive movements or whatever.
That's really not important.
I think what's important is that they have the empire of bases, per se, and that the purpose of the bases might change.
Don't forget, if you go back to the neoconservative charter, if you will, the 2000...
Rebuilding America's defenses.
Rebuilding America's defenses.
Let me stop you right there just for one second.
Everybody, that's the most important one, PNAC.org, rebuilding America's defenses.
I'm sorry, please continue there.
This lays out, I think, the clearest sort of vision of what the neocons were all about.
And if you really read it, I'm not suggesting that it tells you everything.
It certainly doesn't.
I mean, there are many, many more nuances and wheels within wheels there than are presented, obviously, in that document.
But what is interesting to me is that the emphasis that was put on that we must have permanent bases in the Middle East and that this interest transcends whether Saddam Hussein agrees to our terms, comes to terms with us or not.
We may need them with regard to Iran.
And, of course, the same thing is true with Iran.
What happens if Iran comes to terms?
What if we do reach an agreement with Iran?
Well, we'll find another use for them.
The immediate enemy of the moment is less important than the strategic interest in projecting power itself.
So I think that that's really the important point about this empire of bases.
It shouldn't be confused with the idea that we need the bases in order to fight the war.
That's not it.
We need the war so we can have the bases.
Exactly.
Well, which brings us to Africa here.
We're already a little bit over time here, but we have bases on the Horn of Africa.
Looks like they're...
I didn't even realize this, but somebody on Facebook sent me a bunch of links.
There's an entire propaganda campaign directed at liberal youth in this country about Save Uganda, which I hadn't even heard about.
Also, the Washington Post has been all over the fact that there's been increasing violence in the southern part of Sudan, where they can really make hay out of the fact that there's an ethnic difference between the people fighting, as that ceasefire seems to be having some problems there.
And, of course, there's Darfur in Sudan and the crisis that Dick Cheney and the Ethiopians created in Somalia.
There's plenty of excuses to intervene there, never mind Nigeria and Congo over on the other side of the continent.
I think the point about Africa is that it is another opportunity to open up new positions of military power.
I think the military, as an institution, really can't help itself in the sense that it's automatically going to spread into as many countries as possible.
It's really like a corporate structure in a situation where the impetus is only in one direction, which is to expand.
As long as you have the opportunity to expand, as long as you have the resources to expand, there's simply a one-way dynamic that takes place.
Right.
And, of course, all their costs are socialized onto the taxpayer through inflation and income taxation and so forth.
And it's never their own bank account that has to suffer.
Until and unless you have a financial meltdown in the U.S. government such that the military is forced to take the hit, and that day will come, of course, then you're right.
There's nothing to counterbalance or counteract this dynamic of constantly pushing forward anywhere in the world where there's an opportunity to implant more bases, more military presence, more military personnel who will use their presence to drum up support for bases and partnership between militaries and so forth.
Well, there you have it, folks.
Gareth Porter found the silver lining in all of the Democrats' horrible economic policy of creating all these trillions of new dollars out of nothing.
They're going to destroy the dollar and ultimately the empire, finally.
That is certainly going to happen.
The only question is how long it's going to take.
As Walter Lippman once said, the one thing that is most difficult to predict is when something will happen.
I think that's the case here.
Absolutely.
All right, everybody.
That's Dr. Gareth Porter from InterPress Service.
You can find all of your rights at antiwar.com at original.antiwar.com slash porter.
Thanks so much for your time on the show today.
Thanks for having me again, Scott.
Antiwar Radio.
We'll be right back.