10/24/13 – Philip Giraldi – The Scott Horton Show

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Our next guest is Phil Giraldi, former CIA and DIA officer, chairman, executive director of the Council for the National Interest, and writer for the American Conservative magazine, as well as AntiWar.com.
Welcome back to the show, Phil.
How are you doing?
I'm fine, Scott.
How about you?
I'm doing great.
Appreciate you joining us today.
And congratulations to you.
You won fifth place, which is pretty good, in the Best American Organizations on the Israel-Palestine issue.
Congratulations for that.
Well, that's maybe one way to describe it, Scott, but actually we were being attacked by the Anti-Defamation League, and we were listed as one of the ten most anti-Israeli groups in the United States.
So it depends on how you look at it.
Oh, yeah.
Well, that's how I look at it.
I thought, man, that's great, you know?
I don't know what the hell I would have to yell about to get that guy to give me any credit that way, but I was proud just by association with you guys sponsoring the show and everything.
And hey, I know that guy.
He was cited by a Foxman for being good on get the hell out of the West Bank.
Hey, listen, by the way, you're not really anti-Israel, are you?
Actually, I'm pro-American.
I think that's probably where my leanings come from.
So sometimes that's the same thing?
Yeah, well, unfortunately it has become the same thing.
But yeah, Israel is no friend of ours, that's for sure.
All right.
So, speaking of which, well, no, wait a minute, let's stick on this subject for a minute.
What's so good or bad about the Council for the National Interest that has got Abraham Foxman denouncing you in such stark terms?
Well, I mean, if you read my stuff on anti-war, which I know you do, I've been highly critical of the relationship between the United States and Israel, and that's basically what Abe focuses on.
If you look at the groups that he lists in the top ten, a number of them are basically, you know, I would call them progressive humanitarian type groups that are interested in the human rights side of what's going on in the Middle East.
And about half of them, though, are groups like my own that try to urge the media and Congress to have a more balanced approach towards the Middle East in terms of the U.S. interests and in terms of what is good for the American people.
It's funny to see that, I guess, he doesn't even mind finding any groups that are actually just really vicious and bad and actually just hate Jews or something like that.
He only picks on people who actually are just good on Israel-Palestine.
I mean, there you are with Code Pink and Jewish Voice for Peace, which is obviously liberal American Jews, probably, you know, mostly Democrats or ex-Democrats anyway, right?
These are...
There's nothing...
I don't think...
Well, I'm not completely familiar with every group on the list, but I didn't see anybody there who's actually really politically incorrect on this issue whatsoever, just on the opposite side of it from these guys.
Yeah, that's right.
I mean, not a single one of those groups is a group of crazies like, you know, a David Dukes type or anything like that, or neo-Nazis or anything.
It's basically people who are either, as they say, focused on the humanitarian issue of what's going on, or basically want some shift in the politics of what goes on in the United States vis-a-vis the Middle East.
So yeah, I would say none of us are actually crazy.
The only one who's crazy is probably Abe Foxman, who probably goes to sleep, you know, thinking of things that Ubudu and other stuff he can do to us.
But that's the sad thing, that unfortunately this issue is being demonized by people like Foxman.
Yeah.
Well, it's less and less effective all the time, I think.
And I'm sorry, because I know it's too easy.
But he's crazy like a fox, only for his own interests, never against himself.
Yeah, it's amazing.
If you look at all these groups like Foxman's, it's interesting to see how much they get paid.
They get paid a lot of money.
So in effect, they're professionals who are expected to take certain positions, and they get compensated for it.
Unlike the people in the groups that Foxman identifies, we folks don't really profit from this kind of stuff at all.
Right.
Yeah, the whole thing's ridiculous.
Just like Alex Coburn's great critique of Morris Dease and the Southern Poverty Law Center.
And just again, boy, these guys are making a lot of money.
And Phil, have you ever seen, we may have talked about this before, but that documentary Defamation?
Yeah.
Have you seen that?
Yeah.
He goes and interviews a Foxman and he asked him, so, you know, what are the terrible anti-Semitic events that have taken place recently?
You know, and he gets his list out and it's a guy drove by in a car and yelled an undetermined thing out the window at a Jewish lady who immediately called a Foxman about it.
And that's about it.
If you're looking for actual anti-Semitic events in America, in a country of 300 million people and a zillion square acres, pretty much that's as extreme as you can get on most days.
You know?
Yeah, that's true.
And it's true in a lot of the other countries where there are groups that are similar to Foxman's that agitate and basically look.
The scary thing is that what Foxman and some of the others are doing, of course, is they're trying to delegitimize any kind of criticism of Israel and even make it illegal.
That they're trying to use hate laws or hate crimes as a way of saying that, well, if you're criticizing Israel, you're an anti-Semite.
And of course, that's a ridiculous formula.
But given the idiots that we have in Congress and other places, it's something that probably someday we will see.
Yeah.
Well, you know what?
First Amendment aside, they're already having a lot of success at this inside the university system in California, for example, where any criticism of Israel, any organized criticism of Israel is deemed to be anti-Semitic hate speech.
Any.
Yeah, that's right.
And in Canada, in fact, this legislation to do this has come up a couple times and so far has not been passed into law.
But the current administration there has indicated that it favors this kind of legislation.
So essentially, I mean, you know, you can have free speech in certain areas.
I guess you'll have free what they used to have, what they call free free speech zones.
I guess we'll have a free speech zone here and there.
But apart from that, there are certain things we're not going to be allowed to say.
Well, what's funny is all of the people who are going to go to jail first are going to be liberal Jews who criticize Israel, Max Blumenthal in the dock.
Yeah, that's that's the irony of this.
I mean, if you're if you're in the peace movement or if you're if you're at all involved with people who are highly critical of Israel, you'll find that many of them are Jewish.
Yeah.
Yeah, of course.
Every Jew I know hates Israel, you know, you know.
All right.
And I like saying that, too, because it's funny and people are surprised by it.
But it's true.
I don't think I actually well, I don't know how many Jews I know.
And obviously I surround myself by antiwar people of all descriptions.
But anyway, I think I think all the Jews, all the Jews I know hate Israel, too, to be perfectly honest.
Yeah.
Well, you know, it's it's possible to hate what people, what a certain country or what political groups do without hating the people in it.
And of course, yeah, I mean, the government in Israel, Netanyahu, and I, you know, you and I probably both have a considerable level of contempt for Congress and the White House.
But it doesn't mean we hate them.
It means that basically we think they're wrong and we would like them to go away.
Well, I hate them, but it doesn't mean that we hate them.
Well, I cross that line because I'm very immature, but I understand your point.
I take it very well.
And I yeah, I certainly don't hate Israelis.
I'm just talking about, you know, the policy of the government and the people running are pretty damn contemptible.
Yeah, well, that's true.
And that's true over here and over there.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And and in Washington, D.C., it's just a disgrace.
And this is the real point of this thing is the point of your essay here at antiwar .com.
Is it today or yesterday?
Crying wolf over Iran.
And, you know, here we got such a great opportunity.
I'm sure you saw the headline last night, this morning, that they have gone ahead already before the deals even struck and announced they're completely suspending their 20 percent U-235 enrichment.
Now, it's with such a great opportunity to work out a peace deal here on the biggest and most important of the outstanding issues between the United States and Iran.
And we got Benjamin Netanyahu saying, no, I reject the deal.
And and my marching orders are to everyone who's loyal to me, try to stop it.
Which I got to admit, is surprising to me that they can be so blatant to try to interfere, to stop what amounts to a peace deal, you know?
Yeah, well, the sad thing is, you know, the American public is so ignorant about this issue that I think they suspect they can get away with it because they have the people who feel passionately about it are all on their side as far as they can see, because they these are the ones that appear in the media, as my article describes.
And these are the ones who are pushing the agenda.
Now, if if the American public never, ever sees anything that is truthful about the Iran situation, then it's it's opinion is going to be shaped by people like Netanyahu.
And these other people who write for the media.
And now, how right or wrong am I about what a great opportunity for a deal with Iran this is?
Because to me, this isn't just the same old neocons are always trying to obstruct in every little way they can.
This is a really big deal.
And these guys are basically, you know, I don't know what's the right word for it's not really treason on behalf of an enemy state, but it's a violation of the Logan Act or something.
They're trying to undermine great progress between our nation and another on behalf of a third.
It ain't right.
No, it isn't right.
I mean, this is I think most people who are who are watching this, who don't have some kind of vested personal interest, which most of the neocons have in pushing a certain agenda, most of them believe that this for real, that the Iranians are serious about this.
They're sincere about, you know, changing the the playing field over this issue.
And if we miss this opportunity, it'll be a huge opportunity lost because if if this thing fails, it also means that on the Iranian side, people like Rouhani are going to be discredited because they weren't able to pull this off.
So if you if you want to make everything worse, that's that's the way to do it is basically to reject this and walk away from it.
And it will be an interesting test to see if Obama has the courage to do the right thing here.
I guess we'll see.
We'll find out soon enough.
You know, Phil, I guess I probably just don't read the Weekly Standard and commentary enough and things like that.
Did the neocons ever say what they imagined that the one day, you know, Jeb Bush administration regime change in Iran would look like?
They have.
I mean, nobody but nobody has ever said, yeah, let's march the army on in there and sack Tehran.
Everyone knows they can't do that.
It seems pretty obvious that a 1953 style coup is not going to work again ever.
They did that.
And it's amazing how well it worked the first time, actually.
But, you know, that ship has sailed.
And so what do they think?
They're just going to get one lucky missile strike on the Ayatollah and the whole place is going to come crumbling down or I don't understand, honestly, because what else are they holding out for if it's not the Iranians giving in, which is what this is?
Yeah, they don't really understand it either.
That's the problem.
And you get people like McCain occasionally coming out with this stuff about, oh, we should have supported the the green movement.
We should have supported the protesters and everything.
They don't understand that basically the protesters are not necessarily any more pro-American and pro-Israeli than the hardliners in the regime.
They see this thing in very monochromatic terms that essentially if you if you if you flip this thing over, you get the opposite.
Well, you don't necessarily get the opposite.
You might just get a variation on what you have right now.
Right.
Hell, never mind pro-American.
The Greens weren't even anti-Ayatollah.
They were just anti-Ahmadinejad and they'd wish they'd won that election, that they didn't win.
That's exactly right.
So it's not like, you know, it was like the fight between Bush and Gore.
None of that was a fight over whether we were going to keep the Constitution and an independent judiciary in our basic system.
It was just which personality is going to be in the chair.
That's all.
That's exactly right.
It's ridiculous the way they saw that.
I don't know what the hell they thought they were doing there.
But anyway, well, and I guess that is the point.
And we come back to this sometimes and there's a lot of nefariousness and whatever.
But a lot of these arguments inside the policymaking circles really do take place on these very superficial levels that really just don't take into account even questions like, yeah, but what exactly would a regime change look like?
I mean, nobody says that some of the time when these discussions take place.
Nobody says that, right?
Well, yeah, they don't, as they say.
I mean, they're basically arguing because they don't like the status quo and they want to change it.
And they have no idea what the change, how the change will play out.
Now, look, you only have to cite the examples of what's been going on in Tunisia and what's been going on in Libya over the last couple of months to understand that, you know, you can you can think you're the brightest person in the world and you're there on the National Security Council.
You got all kinds of sources of information and you understand something.
But the fact is, you don't understand anything.
You're basically you are from a different culture.
You have a different way of looking at things.
You will never understand it.
And this has been the big failing of American foreign policy, certainly in the last 13 years or so.
And you could argue that long before that.
Yeah, the ones who have a clue just resign in disgust.
I can't take it no more.
Could be a writing gig or something.
They did over Iranian policy.
I mean, there are two people, two Americans who understand Iran better than anyone.
And they basically had to leave.
Right.
They got a book and a blog.
Yep.
Well, and I think they both teach, too.
I don't want to sell them short.
The leverage, sir.
All right.
Well, so now here's the thing.
It's not all about Israel because it's about Saudi Arabia, too.
And but I don't know, I'm seeing all this press about, well, Saudi Arabia.
Well, I mean, actually, it's got to be some kind of big deal.
They refuse to seat on the Security Council.
I don't know.
You tell me.
But also they're making it known.
Prince Bandar, former ambassador, United States is making it known that, well, we're just going to go ahead and have a war against Syria, a covert war, not very covert, but underground type war, not state versus state invasion or anything against Syria without if that's how you're going to be backing down and everything like that.
And yet Jane's Defense Weekly says that the Marines are in Saudi Arabia training Mujahideen right now.
And I'm thinking, really, are you kidding me?
But then I guess it's Jane's Defense Weekly.
So you go ahead.
What?
Well, yeah, I mean, Bandar and also Turkey, al-Faisal spoke here in Washington two days ago and delivered basically the same message.
Turkey, of course, was the head of the intelligence service.
Bandar was the ambassador.
And Bandar is now head of the intelligence service, de facto.
So the fact is, they've been stirring the pot.
I mean, there is, of course, a strong suspicion that they provided the chemicals that produced the homemade chemical weapons that may have been used by the rebels against the civilian population in Syria.
So a lot of wrinkles on this on this thing and a lot of strange things going on.
Our friends, the Saudis, are in bed with the Israelis.
They both would like us to attack Syria.
And that's what this is all about.
And they feel that the Obama administration has been dragging its feet on the issue, which certainly it has.
And so it's like, you know, these people are allegedly friendly countries.
They're not allies, either one of them, but they're friendly countries to the United States, or at least ostensibly so.
And they're trying to urge us to do something that they want done, that's not in our interest to do, and that we really shouldn't do.
So it's that kind of thing.
You know, let's start looking at the Saudis as partners of the Israelis in terms of what's going on.
Well, you know, it's one thing for them to say, well, you know, we're trying really hard to back the FSA, good guys.
And geez, I guess sometimes some of the arms end up in the hands of the Al-Qaedaites, but that's, you know, it's plausibly deniable, I guess, at least as long as we're having the Saudis do most of the arming and financing for us and this and that.
But now they got the Marines in Saudi training these guys.
Come on, man.
Really?
Well, they're in Jordan.
Oh, I was pretty sure I read they're training them in Saudi Arabia.
They're training them in Saudi Arabia, according to Janes.
Well, not that I've heard.
I mean, it seems that the major training center where there are Saudis, there are Brits, there are French, there are Americans.
And of course, there's the Jordanian army is in Jordan and has been right in Jordan.
Sorry.
And there's been one in Jordan for a long time.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's been there for well over a year.
And but it's it's kind of grinding very slowly.
And this is one of the things the Saudis are apparently complaining about, that the CIA trainers who went in there over a year ago have apparently produced something like 50 trained guerrillas.
And so that's kind of a slow pace.
But that's because the administration doesn't really want to be seen as supporting radicals.
And the Saudis are lying anyway, because the Saudis have been supporting radicals and they've been doing it right from the beginning.
So, you know, again, they're lying about that.
I don't know.
I think that basically what we have to do is we have to get back to to the reality of the situation.
The reality of the situation is that our interest in Syria, which is outlined by our president as a humanitarian intervention, is not the same thing that the Saudis are seeing, that the Israelis are seeing, that others are seeing.
So it's like, OK, we don't agree on what we should be doing and therefore we're not going to do it.
Yeah.
Well, and I'll settle for that, I guess, you know, that was the big New York Times story the other day, what, two days ago, I guess, was about basically Obama's dithering on this and talking it to death in the National Security Council.
And because there's nothing to do, what are you going to do?
You're going to overthrow Assad and go down as history as the president that helped Al-Qaeda win?
You know, I mean, if I could see from Obama's point of view that if they really thought that this FSA that they can tame and control could be the thing, that'd be one thing.
But every time they think that, the FSA guys go and swear allegiance to Jabhat al-Nusra, you know?
Right, right, exactly.
And it's like, as I say, all you have to do is look back a little bit and you see whether what's occurring in Tunisia and what's occurring in Libya.
I mean, these are not a good exemplars for what kind of a government you want to wind up with.
You might as well throw a rock into that hopper.
And so, you know, anybody with half a brain should realize that all this stuff has has failed.
It has failed in terms of whatever our interests actually should be in that part of the world.
And it's failed in terms of the government's responsibility to basically be doing what is best for the American people and for the country as a whole.
And I don't see any of that.
Yeah.
Well, you know, I mean, Obama, if he wanted to this whole time, correct me if I'm wrong or whatever you think of this, couldn't he have told Bandar, stop it.
We don't want this.
This whole time.
And couldn't he tell him that now even?
Yeah, he could tell that now.
And I wrote an email to somebody today where I said, look, so what does what do Bandar and Turkey think they're going to do?
Turkey, the former head of the intelligence service, think they're going to do when basically the Iranians, if they do develop a nuclear weapon, they're going to rely on the U.S. basically providing a nuclear umbrella for them.
That's what's going to happen.
And at the end of the day, if they forget that, well, they can go their own.
They can go their own way if they think they they want to create their own nuclear deterrent and go to the expense of that and through the creating a delivery system and the whole thing.
If they want to do that, I mean, I guess I guess they could do it.
But I don't see it happening.
They're basically dependent on us.
Yeah.
Well, and they've got to see that things like pushing regime change in Syria are just exactly the kind of things to paint the Iranians into a corner where they don't have any choice but to go ahead and well, I guess paint is the wrong term there.
Push them into a corner where they have no choice but to go ahead and make nukes if they feel like their back is really against the wall for regime change, you know?
Yeah.
I mean, if we make it clear, though, that that anything short of complete disarmament, which is the Israeli position and essentially appears to be the Saudi position, if we if we finally get to that point, then the Iranians will have no option but to to do whatever they have to do to keep to maintain their security.
I mean, it's the whole thing is ridiculous.
And here we're having an opportunity handed to us and it's it's it's not going to come again.
And and yet we have these people screaming at us that we should be attacking Syria.
I mean, come on.
Yeah.
Well, I forgot I was going to say something about Flint Leverett there.
Oh, he was pointing out that, for example, the sanctions, some of the sanctions require that in order for them to be lifted, that Iran would basically have to regime change themselves, that they would have to become a liberal republic under the American model.
And that's as far as the demands go.
You talk about, you know, moving goalposts and being unreasonable.
There's no end to what the Americans require of the Iranians, at least up until now.
And, you know, I don't know.
Well, and I guess you can answer that if you want, but you could also answer about how serious you think Obama is about seeing this thing through.
And is he really willing to fight about it or not?
I have no way of judging that.
I think I think Obama is I'll give him some credit that he's intelligent enough to see the real issues here and to see the real opportunities.
But the question is, he's still a politician and he's going to be, you know, looking with looking over his shoulder at elections, at congressional elections next year.
He's going to be under pressure from the Democratic Party, which is has a very strong pro-Israeli faction in it.
So he's got a lot of things that he's playing with.
And I, as I say, I don't know if he has the courage to do the right thing.
But I would like to think that he does.
But we've been disappointed in the past.
Yeah, that's for sure.
Although I don't know if it's just the Iranians.
I think the American reception of the Iranians overture has been, you know, a notch or two improved as well so far.
Right.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
We're definitely seeing that even in the media and except in the usual places.
But I mean, yeah, you're seeing a lot of buzz about this that that we you know, the American public does not want another war in the Middle East.
And if if if Iran is able to present a credible case that it's interested in a serious compromise on this issue, I think that would resonate.
And if Obama had any leadership, he'd be able to ride that.
But, you know, we haven't seen a whole lot of leadership.
Well, you know, it's not quite as interesting as a topic as a possible war against Syria tomorrow kind of a thing.
But there is 75 percent, according to one poll, 75 percent support for these polls.
So I think you're certainly right that if he wanted to leverage that popular support into real political support, he certainly could, you know, make the case that, hey, now is a great chance to do this and we're going to and you tell your local Republicans to can it, you know, and that's right.
That's right.
Types, too.
Yeah, that's and of course, that's the other issue.
The Republicans obviously will will will ride this as a sign of weakness.
Right.
Well, if it was me, I would just make it all about how what horrible warmongers they are and I'd win and it'd be easy.
But Obama ain't me.
And that's why he's president.
And I'm not.
Thanks, Phil.
That's Phil Giraldi, everybody from the Council for the National Interest, dot org, the American Conservative Magazine dot com and antiwar dot com.
See you tomorrow.
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