07/09/14 – Eric Margolis – The Scott Horton Show

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Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well, you know, the first two clips are much better.
Of course, all that's from Rambo 3, which was on last night.
The clip about America baiting the Soviets into their Vietnam and all of that.
But that last one is actually most interesting because that's Massoud, the Mujahideen leader being portrayed in Rambo 3 there.
He's a guy that, according to our next guest, Eric Margulies, was actually KGB all along and was only pretending to fight and wasting CIA resources.
Welcome back to the show, Eric.
How are you doing?
Yeah, hello, Scott.
I'm just fine.
Thank you.
I'm just killing time playing Rambo 3 clips, and they're directly relevant to your journalism.
What do you know about that?
Tell us about Massoud real quick, even though that's not why I have you on the show today.
Massoud was a tribal, a Tajik, ethnic Tajik tribal leader from a northern region in Afghanistan called the Panjshir Valley, a major drug production area.
And Massoud had been to university or attended university in Paris, and the French caught none to him, and they loved him because he could speak some French.
And French media christened him the Lion of the Panjshir Valley, and he portrayed himself as a heroic Mujahideen fighting the Soviet invaders after the 1979 invasion.
He was adulated and idolized in the West.
In fact, he was a big time traitor to the Afghans.
He had been a KGB asset for a long time, had gotten to him, I think, when he was in Paris, and he was working quietly with the KGB.
And when the Soviets invaded, what he did was he pretended to be fighting and attacking the Soviet forces, when in fact he was not.
He was spending his time fighting the real Mujahideen who were fighting the Soviets.
I knew this because I was there at the time, and we kept saying, I can't understand why, who's attacking us, why are our troops being frustrated, why can't we blow up the Salang Tunnel?
Well, it was Massoud's doing.
And he was positioning himself with the Soviets, trying to make himself to be the head of Afghanistan, to replace the Soviet-selected leader, Najibullah.
But this didn't happen, because two of Osama bin Laden's men – remember, Osama bin Laden was primarily an anti-communist crusader – they went and they blew him up, and that was the end of Massoud.
But his supporters in the form of what's called the Northern Alliance and the Tajiks are still very prominent today.
Under America's protection?
America's protection, because as soon as the Americans decided to invade Afghanistan, they bought the Tajik forces and the Uzbek forces in the north, who had been collaborating with the Soviets.
They were paid tens of millions of dollars, they switched their allegiance to the U.S., and they served as the spearhead for the U.S. invasion forces.
Well, I'm not sure about that, Scott.
I've never really understood Putin's motives for giving so much help to the U.S., opening supply lines through the north, giving them intelligence information, giving them help with the Soviet-backed Tajiks and Uzbeks and the KGB there.
I think Putin hates Muslims.
He's a visceral anti-Islamist.
Look at the way he crushed the Chechen resistance and the Caucasus.
He's really very alarmed by this whole Caucasus issue.
So he figured, well, we'll help the American devils to crush the Afghan Islamist devils, that the Afghans are a bigger priority.
That's my reasoning.
Well, and it would have made sense for him to assume that the Americans are too smart to go ahead and try to just stay forever, because what are you going to do, remake their entire society with a government in a box or something?
Sure.
The Americans, 50,000 American troops are in Japan since 1945, and 38,000 in Korea, not to mention all over Asia and different parts of the world, there's still American troops in Germany.
Well, sure, but he would have known that the Afghans would have kicked our asses out, though, over the long term, the same way they kicked the Russians out before us, right?
Well, that's what the Russians have been warning the Americans all along.
It's quite right.
But on the other hand, tactically, I guess it suited Putin to cooperate with the states, help them with their problem in Afghanistan, just the way he helped the U.S. out of the Syrian mess, when Obama and his warrior female advisors boxed themselves into a corner there.
I was just thinking maybe there was a chance he had read Zbigniew Brzezinski and thought, you know, that guy was pretty clever, what he did to us, and so...
Well, I interviewed Brzezinski on that very subject.
Brzezinski claimed in 1979 that he had staged a uprising in Afghanistan purposely to lure the Soviets in.
I don't believe him.
I think that he's taking far too much credit, and it's sort of adjusting history after the facts.
And Brzezinski's a brilliant man, I have great respect for him, but he's got one blind spot, and that's Russia.
So, you know, being Polish, he just doesn't see clearly when it comes to Russia.
But I think he's over-exaggerated his role.
Yeah, well, he's certainly celebrated, though, probably, right?
I mean, they say there's the memo where he said, now we'll give them their own Vietnam and all of that.
No, you think that whole thing's a myth?
I think it's wildly over-exaggerated.
Yeah, I could see that.
And what a brilliant move.
And then, but he's left defending the creation of the, or at least, you know, having a lot to do with spurring on this entire Mujahideen movement across the Middle East, and so then he has to make excuses for September 11th.
Well, you know, we did bring down the Soviet Union and all of that, so.
That's true.
Well, it wasn't just the Americans, it wasn't just Brzezinski.
I remember in 1981 or 82, I was invited to Beijing, China, when it was still very much red China, and I was asked to be invited by the Chinese Institute of Strategic Studies, which was a think-tank portion of Chinese military intelligence.
And what they wanted to talk to me about was whether they should support the Mujahideen and open up supply lines to them of weapons.
And what'd you say?
I said, yes, by all means.
I said, don't waste any time.
Get with it.
Hey, I'm sorry, we've got to take this stupid break here, because that's just how it goes.
You know this interview is going to go overtime today, because we've got so much to talk about about Iraq, but I'm glad I asked about my Rambo 3 clips I was killing time with there, because this has been interesting.
Okay, Scott.
Hang on one minute, everybody.
Eric Margulies on the line.
Hey, Al.
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All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
It's my show, The Scott Horton Show.
I'm talking with Eric Margulies, ericmargulies.com, lourockwell.com, unz.com, that's U-N-Z, unz.com, and lots of great articles on everything wrong in the damn world.
As you can tell, I surprised him with a question about the Afghan war from 20 years ago, and I'll tell you the answer.
All right, now, if it's all right, I want to change the subject to Iraq and what all is going on there.
I think I'd like to start with your impression of the new self-proclaimed caliph, the video and the sermon that he gave last Friday in his, I guess, big first coming out ceremony since declaring the new caliphate between the land formerly known as Iraq and, I guess, what's now the rump state of western Syria.
What do you think?
Well, if you remember the old movie, The Mouse that Roared, about the Grand Duchy of Fenwick declaring war on the U.S., Peter Sellers' movie, it was like the camel that roared, but, you know, ISIS is a relatively small organization.
I don't think it has more than 8,000 fighters, no heavy equipment, and it's only in Sunni areas of Iraq and Syria, but it's certainly a grandiose pronouncement for a ragtag rebel group.
However, comma, I am surprised that there's been no effort until now to proclaim a caliphate, except, mind you, there was in Afghanistan.
The Taliban, when it was ruling Afghanistan, declared an Islamic caliphate in Afghanistan until it was crushed by U.S. forces.
This is another attempt to erase or to change the borders in the Middle East that were created by western colonialists.
All right, now, I guess the question is, because I don't know how many thousands of guys they got, but it seems like it's, you know, probably not too many more than 10,000 or so, although there must be some new recruits and that kind of thing going on, but they've got oil and they've got some money, maybe, you know, some billions.
Do you think it's likely that they'll get more powerful from here?
Because the question still remains, even if it's a pretty damn weak state for a state, is there anyone really powerful enough to oppose them at this point?
Oh, I think so.
The ISIS rebels are surrounded by enemies.
They've got Syria on one hand, and to the north, they've got the Kurds, who are being used by the U.S. as their local gendarmes.
There's the Shia government in Baghdad, and backing them up is Iran, of course, which just sent some warplanes to Baghdad.
And finally, there's, you know, the other Arab states who are worried.
And let me throw in Egypt as well, because the semi-fascist government that's now in power in Egypt has been muttering about actually helping the Iraqi government to make sure that Sunni rebels don't get into power.
Well, it still seems like, you know, Assad hasn't been able to, certainly they haven't been able to overthrow him, but he hasn't really been able to take the eastern part of the country back from these guys in, what, three years?
And does Maliki even have an army to reinvade Mosul?
So in other words, they sure are hemmed in as hell, no doubt about that, beset, surrounded by enemies on all sides, but who's putting together an army to go against him and dislodge him?
Look, I was just in New York yesterday, and, you know, bridges are falling down, roads are full of potholes, people are begging in the streets because there isn't enough money to bring New York up to at least European standards of maintenance.
But we just blew, who knows, $20 billion, $25, $30 billion, supposedly training and equipping the Iraqi army, and now we're spending large sums of money equipping and financing the Ukrainian army.
We love these little wars overseas, but they're totally non-productive.
We can't go on affording this.
All right, now, so I wonder what would happen if, I mean, because I don't know, Eric, what the hell is going on anyway?
They said, I know you're in New York, not D.C., but they've sent armed drones, they've sent helicopters.
I don't mean to sound like Shepard Smith before the Iraq war, crying that it hadn't started yet.
It's not that.
It's just that I am a little dumbfounded that it hasn't started yet.
But I would love to stop it any way I could, because I'm foreseeing the bad consequences.
That's actually the question I was trying to get to.
They say that they're sending helicopters and drones, but it seems to me like whatever bad happens to ISIS, we want it to be any of those other powers you just named fault, not ours.
Well, we're doing what we did in Libya, that sort of leading from behind, and trying to get other people to do the dirty work, because we don't want to be seen to do it.
But look, Washington is also trying to kick Maliki out.
He's been a non-responsive puppet, or a puppet gone astray, sort of like Karzai in Kabul.
And they're looking for a more acceptable general, or somebody, or God knows, maybe even Ahmed Chalabi, the fraudster who helped lead us into the last war in Iraq.
Once they get this done, there are more U.S. drones and aircraft, unmarked aircraft, flying over the area, and the Kurds are sending troops south.
And look, you look on the map, and it looks like ISIS has these huge territories that it controls, but actually most of this area is just desert.
And the only thing that counts in that area are the river valleys.
They control the river valleys in the small towns, almost as far south as Baghdad, but not a lot more.
Yeah.
Well, so then, but leading from behind, I mean, what's going to happen?
The Iranian army is going to come in and take over, back up the Saudis, the Mahdi army and the Bata Brigade, but these guys can't take Mosul, I mean, or maybe they could, but then they would have a hardcore insurgency.
They'd never pacify, I mean, maybe Iran's full army, but they're not going to do it.
Who's America going to hire to do this?
Well, the U.S. made clear it doesn't want Iranian ground forces, and the Israelis have also made that clear, and the Saudis and the Gulf Arabs are hysterical at the thought of Iranian troops coming into Iraq for a second time, I might add.
So is America going to end up saying, okay, well, I guess there's a bin Laden-ite state, but you know, big deal.
I mean, I would prefer that, but I don't really see, it seems like at some point they're just going to start the carpet bombing and send in the Marines, because who else is going to send in their Marines?
Well, they may be able to, Washington may be able to cobble together enough mercenaries.
Don't worry, we have about 5,000 mercenary troops in Iraq now.
What they did, these are non-uniformed, semi-uniformed fighters and technicians who run the air bases that are still there.
They'll send some more special forces in.
They can get enough troops, the Turks potentially, who could provide some troops, special forces troops, and, of course, the Kurds, as I've been saying.
So these are a bunch of guys in pickup trucks.
This is not a major fighting force.
All right, let me keep you one more segment, please.
Okay.
Okay, great, thanks.
More with Eric Margulies on Iraq right after this.
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All right, you guys, welcome back to The Thing Here.
I'm Scott Horton.
I'm talking with Eric Margulies.
Thanks for holding on for us and doing another segment here, Eric.
So the question is about the regime change in Baghdad.
And I guess America and Sistani seems, I guess his language is sometimes kind of vague on the issue.
Seems like Sistani and America are agreed on regime change.
Iran is still sticking with Maliki.
Is that right?
Do you know?
Well, I think the Iranians, being Iranians, are playing all sides and are being cautious.
Iran can't be seen helping America overthrow a Muslim Middle East government.
So they have to move very slowly.
And Maliki was a longtime ally of the Iranians, so they're cautious.
Back in 2002, when the U.S. was getting ready to overthrow Saddam Hussein the following year, I wrote, I said, once the U.S. overthrows Saddam, they're going to have to find another Saddam because they're going to find that's the only person who can really run Iraq.
And such is the case now.
Well, it seems like the policy is we've got to find, you mentioned Chalabi, we'll find Chalabi or Alawi or somebody who can, I guess, divert enough.
I even saw a warmonger in the Washington Post, I thought, make a pretty good argument, not for intervention, but just that.
And then what?
They're going to bribe all the Sunni population and go about the policy, all the benchmark reconciliation policy from 2007 that never was accomplished back then.
And now, after all this, they're going to hold Iraq together by bribing all the Sunni tribal chiefs to do another awakening movement, turn on the ISIS guys and marginalize them and then hold Iraq together and all will be great.
That sounds stupid.
That sounds so impossible that it couldn't possibly be what's going to happen here.
Which is probably exactly what's going to happen, because the U.S. is bankrupt on policy.
It doesn't know what else to do.
One of the problems is that you can see this in Kabul, Afghanistan today, with squabbling so-called presidential candidates in a rigged election, and even that is a disaster.
They're all from CIAU, these guys, and yet Washington can't even run a proper rigged election there.
The same thing will happen in Baghdad.
They're going to have to find some guy probably out of CIAU.
You mentioned Chalabi or some of these other characters, Alawi, but Washington will never go and look for an authentic leader who has some kind of legitimate roots, just these guys in business suits who speak perfect English and have manicured fingernails.
Not what the area needs.
Right.
Well, and this is the thing.
I read this thing in the Washington Post where the guy was an advisor to Petraeus and to Crocker and all these people, and speaks Arabic and is some smart credentialed guy or whatever, and he's talking about learning things in 2010 that I was learning from the likes of you and Robert Dreyfuss and Patrick Cockburn and others as far back as 2004 about how among the Shiites, the only leader with any real power and credibility in Iraq who wants to hold the country together, who's willing to really share power with the Sunnis and make friends and rally around nationalism as a way to prevent civil war was Soder, but he was some scumbag with grease under his fingernails to the Americans, and they instead sided with the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution and the Dawa party who've been living in hotels in Iran all along, right, who are these manicured fingernail guys that you're talking about, but how the major difference then between Soder and them was they meant all along and Soder denounced them all along the whole war long, Eric, that their policy was to just take, get America to give them Baghdad and kick all the Sunnis out of Baghdad and then take all the land from Baghdad to Basra and screw the rest of the country, they were just going to, strong federalism they called it, but what it meant, it was like Biden's three state plan.
That was what Iran wanted and that was what America accomplished for them.
And up in the north, the Kurds have set up their own independent states.
Is it really true though that the guys that are advising Petraeus are really only learning these things that Bob Dreyfuss was telling me six years later when they're the ones running the damn war?
You mentioned that Crocker, who was Ambassador Crocker, he was a senior spokesman for the administration, he was an idiot and he knew nothing, but he was sent as a supreme cheerleader to tell the American media how well things were going and democracy and education and all this baloney like that.
But these are people who have no training, no background, no sense of history, and no knowledge of anything ethnic in the country's background.
And then didn't want to learn.
I mean, hell, I didn't have it all worked out either.
I knew that Bush had lured, kind of did a Bay of Pigs thing with the Shia in 91 and urged them and the Kurds to rise up and then had left them stranded, but I didn't have it all wired.
And once America broke it and bought it and occupied it and owned it, it seemed worth figuring out who runs the Bata Brigade and what their objectives are.
Why not?
I don't know.
It seemed interesting.
Scott, I've been in Washington plenty of times with senior officials, with congressmen, and I've tried to explain these things about Afghanistan and about Iraq, and they just don't have the mental time to try and understand.
They don't want to know about it.
They're still struggling to figure out what happened to Bosnia and Herzegovina?
What the hell happened to Herzegovina?
Where are the Herzegovinians?
Are they allied to the Russians now?
They've disappeared.
So we've reached a knowledge saturation because we're fighting too many little wars and skirmishes around the world, and nobody has time to learn all this stuff except a few cranks like me.
Yeah, well, believe me, I can't keep up.
Not by a long shot.
That's why I've got you, thank God.
Okay, so now, the Peshmerga, they've bitten off a lot in saying, we're keeping Kirkuk forever, that's it.
You think they're moving beyond that border, or their fight is to protect their hills and now Kirkuk, too?
Well, Kirkuk was really their big prize, the major oil center, and by the way, it's a short drive from the Turkish border.
And let me tell you, and I've been saying this for years, that the Turks are watching all this going on, saying these oil fields used to be part of the Ottoman Empire, until the rapacious British imperialists drew a line and took our oil away.
Why shouldn't we have it back?
So that's an issue.
The Kurds are really feeling their beans, and they are being helped extensively by the United States and Israel.
Israel is a major player in the whole Kurdish quest.
In fact, the Kurds have built a pipeline that goes up to Turkey, and from Turkey, it's being shipped by sea to Israel.
So the Israelis have got themselves a new source of oil.
They've armed the Kurds since 1970.
So there's lots of footsie and hanky-panky going on there.
Well, and they've declared a referendum.
It's on now.
They've locked down Kirkuk, and they're declaring independence in a matter of months, no?
Well, they're declaring what's already de facto.
And the big question is, how will Turkey and Iran, both of whom have large Kurdish minorities, react to the situation?
Interesting, the Turks in the past would have sent their army in, but now the Turks are making an accommodation with their own Kurds, and will probably take a much more relaxed view to the emergence of an independent Kurdistan.
You know, we never do hear much about the Iranian Kurds and their relationship with the Iraqi Kurds, other than Hersh's report a few years back about CIA support for PJAK in Iran.
Yeah, that's quite right.
We hear absolutely nothing.
I'm not aware of any close links between them.
The Kurds traditionally have been divided along tribal and clan lines.
What is amazing is that the Kurdish mini-state in northern Iraq has held together for so long because its two principal tribal factions, the Talebanis and the Barzanis, have been feuding since the dawn of time.
And with that, I've got to let you go.
Here, man, I just remembered, too, I wanted to ask you about the Houthi rebellion in northern Yemen, but that'll have to wait for another day.
Thank you so much for your time.
Next time, Scott, I'm following it, though.
I sure appreciate your time again, Eric.
Cheers, Scott.
Eric Margolis, everybody.
Spell it like Margolis.
EricMargolis.com.
We'll be right back.
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