08/26/14 – Dahr Jamail – The Scott Horton Show

Oh, John Kerry's Mideast peace talks have gone nowhere.
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So listen, I almost don't know where to begin asking you about what you think about what's going on in the land formerly known as Iraq right now, but I guess I'll just go ahead, and if I'm throwing darts at topics, I'll start with the new prime minister, Abadi.
What can you tell us about him, and what can you tell us about what it means that America's gotten another regime change there, at least partially, and replaced Nouri al-Maliki with this new guy, Abadi?
Well, in sum, I would lead by saying, meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
This is a guy who was close with Maliki.
He was appointed by Maliki into a ministerial position when Maliki was in power.
Again, we have yet another phenomena happening, the same thing that did when Maliki was brought in, where I think it was Patrick Coburn who coined the phrase, you know, this is a guy who both the great Satan and the axis of evil agreed on, being the U.S. and Iran, and it happened with Maliki, and it's happened with Abadi.
And so this is a guy, he's from Maliki, he's in Maliki's Dawah party.
So again, if he's a guy who is backed by the West, therein lies the problem, because one of the big problems that the Iraqi government faces is a crisis of legitimacy, because when the general population sees them as being appointed or okayed or rubber stamped by the West, then they don't have legitimacy.
So this is why when ISIS initially rolled into Iraq from Syria, and the Iraqi military just started laying down its weapons and taking off their uniforms and running away, they're not willing to fight and die for a government that they don't believe in.
So therein lies the problem.
All right, now, isn't it right, and maybe this is overstating it, maybe there's a lot of nuance here I don't understand or something, I thought that the Iranian and Supreme Islamic Council and Dawah party policy always has been that they want what Joe Biden calls strong federalism, they want secession.
And maybe they don't want IS ruling Sunnistan, they would rather have a coalition of Sunni tribal leaders or something like that.
But wasn't it always the case that the Iranians figured if they could get America to give them Baghdad, then great.
But just like you said, they just melted away.
They turn and fled from Mosul because it wasn't their territory.
It was foreign land that they were holding.
They had no real backup there.
So they retreated back to Shiastan.
And so I just wonder whether, you know, if the whole well, first of all, if that's right, then that leads to the question of whether replacing Maliki means a damn thing, because they've tried to portray it like it's just his, you know, idiocy, and intransigent personality, his thick skull, basically, that can't get it right, that he's got to be nicer to the Sunnis, so that they'll turn on these al Qaeda types.
But I just wonder whether, you know, that's in the party agenda, whether that's in the Quds Force's agenda here at all or not, you know?
Well, it's an interesting point.
I mean, and, you know, there could be a lot to that.
But, you know, and I guess we'd have to wait and see regarding what happened in Iraq, whether, you know, if there's a big march by ISIS on Baghdad, if how does the military, the Iraqi military respond in that in that case?
But, you know, we need to go back, I think, also talking about well, but I just mean, do they have an incentive?
Do they care to try to bribe the Sunni tribes and get along with them, incorporate them, achieve any of those failed benchmarks of cooperation from back in 07?
Do they have any incentive to be nice guy Maliki now any more than they did under Maliki, the idiot and the bad guy?
Well, it's a good question.
I really can't answer that.
But one thing I wanted to enter into this discussion, because I think it is directly related is that, you know, quote from the intelligence firms Stratfor, where they released a report several years ago, that basically said that, quote, the new government's attempts to establish control over all of Iraq, the new government being the new government in Iraq early on in the occupation, may well lead to a civil war between Sunni, Shia and Kurdish ethnic groups.
The fiercest fighting could be expected for control over the oil facilities, which is exactly what we're seeing right now.
And then we have to talk about the Biden plan of partitioning Iraq into three rump states, as you just alluded to.
So that's also going on in concert with the push, the tug of war between Iraq.
I'm sorry, between Iran and U.S. plans in the region.
So could those two things happening simultaneously not be self reinforcing?
Right.
Well, yeah.
So when it comes to the Sunni Shia civil war, America's still on both sides over there and I guess will be for as long as they can.
And maybe part of it is just their unwillingness to to call it what it is.
Right.
Oh, yeah.
Well, you know, we're trying to take Iran down a peg by backing the rebels in Syria.
Not that we're trying to take the Shia down a peg by supporting the Mujahideen rebels in Syria.
No, not at all, because they just refuse to look at it that way.
They call it the people of Syria and whatever crap.
And they like to believe it.
But what they're really doing is sometimes they back Iran and sometimes they back Osama's guys.
Well, that's right.
I mean, the U.S. and this is something I hope we can get into a little bit where the political situation that the U.S. is in is absolutely untenable.
They have made themselves quite the bed in Iraq and Syria, where on the one hand, it's clear that there's no way given, you know, the stuff that's coming out about how effective fighting force ISIS is.
You know, this is even coming from within the U.S. military.
They're being called a, quote, incredible fighting force, according to a U.S. special ops source and looking at how they're effectively taking and holding ground, making very smart tactical retreats when the airstrikes ramp up against them.
And so it's clear.
My point is, it's clear that there's nothing short of a full scale ground military operation is what would be necessary to destabilize and remove this group, i.e.
So politically, how do you work that in the U.S.?
So you've got Obama, you know, making bombing runs in Iraq, now having squabbles with trying to get permission from the Assad government to do the same in Syria.
Whether or not they adhere to that is something to be seen.
But doing what it can politically, because politically there is no, there's nothing to support across the population of the United States any kind of another big ground incursion into Iraq or Syria, and yet that's what they have to do.
So what are they going to do?
And now we're about to go into the ramping up 2016 campaign season.
So Obama's, of course, mindful of that, the DNC.
Well, we can't afford that.
That would basically lose us the election to have another big ground incursion.
So what are they going to do?
And I really don't know either.
I mean, I guess I still have to conclude that they're sending in the whole damn Marine Corps eventually, because like you're saying, just as the logical argument, they got no way out of it.
They cannot let, and I'm not saying this, but I'm saying from Washington, D.C.'s point of view, they cannot let this stand and they cannot wait for anybody else to do anything about it, for the Sunnis of Iraq and Syria to do anything about it, for any of the neighbors to do anything about it.
They got to be the ones to do something about it.
And it could just mean, I don't know, carpet bombing with B1s for another 10 years or whatever, try to contain them that way.
But it seems like the most likely explanation is they're going to send in some force of mercenaries or Marines or somebody to sack Mosul before New Year's, because what the hell are they going to do?
You just said, what are they going to do?
They're going to let this place exist when no one else can field an army to dislodge them.
And I'm sorry, because I'm not trying to give them a costus belli.
I know I sound like it, but I'm just saying from their point of view, they've argued themselves and policy themselves into this trap.
And it's a damn mess.
And I'm sorry, we've got to stop here.
We'll be right back with the great Dar Jamal on the other side of this break.
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All right, you guys, welcome back.
These kooks at the Brookings Institution are tweeting out about how we've got to build up a new moderate rebel army in Syria.
No, no, no.
This isn't a rerun.
This is live in the end of August 2014.
We've got to build up a moderate army to defeat Assad and ISIS.
You see, writes Ken Pollack.
Ken Pollack, the guy who, along with his counterpart, RTD2 to his C3PO, Robert O'Hanlon, wrote the threatening storm for the Council on Foreign Relations that shored up all the liberal interventionist part of the establishment for the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Now he's saying, oops, he accidentally turned over the entire north and west of Iraq to a bunch of little Osamas.
And so now we've got to build up a war, build up an army of a little bit less Osamas to fight this army of horrible Osamas, because the last thing we've got to do, according to him, according to Brookings, is support Assad because Israel hates Assad.
Right, Dar?
You can't make this stuff up, Scott.
It's astounding to me.
I'm shaking my head every day where literally these guys, the U.S. government is now in talks with the Syrian government that they, you know, dovetailing on everything you just said.
This was all about getting rid of Assad for the U.S. and for Israel.
And now they're trying to work in conjunction with him to battle ISIS, which they also helped create.
I mean, this is something, it's like catch 22 on steroids at this point.
It's really amazing to me that the policy is so incoherent that these people clearly have no idea what they're doing.
They're letting different political factions make these different calls, often in conflict with one another, as we're seeing so clearly now.
I mean, it's just, it's really stupefying to me to understand that here's the U.S. continuing to support the government in Baghdad, shipping in massive amounts of money and training and weapons as they have been for the last eight plus years, now in talks with the Syrian government to work in conjunction with them there, still funneling in arms and weapons to these quote unquote moderate groups that you just very well pointed out, all at the same time, and literally funding and fueling all sides of the contact either directly or indirectly.
Yeah.
Well, you know, I saw Robert Bear on CNN.
He's a former CIA guy and pretty hawkish on a lot of things.
He's no Giraldi or McGovern when it comes to former CIA guys.
But I saw them ask him, so what do we do over here?
And he said, man, you know, I don't know, maybe nothing.
He said, my entire career, I've never seen the Middle East this bad like this.
And I don't know how it's going to shake out.
And I don't see who we can line up with against these guys.
And so maybe I don't know.
At another time, he said it would take a million men a hundred years.
That was a couple of weeks ago.
And that's a guy who's a pretty bad hawk when it comes to this stuff.
And, you know, we'll turn right around and blame 9-11 on Iran or God knows what, you know.
Well, it's Iraq and Syria are two completely failed states.
And I would second what he said.
If someone said what's the, when people ask me, well, what is the solution?
I say, A, I don't know.
But B, the logical first step is the U.S. absolutely cannot have a role in it because they created the whole problem.
And so the U.S. absolutely can't be part of it.
And yet, politically now they are forced into it to where they have to be, or at least they think they have to be.
And so in a lot of the world community thinks they have to be, and a lot of the people on the ground think they have to be.
But it's an untenable situation.
And, you know, we've got now a giant swath of territory smack in the middle of the Middle East that is completely controlled by ISIS.
And they are getting stronger and they're getting more fighters by the day.
They're getting more public support on the ground thanks to the U.S. airstrikes that are, and Iraqi airstrikes that are ongoing, you know, hundreds of people being killed on a daily basis at this point.
I mean, 212 killed today across Iraq and about the same number wounded.
It's astounding the amount of bloodshed that's happening there.
And it seems like it can only ramp up.
Well, so here's something we got some experience with from the Iraq War.
Well, especially you.
I was safe back here in Texas the whole time.
But what about the tension between the tribal systems and those who are trying to create this Islamic caliphate here?
It seems like a pretty severe challenge of, you know, modes of authority.
And I wonder, well, I don't know, for the medium term, say the immediate crisis kind of dies down.
We have sort of a all things being equal situation within the new caliphate, within Sunnistan.
I wonder who you think really has the upper hand there between the tribes and the Islamists.
It's so complex and it's so chaotic that I think you have to talk about which specific area, because in some areas of Anbar province, if we can still call it that, but just geographically so folks understand what I'm talking about, in some areas there tribes are in control.
In other areas, ISIS is clearly in total control.
And in a lot of areas it's contested.
And then there's some instances where definitely tribal leadership has been working in concert with ISIS.
And then in other areas where they're directly in opposition.
So I think, you know, it's, I think that's just another example of how chaotic and how complex and how dynamic the situation is, even on a daily and sometimes hourly basis.
Yeah.
Well, Lord knows there's a lot of people still to be killed.
I mean, it seems like a lot of the vacuum has been filled at this point, but then there are questions like Kirkuk and, you know, who's going to end up dominating that?
There's a long battle line, long border between the Islamic state and Kurdistan right now.
That's right.
And I think it's very important, the fact of how much violence occurred in Kirkuk.
I believe it was just yesterday, several massive car bombs went off.
That can be expected to continue.
That's contested.
I mean, at the end of the day, this is all going to come down to oil, as it always does.
And ISIS understands clearly, you can see by what they've done in Syria, that they need to gain control of and keep control of as much of the oil infrastructure as possible in both countries.
And Kirkuk is absolutely frontline material.
And I think we can expect a whole lot of things to continue to degrade there.
Yeah.
Well, and then, you know, part of this is going back to war for the Shiite militias, for, you know, for Assad and for the Iranian access that Bush has gotten us, got us fighting for most of the time.
I mean, he was fighting, creating great circumstances for the Bin Ladenites, too, don't get me wrong.
But now that we're pivoting back, redirecting back again to the Wolfowitz policy of empowering Iran here.
Eric Garris has just written me in the IM here about a Pentagon spokesman all but admitted that they are working with Assad now.
And when they asked him the difference between disclosing airstrikes in Iraq and those in Syria, he said, well, in Iraq, there has been an overt ask of the government, you know, for by them for us to intervene, where in Syria, they're still holding it under their chest.
But anyway, so America has bought the caliphate's premise now that you're right, that border no longer exists.
Let's fight.
And this is just amazing.
I mean, again, I'm just shaking my head where this was all about getting rid of Assad.
And now we're working with them.
Well, and I guess we'll be switching back again to whoever knows.
I mean, if you go back to America's relationship with Assad's father and that kind of thing, your brain will explode.
I got a smoke bowl come down.
All right.
Thanks a lot.
Appreciate your time, Dar.
Thanks, Scott.
Good to talk to you again.
That's a great darge mail, everybody.
We'll be right back.
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