07/28/15 – Philip Giraldi – The Scott Horton Show

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All right, you all, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
It's my show, The Scott Horton Show.
Well, I can't just interview Patrick Coburn again, because I just talked to him the other day.
But you know who knows a lot about Turkey?
Phil Giraldi.
You know why?
Because he used to be a CIA officer stationed there.
Yeah, he's a former CIA guy, but he's pretty good on stuff, it seems like.
He's the executive director of the Council for the National Interest, and he writes at UNZ.com, UNCUNZ.com, and The American Conservative Magazine at TheAmericanConservative.com.
Welcome back to the show, Phil.
How are you?
I'm fine, Scott.
How are you?
I'm doing real good.
Appreciate you joining us today.
So, all kinds of things are going on.
The best that I understand, and you can correct me if you think that I'm wrong, and you just might, but the best I understand is that a Kurdish member, not of the PKK, but of the Islamic State, or at least that's the way they're saying it, did a suicide attack in Turkey, and so then Turkey announced that they've decided they're switching sides in the war, and now they're anti-jihadists, and so then they started bombing the PKK, the Kurdish Communist Guerrilla Group, and then maybe the Islamic State summed to something.
What in the hell is going on over there?
Okay, well, look, it's actually kind of easy to understand.
Turkey's been sitting on the fence for a long time in terms of what's been going on in Syria, except that it's had a secret relationship with al-Nusra initially, and more recently with ISIS.
Now, this is easy to understand because Turkey doesn't give a damn about either of those groups.
What it does give a damn about is the Kurds.
What Turkey is totally paranoid about is the development of a Kurdish state in Turkey, in Syria, and Iraq, in other words, all of it, and in Iran, all of it coming together to create a Kurdish state.
That's what Turkey is terrified about.
So now, in this current situation, if you read the news accounts of who Turkey is attacking, they're not attacking ISIS, they're attacking the Kurds, and it all makes sense if one understands that the Kurds are the real enemy for the Turks, and so the whole ISIS thing is just kind of a sideshow, and the whole business with the Syrian government is pretty much a sideshow.
What they are concerned about with the Syrian government is that the Syrian government will, in its death throes, permit the creation of a Kurdish state.
It's all about a Kurdish state.
Yeah.
Okay, except they had a peace deal with the Turkish Kurds that's lasted for quite a long time, and I know they're all Kurds, but there's a lot of political division and tribal division among the Kurds, too, and it's not like everybody's just ready to snap their fingers and join together into a Kurdish state.
I mean, they're Turks, too, in a way, right?
There are two different issues here.
The peace treaty, it was kind of a de facto peace treaty, it was never really that formal, was with the PKK.
Now, the PKK is the Kurdish resistance movement that's basically in Syria and in Iraq.
Within Turkey, there are a lot of Kurds.
Some estimate that a third of the Turkish population is actually Kurdish, so there are two separate issues playing out here, and essentially, since the leader of the PKK was arrested by the Turks 15 years ago, there's been kind of a de facto on and off non-aggression pact between the two of them, but my concern right now would be that the Kurds have shown that when they're pushed into a corner, what they do is they blow up tourists, and I think we can expect to see some bombs in tourist areas in Istanbul and along the south coast.
Well, so do you think that the Islamic State sent a Kurdish member to go, like in the story here, to go and do this attack just in order to turn the Turkish state really more to their side, to actually give them an excuse to attack the Kurds, their enemies?
Well, that doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but the fact is the Islamic State is already on the Turkish side, because many of the people resisting Islamic State are Kurds, are Kurdish militias.
So it is a no-brainer for ISIS to want the Turks to start attacking the Kurds.
The kind of joker in this deck is the fact that the United States will be staging attacks on ISIS simultaneously from the Turkish airbases that are NATO-controlled.
So that's going to be happening, too, but the fact is, if you want to understand where the Turks are coming from, you have to understand that the enemy is the Kurds.
It's not Bashar Assad, it's not ISIS, it's not anything else.
It's not al-Qaeda, it's none of these groups.
It's really the Kurds.
This is the existential fear that drives the Turkish government, and this is why they behave the way they do.
Yeah, no, but that's what I meant, was the Islamic State sending a Kurdish guy to do the attack in order to give Erdogan an excuse to crack down on the Kurds, which he hadn't really been doing.
He'd been supporting the Islamic State, I guess, somewhat, but I don't know to what degree.
Yeah, that's right.
There were two incidents.
There was a shooting incident in which a Turkish soldier was killed, and then there was a bombing incident which I think killed two more soldiers or paramilitary policemen.
And so there have been a couple of incidents, but you're quite right.
It seems to me it is a provocation to turn the Turks loose on the Kurds, because the Kurds are the people that are most successfully resisting ISIS.
Well, yeah, so Turkey is a NATO ally, and the U.S. doesn't let them get that far out of line here.
This is American policy still is.
They don't give a damn about ISIS or the Islamic State either in Syria, or at least they still, I guess, have the Kagan plan.
They'd rather get rid of Assad before getting rid of Baghdadi.
Right, so the thing to watch will be to see just how effective or serious the U.S. presence in Turkey turns out to be.
Are they going to be pushing ahead?
They're talking about something like a no-fly zone, a safe haven.
I mean, that, I think, is kind of an irrelevancy.
It's not really the policy.
It's just to be doing something that looks cosmetic and looks nice.
But that doesn't really advance anything.
All right, now, so back to the Kurdish factions in Syria, Turkey, Iraq, etc.
If the Assad government falls, and to whatever, Nusra or ISIS or whoever, and the Syrian Kurds have their own little semi-independent state, which they already kind of sort of have right now, that doesn't necessarily mean, does it, an immediate alliance and joining up with the Barzani clan in Iraq and the Declaration of Independence of Kurdistan?
And then, I mean, obviously, the Turks are terrified because it's Kurdistan takes up, you know, I don't know, you said one-third of the population, but it's about one-third of the land mass of Turkey is Kurdistan, too, right?
Right, that's true.
But I would not be surprised to see some kind of political union between the Syrian Kurds and the Iraqi Kurds, because Kurdish nationalism is extremely strong.
And this, of course, would then suck in, you know, the Kurds who are located in Iran, which Iran, no doubt, is concerned about, and that's one of their concerns in terms of their own support for Syria.
And, you know, so this is a complicated kind of picture, and it has often been noted that when Sykes-Picot Treaty that created the modern Middle East, the Kurds were the guys that were left out.
And so I wouldn't be surprised to see something coming together if there is a complete collapse of authority in Syria.
Well, and this is something that Rand Paul has called for, that, you know, the Kurds in independent Kurdistan, and never mind that that would mean war with Turkey.
Yeah, that's right.
Turkey would declare war on us.
And, of course, Iraq would have problems with it, too, our alleged ally.
And, you know, it's just, it's, again, one of these silly ideas that a guy like Rand Paul, who's better at doing eye operations than figuring out foreign policy, you know, it's the kind of stuff he comes up with.
You know, is it really too much to ask that he just read his dad's column?
I mean, come on.
He doesn't, apparently.
That's part of the problem.
His recent comments on the Iranian deal are pathetic.
And, listen, the Kurds have a right to self-determination as individuals and as a people, if that's how they identify themselves.
But it's not all things being equal here.
There's a war going on.
And the promise of more wars.
It's not like we're talking about how a peaceful separation could be negotiated in a perfect world or something like that.
That's right.
The Kurds probably prefer the status quo to more of them being killed.
Hang on a sec.
We'll be right back, y'all.
Phil Giraldi after this.
Hey, y'all.
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All right, you guys.
Welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
It's my show, the Scott Horton Show.
I'm talking with Phil Giraldi from the Council for the National Interest, the American Conservative Magazine, unz.com, U-N-Z, unz.com.
He's got a new one out at UNZ, Israel's $100 million gamble.
Geez, I kind of like to talk about that.
I haven't read it yet, but I think I know what you're talking about.
But, no, I'm still with the turkey thing here for a minute.
Assuming that there's a policy that somebody could state in a paragraph at all, would you agree that, I mean, am I right?
It seems like the policy is, we'll bomb the Islamic State, and we would prefer the Turks not really support them, and we won't attack them, but we like al-Nusra now, and as long as al-Qaeda is doing our bidding, fighting against Assad for us, then we'll go ahead and let that, I mean, we're working with the Saudis from Turkey to support the new army of conquest.
They're not even shy about it, right?
Brookings guy Lister writing about it in the Washington Post and all this stuff.
But, so, as you mentioned earlier, though, they've now, the Turks have finally opened up the Incirlik, as I say, air base there in Turkey to let America fly more missions against the Islamic State in Iraq, and presumably in Syria, too, where they're helping back the Kurds there.
So, assuming what I just said made any sense at all, is that basically what's going on here, or do you think it's different?
Yeah, I think what you have to bear in mind here is that everybody that's playing in this poker game has a different agenda.
And you just outlined that.
I mean, basically, you know, who the Saudis are supporting are not necessarily who we would be supporting.
The Turks are supporting people that we would not be supporting.
The whole issue of replacing Assad is an issue on which there's not a total consensus.
And then, of course, the war itself is, as we were talking before, is a conflict that is intertribal in some ways in terms of how it pits groups against each other.
So, it's a god-awful mess, and the only thing that obviously ties it all together is the fact that none of this would have ever happened if we had not invaded Iraq in 2003.
Yeah, got that right.
All right, now, but so, come on, be honest with me about the authority of the CIA and the Americans in Turkey to say, hey, man, we don't want you to back this group of jihadis, we want you to back that group.
They really say, screw you, Uncle Sam, we can do whatever we want?
Come on.
Well, what they're doing is basically they're running these operations in a covert fashion.
I have an article that's going to be coming up on the American Conservative this week called Deep State America, and I outlined that, you know, when basically the Turks, their version of deep state and our version of deep state, they kind of operate in the same way.
They do things that go under the radar, and essentially these are things that they perceive or we perceive as being national interests, national security type issues.
And the Turks do the same thing.
I mean, they've been talking to these people.
When I was in Istanbul last July, there were ISIS people in the streets collecting money.
You know, and this was very deftly against U.S. policy, and it was very deftly against what the Turkish government was actually saying.
Now, so, our friend Patrick Coburn here is saying, this is the dumbest damn thing in the world.
I can't believe America has given the green light to the Turks to bomb the Kurds.
Because now, what are the Kurds in Iraq saying?
The Kurds in Iraq are saying, oh, now screw us, huh?
I thought we were buddies, but now you're switching sides to Erdogan.
I see how it is.
And yet, that was the whole point of this war, was to keep the Islamic State out of Iraqi Kurdistan.
Yeah.
Well, see, the point is we're back down to the low level on this, which is where everybody has an interest in doing something that doesn't necessarily mesh with anyone else's interest.
And the Iraqi Kurds, as long as we're giving them weapons and we're giving them money, are going to be our friends.
But as soon as we stop doing that, they're going to say, hey, you guys stabbed us in the back.
And this is how these things always play out.
And when the fighting is over, if it's ever over, the Kurds are going to be looking to their own interests.
And the Turks are looking to their own interests right now.
So why should we expect anything different?
We are the only country that doesn't actually do anything that's in its own interest.
Yeah, exactly.
Well, you know, it's funny.
There's this picture that goes around the Internet sometimes.
There's a couple different versions of it, I think, where it's like a letter to the editor of the newspaper saying, here, let me explain the Middle East real quick.
And they explain which all countries hate, which all other countries and back, which all other minority factions in those countries and whichever and how complicated it all is.
But the thing is, if you ever see it, it's completely out of date now because all those alliances are completely shifting and changing all the time.
Like, I think it was originally written when the Muslim Brotherhood was in power in Egypt.
But don't worry, the Saudis and the Americans took care of that.
Yeah, that's right.
I mean, basically, you know, we fixed that situation in such a way that it's had consequences for the entire region.
So, you know, another great victory for American diplomacy.
Yeah.
Hey, by the way, you've been writing for years, especially every time the State Department report on terrorism comes out.
You always give it a real critical read and report here.
And, you know, oftentimes, as we've talked over the years, they're way overplaying the terrorist threat.
So they have excuse to wage this stupid terror war.
But then it seems like maybe now their interest more is in underplaying the amount that American policy really, especially, obviously, as you said, this all flows from 03 on, has helped to spread.
And really from 11 on has helped to spread jihad all throughout North Africa.
We got guys calling themselves the Islamic State in Nigeria, in Libya, in the Sinai Peninsula now fighting the Egyptians.
Is that nonsense?
These are just the same old militias that were always there and they got a new brand name.
Or is this a real thing where the Islamic State, after all, their opponents are weak everywhere they go.
So they're pretty weak, too.
But that doesn't seem to stop them.
Well, I think you have to look at it the same way we were looking at Al-Qaeda near the end.
That basically it's a franchise.
And these guys are using the name because the name has a certain cachet to it.
But at the same time, they're not taking direction from, they're not necessarily getting money from.
The whole terrorism issue in every country, if you look at it carefully, is different.
There are different social dynamics driving it.
There are different resentments that are driving it.
In most countries, it comes down to a type of civil war, if you really look at it.
And they're all driven by local issues.
It's good PR for them and good PR for us to oversimplify it and just rally around the black banner and all that.
Sure, sure.
Like the latest country report on terrorism by State Department emphasized that now, OK, hey, last year it was Al-Qaeda.
This year it's ISIS.
And, boy, it's really bad.
And of course, you know, they always come out with, boy, it's really bad because it justifies the government.
Right.
Meanwhile, all the ISIS attacks here are all FBI plots, not real ISIS attacks at all.
Well, that's been true since 2001, really.
I mean, you know, there have probably been a lot.
Like I think I did a summary of the attacks the last time I did a report on the country report.
There were something like 38 Americans who'd been killed by domestic terrorism of Islamic that could possibly link to Islam.
And one of them was, of course, the Major Hassan in Fort Hood.
And I think there was another.
Yeah, it was the Boston bombing.
But all the rest of them were kind of plausibly maybe not so.
So I said, you know, essentially this is over the course of 13 years.
You have something like 2.1 people getting killed per year.
And we're spending a trillion dollars a year to fight it.
Right.
Yeah, the only ones that were legit was Fort Hood.
There was Zazi, the cab driver from Denver.
He was not entrapped.
He was a real guy.
But they got him before he did anything.
And not through illegal spying either, but the old fashioned way.
And then there was the failure of the Times Square bomber and the failure of the underpants bomber.
And I think I'm out of examples.
All the rest of them bogus.
The Boston marathon.
Oh, in Boston.
Right, right.
You mentioned Boston.
Yeah, but that's it.
You know, that's it.
And we're talking about 13 years of spending a trillion dollars a year employing hundreds of thousands of people.
We're intervening in countries all over the world.
And, you know, for this?
Yeah.
Come on, guys.
You know, I...
It seems like now...
Anyone would have to do better than that.
Only now, after all this, only now have they really inspired the lone wolf attackers to finally come out, unentrapped ones, to come out and do, like, the Chattanooga shooting and a couple other things like that.
And when the whole slogan for the entire project was we have to fight them over there so that we don't have to fight them here, when, quickly, it's causing it, you know?
Yeah, that's exactly right.
I mean, it's been a fraud ever since the beginning.
All right.
Well, thanks, Phil, very much for coming on the show.
I got this lady reporting from East Africa here on the situation in Somalia coming up next.
Oh, that'll be interesting.
Okay, thanks, guys.
Tune in, LRN.
FM.
Thanks, Phil.
Okay.
Bye.
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