05/28/10 – Juan Cole – The Scott Horton Show

All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's Antiwar Radio on Chaos 95.9 in Austin, Texas, streaming live worldwide on the internet at chaosradioaustin.org and at antiwar.com slash radio.
And our guest on the show today is Dr. Wong Cole.
He's a professor of history at the University of Michigan.
He's the author of Engaging the Muslim World and the blog Informed Comment at wongcole.com.
Welcome back to the show, Wong.
How are you doing?
Great.
Thanks for having me, Scott.
Well, I sure appreciate you joining us today.
Now, I just hit refresh on the page at antiwar.com, bad news, at least 80 killed in Lahore mosque attacks.
Militants target minority Maria mosques, it says.
What's going on?
The militants in Pakistan have been attacking religious minorities as soft targets.
You know, it's hard for them sometimes to get at the Pakistani military, with whom they have the real beef.
So they'll bomb Shiites in Karachi, or in this case, they attacked two mosques of the Ahmadiyya sect in Lahore.
So basically they're, what, just trying to get a reaction out of the Pakistani military then?
They're sending the signal to the Pakistani government and military authorities that they can strike at will, and I think probably they're also trying to cause trouble between the Sunni majority, the Sunni Muslim majority, and these religious minorities.
That's a tactic that was used in Iraq as well.
And to just sow turmoil in the society, because if you're a revolutionary force, as these people are, and you want to overthrow the government, then chaos is preferable to stability.
Well, I'm sure you saw this article the other day in the New York Times about how those crazy, diaper-headed Pakistanis, they're just so backwards and uneducated, and their religion is apparently so terrible that they just believe these insane conspiracy theories about the United States, such as, you know, we're the reason for their problems, and stuff like that.
What's the matter with them?
Well, you know, there are two things to say about this.
Of course, the United States has caused a lot of trouble in that part of the world, and not by itself, but in the Cold War, the U.S. and the Soviet Union fought a kind of great game, as the British and the Russians had done in the 19th century, so the Soviets and the United States fought a great game in Central Asia, and the U.S. became the major foreign ally of Pakistan, and the Soviets were there in Uzbekistan, and they came down and took Afghanistan, so in the 1980s, when the U.S. decided to use private armies and covert means to get the Soviets back out of Afghanistan, there was a lot of spillover and blowback from that effort on to Pakistan.
It spread the drug trade, because the CIA used the drug trade to fund the mujahideen against the Soviets, and it caused the U.S. to back the then-military government of Zia al-Haq and weaken democracy.
So there were a lot of bad things that happened to Pakistan because of U.S. intervention.
But listen, Scott, the problem is, and in this regard I agree with that article, that the Pakistani public doesn't do that kind of analysis when they're thinking about the United States.
They say things like that the Taliban were created by the U.S. and the Indians, and whenever anything blows up, like in Lahore, it's actually Blackwater or it's the Indian research and analysis wing, their version of the CIA, the RAW, that's behind it.
And that is just crazy.
And it's not that just like ordinary people in the streets say these things.
I've had prominent anchors, military officers, I've had them tell this kind of thing to me.
I've seen it with my own eyes.
So that's worth complaining about.
Of course, these conspiracy theories in this hot house atmosphere come out of long years of military rule and authoritarian repression of genuine information.
Yeah, well, and I don't think that can really be understated.
I mean, as we all know, we have Reaper drone robots flying around in the sky, dropping Hellfire missiles on people in Pakistan, and our president goes on TV and jokes about it.
I mean, if I was a Pakistani, I'd be paranoid as hell, too.
Yeah, well, as I said, there are some legitimate roots for some of the paranoia, but in my view, you know, when you've got an interior minister who comes out and says these things, it's not good.
The Pakistani government needs to set a different tone.
Yeah, well, I mean, the thing is, too, I don't know if that's really different in any state.
I mean, our secretary of state, our foreign minister says insane lies all the time that pass for, you know, reasoned discussion, right?
Well, it is true.
It's a technique of governance to put out conspiracy theories, but it...
Yeah, like Saddam Hussein's going to kill us all if we don't stop him.
Yeah, there is something, I mean, especially pathological about the political discourse in Pakistan.
I can't disagree with this.
And I think President Zardari and Prime Minister Gilani know better.
And you know, and there's a lot of hypocrisy involved, because you know that the Pakistani government is up to its hips in these drone strikes.
They're taking off from Pakistani bases.
The government has asked, please let us do it.
You know, it's not that the Pakistani government has the progressive position as kind of under siege by the U.S.
This is a joint operation.
So then for them to come out and say, well, we're deeply opposed to this and we're sure India is behind it, you know, that's really weird.
Yeah.
Well, now the Americans, it seems in a couple of ways, aren't giving them any choice.
I mean, basically, you know, Zardari is the prime minister because we say so, just like his wife was going to be before she was killed.
And you know, like to hear Eric Margulies tell it, this is a major part of Pakistani strategic doctrine that in the event of an atomic war with India, they have to be able to retreat across the Khyber Pass into Afghanistan and that they just cannot let the Indians in alliance with the Hazaras and Tajiks and Uzbeks and the Northern Alliance types that America's installed in power in Kabul have them surrounded like that.
And so on one hand, we're paying them and forcing them to fight the Taliban inside the country to a certain degree.
And yet at the same time, we're also putting them in a position where they have no choice but to support the Taliban against the Karzai government in Afghanistan.
Well, that's a very canny analysis of it.
I don't disagree with you, Scott.
There is that deep, profound ambivalence in Islamabad over Afghan policy and policy towards the Taliban.
The drone strikes, by the way, typically are against Arabs or people closely allied with them.
And so you don't hear so much about, you know, local push tunes being killed by them.
Occasionally, you'll have a prominent Taliban militant who is targeted.
But I think one of the reasons that the Pakistanis don't actually, whatever they say, mind so much these drone attacks is that they're afraid of those Arab forces as well.
And indeed, the likelihood is that the Marriott was blown up a year and a half ago by the Arab Afghans, they're called.
And Zardari and Gilani, the president and prime minister, were actually scheduled to be having dinner in there when it was blown up.
So these guys, you know, have a red target on them painted by these Arabs.
And so if the U.S. wants to blow them away from the sky, I think that doesn't actually sit so uneasily with Zardari.
Yeah, well, probably not.
Although you can see why for the average Pakistani, if he maybe like just told that same, my paraphrase of Margulies there, but kind of leave out some of the detail.
What we have is really America backing its enemies, right?
We're we're paying.
I mean, I'm saying if you oversimplify in conspiracy theory fashion, we're paying the Pakistanis who are paying the Taliban who we're fighting in Afghanistan.
It's true.
Some of some of that is going on.
But, you know, it's John Mearsheimer wrote a book called The Tragedy of Great Power Politics.
And there's there's something implicit.
If you're going to go out into the world and try to shape it, you're going to find yourself in all of these contradictory positions.
And, you know, you could argue that the original sin is for the U.S. to try to shape Afghanistan so powerfully to begin with, because Afghanistan is a prize.
It's something that's fought over by India and Pakistan and Iran and still, to some extent, Russia.
And so, you know, inevitably, we're going to be at daggers drawn with some forces and in, you know, implicit alliance with others who are also, you know, have a stake in this Afghanistan venture.
So, you know, there's been ironies like the Iranians being very helpful to us in Afghanistan at some point who are supposed to be our enemies.
And then the Pakistanis funding our enemies in Afghanistan at a time when we're proclaiming them dear allies in the war on terror.
So it's it's a John Le Carre world.
You know, it's very gray and very disreputable.
And there are no clear lines.
Well, as we've talked about for going on five or six years now on the American policy in Iraq from the day that they toppled Saddam has been to install the Shia authorities in power there.
Not that they really had any choice when Sistani demanded one man, one vote back in 2004.
But now fast forward into May 2010, Joe Biden's telling the Post that, no, they really meant it.
They're sticking with the status of forces agreement and they will be down to 50000 combat troops by the end of this August.
And I noticed that he didn't mention the contractors, but and he did take note to say, hey, 50000 is still a lot of troops.
But so here's my question for you.
And you can challenge any of that you want to.
But here's my real question is, do you believe that the United States will get out of Iraq as according to the status of forces agreement by the end of 2011?
Is it still on or are we staying forever?
How many permanent bases, how many contractors?
What's the deal?
Well, you know, I grew up on army bases.
I'm an army brat and I want to tell all the civilians there are no such things as permanent bases.
A base is a political artifact.
It's a it's a product of negotiation.
And sometimes warfare.
But, you know, the idea that the U.S. will stay in Iraq forever because it has permanent bases or is committed to have permanent bases is is is a nonstarter.
I'm pretty sanguine, Scott, about Obama actually getting out of Iraq.
It might not be on a perfect timetable, but I think that's where things are going.
I think he's determined to do it.
I think he thinks that the Iraq war was immoral and wrong, that the U.S. investment in Iraq is is a waste of money and that the Iraqis, you know, are to the point now where they can more or less limp along by themselves and we're not doing any extra good there.
And so I think that if it's not August, you know, August 31st, soon thereafter, we will be down to 50,000 noncombat troops.
Of course, some of those will be combat troops that have been categorized as noncombat troops.
A lot of them will be trainers.
And, yeah, I think that by the end of 2011, we'll mostly be out.
We won't be entirely out.
And, you know, we have to be realistic about these things.
First of all, Iraq has no air force.
And the U.S. will be providing its air force, I think, probably till 2018 or so.
They've got a lot of F-16s and helicopter gunships on order, which will arrive in 2013.
But those are sophisticated weapons.
They need, the pilots need to be trained on them.
So you're looking at the U.S. being Iraq's air force, you know, well into this decade.
And that doesn't necessarily mean bases or any significant number of troops on the ground, as something can be done from Al Udeid base in Qatar or from Incirlik in Turkey.
But there will be a U.S. presence and a U.S. entanglement in Iraq for a good decade.
But with regard to having large numbers of infantry troops on the ground, I think Obama's going to end that.
I guess the number one reason for me to believe that the occupation is going to end, even if only to the degree you describe with air bases still there and so forth for years to come, would be the power of Muqtada al-Sadr.
And my best interpretation of the latest news, I know it's a complicated mess over there, but my best understanding is that now Muqtada al-Sadr and Nouri al-Maliki are trying to put aside their differences and they're going to, basically Maliki is going to rejoin the Iraqi National Alliance or their parties are going to merge together and they will have the plurality in the parliament to either keep Maliki or a compromise candidate.
And I wonder what you think that means for the future of the country.
It seems like, if I remember right from three, four years ago, well, three years ago, Muqtada al-Sadr's deal with Maliki was, you know, his guys in the parliament would support Maliki as long as Maliki promised and really stuck by the timeline for the withdrawal of American troops.
Because it seems like if there's anybody in that country with the authority, with the influence, to make demands like America out now and who really means it, it would be Muqtada al-Sadr.
Oh yeah, well, Muqtada al-Sadr's movement did relatively well in the parliamentary elections.
They have nearly 40 seats out of 325.
They are kingmakers because they are needed to form whatever coalition emerges into power.
And certainly they would put down about any significant number of U.S. troops remaining in Iraq.
And you were right that a lot of people discounted Sadr, felt like his movement was over with.
But he's demonstrated that he is a community organizer and a political organizer with legs.
And that's their number one goal.
It has been since the spring of 2003, to get the U.S. military back out of their country.
And they can cause governments to fall over inside Iraq.
They can get up big demonstrations.
They can turn to violence again.
So yes, I think that's one factor.
But I would just underline that the consensus in Iraq about the desirability of getting the U.S. military out of their country is much broader than that.
You know, in opinion polling, certainly you get 70-80% of Iraqis want the U.S. out.
Well, and it's always been that way, right?
I was only referring to people with power.
Always is maybe an exaggeration, but it's been that way certainly since 2005 or so, maybe 2004 or so.
It's been that way for a long time.
And yeah, but even the political powers that be, a lot of them have rethought this.
You know, I think the Sunni Arabs want the U.S. out, all but 10% of them or so.
And the majority of the Shiites do.
And, you know, it's really only the Kurds and some of the Shiites that, you know, are afraid about the security implications of U.S. withdrawal.
And they're a minority.
So I think, you know, to the extent that these things are often the result of negotiations with Parliament, it should be remembered that the Filipino Senate asked the U.S.
Navy to leave the base at Subic Bay in 1989.
And that happened.
I can't tell you how much the U.S.
Navy wanted that base, but the Filipino Senate had its way.
It doesn't always work out that way, but very often if the host government really, really doesn't want U.S. troops there, then they're not there.
And they don't need to be, you know, for U.S. strategic purposes, they don't need to be in Iraq anyway.
Iraq is, that was an idea of the neocons that was always flawed.
The idea that Iraq could be a good place to put a U.S. military base is crazy.
And a small place like Qatar, which is not very politicized, where the emir wants to maneuver between the U.S. and China and Iran and so forth, you know, strategically speaking, makes an awful lot more sense.
And Iraq is highly politicized, highly armed, and hostile to foreign intervention in its affairs, has been all through the past 100 years.
So that was always a stupid idea.
And I think that as with all stupid ideas, its time is going to run out.
Yeah, well, I hope that's right.
It's funny, you know, you go back to that Paul Wolfowitz article interview in Vanity Fair from years back, and of course, all the headlines out of it, for people who remember, were he said that, well, weapons of mass destruction, for bureaucratic reasons, that was the one thing that we all agreed on that we could use to sell the war.
But we really wanted it for all these other reasons.
But he also says in that article that, well, you know, the occupation of Saudi Arabia, the permanent, well, semi-permanent bases there from that existed since 1990, that was really doing a lot to radicalize people to bin Laden's cause.
So we needed to get them out of there.
And then I guess he decided moving them a little bit north into Iraq was going to be a big improvement.
But, you know, that was actually, you know, according to Paul Wolfowitz, that was one of the reasons for the invasion of Iraq, to use it as a center, was because we got to get out of Saudi Arabia, because that's what got our towers knocked down.
But anyway, let me ask you this about Saudi real quick.
Here was my interpretation of Muqtada al-Sadr saying, you know, from Tehran, correct me if I'm wrong, from Tehran, he said, you know, I think we ought to hold a referendum and within the Iraqi National Alliance to see who you guys want to be prime minister.
And then I guess he snapped his fingers.
And two days later, a referendum was held all across the south of Iraq.
Now, here was my interpretation of that.
Holy moly.
I never seen anybody snap their fingers and have a referendum of millions of people in two days.
Am I rightly impressed by the power and influence that that guy has over the, you know, regular Shia population of Iraq?
Well, I think the organizational capabilities of the Sutter movement have all along been extremely impressive.
So here's the thing, though.
Sutter was speaking from Qom, which is the Iranian holy city, the counterpart in Iran of Najaf, where he is said to be studying.
And what he asked for was that the Sutter movement vote.
So it was his people.
It was people loyal to the memory of his father.
Oh, it wasn't the whole INA, like I said.
No, it wasn't the whole coalition.
It was just the Sudras.
And there were a lot of criticisms about how this was carried out because, you know, there weren't proper rules.
Anybody could come in and vote.
It's not clear whether people could vote more than once and so on and so forth.
Sure, it's impressive that they could hold this ballot in a quick, on a quick timetable.
And, you know, they do have a lot of organization.
They have soup kitchens.
They have people who, you know, patrol neighborhoods to provide security.
They can get their people out.
They have all along been able to do that.
And in some ways, since 2007, when the troop escalation called the surge occurred late in the Bush administration, and the Sudras were under enormous pressure with regard to their paramilitary wing, my own analysis of it is that they've been invested a lot in building up their more political wing, and in a way maybe benefited from the crackdown on the paramilitary.
You know, you have no choice but to do political organizing if you want to survive when you're under the gun that way.
So they're very organized, and they're significant.
They're not a majority, but they have their place in Iraqi politics.
They seem to be a long-term feature.
And since Iraqi politics is so fractious, a disciplined, smaller group like that can often emerge as a swing vote and be enormously influential in national politics.
All right.
Now, in just the last couple of minutes here, sorry to leave this till the very end, but there was the major report in The New York Times about a new covert action program under the Joint Special Operations Command of the military, signed by General Petraeus, General Grievous, as Lew Rockwell calls him.
And along with that is the national security strategy of the Obama administration that's just been put forward.
And in The Washington Post's coverage of the new national security strategy, they interviewed John O'Brien, the head of counterterrorism.
And he talks about here how killing people is what creates terrorists and whatever.
But never mind that.
Wherever they plot and train in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and beyond, we're going after them.
So go ahead.
You got three minutes.
Say whatever you want.
Well, listen, I don't have a problem with us cracking down on people trying to kill us, but I'd like everything to be done within the framework of a rule of law.
And the thing that disturbs me about the way that U.S. government procedures have evolved in the past few years is it seems to me they mix up all kinds of things that shouldn't be mixed up.
So you've got the CIA doing military things, like those drone strikes that are done by the CIA.
In fact, they appear sometimes to be subcontracted to civilian security organizations.
And that's not right.
And if you have the CIA do something, it's covert, it's classified, and the public officials can't even talk about it.
If you asked Hillary Clinton, well, what about those drone strikes?
She can't confirm or deny that they even take place, because it's all covert.
So that shouldn't be done by the CIA.
If it's a military operation, it should be done by the Defense Department, and then we should be able to ask Gates, you know, what's going on here?
And now, Petraeus is apparently dissatisfied with the capabilities of the CIA in gathering information about these covert al-Qaeda cells in places like Yemen, and also the CIA ability to penetrate the Revolutionary Guards in Iran.
And so he's convinced that, well, we take some special ops forces and turn them into a kind of military CIA.
Well, that's not right, either.
That's mixing up intelligence with military, and there's some danger that it makes all U.S. troops suspect spies, and it abrogates the Geneva Conventions about the treatment of POWs.
So somebody needs to sit down and work this whole thing out so that it makes sense and that it's within a framework of the rules of law, and we stop having all this cowboyism.
Yeah.
Well, terrorism is a felony.
There's a law on the books.
Right now, people are prosecuted for it, I think, every day.
All right, we're all out of time.
Thank you very much for yours.
I really appreciate it, as always, Juan.
It's great talking, Scott.
Take care.
All right, everybody, that's Juan Cole.
Informed comment at JuanCole.com, and I'm sorry I don't have the name of the book in front of me.
Engaging the Muslim World.
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