Alright everybody, welcome back to the show.
It's Anti-War Radio, I'm your host Scott Horton.
Angela Keaton, producer of the show and Anti-War.com development director is sitting in here, but her mic's off because I'm about to interview Gareth Porter here in a sec.
All about Afghanistan for you.
A little bit of an explanation for the Chaos audience, a lot more music, a lot less talk and that's because we're on the Liberty Radio Network and kind of doing a simulcast type thing because I want to have my cake, eat it too, and have some more for later and to have eaten a bunch yesterday and yeah.
So what happens is when the Liberty Radio Network feed goes out to commercial, then I try to remember to play on a playlist for the Chaos audience.
So I guess everybody, you've got your two choices, if you prefer my music to commercials then you've got ChaosRadioAustin.org, 95.9 FM in Austin, Texas and if you'd rather hear the other way around then you go to the Liberty Radio Network at LRN.
FM.
Alright so, that's enough of that.
Now it's time to welcome back my friend and my favorite reporter, Gareth Porter, from Interpress Service and he also writes, we republish basically everything that he writes at original.antiwar.com.
Welcome back to the show, Gareth.
Thanks, Scott.
Glad to be back again.
Well, I'm very happy to have you here.
The most recent piece that you wrote for Interpress Service is along the lines of what we talked about a couple of weeks ago but of course still very timely and important this week as well.
The crystal faces Iraq 2006 moment in coming months.
What does that mean?
Yes, the Iraq 2006 moment concept is something we did, in fact, talk about on your show.
That's the first time I think I've made it public.
The idea is that there's a parallel here between what's happening in Afghanistan on the ground there in relation to the problem of political support at home in the United States and what happened in Iraq in 2006 on the ground as well as politically at home.
What happened in 2006 in Iraq, of course, is that the level of sectarian violence grew so overwhelmingly in the year of 2006 that it was impossible for the people who were managing the war to essentially deny it or to put forward a narrative that somehow contradicted or put it in a favorable context.
And as a result, essentially the support politically for the Iraq war melted away at home.
And I don't mean here just public support as reflected in polls or other ways of sort of gauging public support, but the political elite itself essentially lost confidence in the people who were managing the war.
And this basically created a political crisis for the White House in terms of what to do about this.
And it was out of that, of course, that they decided to go with the surge rather than to basically fold up their tents and leave Iraq.
Now, you know, I think something similar is happening, at least in terms of the incipient political crisis, is very likely in the case of Afghanistan, because I think what we have here is a set of circumstances that lend themselves to that kind of dynamic.
That is to say, it's going to be increasingly very difficult, if not impossible, to sort of hide the fact that the emperor has no clothes there, that the McChrystal strategy is not working, that it's unworkable, and is going to continue to be unworkable, and he can really not do anything about it.
I think this is going to be increasingly apparent in the coming months.
And so I do anticipate that there will be this kind of meltdown in political support.
Now, the question then is, is there a fix that the people who want to continue this war, particularly the military commanders in the field and their supporters in Washington, can come up with?
And I think they do, in fact, have their own fix in mind, which we can talk about a little later in the show.
Well, you know, I'm going to have Kelly Vlahos on the show here in the next hour.
She's got a new piece at AntiWar.com all about the big conference that the COIN crowd had the other day, and how they're avoiding the subject of their own failure.
So that's an important part of this story, is what the Democratic War Party is saying to itself about the crisis.
Well, and that is very much linked to the fix that I am talking about, because what I heard about this fix, this political fix, if you will, for this problem of an incipient meltdown of political support for the war in Afghanistan, was something I was told at that very conference, the same conference that Kelly was at.
Well, and what you have is something...
I hope that's a teaser for your program, you know, to get people to listen to the entire program.
Yeah, yeah, there you go.
Well, and I know she has a quote, I'm trying to fast forward through your article here and look for the quote that you're talking about, the best one here, but I'll let you get to it yourself.
But Kelly certainly has a quote in her article about, yeah, well, you know, I talked to this general or colonel or somebody in the hallway and he said, oh, yeah, you know, Afghanistan isn't even in our interest anymore at all anyway.
The whole thing's a big stupid joke.
That's interesting, yeah.
I mean, I'm sure that it was perfectly possible, in fact, easy to find people at that conference in the military who voiced those kinds of opinions.
I think it really is the common opinion at this point of those who don't have a direct stake politically in claiming that this is still working.
Well, look, if the parallel is 2006 in Iraq, then all that means is we're going to have even more war.
You know, the news story is all about, you know, McChrystal needed a drink of water this morning instead of what John McCain was saying to him when he fell over or whatever.
I didn't see the footage.
But anyway, what McCain was saying was, hey, what's all this about an artificial timetable?
We have to win this war.
This is the same thing as during the Bush era.
And James Baker and Sandra Day O'Connor and Verdon Jordan and, you know, the secret ruling power from on high came and said, we're the Iraq study group.
And we say, get out by spring 08.
And Bush said, no way, and doubled down the whole thing.
So can we expect an attempt by Petraeus to, and he was the one who said it all in motion in Iraq.
Well, I think the answer is yes and no.
The yes part of it is that now is the time for me to pop the key point that I was going to make, which I picked up at the conference, the Center for New American Security conference that Kelly was also attending.
What I did was talk to the president of CNAS, retired Lieutenant Colonel John A. Noggle, who is a very close friend and associate of General Petraeus, helped Petraeus write and perhaps more accurately, you know, really did most of the writing himself along with the other coauthor, General Amos, whereas Petraeus merely put his stamp of approval on it.
But Noggle is very close to Petraeus.
And he told me when I asked him about Afghanistan, look, this is, we can still win this war, but it's going to take a long time.
And he thinks, he said that the policy of the United States can still be turned around, that they can sort of get President Obama to reverse his decision to begin withdrawal in mid-2011, and instead to basically declare that we are in this for the duration in order to defeat the Taliban.
And the reason he thinks that is that the Republican Party will attack the president unmercifully if he does not reverse the policy, and that that will create a new political dynamic.
Now, I do think that that is, in fact, the political fix that McChrystal and Petraeus and their supporters in Washington have in mind, their equivalent, in fact, of the surge policy of 2006, 2007.
Well, are you sure that the president really wants out of there?
Seems like this decision has already been made, at least by Petraeus and McChrystal, who McChrystal, the general in charge of Afghanistan under Petraeus there, told the media last week, I think it was, maybe it was the week before that, that, ah, 2011, forget that.
We're going to be there for years and years and years and years.
There's just a leak in the Australian press that they're talking decades and decades and decades.
We hear leaks like that all the time in the NATO countries, you know, Germans and French complaining, you know.
No doubt about it that McChrystal has made it abundantly clear that he wants to stay there for years and years.
I'm sorry.
Let me, let me get back to the president and what you think he thinks when we get back from this break here.
It's Gareth Porter, my favorite reporter, IPSnews.net on anti-war radio.
We'll be right back.
You can sign up for LRN email updates at updates.libertyradionetwork.com and join us on Facebook at facebook.libertyradionetwork.com.
All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's anti-war radio on the Liberty Radio Network and chaos radio, Austin 95.9 FM.
It's radioaustin.org and I'm talking with Gareth Porter here and Gareth, I know you lean a little bit left and I know that you want to believe that the president is anything less than the devil himself, but is there really any reason to believe that he disagrees with the Pentagon about staying in Afghanistan slash Pakistan arc of crisis from here on to eternity?
You know, I think the answer to that is not one that I'm able to give easily.
I mean, I think that what's happening is that he is, in fact, being changed every day that he's in the White House and that he makes his accommodation with this war and the war makers.
There's no doubt in my mind that when he entered the White House, that he had a big set of differences with the war makers.
I think that those differences have narrowed up, as I say, day by day, week by week, month by month.
I mean, he did say during the whole campaign going back to 2007 that the real war is Afghanistan-Pakistan and he couldn't possibly.
I mean, this guy, he's not George Bush.
He's smart enough to be his own Dick Cheney for a minute, at least, and say, look, you're not going to win a war in Afghanistan, what are you, stupid?
All of human history says nobody's conquered that place since the great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandparents of the people who live there right now.
Yeah, and of course, let's bear in mind that the politicians of this country are such that Democratic candidates believe, whether it's true or not, that they have to have a war to support so that they can also oppose the wars that they do, in fact, oppose.
And that certainly was the case with Obama in the last presidential election.
I mean, he was running on an anti-war platform, and so he was covering himself politically by having a war that he could support.
I mean, you know, I did some reporting in the first month of the Obama administration that suggested, and I still believe this is true, that Obama wanted to hold the line against escalation in Afghanistan, you know, was only partly successful in doing so, and in the process, I think that he has increasingly been compromised, you know, in a fundamental sense.
I see him now as going through what Lyndon Johnson went through when he, in fact, tried to avoid going to war in Vietnam.
I mean, he did not want to go to war in Vietnam.
He was politically under pressure to do so within his own administration, and, you know, for his own political reasons, went ahead and made his compromises, and then he became a hawk.
I mean, he became so hawkish that he was more gung-ho than anybody else in his administration.
And in the end, that destroyed him personally.
I mean, he became an alcoholic, you know, that's not well known, but he was so profoundly changed by his presidency, and by becoming a war president, that it did personally destroy him as well as, of course, preventing him from ever running for office a second time.
Which is still preferable to being burnt to death by napalm, but, okay, so there's just no question that there's pressure from the Pentagon on the president, regardless of whether he welcomes it anyway or what, to stay forever.
I mean, there's been all these leaks.
Please talk about what's been in the Times and the Post lately about JSOC and about setbacks and Kandahar here and Marjah there, and minerals discovered over there, even though everybody's known about them for 50 years or something.
You know, what do all these things mean?
What it means is that there really is real panic in Washington, as well as in the command in Afghanistan, that this is not working and that we're facing a severe crisis of political confidence here at home in the war.
And they really don't know what to do about it at this point.
And that's where, you know, this fix that I alluded to earlier comes in.
They're going to hope that the Republicans, and, you know, the comment that you quoted from John McCain is a perfect illustration of what we can expect over the coming year to be the Republican line led by McCain on Afghanistan, that this president has to basically shape up, eliminate this idea that there's going to be any withdrawal, and emphasize that we're in this for the duration.
And I have to admit that I doubt that President Obama has the wherewithal, the balls, if you will, to stand up to that kind of Republican pressure, as well as, of course, you know, the military leadership itself, the Petraeus and McChrystal, taking that line privately and in some guarded fashion, probably publicly as well.
And so I think that that is their fix.
But I also think that this is not going to solve the political problem here at home.
You can't do what you did in the Iraq war, which has come up with a savior, and in that case David Petraeus, who was going to have a whole new strategy, which was called counterinsurgency, along with 30,000 more troops.
That's simply not going to be credible in the case of Afghanistan.
Nobody believed that.
So, you know, how are they going to justify it?
What are they, how are they going to play this?
This is still to be seen.
I just don't see how this fix is going to do them much good, you know, except to continue the war under circumstances where more and more people in Congress, public opinion, the political elite generally is saying, this is no good.
I mean, what are we doing here?
We have to get out.
All right.
Now, you know, I don't ever, I try to play devil's advocate on some of the details with you sometimes, probably not good enough, but I hardly ever play, you know, really devil's advocate in the war party's advocate sense.
So let me try.
In Iraq, they invaded this country, overthrew the minority dictatorship and empowered the majority that doesn't need us over the long term.
They're going to rule the place, at least from Baghdad to Basra and like that.
Now in Afghanistan, we've installed the people who were on the verge of losing completely their civil war at the moment that we intervened against the majority.
And if we do leave, there's every likelihood that we're going to have to watch the 1990s or worse play out all over again in Afghanistan as there's a major civil war, as all of our former puppets and quislings get knives through the throats, as Kabul falls to the Taliban, as all hell breaks loose.
And I mean, don't we owe it to the people of Afghanistan to carpet bomb them until that's no longer a possibility, Gareth?
No, of course not.
I mean, you know, I don't believe that for a moment.
You know, this is, of course, the fundamental argument of the warfare state, that once you've been committed to a war, no matter how bad an idea it was, no matter how bad an idea it is to be fighting the war, nevertheless, we have to continue it because somehow, you know, the alternative of stopping the war is always worse.
I mean, the experience, of course, in past wars, Vietnam, Iraq, has always been that that argument was just flat out a lie.
Just to recall very quickly, in Vietnam, the argument was if we pull out, you know, 500,000 people or a million people will be killed by the North Vietnamese.
In the case of Iraq, it's going to be a bloodbath.
So that was not true in either case.
It won't be the case in Afghanistan either.
All right, now, can I keep you over here?
Sure.
All right, great, because I want to ask a bunch of questions about Iran, too.
Everybody, stick to Gareth Porter from Interpress Service, IPSnews.net, original.antiwar.com, slash Porter.
This is Antiwar Radio.
We'll be ready.
What's up next?
Visit the LRN program guide to find out at shows.libertyradionetwork.com.
All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
It's Antiwar Radio.
I'm Chaos, 95.9 FM in Austin, Texas, and Liberty Radio Network.
Chaosradioaustin.org, antiwar.com, slash radio.
And I'm on the phone with Gareth Porter.
My favorite reporter from Interpress Service, IPSnews.net.
And, of course, we republish every bit of it at original.antiwar.com, slash Porter.
Gareth, you still on the line there?
I'm still here.
All right, now, to the audience, I'm sorry if this bores you to tears and you just want to put your CD back in the play or something, but I need my understanding enhanced on a topic that is extremely inside baseball, I guess, on this Iran nuclear issue and the conflict with the so-called international community led by the American empire, of course.
And, you know, for those who are able to follow along, great.
And if you can't, then that's just an indication that you need to listen to this show all the time, and then you'll be able to.
Maybe go back and read, you know, a book or something.
Maybe go back and read Dr. Porter and Dr. Prather's archives at antiwar.com.
Now, Gareth, let's talk about Subsidiary Arrangement 3.1, Iran's safeguards agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency.
I guess I can sum up this real quick.
The IAEA already existed and was the Adams for Peace project, basically.
And then they came up with the Nonproliferation Treaty.
It was America's baby, and they got virtually every state in the world to sign the thing.
The nuclear weapons states are bound to not proliferate nuclear weapons to non-nuclear weapons states, and the non-nuclear weapons states are sworn to not get nuclear weapons technology, either develop it themselves or acquire it on any kind of market or anything else.
So then each of these non-nuclear weapons states has a safeguards agreement with the IAEA, basically a contract with the international scientists and cops that they can come in and monitor, you know, all the nuclear material, declare nuclear material, make sure that none of it is diverted to a military or other special purpose.
Then we get into additional protocols and subsidiary arrangements under the safeguards agreement between, in this case, the state of Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Now, the big controversy over 3.1, of course, goes back to the question of the so-called outing of the so-called secret comm facility by the President of the United States last October.
And I think now I'll be quiet and let you take it from there and make sure that I understand what exactly 3.1 is and just how in violation Iran was of it or not or what.
Okay.
So we'll pick up the thread in just a moment.
The 3.1 subsidiary agreement, basically the key date there is March of 2007.
But let me just make one preliminary comment or point, not a comment, it's just a factual point, that the critical sort of event that preceded this event with regard to the subsidiary agreement is the effort by the IAEA, of course prodded, led by the United States, to get Iran in particular to sign the additional protocol.
Now, the reason that they were so eager to get Iran to sign the additional protocol was the difference between the additional protocol's requirements and the initial treaty commitment of Iran to the IAEA, or not the treaty commitment, but the basic commitment under its safeguards agreement, is that the safeguards agreement, as you correctly pointed out, involves the IAEA's right to go in to inspect nuclear material, to ensure that nuclear materials are not diverted.
The additional protocol, on the other hand, allows the IAEA to go in and look at non-nuclear issues, such as centrifuge manufacture, for example.
And so what they were after here, it's very clear, it's absolutely clear that the IAEA and the United States wanted Iran to be in a position to turn over, where it had to turn over all the information about where it manufactures centrifuges, so that they could be in a position to say, okay, we know exactly where they're doing centrifuges, we'll know how many centrifuges they have at every moment.
And this is a very big step away from the original intention of the IAEA.
What it means is that they are trying to prevent Iran from having any nuclear program, because centrifuges are, of course, necessary to have any enrichment.
And so that was really what they were after.
Well, and as long as the, Gareth, as long as Iran was voluntarily abiding by the additional protocol, which was not ratified by their parliament, like if the president agreed to something, but it was not yet ratified by the Senate, that kind of situation, they were going along with it anyway, and it also included a complete freeze on enrichment.
They were voluntarily going along with it, that's correct.
But then, of course, they came to a point where they were being pushed into the Security Council, where the issue was very clearly that the UN Security Council was going to take the position that Iran may not have any enrichment.
And so then they backed away from the additional protocol.
And it was then, coming back to March 2007, this question of whether they would inform the IAEA as soon as the decision was made to have any new nuclear facility.
Now, if they were still under the additional protocol, that would include any facility to manufacture centrifuges as well.
But in this case, it meant facilities that actually would have nuclear materials in them.
And at that point, the Iranians said, hmm, we are being threatened with war by Israel and the United States.
You know, any information we provide them, design information on our facilities would better enable them to plan their bombing attack.
We shouldn't even tell them ahead of time, until we absolutely have to, where these facilities are located.
So they said, we're not going to abide by the 3.1 commitment.
Now, legally, there is a distinction between the subsidiary agreement requirement, which we're just talking about, and the basic requirement associated with their safeguard agreement.
The safeguard agreement is, in fact, a treaty with the international community through the IAEA.
Well, I think the question is, is there a substantive difference, or one is a subset of the other when it comes to the question of the additional protocol and the subsidiary agreement arrangement to 3.1?
It is not simply a subset.
It is, in fact, a different kind of agreement.
The legal specialists have, in fact, argued that the subsidiary agreement does not constitute an international treaty.
It does not have the same legal force that the original Iranian agreement with the IAEA, that is, its safeguards agreement, has.
And therefore, the Iranians do, in fact, have the right to change their mind about whether they're going to go along with that subsidiary agreement.
They cannot unilaterally change the wording of it.
That much is clear.
They can't simply unilaterally declare that the subsidiary agreement will have a different wording, but that's a different issue.
What they can do is say, we are suspending our agreement to this subsidiary agreement.
And now, just to cut to the chase here, because we're real short on time, Gareth, that's Gordon Prather's article about the IAEA legal eagle finds that this is all bunk, it's not a violation, right?
Isn't that the same article, the same topic there?
There was, in fact, I think what he's referring to is that there was a letter from, or a memorandum I should say, from the IAEA's legal, the head of the legal department of the IAEA, which addressed this issue.
Now, he was saying that yes, Iran is obligated to go ahead and abide by this subsidiary agreement.
But he also said that this is not a violation of their safeguards agreement.
Right, and so, according to their safeguards agreement, as long as they notify the IAEA six months before they introduce nuclear material, which is what they did, at least, then they're good.
That's correct.
That's the deal.
Alright, thank you, Gareth.
You're the best, man.
My pleasure.
Alright, everybody, this is Anti-War Radio.
We'll be right back.
