01/22/16 – Daniel McAdams – The Scott Horton Show

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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.
On the line once again, I've got Dan McAdams from the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.
Welcome back to the show, Dan.
How are you doing?
Hey, Scott.
Thanks for having me back.
Very happy to have you here.
And a very important piece that you wrote that we're running on the blog at antiwar.com this week, Al-Qaeda allies to represent opposition in upcoming Syria peace talks.
And I got one more headline for you here, which is, where did it go?
Kerry lowers expectations as Russia vows Syria talks will start on time.
And Kerry says there will be no direct meetings during the first round of talks.
So I guess my first question for you is, could you explain who all is meeting and particularly which all Syrians?
Because I've seen lists of, I don't know, maybe more than a dozen countries who are meeting here.
But it doesn't seem like there's that many on the Syrian side, including the Assad side, or any of the various jihadist groups that have been fighting against them, except perhaps maybe this one that you're writing about here, this Jaysh al-Islam.
Yeah, I mean, as far as I can see, the planning for this, which is supposed to take place on Monday, is right now still up in the air.
If I were a betting person, and I'm really not, I would bet money that it will not take place.
First of all, as you point out, you have the problem of this organization that Saudi Arabia helped broker, this High Negotiations Committee, which is said to represent all of the opposition in Syria.
They demand that they're the only opposition group that's allowed to participate in the talks, and they've put forth as their chief negotiator, Mohammad al-Lush, who's the brother of Zabran al-Lush, who was the head of, as you point out, the head of Jaysh al-Islam, or the Army of Islam, which is a group that has fought alongside the Nusra Front, which is al-Qaeda in Syria, has taken part in the massacres of minorities in Syria, but we're told it's okay.
The media tells us they backed off of their call for Sharia law last year, so I guess they're okay now.
But, you know, Scott, before you had me come on, I was watching a video of the late Zabran, former head of this Army of Islam, who was hit by a Russian airstrike in November, I think, and killed.
But he made a video before that where he praised al-Qaeda, he praised al-Nusra.
So we know what these guys are coming from.
These are the guys that the U.S. and the Saudis are putting forth as the sole negotiators for the opposition in Geneva.
So it's no wonder that the Russians are saying, are you insane?
You know, we're not going to accept this.
We need to have at least some other groups, the Kurds, for example, maybe some more moderate opposition.
So it looks to me like this is not going to go off.
As a matter of fact, Reuters is just reporting that this high council is not going to show up at all.
If the Russians don't stop bombing them, I guess it's kind of hurting their feelings.
Man, so they're not even trying to get any other mythical moderate groups represented at all?
Just this Jaysh al-Islam is supposed to be the umbrella for, I guess, probably not the Islamic State, but for al-Qaeda, Ahrar al-Sham and the rest of the other groups or what?
Well, the High Negotiations Committee is the umbrella group.
That's what the Saudis put together recently in Riyadh.
The Jaysh al-Islam is essentially the main group underneath that umbrella.
They're the primary group underneath that.
And their problematic ties are obvious.
But, you know, it's basically they've put so much time and effort into it that they want this to be the only group.
And I guess that this committee feels that they have got a sufficient backing of foreigners.
They're going to say nobody else can show up but us to the negotiating table.
It seems unlikely that it will happen that way.
But then again, that great mastermind of State Department's public affairs, John Kirby, said yesterday that the U.S. is going along with the idea that they should be the only sole negotiating group.
So basically something's got to give.
Either the Russians accept al-Qaeda as the negotiating partner or the U.S. puts some pressure on the Saudis to get these guys to back off.
Well, and I mean the thing is even if you could get both of those things to happen, it kind of remains the fact that the Assad government or whoever on that side would have to negotiate with al-Qaeda if not also the Islamic State because they are the opposition.
How the hell are you going to have a peace treaty and exclude the dominant factions of the opposition on the other side?
It's like the Brits want to make a deal with the swamp fox but let the rest of the rebellion continue.
No, absolutely.
That's a good analogy.
And there are moderate factions and the Russians have been working with them, I think.
I mean I've read they have.
But these are relatively insignificant factions, the ones that have not taken up arms.
There are people that have been in opposition for a long time.
But everyone knows that the only effective fighting force against Assad is ISIS and the Nusra and their various allies, the various names.
So that really is the question.
It's come to a head in a matter of speaking that it's basically Assad versus the people who want Sharia law and all of the things that go along with it.
So this is the case with U.S. foreign policy.
When they're backed into a corner, what do they do?
They do, but they double down.
And that's why I saw a piece on Zero Heads this morning that Ashton Carter announced today that the U.S. is going to send in the 101st Airborne to retake Mosul and, more interestingly, Raqqa, the headquarters of ISIS in Syria.
So in Carter's mind, the U.S. is going to invade Syria and reinvade Iraq.
Very interesting development.
I wonder how the Russians feel about this.
Yeah, I hadn't heard that, but I did see that U.S. troops take over Syria Air Base in Syrian Kurdistan here.
So I hadn't heard about the 101st Airborne, but that would just be my prediction finally coming true.
I'm amazed it took this long, if that's really what's going on now.
It's sort of a Hail Mary pass, I guess, but talk about adding fuel to the fire, putting a mass of fuel.
It's hard to imagine anything getting more complicated than if the U.S. sends in the 101st Airborne.
Yeah, here it is.
Wow, stars and stripes.
Carter to the armies, 101st, you will prepare Iraqis to retake Mosul.
But yeah, that's not just special forces, man.
I don't know how many infantry that includes in total.
But, you know, of course, all they can do, even if they can drive ISIS out of power in Mosul, all they do is turn them back into al-Qaeda and Iraq the insurgency, which is, you know, fought America to a standstill back when we had 166,000 troops in the country.
And there's also the small matter of permission.
The U.S. does not have a status of force agreement with Iraq.
So it remains to be seen whether they're going to get permission from the local Kurdistan government, which the U.S. is more and more at least de facto treating as a legitimate government in Iraq, but not of Iraq.
So how is the U.S. going to get permission to reinstate Iraq?
I guess they're not worried about such niceties.
Well, yeah, I mean, I don't know.
I guess they just got to call Khamenei and ask him for permission, just like they always do.
Ask the Iraqi National Congress what should be done.
Remember with John Kerry, it wasn't that long ago where he said to the Russians, you don't just invade another country on a false pretext.
But here we are about to invade Syria.
We know we already have special forces.
The U.S. already has special forces operating on the ground in Syria.
This will be of a much greater magnitude if this indeed takes place.
And then as Zero Hedge points out, I think a great point, OK, so they take Raqqa.
Then what do they do next?
What does the 101st do?
Do they just sort of pull out and say, ooh, job well done?
Do they move on to Latakia and the rest of western Syria?
And how will the Russians take that?
Talk about a can of worms.
Well, if they're putting troops right now in not just special forces but building an air base even in Syrian Kurdistan, they're de facto creating an autonomous, independent Syrian Kurdistan there, which is obviously not just problematic for the continuation of the war with Assad, even though I think the Kurdish leadership is on the record as saying maybe they don't want to be ruled by Assad, but they don't want to see him lose Damascus either.
It's also picking a fight with our allies, the Turks, who of course are on the side of al-Nusra and I guess ISIS as well, or they have been in the past and certainly are opposed to any American move to create a new autonomous Syrian Kurdistan there, Rojava or whatever they call it.
So all just future conflict.
They're just laying out and possibly with our NATO partner there because the Kurdish issue is one that they'll fight over, right?
I mean, what are they going to do, give up on the Kurdish issue, the Turks?
I mean, this is the poster child for non-interventionism, isn't it?
You know, you get in there and you take sides with one group and you realize, oh, shoot, our NATO allies are slaughtering these people who we're calling allies ourselves.
You're absolutely right.
The Kurds are absolutely not going to stand for a de facto independent Kurdistan in northern Syria.
It's just not going to happen.
So how are the brainiacs in the U.S. State Department and Pentagon going to square the circle?
I don't know, man.
It's going to be bad, though.
Listen, I'll let you go.
Thanks very much for doing the show, Dan.
I appreciate it.
Thank you, Scott.
All right, Sheldon, that's the great Dan McAdams.
You can see why he was Ron Paul's foreign policy advisor for years in his congressional office there, and he now runs the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.
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