05/09/16 – Brad Hoff – The Scott Horton Show

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Okay, introducing Brad Hoff.
He is an Army veteran and a former resident of Syria for, I think, a few years there.
And now he writes a great blog called levantreport.com.
And you may well remember that he did the groundbreaking work on the DIA memo of August 2012 about the Syria war and a lot of great stuff about the Hillary emails and the war in Libya, etc., like that.
Welcome back to the show.
How are you doing, Brad?
Great, always great to be on, Scott.
I appreciate it.
Very happy to have you here.
So, I guess, first of all, I wonder if you at least read about this new podcast by Ayman al-Zawahiri, the leader of al-Qaeda hiding in somebody's basement in Pakistan somewhere, I guess, urging the different factions, apparently, I guess, according to the Reuters version, excluding Islamic State, but that all the other jihadist factions fighting in Syria should all join forces as though they had not.
I'm not sure exactly what he was getting at, but how about you?
Well, right.
One of the things I picked up from it was how close he sounds in his word choice and the logic of his argument to guys like General David Petraeus, right, who have been arguing this idea that the U.S. ought to work with Jabhat al-Nusra, which is the al-Qaeda group operating in Syria, in order to, quote-unquote, peel off moderates.
And so al-Zawahiri's own word choice and phraseology actually sounds a lot like some of our own think tankers and neocons in D.C. and others like General Petraeus.
It's pretty ironic, but it seems like this would be an interesting story for people to pursue, the fact that you have these guys in Washington echoing rhetoric that sounds closely parallel or akin to al-Qaeda's top men.
And that's one of the things I found interesting about the story and ironic.
So, yeah, you know, one of the things, too, is here I noticed, again, according to the Reuters version, but maybe you know better about, you know, I don't know if you actually listen to the thing or what, but they say that he has endorsed the idea now of Golani and the al-Nusra Front in Syria going ahead and creating an emirate, which is sort of, maybe I'm oversimplifying, contrary to the typical near-enemy, far-enemy split, that, as Zawahiri has argued for, I thought, about 20 years now, we've got to get rid of the Americans first, or else how can we ever build a caliphate that they won't bomb to smithereens?
Only now, just from the looks of it, it seems like maybe he's feeling the PR pressure that the Islamic State has created a state and gotten away with it for a couple of years now anyway.
And so now he wants to go ahead and be a little copycat and go ahead and declare an emirate in Syria, whereas before he said we've got to just keep fighting until someday?
Right, yeah.
It's interesting.
To my knowledge, some of the earliest sort of source material of internal al-Qaeda debate and discussion that we have involved this idea, do we go after the near-enemy or the far-enemy first?
And, of course, the Syrian government, as well as other governments in the area, represent the near-enemy.
And so it's interesting.
It seems like a return to that policy.
And it's ironic that Zawahiri would call for rebel unity in a place where al-Qaeda, I think, exercises sort of final veto power over all the other hundreds of factions in the first place.
And so, yeah, it seems like maybe ISIS has just gotten all the good propaganda and Zawahiri is trying to catch up.
And who knows?
Zawahiri may have issued all kinds of other calls or new policy declarations, but it could be that we're just sort of hearing select messages amplified here in the West.
Well, and, you know, I wonder, I mean, if he's basically conceded the point on strategy, then the only thing he has left to argue about, it seems like, with Baghdadi is who takes orders from who.
And that's a pretty thin reed for him to stand on, especially if he's way out in Pakistan by himself with no legions to command, unlike Baghdadi.
And it seems like, I mean, I don't know what all stands between reconciliation between the two factions, but it doesn't seem hard to imagine that now that the Islamic State is so much bigger than the Al-Nusra Front, that the Al-Nusra Front and, you know, the groups that it rules over as well, maybe even, would end up just being subsumed again into the Islamic State.
What do you think of that?
Right.
You know, I mean, people have always talked about this big, deep wedge between the two groups.
And, of course, you know, there's been a schism and this power struggle over leadership.
But how far apart are the two, really, ideologically and in terms of brutality?
So, I mean, ISIS has shown itself to be pragmatic in many ways, in terms of its, you know, the sort of Machiavellian nature, you know, in addition to the, you know, Wahhabi, you know, vision of the world.
Yeah, but it seems like maybe both sides will, at some point, be a bit more pragmatic, you know, as the various factions were in, you know, 2012, 2013, and will begin to attempt to take territory together.
Because I really don't see much in terms of ideology that really separates the two, except maybe that it seems like the Nusra guys are a bit more comfortable these days, or at least in the past couple years, working alongside the other Islamist groups, and even groups supported by the West.
I mean, they've been quite open about, you know, bragging about the sort of jihadi Walmart of weapons that they have access to, right?
Supplied from, you know, Western and Gulf backers and things like this.
So, sure, it would make a lot of sense.
You know, I forget if we've ever discussed this before, but there was a piece about, you may be familiar with him.
He's kind of a, I think he's kind of a left-wing, radical Jewish lawyer from New York named Stanley Cohen, who oftentimes, I think he represents Hamas in court in New York.
They're often sued, I guess.
And anyway, so there's this giant piece in The Guardian about how he had tried to negotiate.
Oh, you might know, the IRS put him in prison or something.
You know, the government hates this guy.
Right.
I remember reading a bit about him.
Yeah.
So he had engaged in a campaign or a, I don't want to say scheme because that's all negative connotations.
But, you know, he was trying to negotiate the release of one of the American hostages, one of the.
And I forget which one.
So I don't want to say it was one of the guys that got it ended up getting his head cut off over there a couple of years ago by the Islamic State.
And he was trying to negotiate the guy's release.
And the way that he was doing it was he knew somebody who knew somebody in Kuwait who was had contact with an Al-Qaeda imam in Jordan who was very powerful.
And one of the big splits in the Islamic State was between this imam and his student who had gone off and sided with the Islamic State.
And as part of the negotiations to get the American hostage freed, Stanley Cohen, almost according to this Guardian piece and apparently the fears of the FBI, almost negotiated the reconciliation of Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State between this imam and his student and getting them back together again in order to get the hostage back.
And then at the last minute the FBI freaked out and had the Jordanians arrest him and cancel and quash the whole thing.
But the point of the story being is that those two personalities is how far apart these groups are.
That's all.
Right.
I do remember reading something about that.
And as far as both sides, really in my mind, for as many headlines as they've generated, as much propaganda as has been put out, as many daily articles we read about ISIS, in my mind ISIS still remains the bigger mystery compared to the al-Nusra guys.
They really are the bigger mystery to me.
Even starting with the question, who even is Baghdadi?
We know much less about him than we know about the traditional al-Qaeda leadership.
And so I think we're probably in for a few surprises.
I still think for as much information as generated in daily news and even their own propaganda press releases, there's just still so much that's mysterious about the group.
And so I'm definitely open to the idea that as sort of absolute nutcase radicals that they are, there's still this Machiavellian pragmatic streak to them, especially if their backs are increasingly against the wall.
As I think we're seeing more and more in Syria and with the liberation of the highly important symbolic city of Palmyra and things like this, as well as the increased pressure being put on the other rebels, as well as especially al-Nusra, al-Qaeda in Aleppo.
Yeah, let's talk more about that now.
And I want to get back to the Russians in Palmyra and the eventual march to Raqqa as well here in a minute.
But all the heaviest fighting recently has been between government forces and al-Nusra and allied forces in Aleppo.
Is that correct?
Yes, that's my understanding.
And media talks as if it's like half the city is pro-government and the other half is pro-rebel or pro-opposition.
But that's not true at all.
We're talking a very narrow area of districts under rebel control with the vast majority of the population under government control.
And so I think we're seeing a lot of media being generated about Aleppo right now because this is kind of a potential key turning point.
And I think the backers of the opposition know this.
This is partly why the case of Aleppo right now is being so consistently highlighted.
So the ceasefire said forget al-Nusra and ISIS.
And I guess Petraeus and them probably frowned about that.
They would have liked to negotiate and get along with al-Nusra and pretend they're not basically the exact same organization that knocked the towers down.
Because hey, if they're useful, why not?
But so it was supposed to include all of al-Nusra's allied militias like Arar al-Sham and Jaysh al-Fattah and who knows what the Americans call FSA groups.
Although I don't know how many times the FSA can be absorbed into al-Nusra before it doesn't really exist anymore or what.
I'm sure you have a much tighter handle on all of that than I do.
But so now, I mean, apparently, John Kerry and the Americans have been blasting Assad for attacking al-Nusra saying that, you know, hey, they're as long instead of saying, you know, admitting that, geez, it's unfortunate that our CIA backed so-called moderates don't seem to differentiate themselves from al-Nusra.
So they're getting bombed and that's tough.
They're mad at Assad for bombing al-Nusra because it's hurting our mythical moderates who are standing right next to him.
Right.
Amazingly, and I think years too late, you get more and more just low admissions from the State Department, the Department of Defense, that this is in fact the case.
Just none of these groups are really distinct realities on the ground, but they all have sort of porous borders, so to speak.
And of course, earlier this month, you have the DOD spokesman, Colonel Warren, coming out and saying, quote, it is primarily al-Nusra who holds Aleppo, and of course, al-Nusra is not part of the cessation of hostilities.
And he actually ends that with, so it's complicated.
Well, yeah, as you say, no, it's not complicated.
It shouldn't be complicated.
My understanding is that shortly after he tried to walk his statements back in an email exchange with some, well, maybe we could say irate think tankers who would not dare ever admit that it is predominantly al-Nusra that is damaging any potential ceasefire.
But yeah, there is interestingly this slow acknowledgment of the truth of all this, even from our own government and military spokesman.
Unfortunately, just everyone seems to have a short-term memory because all the same guys were just a year ago saying, no, no, it's all mythical moderates and freedom fighters and people we need to support.
Yeah.
Well, and, oh man, there's so many different things to talk about.
Well, let's do the Russian Palmyra thing.
So the town of Palmyra has been taken back by the Syrian government, and I saw a thing, but I don't know what the source was.
It was a foreign source on the internet, Brad, and I wasn't too familiar, but it said, this is video of the Russians building a new military base there, at least some kind of forward operating base, getting ready to move further east.
And I've heard the move for Raqqa described as a race between the Syrian government and the Americans, and they're Kurdish-backed factions.
And we saw in the last week that Obama, according to the official numbers, has increased the number of American special forces embedded with the Kurdish, Syrian Kurdish YPG militia from 50 up to 300 now.
Right.
And so I wonder, is that basically the correct frame?
There's a race on for who can sack what the Islamic State considers their capital, the town of Raqqa, in what used to be called Eastern Syria there?
I'd say that's accurate.
And we saw this uncomfortable State Department presser with Mark Toner, if you remember, like I think end of, I want to say end of March, right after the government's liberation of Palmyra.
And he was spot on.
So do you think this is a bad thing that the Syrian army took it back from ISIS?
And it was very awkward because he hesitates for like two minutes and cannot actually just come out and say, yes, we think it's good that ISIS got its tail kicked and has now left this UNESCO World Heritage site.
And that, of course, got a lot of commentary.
Which is really funny, too.
And everyone should really look up that clip.
I know they have it posted at the Ron Paul Institute page.
And the thing is, it would have been so easy for him to say, oh, hell yeah, we love it.
Anytime the Islamic State loses anything.
The only bad part is that Assad won in this case.
He could have said that and been over in the space of one sentence.
But to watch him just sit up there and hem and haw that like, no, really, we like the Islamic State better, but we hate saying it out loud is really something else to behold.
You know, it's really something.
Now, there's been a number of amazing moments like this.
And of course, we can talk about it later.
Hell, that's how they got Paul Meyer in the first place was America said, oh, we're not bombing them as long as they're moving against Assad government positions.
Forget it.
Well, no, and it really confirms, I think, what you might call the strategic realism, the very accurate vision that the 2012 DIA memo put out about a year ago.
It really, that military memo echoes at least this sort of institutional alignment where Washington and these Western capitals would actually be sympathetic to some type of Islamic caliphate entity taking over the region.
I mean, so I was thinking about that document as I watched that Mark Toner, very awkward press briefing, you know, because it very much revealed that mentality.
But, you know, interesting thing about the permanent Russian base.
I saw some level of confirmation of this on Patrick Lange's website, Six Semper Tyrannis.
And he, of course, was like the Pentagon's top intelligence guy throughout the 80s and 90s.
And so, you know, he's a pretty, I guess, I think, legitimate, insightful observer.
He's a hell of a critic, too.
Yeah, I mean, that's why you can trust him at least a little bit.
He's been pretty opposed to a lot of things for a lot of years.
Right, right.
And interesting thing about, you know, this Russian, this orchestra, this concert just done at the ruins.
I saw some quote from, out of, who said it?
I think it's, I want to say it was someone pretty high up in the British government, I mean, seemed more upset about that Russia would actually come in with a cultural event than the prior horrible executions that took place there.
And, of course, we have all these, there are all these NGOs, like so-called independent NGOs like Avaaz, who are actually calling on the Syrian government not to rebuild or attempt to restore, because I guess they're just not the right ones to do it.
Yeah.
All right, now, man, I got to go because Dan Adams is coming up, but I got to ask real quick, if you read the thing about Ben Rhodes there, Obama's foreign policy wonk in the New York Times, and how every one of them, except maybe him, but it really, to me, was revealing of the consensus in D.C. that everyone knows Obama's biggest failing, boy, Twitter agreed this morning, too, Obama's biggest failing was, and it, which is responsible for the entire body count in Syria, is that he didn't go to war in Syria.
Never even mind, you know, spending billions and working with our allies to support the rebels all along, but every casualty basically is on him, and I think, you know, at least implicit, is if we would just invade now, all the deaths would stop, and what is he waiting for?
And I was thinking, these people are grown adults.
Right, I actually, about a week ago, I got into a debate with a very prominent analyst based in the U.K., saying much the same thing, and saying, we've just got to do something militarily.
And I just literally, on a very personal level, asked him, are you ready to join up?
Are you ready to join the military?
He's actually American, but he's teaching at a university in Britain, right, and I just said, look, are your children going to go in first to try to enforce the no-fly zone?
Are you going to be the first one to stand up and offer yourself or your family to attempt some kind of military intervention?
And I suppose the next question would be, are you going to want to live there during the aftermath of whatever military intervention would come?
And it's absurd.
And then he responded, no, but I'm getting positive attention from my peers when I say these things now.
Oh, exactly, exactly.
Another armchair analyst who really knows nothing of the consequences of such talk.
But of course, he's a public, right, he's got a public platform, and he spouts all this, but without owning up, without being responsible for the even greater bloodshed that would result from such lunacy.
So, no, I'm sick of it, and I just, at this point, I just call it out on that very personal level.
Look, if you're going to spout all this militaristic rhetoric, start another war, start even World War III, are you going to be the first?
Are you going to send your children?
Are you going to send your brother, your uncle?
Put your money where your mouth is.
I even sent him the phone number to his local Army Marine recruitment office from his home state.
He, of course, didn't like that and ended the conversation.
Yeah, go ahead and carve yourself out a safe zone there, tough guy.
I like that.
No, exactly, exactly.
All right, well, listen, man, I really appreciate all your work and your time on the show, and is it okay if I say that you're writing a great book right now, all about this?
Sure, that's fine.
Awesome.
Sure, you haven't heard from me much in terms of publishing articles or updating my blog.
I did announce about a couple months ago that I'd take a bit of a sabbatical, and I am working on a more substantial, longer-term project on Syria, and the working proposed title is Syria Declassified.
My hope is to wrap it up by mid-to-end summer, so hopefully I'll start making announcements about it, more formal things, and I've talked to a couple publishers, but we'll see.
Awesome.
Well, I can't wait to read it.
I know the audience agrees, too.
Appreciate it.
Thanks so much, Scott.
All right, y'all, that is the great Brad Hoff.
Check out LevantReport.com, his great blog, lots of great scoops there, and soon his book, tentatively titled Syria Unclassified.
All right, thanks, y'all.
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