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Sorry I'm late.
I had to stop by the Whites Museum again and give the finger to FDR.
We know Al-Qaeda, Zawahiri, is supporting the opposition in Syria.
Are we supporting Al-Qaeda in Syria?
It's a proud day for America.
And by God, we've kicked Vietnam Syndrome once and for all.
Thank you very, very much.
I say it, I say it again, you've been had.
You've been took.
You've been hoodwinked.
These witnesses are trying to simply deny things that just about everybody else accepts as fact.
He came, he saw us, he died.
We ain't killing they army, but we killing them.
We be on CNN like Say Our Name been saying, saying three times.
The meeting of the largest armies in the history of the world.
Then there's going to be an invasion.
All right, you guys, Scott Horton Show.
Introducing Daniel Lazar from ConsortiumNews.com.
He is an author as well.
He wrote The Frozen Republic, How the Constitution is Paralyzing Democracy.
If only.
It was paralyzing.
Israel's alarm over the Syrian debacle.
What an interesting article here at ConsortiumNews.com.
Welcome back to the show, Daniel.
How are you?
I'm fine.
How are you, Scott?
I'm doing great.
Hey, listen, this Syria civil war is just a mess.
And there's so many different players on so many different sides.
And also time keeps going by.
So that means the situation on the ground is changing.
And who knows who the Turks are prioritizing this week?
I can't keep track.
And you're doing a hell of a good job of keeping your eye on what's going on here.
And I guess if I can overly simplify something for you to elaborate on, it would be that the CIA-backed terrorists have taken a real hit here as of late.
They've been driven out of Aleppo and they're in the Idlib province now.
And then Donald Trump came in and he, according to the Washington Post, and nobody really disputed this, I guess they said that he really did call off the CIA support for the jihad there.
And so where does that leave Likud, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the ruling coalition in Israel and their plans for the future of Syria?
Daniel?
Well, I mean, a couple of things to keep in mind.
So this one part of the Syrian war is winding down, it seems.
Al-Qaeda and ISIS are really on the run.
And it looks like Assad, backed by Iran, Russia, and Hezbollah, looks like he's at the point of sort of cleaning up most of the country, reestablishing control.
But wars just don't end neatly.
They tend to transmute themselves or reincarnate themselves in different forms.
And so there are a number of strings left untied here.
And the most serious involves Iran, which is at the point of extending its reach, its power, from Iraq into Syria and even into southern Lebanon, which is the Hezbollah stronghold.
So this is setting off alarms in a lot of places, the U.S., but especially Israel, which is, you know, a hop, skip, and a jump away.
And after defeating Hezbollah in a war, a 34-day war in 2006, is extremely alarmed to find that now faces on its northern front a Hezbollah, Syrian army, Iran Revolutionary Guard, and Iraqi Shiite militias all banded together in a common military front, which Israel feels is very threatening.
So Israel has been engaging in serious saber-rattling.
Netanyahu just got back from a visit to Russia to confer with Vladimir Putin.
And their top intelligence officials were just recently in Washington doing the same with the Trump administration.
So everyone is gearing up for stage two.
And that seems to be some kind of Israeli action aimed at pushing these pro-Iranian forces back.
Oh, man.
So, now I just read a headline the other day, and I tried to find it and I couldn't find it, but they said that there's been more than 100 strikes by the Israelis against Assad or Hezbollah, although I think the way they frame it is usually against their arms caches rather than against troop strength in any particular case.
But I don't know that much about it.
What do you know?
Well, I mean, the 100-plus figure comes from Netanyahu, who conceded that figure recently.
And Israel has intervened against Hezbollah primarily.
It's intervened in order to destroy Hezbollah arms hordes in various places in Syria.
So it's intervened.
It's also intervened by tilting quite decidedly in favor of the rebels.
So rebels have been treated in Israeli hospitals.
It seems that other kinds of aid have also taken place, but we're really not quite sure.
But Israel has tilted to some considerable extent in favor of the rebel side, which means they just bet on the wrong horse, and now their horse is losing, and they're very upset.
Yeah, well, something about this keeps happening.
Since 2003, Israel's partisans in the United States push for these actions that are supposed to weaken Iran and only ever strengthen Iran.
Before, the Shiite Crescent was sort of a metaphysical thing.
Now they've really got their land bridge all the way through from Iraqi Shiastan into Syria, right?
Correct.
That's the big story here.
And that's all because—and, you know, I always go back to this because, jeez, it's just so blatant.
Jeffrey Goldberg says to Obama, he says, Hey, Obama, getting rid of Assad would be a great way to bring Iran down a peg in the Middle East, don't you think, Obama?
And Obama says, Why, that's right, Jeffrey Goldberg.
That's exactly what we're doing.
I can't tell you more because then I'd have to kill you.
Waka, waka, waka.
It's right there in the Atlantic.
The title is, as president, I Don't Bluff, talking about, Trust me, Israel, I won't let Iran get the bomb is the main subject there.
But this is the discussion about Syria.
So this whole thing, obviously, is meant to weaken as one of the main motivations.
Anyway, I won't stack them up and read minds here.
But clearly a major part of this is weakening Iran by weakening their or overthrowing even their closest Arab allied state, their only Arab allied state.
And yet, as you're describing, seems like they're only getting more and more powerful as a result.
Again, it's like the Iraq war, too.
It's like Israel.
This is a this is a major miscalculation.
In fact, it's one of the worst miscalculations the Israelis have ever made.
I mean, bear in mind, the United States is 8000 miles away or 5000 miles away, whatever the hell the figure is.
So the America is big and powerful and far away and therefore can afford to make mistakes.
But Israel is not.
Israel is very close, you know, close by.
And it it usually judges things much better.
This is a really a major miscalculation until Assad went on the offensive.
Israel was really in the catbird seat.
I mean, it's the disarray in the in the Arab Muslim world was was immense.
There were civil wars breaking out.
And consequently, its Arab Muslim opponents were vastly weakened and Israel was strengthened.
Economically, it was doing fantastically.
It just seemed that in every respect, Israel had never been in a stronger position.
But now suddenly it finds that the situation has changed dramatically.
And it's very, very worried.
And it's very worried because it realizes that it screwed up.
It backed the wrong side.
I mean, how the hell Israel could have been so stupid as to think it would benefit from an Al-Qaeda ISIS victory is unknown.
But then again, Obama engaged in the same miscalculation.
I mean, he was surreptitiously backing Al-Qaeda or at least backing people who are backing Al-Qaeda and backing ISIS.
You know, Gareth says that it was a follow up to the piece on the American Conservative Magazine site about how America armed all the jihadists all this time, where he said, and now why did this happen, really?
And he says in there that, you know, the CIA and Hillary Clinton, David Petraeus and these, well, political hacks and their institutional interests, that they really prevailed and that the Israelis at first were hesitant and that it took about six months for them to really, you know, pick up the clarion call for, yeah, we got to get rid of Assad.
And now I got the quotes.
I won't waste your interview time playing them again.
But Michael Oren, anyone can just search Oren, O-R-E-N, Oren Sunis, and it'll come right up.
Again, it's Jeffrey Goldberg, and he's explaining Israel's position on this, saying they wanted Assad gone all along, even if it benefits ISIS and Al-Qaeda.
They don't care.
But so what do you think of that, though, that really it was Hillary Clinton and David Petraeus and them leading the parade on this and the Israelis were like, well, I guess, OK, guys, because after all, they were negotiating with Assad, you know, touch and go, right?
Yeah, but this goes back decades, decades.
I mean, the U.S. – I mean, Eisenhower used to try to enlist – used to go to the Saudi king.
It was King Abdulaziz, the original king of Saudi Arabia in the 50s and 60s.
And he used to say to him – I mean, this is Dwight David Eisenhower – he used to say, like, now, wouldn't jihad be a great tool against the communists?
And he couldn't get it going.
But the U.S. has always oriented itself to the Saudi Wahhabists and to jihad.
I mean these are the kind of forces that the U.S. has employed throughout the Cold War.
And it just can't – it's in its DNA.
It can't shift horses in midstream.
For a brief period after 9-11, the U.S. may have backed off to a degree, to a small degree.
But now it's just back doing the same thing, backing the jihadists against the radical Arab nationalists.
It happens again and again and again and again.
The pattern is a well-established one by this point.
Well, and that's the thing that makes it almost sound like unbelievable conspiracy, this and that.
Because you talk about Ronald Reagan backed the Mujahideen back when.
And that even Bill Clinton kept backing them in the 90s, even as they were attacking us.
You know, obviously, Bosnia, this and that.
But you want to say that America's backing al-Qaeda and backing, you know, Saudi-backed – also Saudi-backed jihadists after 9-11?
And in fact, after Iraq War II, where about 4,000 out of the 4,500 Americans that died, died fighting the Sunni-based insurgency that they were at least allied with and part of during that time.
That's some pretty high treason.
It sounds like maybe you must be wrong or something.
Because otherwise, wouldn't that be a scandal other than on this show?
To me, it's amazing.
Consortiumnews.com.
It's amazing that it's not a scandal.
But look, it was amazing that Obama's suppression of the 29-page chapter in the 9-11 report dealing with the Saudi connection.
It was amazing that that chapter was suppressed for, what was it, 12 years?
And why wasn't that a scandal?
I mean the reason it's not a scandal is America is an oligarchical republic where foreign policy is in the hands of a small coterie in Washington.
And the people are just completely outside the loop.
Yeah, well, and it is all domestic politics, right?
It has virtually nothing to do with anything that you or I out here in the country would consider to be the national interest, the responsibility of these men.
Instead, it's just what they want.
Yes, but it seems to be quite clear that Hillary paid a price for her backing of these endless wars.
And that Trump, crazy as it seems now, Trump gained by virtue of being the, quote, peace candidate, which he was to a very small degree for a limited amount of time.
But he benefited the polls for that reason and Hillary suffered.
So we have an orange-haired maniac in the White House.
Right, and it really is, just like you say, it's just because during the campaign he said, I'm for and against everything.
Whether you like, if you like something, I'm for it.
We should have won it.
If you're against it, yeah, we never should have done that.
Whichever, whatever your position is, and if you can't see through that, then you'll hear enough to like, I guess.
But, you know, there's an article today on this point here by a guy named John Carney at Breitbart called Trump supporters will pay the price of the Afghan war.
And it's like, it's as deadly serious as that title sounds.
He means by that they will be the ones dying in this thing as he extends the war when they're the ones who elected him because he was the one who said that he would not do that to them.
And he cites that study that says that Hillary Clinton lost in the major swing states there, and especially in the counties that suffered the worst casualties from Iraq War II and Afghanistan.
And, you know, that's Steve Bannon's post-administration job line at Breitbart right now.
Or at least, you know, it's within the spectrum of what they're arguing is that they're sick of this.
They don't want to hear any more tough guy stuff about kicking butt.
And they don't want to hear any more stupid crap about red, white and blue flags.
Their older brother already died in this thing.
And they really believe hope and change, cha-ching, that Trump meant what he said, that we're not doing this nation building and these long term wars anymore.
Yeah, but, you know, but the guy is the guy is as a as a screaming idiot.
He doesn't know what he's doing, what he believes.
He'll say one thing and the opposite, depending on the circumstances.
And also, as we know, you know, Trump's not in power.
The deep state is in power.
So he's also so the deep state is running things.
And Trump is a figurehead at this point.
Why don't you elaborate on that to any and all degrees that you wish?
I mean, the one semi sensible thing that that Clinton that that that Trump's on the campaign trail was a call for a rapprochement with Russia.
And that made perfect sense to try to undo the poisonous atmosphere created by by Obama and Clinton and all the rest of the neocon crowd.
But, of course, that's what the Democrats have hit him hardest on.
Is he any talk of a rapprochement with Russia?
And they've dredged up Russiagate, which to me is, you know, has zero evidence behind it.
But they've they've beaten and battered and bludgeoned the guy with with all this Russiagate nonsense.
And as a result, I mean, this guy has been beaten to a pulp.
He doesn't know what he believes anymore.
He's terrified of opposing the deep state, which by which I mean the Pentagon, the CIA, the major media and the foreign policy establishment.
And so, you know, the only way he figures that he can sort of, you know, improve himself in their eyes is by playing the tough guy in Afghanistan or Yemen or whatever.
Which means committing the same crimes, the same idiotic mistakes that they've committed all along.
It's just it's just ludicrous.
All right.
Hold on just one second.
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And it's just his own fault, too.
I mean, if he read anything, then he would know that there's such a human as Doug Bandao and Paul Pilar and, you know, Andrew Bacevich and a few people that are, you know, anti-war enough and yet credible enough to really be in a cabinet.
He's never even heard their names before, probably.
And instead he says, well, I know I'll just get the meanest generals I can find.
They'll make me look tough by, you know, osmosis somehow or whatever.
And then so no one will attack me for being weak.
Have that political base covered.
But then and this is the same thing Obama did when he kept Robert Gates and David Petraeus and all of these bums was that way.
No one will call me weak.
But now guess what?
They own you and they're going to tell you what you have to do or else they'll resign.
And then what would you do?
Right.
So, well, Scott, you know, I mean, look, I mean, Trump's a really stupid guy and he's so, so stupid.
And you know what?
I'm sorry.
I got to interrupt you here just to elaborate on that real quick.
And I'm not a big fan of Dresdner, but it doesn't matter.
If people go look at The Washington Post and you know what?
Maybe a lot of these are anonymous quotes to Anonymous Post or Washington Post articles.
So I don't know.
Take them for what they're worth.
But he's got a collection of just 100 examples of at least supposedly Trump's own staff talking about, well, yeah, we try to distract him or we try to make sure to include his name in every paragraph to get him to pay attention for more than 32 seconds in a row.
And this kind of thing, they as he puts it, they talk about him like he's a toddler.
You know, they're terrified of what he would do if they don't keep him busy with busy work.
He's a toddler.
In fact, that's deeply insulting to toddlers.
So I think you should apologize to all two and three year olds out there.
Dresdner definitely owes him an apology there.
But so, of course, the spin there is that, you know what?
The elected government is just not up to the task.
And so it's a good thing that the deep state is here.
There's an article today in The Washington Post about how the CIA is keeping a close watch on Pompeo, the appointee of the elected president of the United States.
And so if that's their job, they don't even they're not even shy to put that in The Washington Post, for Christ's sake.
It's amazing.
The CIA, a co-equal branch of government right there with the Congress and the presidency.
Co-equal, you mean superior.
Anyway, but but I just got it.
I just got to emphasize one point.
There's a there's a there's a very nasty three letter word which has not come up in our conversation conversation yet.
And that's O.I.L.
I mean, the Saudis sit on top of 22 percent of the world's proven oil reserves.
Qatar sits on some huge portion of the world's natural gas reserves.
The U.S. has invested at this point more than.
Wait for it.
Ten trillion dollars.
That's a one followed by 13 zeros.
If they've invested that amount in militarizing the Persian Gulf since the mid 70s.
Now, the reason that the U.S. engages all these idiocies, you know, you know, trying to block Iran, you know, backing Al-Qaeda or backing people who back Al-Qaeda, et cetera, et cetera, is that it sees its imperial future rests on controlling the Persian Gulf.
That is the prime bottleneck in the world today.
And America's power, if it's to continue, means that it must maintain control over that bottleneck.
So that's why the U.S. is locked in this marriage with Saudi Arabia.
That's why the U.S., you know, is, you know, is its militaries, its ships, you know, patrol the waterways there.
That's why these wars are growing, because oil is the great prize.
OK, so let me ask you about this a little bit more, because I'm interested in exactly what all you think about this.
Back before the first Gulf War, I'm pretty sure it was, the libertarian economist David Henderson wrote a piece for a study for Cato that said that, whoa, whoa, whoa, we spend way more securing Middle Eastern oil than we even spend on Middle Eastern oil.
This is absolutely insane and we should stop it.
That was before, that was just during Desert Shield, for crying out loud.
I don't even think he was counting the cost of Desert Shield.
I think he was counting up till then.
And then they reiterated there at the, I guess, in the mid-90s there at the Cato Institute about that.
And so I guess, and I think they have in the 2000s, I don't know about the teens, but in the 2000s at some point they've updated and said that, yes, that's obviously still true.
We spend far more in the Middle East on militarism and propping up dictators and foreign aid and all this stuff than we do on the oil itself.
So that brings up the question then, is it all just Rex Tillerson rules the world and it's only just about funneling profits to Exxon because of the old Standard Oil connections to the Saudis from back when?
Or is it more a matter of military strategy that we need to control these choke points in case we get into a nuclear war with the Chinese?
We've got to be able to make sure they can't import any fuel from the Middle East?
This kind of thinking or who decides?
Anyway, I guess it does go without saying that Tillerson is the Secretary of State right now.
So I don't want to play that fact down.
I think that all those factors are important.
But I think that the important thing is that America is the imperial master of the world.
And one way it demonstrates its mastery is by controlling this all important choke point because if it doesn't control it, others will step in and take control instead.
So the last thing the United States wants is for China to get involved in controlling the Persian Gulf and therefore allocating oil to the eastern Pacific or the western Pacific I should actually say.
And so – which would make China – give China a strategic edge over the entire region.
So the U.S. feels it must maintain its primacy in this all important choke hold in order to establish itself as the world's imperial power.
I mean is that realistic or they're just projecting their own – I think it seems like if China – and I don't want to project benevolence onto the Chinese pseudo commie dictatorship there or anything.
But it seems like if they have an interest in armed force in the Persian Gulf, it's to provide security and keep the lanes open.
Not to try to become the new hegemon over Iran and Arabia as the Americans have tried to do.
Why would they be so stupid?
But if the U.S. somehow withdrew.
Yeah, even then.
I mean how much is it going to cost?
Can't the Chinese look at America and laugh and know better than to try to replicate what we're doing?
Why would they need to?
Very possibly.
But still the Chinese and the Russians too and Iran as well would step in as the essential arbiters of the region.
Yeah.
And whether they probably do it better than the U.S. does and they probably would like to limit their obligations to the Saudis.
Because the Saudis are at this point this huge source of instability in the region.
Don't you say in here too that the Saudis are now through the Iraqis reaching out to the Iranians and trying to ratchet tensions down here?
Did I say that?
The Saudis?
The Saudis are not trying to ratchet tensions down with the Iranians.
I'm sorry.
I read a thing yesterday that said that they had sent an emissary to try to, you know.
The Saudis are playing various games.
They've been in touch with certain friendly forces, Shiite forces in Iraq.
They're trying to sponsor this one out-of-power sheik in Qatar, et cetera.
There's a lot of maneuvering going on.
But the Saudi-Iranian hostility is running as high as it ever was as far as I know.
There's been no letup in that regard.
But if the U.S. were to withdraw from the Persian Gulf, that would simply mean the baton would pass to other forces.
And these forces would then emerge as the key regional powers.
So the U.S. – so China would gain an edge with regard to Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, et cetera.
There would be a fundamental power shift in that part of the world.
The U.S. doesn't want to see that.
So that's – What exactly do you mean by edge there?
They'd gain which edge?
Lean on those governments to kick us out, for example?
Or somehow limit U.S. influence?
Yes.
The U.S. would find that its influence would be significantly diminished and that the new power would appear to be China.
I mean I guess – I'm trying to get to – yeah, but so what?
In other words, the whole thing is a self-licking ice cream cone, right?
I mean it just sounds like they're going to lose power, but then so what?
They'll have less water to sail in?
Or what will happen?
I quite agree that what will happen is that there will be a fundamental realignment globally, that the U.S. will find itself on the outs in regard – in the Western Pacific.
It will find itself having to cede authority to the Chinese.
And that will be a significant change.
And for the global hegemon, it will be a major step downward.
And global hegemons don't like to take major steps downward.
All right.
Well, so one thing that is true that Donald Trump said in his speech the other night about Afghanistan was, hey, it was broke when I got here, man.
These guys, they left me with a real mess.
And then he made the terrible mistake of following up with, but don't worry.
I'm going to take care of it, which why would he put himself on the line like that?
But anyway, he did.
But he sure is right that, OK, he is the new guy.
And, in fact, he's here because the Americans didn't want the Bushes and Clintons anymore because this is all their fault and we all know it.
So – Scott, can I get a movie plug in at this point?
Yeah, go ahead.
Everyone listening should – they should go to Netflix and tune in to a wonderful movie called War Machine.
It came out a couple of months ago.
It's a hilarious and exciting, intelligent, quite funny portrait of U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan.
And it is just devastating.
Right on.
You'll learn more from spending two hours watching that show than you will listening to me blabber on.
Cool.
Well, I'm going to go ahead and second that.
As I mentioned when I was on the Tom Woods show the other day, when I had the chicken pox, I watched War Machine.
And I really liked it too, and especially because it's based on Michael Hastings' book, The Operators.
Right.
And I used to interview Michael back then all the time, including at 4 in the morning Afghanistan time or whatever.
He would come on my radio show and explain all of this stuff.
So my brand new book – I don't know if you know, Daniel.
I'm going to send you a copy, but my brand new book Fool's Errand is out.
It's all about Afghanistan, and he's in it a lot.
So reverse plug.
If anybody liked that movie, you'll love my book too.
There's plenty of Hastings in there.
It's a great film.
It really is.
I loved it too.
It teaches you everything you want to know.
Here's my only problem.
I think that they should have made the Hastings character the protagonist, and then they should have made McChrystal the bad guy.
Except then you can't really use Brad Pitt to be your lead or whatever, I guess.
They made McChrystal into almost – and really by extension America – into this kind of innocent, bumbling, well-meaning, but off on a fool's errand kind of a guy.
As though McChrystal wasn't a cold, calculating, Delta Force killer who knew he was lying, et cetera, et cetera.
Perhaps you're right, but the film really works well.
I can't vouch for every last detail, but the film works really well.
It really drives the point home very powerfully that there is no way out of this quagmire in Afghanistan.
Trump has the wolf by the ears, as we say.
This goes to what I was going to ask you before the gratuitous movie and book plug.
So if you worked for this guy since he fired everybody else, and you were the new chief strategist or the new national security advisor – or better, the new deputy national security advisor who actually does the work – and you're facing not just Afghanistan, but the whole situation you described.
The empire's falling apart.
It's the rise of China.
I mean, I don't think they're that ambitious internationally really, but I mean, I guess in their own region anyway.
As far as all of that goes, he did just inherit this mess, and it is only a few months, six, seven months into his term of office here.
So what would you tell him to do?
How would you tell him to approach, well, for example, the Saudi-Iran mess in the Middle East, so much of which has been caused by the U.S. in the first place, as he well knows?
I have no – my advice to Donald Trump would be to take out a gun and put it to his forehead and pull the trigger.
But I think that if I was running a country, what I would do is I would – the first thing I would do is institute a very serious carbon tax with the goal of weaning the U.S. off oil within five to ten years, which I think is an eminently reasonable, practical goal.
It would create a bonanza for wind farmers, for alternative energy forces, for people building superconductivity, et cetera, et cetera, conservationists of all kind.
But the point is that oil is just costing far more than whatever benefit, economic benefit it accrues, costing far more in the form of global warming, military expenditures, traffic and congestion, de-urbanization, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Have you ever heard of the phrase resource curse?
Yeah.
Well, I mean Saudi Arabia is the greatest example of the resource curse in history.
It is a giant rentier economy which puts out oil corruption and terrorism and religious fanaticism.
It's the most dysfunctional society.
It's the most spectacularly dysfunctional society in modern history.
And there's no cure for it.
The only cure for it is to kick the oil addiction, to adopt a sensible energy policy which would require withdrawing in total from the Middle East and concentrating on rebuilding America in a smart way, not in a stupid Trump way at home.
And that means mass transit, conservation, rail, high speed rail, re-urbanization, creating jobs for the inner city population, re-industrialization, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
But there's just no way the capitalists will do that.
It's just beyond the scope of the capitalist regime.
Well, I mean that's the thing is prices, as long as the subsidies are for the oil companies and for the militarism protecting all the oil resources, all the money that goes into the Navy protecting all these shipments on the seas and all the tax breaks compared to the other energy industries and all the different unfair advantages that government gives them to lower their price.
In fact, this is something that we're seeing in effect right now.
Michael Clare's written about this and back in the last time around, Greg Pallast wrote about this back 10, 15 years ago about how the Saudis, and they're not shy about saying that this is their strategy, that they try to keep oil prices artificially high, as high as they can and with their OPEC cartel cronyism conniving in the market and all of that until they start seeing some real competition, whether it's in the form of alternative energies like you're talking about or shale and tar sands and this kind of stuff where this oil is only available at higher prices.
Then every once in a while like they're doing right now, they try to overproduce in the market and dump the price way down in order to bankrupt their competition and prevent that kind of thing from happening.
You have Uncle Sam riding in the sidecar with them on this policy.
I wonder what Rex Tillerson thinks of that.
Think of all the Texas oil men who are getting killed by that kind of thing, but maybe he's not on their side.
He's on the king's side.
If Americans paid the true cost of a gallon of gasoline, it would be, what would it be, $20, $30, $40 a gallon?
Yeah, and then all those things that you're talking about all of a sudden become perfectly reasonable for the price.
Yes.
And then you don't even need a central program to do it.
You just need to cease the central program that's helping oil.
Yes, you're absolutely correct.
That's what would happen.
There would be a gold rush for alternative oil, for superconductivity, for conservation, for other forms of energy production, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
It would be a revolution.
But the world has been in a hydrocarbon age for two centuries.
This would be a second or third, depending on how you count it, industrial revolution.
But capitalism just can't do it.
It simply is not up to the task.
It's too short-sighted.
It's too selfish.
It's too oligarchical.
It's only the working class itself that's capable of creating this kind of revolution.
Well, I don't know about capitalism as an economic system, but certainly the American empire, which is I think what you're referring to there really, our current system, is the one that won't allow it.
Anyway, yeah.
Nah, semantics.
I know what you mean, and you know what I mean, and it's all good.
Hey, listen.
I love talking with you, Daniel.
You're such a great writer.
When's that new article coming out about the Saudis for the American Conservative Magazine?
It's coming out shortly.
I'm not really quite sure when.
It's actually about Wahhabism.
You know what Wahhabism is, of course, Scott, right?
Yeah.
So it's about – and the point is a very simple one.
The point is that Wahhabism is kind of a nasty reactionary religion, which sort of grew up in this back of – this Arab back of the beyond, the Najd, which is this area around Riyadh.
But the point is that if it wasn't for US imperialism, Wahhabism would have no impact whatsoever beyond outside the desert.
It's a desert religion, which is of no value, no interest whatsoever to outsiders.
It's only US imperialism, which has blown it up into a world-altering force.
So Wahhabism certainly has – deserves a lot of blame.
But the real onus lies on the US, which has transformed this once obscure religion into a world-altering force.
It's amazing.
Well, I can't wait to read that.
I've told people before in context when you were on the show and we talked about it, but also time and again in other circumstances when it comes up how important your article that you wrote for Consortium News is about Moussaoui and what he talked about in his deposition.
This is the convicted al-Qaeda co-conspirator who spilled his guts.
Pretty honestly it seemed like, for the most part anyway.
And then you wrote this great piece about what all this reveals about the Saudi kingdom and their relationship with the religious kooks and the terrorists and whatever like that.
So I really can't wait to read your take on what you're talking about here for the American conservatives.
Sounds good.
And so if anybody wants to search that Consortium News article, just search Daniel Lazar, but with an E on the end.
Daniel Lazar.
I pronounced it right?
And Moussaoui.
And it'll come right up for you there.
All right, listen, thank you so much for coming back on the show.
I really do appreciate it.
No problem, Scott.
My pleasure.
All right, you guys.
That is Daniel Lazar.
Check him out at ConsortiumNews.com.
And this one is called Israel's alarm over the Syrian debacle.
And it's really good on that topic, too.
We'll be running it tomorrow on Antiwar.com.
Thanks, you guys.
