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Alright everybody, welcome back to the show.
It's Antiwar Radio.
And man, the Toronto Star wishes that they were good enough to have the rights to the work of Eric Margulies.
They're not good enough.
So go look at EricMargulies.com.
Right now, the most recent article is called The Rains Came.
And not in a good way like ending a drought either.
Welcome back to the show, Eric.
How are you?
It's always good to be back with you, Scott.
I'm really happy to have you here.
I'm really sorry to have to hear the news I'm about to hear, but I want to hear it.
So just the facts.
Give us the lowdown on the flooding in Pakistan.
Well, it's the worst rains in anyone's memory.
Monsoon rains.
Monsoon rains are not like rains.
They're like a hundred foot water main breaking over your head.
I've driven through them in Pakistan.
The sky turns pitch black in the middle of the day.
This deluge comes down.
Roads are flooded.
High winds.
It's really like a biblical disaster.
And this is what's hit Pakistan.
There are now reportedly over 15 million people who have been displaced by the flooding.
It's affected large parts of the country.
A terribly poor country.
One of the poorest in the world.
And there are probably large numbers of people dead.
They don't know how many yet.
And we're getting the first reports of cholera.
But really the country is devastated.
Okay.
Well, I'm looking at my map on the wall here.
Tell me about the regions, the different regions of Pakistan that are affected.
Is it really just the whole country?
I mean, you throw around words like 15 million people, Eric, and I don't know what to imagine.
Well, Scott, if you look at Pakistan, it's really a one river town, if you want to call it that.
There's the mighty Indus River, which rises high in the Karakoram Mountains.
And I've actually been at its source.
And it goes down all the way to the Arabian Sea near Karachi.
So the whole, it's the spinal column of Pakistan.
Now, this river is flooded.
And other rivers, like the Jhelum, there are five major rivers in Punjab.
Some of them are flooding.
There's this huge wall of water coming down from the mountains to the north.
And we're in the second wave now, and another wave apparently is coming.
So what used to be called the Northwest Frontier Province, where U.S. drones are continuing attacking so-called militants in spite of these floods.
But that area, plus Punjab further down, and now Sindh, the southern region, are all experiencing extensive flooding, which has destroyed roads, bridges, factories, agricultural irrigation systems, this year's crops, and Pakistan's only major foreign exchange earner, which is cotton.
Well, geez, that's our only foreign exchange earner.
Practically.
I'm sorry.
Well, so tell me this, because I have no idea about the geography of this place.
Is it the case that maybe Peshawar or Karachi or some of these other cities are far enough away from the flood plain and or high enough at a different elevation where they're going to be spared?
That's right, Scott.
There have been no reports of major flooding in the cities.
But what they are doing is getting a flood of refugees, because Pakistan now has 15 or maybe 20 million by now.
I don't know, because there are a lot of people moving around of refugees who have to be fed.
They have no water.
They have no shelter.
They're absolutely desperate.
And following the floods, it's going to be intense heat.
So it's a major humanitarian crisis.
Pakistani government is completely inept.
It's broken down.
It's doing very little.
The army has been left to do what it can to help.
But the response of the government has been really deplorable.
So, well, I mean, I guess it's a good thing to hear that the major cities are out of the way.
I mean, you'd be talking about the destruction of the whole society at that point.
But certainly you're talking about the whole society on hold now to try to do something about this.
All regular business is off, basically, right?
That's right, Scott.
Well, Pakistan was just hanging on by its fingernails before these floods.
It's bankrupt.
It's former politicians.
U.S.
-supported politicians stole whatever little money there was left.
The country is essentially destitute.
It lives on American handouts.
It's become a beggar nation.
And we're giving billions of dollars to the Pakistani military to help wage the war in Afghanistan and to attack Islamic militants, tribal militants.
But the problem is now that the government's almost kaput in Afghanistan.
It's going to need billions and billions more dollars.
I guess it's going to have to pay that.
Yeah, well, was that a Freudian thing, or you were talking about Afghanistan?
Because same story, either side of the border.
Oh, sorry, it was Freudian, or the Afghan version of Freud.
Yeah, however you say that in Pashto, huh?
Right.
All right, well, so I guess I'm sorry to kind of make this about American policy and not about the humanitarian crisis, but it is sort of the same story.
What does this mean for the future of the Af-Pak war, as the Rockefeller Democrat warmongers over at the Center for New American Security like to call it?
Well, often compared to what's going on in Afghanistan, now we Americans were waging a war in Afghanistan against the population.
And it's like we're fighting a fire on the roof of a house.
You're on the roof, while meanwhile the lower floors are burning.
And this is exactly what's happening now, because the war in Afghanistan cannot be waged by the U.S. and its impressed allies without use of Pakistan and Pakistan's bases, airfields, ports, fuel pipelines or fuel routes, logistical lines, Pakistani army, Pakistani intelligence services, etc.
And that's the American base for waging this war in a very remote part of the world.
And the more trouble there is in Pakistan, the harder it is for the U.S. to conduct military operations and the more expensive.
And right now, Pakistan is increasingly in chaos.
The U.S. installed government of Zardari, Asif Ali Zardari, the husband of the murdered Benazir Bhutto, is just collapsing under its own incompetence.
And the U.S. is having a very difficult time finding some kind of replacement.
Well, what about the Pakistani military?
Are they going to be able to, I mean, I'm not saying I'm for this or whatever, but if it's the difference between the four major provinces, as you've taught me before, being held together or them breaking apart, which would likely lead to massive violence in what's already a disastrous humanitarian situation, I mean, is the military even able to do a coup and hold the country together if the Zardari government falls?
Because the parliament isn't just going to elect a new guy.
I mean, it would be the whole parliamentary government that fell, is I think what you're referring to, right?
Well, Scott, I see two options.
The military has ruled Pakistan for half of its existence since 1947.
I think that's eventually what's going to happen.
Again, there's going to be a new military government.
The U.S. has just engineered the extension of the term of the chief of staff of the military General Kayani and the head of Pakistani intelligence, General Shuja Pasha.
This is unprecedented in Pakistan.
It's like extending the term of the joint chiefs of staff for another three years.
Freezes all promotions.
Very unpopular.
Unprecedented, as I said.
It's being taken as very likely as a step towards full military rule.
The military really is Pakistan's real government.
The people in Islamabad are mainly window dressing.
There is one other option, though, and that is that the party, the Muslim League, they're led by Nawaz Sharif, who is fairly popular.
He's hardly a gifted leader, but he's certainly a much more respectable alternative than Asif Zardari, stands in line next to be prime minister if Zardari falls.
Whether he can hold Pakistan together and manage it remains to be seen.
I don't mean to come out on the side against decentralization of power in general or whatever.
I'm talking about in this particular circumstance.
I'm not for states falling apart in all times and all places.
Not when it means many people being hurt.
I want to see repeal and decentralization in a calm manner, like in America.
I want to see a limited constitutional republic, and then we abolish that.
You know what I mean?
Instead of just a Soviet-style collapse, which is obviously the way we're headed right now, speaking of policy in Central Asia.
Everybody hang tight.
It's the great Eric Margulies, author of American Raj.
EricMargulies.com is his website.broadcast.lrn.fm All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
It's Anti-War Radio.
I'm Scott Horton.
I'm talking with Eric Margulies.
He's the author of American Raj.
Liberation or domination?
I think the answer to that's pretty obvious.
His website is EricMargulies.com.
You can also read, I believe, everything that he writes at LouRockwell.com.
And we link to virtually all of it at AntiWar.com as well.
So now we're talking about the legitimacy, such as it is, of the government of Pakistan and the effect that this horrible flooding is going to have on the stability of that state and American policy in the region.
And I guess I'll just let you talk some more, because I know you've got all kinds of things to say here.
Well, Scott, it's a little bit dismaying that Washington's primary reaction to this was a political rather than a humanitarian concern.
Pakistan is unpopular, it's true, but this is a terrible human catastrophe.
The suffering there of these poor people with no homes, no food, no water, and no shelter is, you know, millions of them is really heart-rending.
Pakistan is supposed to be a close American ally.
The concern being expressed very much in the States is that, well, this is going to help Muslim Islamic groups.
Why?
Well, because they are providing effective aid and humanitarian relief for all these millions of refugees, whereas the U.S.
-backed government has been a dismal failure.
And these Islamic groups are going to be even more popular because of this work.
But as I just wrote in my column on the subject, that hardly matters.
Washington shouldn't be concerned by that, because 95% of Pakistanis already hate the United States and say it's a bigger threat to Pakistan than India, its old enemy.
Obviously, we're going in the wrong direction of Pakistan, and we're breeding enemies faster than we can shoot them down with predators.
And we, Americans, need to take a different approach to Pakistan and start making these people our friends rather than bitter enemies.
Well, I mean, all you're really doing is making the case, I think, if I heard you right there, Eric, that Pakistan is just full to the rim with Islamic extremists, the kind that we have to kill.
So we ought to be happy that the floods are just getting rid of them for us, because that's the motivation of people that hate America, is something that Mohammed said in that book makes them hate us.
Well, that is a view.
I'm flooded with emails like this from less thoughtful elements in America, to put it politely.
The know-nothings, as they used to be called.
As I just wrote a column for the Huffington Post, what inspired the 9-11 attackers was not Islam.
It was hatred or a desire to punish America's policies for supporting Israel and for what they called occupying Saudi Arabia and other Muslim countries.
This was the reason.
But the attack was twisted in the American media and by the White House into making Americans believe that this was somehow inspired by Islam and that Islam is the enemy, hence this ugly and stupid mosque controversy in New York, which is bringing out the darkest and ugliest side of American society.
Muslims are not the enemy.
What's happening is political.
Pakistanis are angry at us, not because we are Christians or Jews, but because of what we've been doing in their country and what we've been doing around the Muslim world, particularly so in Palestine.
Tell them about Abdul Azam.
Abdul Azam I met in the mid-1980s in Peshawar, Pakistan.
He was running a little one-room outfit called the Afghanistan Information Agency.
He was trying to get the word of the struggle of the Afghan tribes against the Soviet invaders in those days, getting the story of this epic resistance out to the West and also out to the rest of the Muslim world.
He became Osama bin Laden's teacher and spiritual guide and formed a lot of bin Laden's world philosophy.
And Azam said to me, as I quote in my first book, War at the Top of the World, an amazing line, I'd never heard it before, this was 1986.
He said to me, Eric, he said, when we have finished driving out the Soviet colonial power from Afghanistan, we are going to turn and drive out the American colonists from Saudi Arabia.
Shocked, I'd never heard my country referred to as a colonialist power.
But that was his view, that's Osama's view, and certainly it's become current in the Muslim world.
Well, and as you say, this was the view of the people that we were backing at the time, and I think you told me before that you kind of argued with him a little bit and said, well, whatever do you mean that America is a colonial power?
Because, of course, that's what the Reds say about us, but who cares what the Reds say?
They're the Reds, for crying out loud.
Exactly.
The only real criticism that I was aware of of America in those days, 1980s, came from the communists, and as you say, they were just full of Marxist-Leninist hot air, and what else do you expect them to say?
Ironically, in retrospect, Scott, a lot of what the Soviets said about us was true, just as a lot of what we said about them was true as well.
It was two pots calling each other black.
Right.
It's sort of like the Republicans and the Democrats.
When they agree about stuff, they're all wrong, but when they're accusing each other, they're usually at least partly right, you know?
Exactly, Scott.
Again, politicians, man, they're the same all over the place.
All right, so, and now again, to be perfectly clear here, this was not a religious mandate for an Islamic caliphate to take over the world and convert us all to Islam.
This was about what the American government was doing in Saudi Arabia, is what this guy, Azzam, told you in 1980, what?
1986.
All right, then.
Just so that we're on the record here and people understand what this is about, because what a simple lie that it's about their religion.
But you know what?
And there's a great article about this at Philip Weiss's blog called The New Antisemitism, and this is what I've been saying this whole year long at least, is that this is exactly as what I've learned anyway of the conspiracy theories, the worst kind, about Jews in Europe in the 30s.
This is the story, is that they can all hear each other thinking, and they're all in on it against us, and they're different from us, even though they live here with us, they're separate, they're our fifth column, and the reason that they do what they do is because of the religion that they believe, and all these things.
This is what primarily a bunch of Israel firsters, ironically, are trying to get the American people to believe about Muslims.
And this is the kind of thing, not to be too hyperbolic and politically correct like a Democrat or something, but this is the kind of thing that leads to holocausts, or at least to, you know, in American history, rounding up the Japanese.
Eric?
Scott, I couldn't agree more.
I've been saying this for years.
It's in my new book, American Raj.
I say that this is the hatred of Muslims, which has become a mantra, a tenant of all right-wing parties in the US and in Europe, Canada as well, is the new anti-Semitism.
It's just very similar to the 1930s hatred of Jews in Europe.
Just take the word out, Muslim, and replace it with Jew, and you've got the same caricatures, the ugly cartoons, the terrorists, the dirty, etc., etc., etc.that you have.
I remember 60 years ago, my mother said to me, she said, Eric, one day, all the Jews and all the Muslims in America, there are going to be pogroms against them.
And we're getting close to halfway there now.
And you're right, the right-wing neocons are pouring gas on the fire of racial and religious hatred.
Well, I sure wish we had more time to talk, but I've got to go and talk with Grant F. Smith about them neocons.
And, of course, it's funny because it almost sounds like the same anti-Semitic conspiracy theory stuff, but it's not, it's real.
All right, well, hang tight, everybody.
We'll be back.
Thanks, Eric.
Give him hell, Scott.
That's the great Eric Margulies, everybody, ericmargulies.com.
