Sorry, I'm late.
I had to stop by the Whites Museum again and get the fingered at 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 hacked.
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 their army, but we killing them.
We be on CNN, like, say our names, 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, on the line, I got the great Jason Ditz.
He is the news editor of Antiwar.com.
News.
Antiwar.com.
He writes, I don't know, man, eight or ten articles a day, explaining every damn thing in the world going on important to you there.
News.
Antiwar.com.
Welcome back to the show.
How's it going?
I'm doing good, Scott.
How are you?
Good, man.
I really appreciate you making time for us today to talk about some things, because, man, there's a lot of things going on.
But I guess, first of all, I'd like to ask you about what's going on.
If you can, you know, kind of help draw out, you know, what's the status of the Syrian Army's war, with whatever help they have to, if you could include that in your answer, against the last of the FSA and the al-Qaeda holdouts in the Daraa province in southwestern Syria?
Well, it looks like Syria and Russia mostly mopped that up.
There were a few more—Russia's been negotiating deals with individual commanders on the FSA side to basically disarm in return for not being attacked, which has been working pretty well.
There's sort of a—what happens after that's sort of vague, there has been talk of giving them amnesty.
Syria's offered amnesty to some of the rebel groups just to get right with the government at this point.
Some of the rebels that don't want to do that are probably going to be bussed up north into rebel-held territory up there.
But there were four more towns that reached disarmament deals last night, and there's really not a lot of resisting rebels left that hold any meaningful territory around Daraa.
So I would expect in the next week or so, Syria will basically have the area under control.
Now, part of Russia's negotiation is that these guys aren't going to be coming in and— the Syrian military isn't going to be immediately coming in and taking over these towns, but the local political figures are going to be running them for the time being.
But it will be as non-rebel entities, at least.
And you're saying—well, let me make sure I understand you right—that the troops will be there, but that they're not going to be taking over the local governments and administering them.
They're going to keep basically whatever local regimes they have, only just they're going to go from being overseen by al-Qaeda to overseen by the SAA instead.
Right.
And in some cases, the negotiations are even that the military won't directly enter the town.
They'll just kind of stay outside, and Russia will act as an intermediary.
That was also the deal on some of the Jordan border crossings, was that Russia's going to send military police to manage those crossings temporarily as an alternative to having the Syrian army physically take them over.
And then the Syrian al-Qaeda, whatever they're calling themselves these days, the Nusra Front— Tahrir al-Sham.
Yeah.
I was going to say that, but then I thought maybe I had it mixed up with a different one.
But I guess there's Ahrar al-Sham.
That's different.
Are they still around, the Muslim Brotherhood guys?
I think they are still around in the north, but how big they are, I don't know anymore.
But down here, you did have the Tahrir al-Sham al-Qaeda guys, still Jolani and his men, basically.
That's the point.
Zawahiri's guy.
And then whatever FSA groups.
And do you know the names of them?
Does it matter?
How big were these groups compared to al-Qaeda there?
They're all just allies anyway.
Right.
That's the thing.
FSA in areas where there's a lot of Nusra Front forces tends to be a distinction without a big difference.
Ever since the US stopped really heavily backing the FSA, they more or less became an al-Qaeda front group.
They were just using the FSA name to try to present themselves as non-terrorists or to try to get involved in negotiations.
It was kind of always that way, right?
That the FSA were sort of the gun runners for the actual fighters.
Right.
Even when the war first started, there was a lot of...
Nusra was seen as the only fighting force that actually was having any real success.
So people would send aid to these other rebel groups and they would just funnel it to al-Qaeda because they figured they were the ones that knew what to do with the weapons.
Did you see the recent quote of when Mehdi Hassan interviewed Ben Rhodes, the National Security Advisor?
And he calls it absurd in place of treasonous, saying that here we're backing essentially Syria and al-Qaeda at the same time that we were adding them to the terrorist list and saying that these guys are our enemies.
Right.
And I mean...
He says it like, isn't that kind of a funny little irony rather than like, yeah, no dude, you were backing the bad guys for years, you know?
Right.
And I don't know that it's an irony or treasonous or anything so much as just business as usual for a lot of them.
I mean, especially in Syria, we've never had a really consistent position on who we're backing or why or what our endgame is.
So they just kind of do whatever they feel like at any given time.
Yeah, it wasn't treason like, oh, John Brennan joined the Muslim Brotherhood and devoted his allegiance to their cause.
It's just that they would go ahead and back the American people's enemies against their enemies, Iran and their friends.
Right.
So, yeah, they don't think of it as treason, just another day at the office.
But it is treason against, you know, the people who died on September 11th.
And for that matter, against the 4,000 out of the 4,500 guys that died fighting the Sunni-based insurgency in Iraq, which not all of that was al-Qaeda, but they were certainly the worst part of it at the time.
If that was your brother, you'd probably lump him in, you know?
God's sake, man.
And then just, you know, in fact, while troops were still in Iraq, I like to joke about how me and Jason Ditz used to joke about how back in 2011 and 2012, America was still giving drone war support to Shiite forces in Iraq to fight against the Sunni insurgency.
And we were laughing about how, well, you know, they're chasing them across the border into Syria where they're the good guys, where we're on the other side of the war there, on the other side of the line.
And that was before the Islamic State.
That's what caused the Islamic State is exactly this policy that we've been talking about covering this whole time.
Well, right.
And on the other side of the coin, all of those Shiite militias that we're so willing to praise and look the other way when they were torturing people in Iraq, the minute they cross the border into Syria, they become the bad guys and they become Iranian-backed militias.
Right.
It's amazing.
Even after Iraq War 3, where we outright took their same side again against the Islamic State there and rousting them out of Fallujah, Ramadi, Mosul, Tikrit, etc.
Amazing, isn't it?
Right.
It's the exact same guys.
And it's just like once they cross that largely erased line in the sand, ISIS more or less, you know, there were some trenches or something there at one point.
But when ISIS took over that area, they largely erased that.
So it's not even obvious where the border is anymore in some places.
But once they cross that line, then they're enemy combatants.
And now, by the way, isn't it right?
And I'm sorry, because I did not get a chance to read into this, but I think you covered this, right?
That the Israelis hit these Iraqi Shiite militias, Bata Brigade types on the Syrian side of the border a couple of weeks ago, right?
Right, right.
Not far from the border.
In fact, there was originally the airstrikes were, I think it was Khatib Hezbollah and there were some Bata Brigade and some other ones were struck right near the Iraqi border.
And Syrian state media sort of speculated, well, this must be a U.S. strike because no one else is striking us anywhere near here.
And the Pentagon the next morning came out and said, oh, no, this was Israel.
Israel did that.
And Israel's never confirmed it, but they usually don't.
Well, you know what?
Speaking of the eastern border of Syria with Iraq there, what about the last holdouts of the Islamic State there in the east?
Because it seemed like it just sort of went without saying that when Raqqa fell, then the Islamic State, they didn't hold any more actual territory that they could claim there on the run.
And that even if they had some little holdout out in the desert somewhere, that that would be over within a matter of days or weeks at most or something.
And yet here we are, it's been a year and there's still, according to some maps, I guess, and as far as I know, some reporting, although I admit I'm behind on this, there are still so-called pockets of Islamic State fighters in the east just adjacent to the American Marine Corps on the Iraqi side of the border and the Syrian side of the border.
So what gives with that?
Well, there definitely are.
And in fact, there was a roadside bombing that ISIS took credit for that targeted a U.S. military convoy just last week.
And the big issue there is I think the Pentagon really underestimated how hard it's going to be to target a bunch of seasoned insurgents that have fled into the desert.
There's not big stationary targets to hit.
There's not a city to lay siege to.
Yeah, but don't they still have Kurdish troops on the ground to command and to go after and mop these guys up?
I mean, I think you're probably aware that in some places this is being covered, as it sure seems on the face of it, that the Americans are protecting these guys.
And how come these last holdouts of ISIS fighters way out in the middle of nowhere, how could it still be going on?
But you think it's just they don't have the manpower or what?
Well, I think they have the manpower.
I think it's just that ISIS is very good at what they do.
They've sort of spread out their leadership among a lot of different groups.
They use hit and run tactics when they have to, and they avoid fights whenever possible.
So, I mean, the desert's a big place.
And even if you kind of know where in the desert they are, by the time you get troops out there, it seems like they've vanished again.
So, they're doing a really good job of avoiding any of these big war-ending showdowns.
And I don't know that that's deliberate on the US's part, although certainly the Kurds aren't super willing to send large numbers of YPG fighters in there, while Turkey's still threatening to invade the rest of their territory.
Well, I mean, we've seen times in the past where the Americans were willing to completely hold their fire, I guess twice, right?
Two different times when ISIS took Palmyra.
The Americans were even quoted saying that, well, bombing ISIS on behalf of the Kurds in Kobani is one thing.
But if bombing ISIS and their giant convoy in the desert headed toward Palmyra would be to the benefit of Assad, well, we don't want to do that.
So, they would rather let it fall and let the head of antiquities get his head cut off and all of this stuff.
They've admitted that.
And, of course, the leaked audio of John Kerry saying, well, yeah, you know, we knew that our guns were benefiting the Islamic State and that they were rising, but we thought we could manage.
And then we would use that to pressure Assad to do what we wanted and step down from power.
And, of course, you know, the end of that is instead he called Putin and asked for help.
But, you know, it obviously raises a very serious question about whether for some reason they've decided to hold their fire against these guys and go ahead and keep them in play, keep them as an excuse to stay in Syrian Kurdistan.
What do you think?
Well, that's definitely possible.
And I think the Pentagon so obviously wants to stay in Syria.
I think they'll find an excuse.
If it's not ISIS, it'll be something else.
They were already kind of trying to spin it as we need to keep the troops in Syria to make sure Assad doesn't win all the way.
But in general, I think that there is no long term planning in Syria except that the Pentagon wants to stay and what how they get there and how they keep the war going is is all kind of being done spur of the moment.
So, yeah, I mean, they could say Hezbollah or Iran or whatever.
I mean, they have said outright very cynically.
Right.
Well, I mean, we're there.
And so we're not leaving in exchange for nothing.
You know, this kind of right.
Oh, man.
And interestingly and importantly over the president's dead body, apparently to not that he's really I shouldn't put it that way because he hadn't really been willing to go to the mat over it.
But, you know, we had two different major events earlier this year where the president said, no, we're getting out of Syria.
We're only there for ISIS.
And now that we're done whooping them, we're getting ready to leave.
And Rex Tillerson said, no, that's not true.
Never mind what he said.
We're there for Iran and Hezbollah.
And then in response to that, Erdogan said to Putin, see, I told you they're going to stay forever and carve out this space with the Kurds.
And you promised me you wouldn't let that happen.
So now you got to let me attack.
And he did.
And that led to that major escalation there where they took Afrin and then went all the way to Manbij, which is still going on.
And I should ask you about that in a second.
Right.
But then there was the second one where he said it again.
He wants to get out of Syria and they had another fake chemical attack.
So, yes, I'm pretty certain.
And I don't know if the Americans were in on that one or not, although certain factions of them certainly played it up like they believed in it.
And he went along with it and bombed the place over it again.
So.
Right.
It seems like they.
On the one hand, it's not that hard to convince Trump to keep a war going.
But on the other hand, when he has a set that he wants to do something like get out of Syria, he's going to keep bringing it up.
So it seems like the Pentagon is just sort of and the rest of the administration that wants to keep that war going is just sort of resigned.
Well, every once in a while, Trump's going to bring it up and then we're going to have to do something to justify keeping it going.
Yeah.
And then.
So what is the latest from Manbij, by the way?
The Americans have some kind of deal with Erdogan there.
What is it?
Right.
The deal there is kind of strange because.
Well, particularly because Turkey has been so open about how cynical of a deal it is that basically they wanted the Kurds out of Manbij and they've always wanted the Kurds out of Manbij.
They say it's not a Kurdish city, which it's not.
And they claim the U.S. promised them when they attacked Manbij, when it was ISIS held, that the Kurds wouldn't get to keep it.
So under the deal, the Kurds had to leave.
The U.S. and Turkey are going to basically defend the city themselves and let local political groups run it for day to day operations.
Right now, Turkish forces are not allowed in Manbij.
They're allowed up to a perimeter just outside the city.
But Turkey's foreign minister has been very public in saying that he thinks that's temporary and they'll just keep closing that perimeter a little bit here, a little bit there.
And eventually they'll be right in the middle of the city and have taken Manbij effectively.
And then there were reports at the time when the Turks were first arriving that they had al-Qaeda shock troops basically out in front.
And then there were pictures on Twitter that I think were verified by legit journalists there on the scene of even war crimes and desecration of the bodies of female YPG fighters, Kurdish fighters there, and at least one woman anyway.
And this kind of thing.
So was that right that the al-Qaeda guys were there fighting basically under the umbrella of the Turks?
And are they still there too?
I mean, is that who's basically, when the Kurds are gone, is that who inherits the town, is al-Nusra?
Well, it's not really al-Nusra.
It's more the other Islamist rebel groups that Turkey has chosen to back as alternatives to the Kurds.
Some of them, Ahrar al-Sham, for instance, do have leaders who pledge allegiance to al-Qaeda.
So yes, there are al-Qaeda linked fighters in the Turkish backed force that's getting closer and closer to Manbij.
Whether the U.S. deal is going to have those fighters in the city or not, I'm not sure.
The U.S. probably doesn't care at this point so long as they're allowed to keep some troops in Manbij.
As with a lot of the stuff in Syria, it seems like so long as the U.S. has somebody that's going to let them stay, they really don't care who it is.
Well, and that's just because that's what Israel wants, or what?
I mean, America, I mean, Trump, you know, steal their oil or whatever, but that can't be it, right?
Right.
But I mean, you look at different parts of Syria, and of course the vast majority of U.S. troops in Syria are embedded with the Kurds.
But I think there's a view that that's not sustainable because of Turkey.
So some of them are going to be staying in Manbij, which is going to be effectively a Turkish occupied town.
There are U.S. forces in the south at Al-Tanf, the border base, which was effectively in Nusra territory, and they did no fighting against Nusra.
They were just there to prevent the Syrian military from getting too close to the Jordanian border.
And in a lot of these places, it feels like the U.S. wants a presence there.
They don't really know why or to what end, but they're, again, they're not going to give it up for nothing.
Yeah.
Who lost China?
Who lost Syria?
If we have a thing, we have to stay and do it.
It's the Pottery Barn rule or something.
It's something.
I'm not sure what it is, but it's a thing.
All right.
So I got a million things to ask you about on other topics, but one more on Syria here.
Some folks on Twitter were asking, hey, man, how come you're quoting still after all these years, or not necessarily consistently the whole time, I don't know, but how come currently or recently you're quoting the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights on casualty numbers and whatever other questions when it's, I forget my footnotes now, but I think it's fairly well established, as Dick Cheney might say, that the thing is a front for MI6.
And that the guy's a one-man operation.
He's clearly been on the side of the rebellion all along.
So what's the answer to that?
Well, that's a tough one, because, yeah, the Syrian Observatory is not the most reliable source of information.
They do have some fairly obvious biases.
Sometimes, though, they're really the only source that has early figures for certain fights.
They're usually pretty accurate in the main on significant exchanges.
You'll see a lot of reports where it's like, oh, the rebel spokesman claimed 50 were killed, but the Syrian Observatory says it was 12 or something like that.
And they tend not to over-inflate their numbers too much.
There certainly are some problems with the way they do things.
And, for instance, sometimes when they send out their casualty figures, you really have to go over them with a fine-tooth comb, like casualty figures for the last several years or something, to understand what they're trying to say.
Because sometimes they'll contradict each other in just talking points.
But I think numbers-wise and facts-wise, as far as, oh, this town fell to this group, they're usually pretty good.
And there really aren't a lot of alternative sources for some of that stuff.
So, yeah, I mean, that's worth explaining.
A lot of times, maybe it looks like, from the outside, oh, well, you're just taking for granted that this is true, when a big part of what you're doing is really reporting that the Washington Post is saying today, and you want to talk about MI6 or CIA or who's your enemy, it's certainly the Washington Post.
And yet, a lot of the times, we got to rely on some of the things that they're saying that, at least until somebody debunks them, seem true, right?
I mean, you have a story here about another Afghan war strategy review.
So whoever reported that, you know, might well have been from our enemies, too.
I'm not exactly sure which sources I'm about to ask you.
So that is how these things go.
I think possibly the misunderstanding is people thinking, oh, you're just quoting them like it's gospel or something.
And by the way, I haven't talked to David Anderson in quite a while.
I don't think he's been in Syria in a while.
I don't know what he's doing these days.
But he covered the early part of the war for McClatchy newspapers through 2013 or so.
And I talked to him all the time.
And he would say, Oh, yeah, those guys are biased, but their numbers mostly check out, you know, not every time.
But you know, overall, if they say this was more or less the results of a certain firefight, they're probably more reliable than the Pentagon or, or state media in Syria or anybody else for that matter.
Which that much sounds right to me.
Like, of course, Washington Post is biased, too.
And we sure as hell are biased, but you got to do what you got to do as far as the best you can with the sourcing you have.
Quote the BBC, too, right?
I mean, that's officially the British government.
And we try to be pretty, pretty upfront about whose numbers we're using, where the numbers came from, and who's saying how many people got killed here.
Which is why you see, oh, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says such and such instead of just us reporting that's what happened.
Right.
And you're right that it's even, you know, compared to the Washington Post, it'd be probably fair, or you didn't say this, I'm saying this, but it's probably fair to just use says rather than claims the way you would with the Post or the Times, depending on what it is.
You know what I mean?
If, especially when, and this could, you know, not always be true, but when it's seemingly against interests, like you're saying, well, this many of the guys that he obviously favors, got their asses handed to them today in this battle.
That kind of thing.
I mean, maybe he could just be playing for sympathy.
But, you know, that would tend to go against the overall theme of victory is at hand, and all we need is a little more help.
And we could really make a difference for the positive here, which would be the way that they would try to spin it, you know, or you would think.
Right.
And, and it's not to say that they don't have some common biases with MI6 or with the US.
But when you look at Pentagon casualty figures in Iraq and Syria, for instance, I mean, they're, they're vastly different from what you see from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
I mean, they're, maybe the Pentagon admits to maybe 10% of the casualties.
The civilian casualties that the observatory will report.
And I think making good records of their own guys, but not of the other guys.
Right.
I think if they were really, you know, formally being driven by the British government, to stay on narrative, they wouldn't be contradicting the Pentagon in such a fairly obvious way.
Yeah.
Well, and of course, like you're saying, you know, take it for what it's worth anyway.
Right.
I think it's I think it's just that they have a common agenda.
And sometimes their facts don't line up.
But I would definitely take the Syrian observatory says how many people were killed in an incident, as opposed to what Pentagon says were killed.
Yeah.
All right.
So speaking of the British government, it's Reuters here.
I think we can assume they're fairly well infiltrated.
I don't know who wrote the story, it might be perfectly sound.
But you're writing here at news.antiwar.com, facing lack of progress, US officials expect another Afghan war strategy review.
And I've been told I got criticized for being a sucker when I was on the Ron Paul show.
And I said, you know, I did hear that he really is still upset about Afghanistan wants to get out.
But I did hear that from somebody who might know it.
I don't know.
Friend of a friend kind of thing.
And obviously, the war is so damn stupid.
And it's gone on so long that pretty much you got a consensus with everybody wants out of there.
And so it makes sense that even a Sean Hannity fan like Donald Trump would be just completely over it and impatient with what these generals keep bringing to him.
I want to plan to end the war.
So they bring them a plan to expand the war, of course.
But so now here we are a year later, and he wants another review.
Go ahead and tell us everything that the MI6 told Reuters to tell us about this.
Well, it shouldn't be too surprising.
We have another new Afghanistan commander.
The last guy, John Nicholson, basically wore out his welcome.
It's been it's been the usual year and a half or year and three quarters that most most generals seem to last in Afghanistan before they're so disgraced that they're It's been a pretty much constant escalation since August.
And despite depending on claims of progress, which they always claim, there's really nothing to show for it.
The war is still going very badly.
Afghan territory still shrinking.
Casualty numbers are still high.
So they're really, there's really nothing for the Pentagon to hang their hat on and say, Oh, this is getting better, at least.
So, yeah, they're going to do another policy review.
And were it not for the fact that President Trump was very open about his first instinct being to withdraw from Afghanistan, I think you would probably still be in Afghanistan.
And we're going to see one of those usual policy reviews that we saw under Bush and Obama, where they talk for a while and then they decide that they're going to double down on the policy that they already have and call it a change.
Really great stuff.
The great Mike Swanson.
And he's also the author of the book, The War State, which is a really great history of the rise of the new right military industrial complex after World War Two in the Truman, Eisenhower and Kennedy eras.
You'll really want to look at it.
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They're disastrously mistaken in thinking that they could send all these fighters and all these warplanes and start bombing and roll back all the Taliban gains.
Yeah, I mean, they're never going to do it with their power.
I could see the Richard Nixon thing where, well, we're going to pull our troops out, but we're going to carpet bomb the North so bad that everyone's going to be diverted from the fact that we're pulling our troops out.
I don't know.
It's too easy to just stay and not lose, I guess.
And for a guy who might just be kind of curmudgeonly about it or whatever, I don't think he really wants to fight about it that bad.
That he really would force the issue to quit.
Does it look bad?
Look, something bad happened after we left.
Why deal with that if you can just stay?
All right.
And it's one of those wars that's been going on so long now that it's every president's war, and he doesn't want to be the one that lost Afghanistan.
So that may inform his decision to keep trying something.
Well, so Pompeo went there, and you know, this happens all the time.
It's always a surprise visit, meaning they couldn't announce it beforehand because they're afraid his plane would get shot out of the sky.
So instead, it had to be a surprise as though the whole motive for that is to provide a big morale boost for the troops that, wow, the Secretary of State is here, guys.
We can believe in the mission again or something.
Anyway, so he snuck into the country in the dark of night.
But so as a professional criminologist, I guess I got to ask you if you think that is it possible that this really symbolizes a thing that when he says, hey, I'm here because I want to make it clear that we're willing to negotiate and this kind of thing, that that really is a change from what McMaster was saying about, well, we'll just stay and fight longer and longer.
And that Trump is really saying, hey, come on, try to figure out a way to negotiate this thing like we're doing in Korea.
Or is it just another, you know, come on, everybody knows that isn't going to work anyway, the Taliban won't deal.
And so it's just another, you know, might as well be Condoleezza Rice over there talking about how the end is in sight or what?
Well, that could be.
But I think even if that's what it's intended as, it looks like a big change, because it was only a couple of months ago that President Trump was saying, we absolutely can't talk to the Taliban.
There will be no negotiations.
Maybe somewhere down the road, we'll talk, but it'll be a very long time from now.
You just can't deal with these people.
We're going to have to keep fighting them.
And, well, if it was Tillerson, completely contradicting Trump, you might say, well, this is just an internal administration disagreement.
I don't think Pompeo would do that.
I don't think Pompeo would go to Afghanistan and say, we support the talks, we'll engage in the talks.
Shortly after President Trump had said there will be no talks, unless it marks a change in policy.
And to some extent, it, I think it's because when President Trump said there will be no talks, that was a pretty big mistake.
Because then the Taliban came out shortly thereafter, as kind of open to talks.
And that made a lot of sense.
That made the US look like they're the ones that are dragging this war on, which, of course, they kind of are.
So being publicly against the talks is not a good look for the US.
So I think, at the bare minimum, they want to change that appearance.
Okay, but I've seen contradictory reports about the Taliban and whether, you know, they're changing their longstanding policy, which is we'll talk to you after you leave, right?
You know, they're, they have had a ceasefire and some negotiations with the central government there.
But have they, you're saying that they really indicated seriously that they would be willing to negotiate with the Americans now?
They've been a little vague about negotiating with the Americans or with any of the Western forces, but they have said that they'll negotiate with the Afghan government.
And there are some reports, although nothing publicly confirmed by either side, that they actually have been negotiating for a while with the Ghani government and trying to come up with some sort of settlement for the war.
The ceasefire, which, of course, didn't last all that long, was really a big, a big indicator that these two sides see that they can work together.
And I think it might be Ghani hedging his bets in case President Trump does end up doing another drawdown and heading towards pulling out from Afghanistan that he wants to at least try to get some sort of settlement.
At least be on speaking terms with the Taliban instead of just waiting to get run over by them.
And I'm only quoting other sources, of course, about mostly a non Gopal about how much power and influence the Taliban have in virtually the entire south and east of the country, other than the actual provincial capitals themselves, where they have some presence, but they don't, you know, group troops together in targetable ways or anything like that in the provincial capitals.
But otherwise, they seem to rule the entire countryside most of the time.
And just like we always said, during the coin surge, and all of that, that all the gorillas have to do is melt away and wait you out because you're from North America, and they're not.
And so once you withdraw, even all the way out of the country, at least back to your bases, they come right back again.
And so that's exactly what's happened.
And how, you know, all these government structures set up by America and Kabul down there still exist, but the Taliban actually control them all.
And this kind of thing, the courts, the healthcare, the education, the everything.
So it's already a done deal.
Oh, and I remember now, what was my question for you before that I forgot, which was, do you hear any talk really about is there any kind of real debate around, you know, what these negotiations would look like and really end up because I saw where Ghani was saying, Look, maybe we'll just make the Taliban a political party and invite them into the parliament and share the power.
And I'm thinking, you might not really want to do that.
You know, how about just let them go?
And maybe not even full scale secession, but how about just a lot of autonomy and recognize that, okay, they basically have, you know, what amounts to popular sovereignty in Afghanistan in down in the Helmand and Kandahar provinces, etc.
And, and go ahead and, and let them have basically self rule, federalism, you know, that kind of thing.
But it seems it's the obvious answer to me, but I want I don't see anybody else even arguing, you know, that these are two different positions, it seems mostly like, it just sort of goes without saying that once we have a peace deal, that will mean integrating them into the government of Kabul, which seems like, I mean, think of all Dostum and all of the, the Uzbeks and the different Tajik fighters and army, you know, everyone who has everything to lose.
If that happens, and that just be a start of a whole new civil war, right?
Seems like seems obvious enough to me and not, not that it's up to me to tell the Afghans what to do or anything.
But I just wonder whether you see that really even being discussed.
Which, I think is unsurprising that the Taliban has always envisioned having, well, returning to being a government, and if not the government of all of Afghanistan, at least of pretty significant parts of the country.
The government of all of Afghanistan, at least of pretty substantial chunks of the south.
So yeah, I think just having sort of autonomous regional governments that are Taliban run, probably is the most practical solution and, and really, war aside, you could argue that's already happened.
Because that report says, you know, the Taliban are providing all sorts of government services in a lot of these areas.
In some cases, you have the local Afghan government appointed officials having to work with the Taliban, because it's the only way you can get anything done in those areas.
So I think combatants aside, a lot of people have already sort of defaulted down to that.
You know what, let's switch back to the Levant for a minute.
What's going on with this increased clampdown against trade in Gaza?
Right.
Terrorist kites.
And I mean, these kites, people are, you know, attaching flaming rags to kites and flying them over Israeli territory and trying to set farmland on fire or try to set forests on fire.
And they've done some property damage doing that.
But it gets a lot more coverage in the Israeli press than it probably warrants as far as how much damage is really being done.
No, there haven't really been casualties or anything like that.
So there's been a big push from some officials to do something to punish the Palestinians over this and to punish Hamas over this, even though there's no real sign Hamas is flying kites.
So they decided, well, we're going to close this border crossing to trade.
Supposedly, it's going to stay open to certain types of humanitarian aid.
And they also cut back the fishing zone for the Gaza Strip quite substantially.
So they're not allowed to go out as far to fish.
What, from three miles to one or what?
I mean, what do they have left to restrict?
Well, it had actually been expanded to about 12 miles.
Oh, really?
And they weren't blasting them for going out that far?
They were letting them go out that far?
Yeah.
Sometimes you'd have some confrontations.
This was earlier this year, I think, that Israel announced things were going pretty well and they were going to expand the fishing zone.
And there would still be reports where, oh, they said they expanded the fishing zone to, first it was to nine miles and it was to 12.
And there were reports that, oh, you know, it just went from nine to 12, but some boat got 10 miles out and all of a sudden there's Israeli ships all over the place following them.
But now they're back to six miles.
So that's a pretty substantial loss.
And the Gaza Strip doesn't have great fishing right along the coast, as you might imagine, because both of sewage problems in the country with no electricity, they tend to have to pump a lot of their raw sewage right into the ocean.
And there's just so many people to feed there that what fishing there is that gets done really close to shore, they tend to wipe out those fish pretty quickly.
Yeah.
And they're the ones that are all polluted with the sewage that they can't repair their sewage works.
And so leaks right into the sea there, at least get out to sea, it's a lot more diluted, you know?
Right.
And there are more fish there as a consequence when you get further out.
So there's more fish to catch.
This would be a pretty substantial loss of food, I would think, for the Gaza Strip.
Whether that's going to be replaced by more humanitarian aid or not, I don't know.
History would suggest not.
Israel usually is pretty determined to keep the Palestinians on a semi-starvation diet in Gaza.
Crazy.
You know, Eric used to compare it to escape from New York, where it's just this prison by the sea, you know?
It used to be a civilization and now it's a work camp or some kind of camp.
It's a stay the hell out of here camp.
It's crazy because, you know, in recent years we've had the aid flotillas try to get to Gaza with humanitarian aid and they get boarded by the Israelis.
And the Mavi Marmara, where we had some aid workers killed when Israel boarded their ships.
But now we don't really even see aid ships trying to get to Gaza.
What we're seeing is boats trying to get away from Gaza, where some small makeshift boat is slapped together and the Gazans try to load some wounded people up on it and take them to Cyprus for medical treatment.
And then you have the Israeli Navy rushing out to capture the boat before it can get away.
I forgot who it was that I interviewed who said, man, I used to remember everything.
Somebody I interviewed was saying, hey, this whole refugee crisis, the Palestinians, how come the Palestinians aren't all emigrating to Europe?
They'd flee if they could.
The Gazans, they're captured there.
They're not allowed to flee.
You're better off being an Iraqi.
Right.
It's really incredible.
You can't get out of the Gaza Strip.
You know, every once in a while, Egypt gets it in its head to open the Sinai border.
And then you see a flood of Palestinians leaving through the Sinai.
But barring that, they're just stuck in there with preposterous limitations on what's allowed, you know, whatever fish you can catch in six miles, whatever plants you can grow in between Israeli airstrikes and food aid that's in some ways just ridiculous.
I mean, Israel's got certain rules on what types of food are allowed in.
It's only unprocessed food that can be brought into Gaza.
So, for instance, you can bring rice into the Gaza Strip, but you can't bring noodles.
You're not allowed to bring chocolate into the Gaza Strip because that's considered processed.
I mean, it's it's really, really strange to look at all the rules that they've had over the last several years of that blockade.
Man, I'm saying this to everybody as long as we're on this subject.
Have you seen Killing Gaza, the Max Blumenthal documentary?
I have not had a chance to see him and Dan Cohen, I should say.
Yeah.
So and I'll keep repeating myself because I don't care.
I want people to understand this.
You know, we talk about this all the time, like it's Jim Crow South or something analogous to that apartheid.
We're half the population of under Israeli controller Arabs and only about one sixth of them or something have any representation in the Israeli government at all.
And it amounts to nothing.
So you're never part of any kind of coalition of power in any way.
And but you watch this video.
So, in other words, you know, we already talk about this way.
We already understand it to be that's exactly what it is.
But when you see the interview, the interviews of Gazan after Gazan explaining, yeah, well, the reason I live here is because my parents are refugees from the great Nakba.
And anyway, so and you watch that, you really come to understand it and feel like it's just like if we still had Jim Crow segregation in Mississippi and lynchings all the time and all white juries and all white primaries.
And and just and then no one was doing a damn thing about it.
We're just going to let this continue on because, hey, what are you going to do?
And that's really how it is.
It's just like if it's just like Mississippi burning going on down there in the Gaza Strip.
It's that level of injustice, that level of, you know, blatant injustice and just ongoing.
And apparently, according to everyone with the power anyway, it's it must stay this way from now on.
I don't know if they can be made to stop or not, but they sure don't seem to want to.
And I mean, the Israelis and the Americans, too.
Yeah, yeah, there doesn't seem to be, you know, we get we get reports every once in a while that Egypt and Qatar are trying to negotiate some sort of long term Gaza cease fire where Gaza would be allowed to have an airport or at least a seaport and not a blockade.
But even when those talks were starting to starting to gain some momentum, Israel pretty quickly pushed this alternate plan where instead of giving Gaza an actual seaport where they could actually come and go as they please by boat, they would have they would just pay Cyprus to let them have a drop point in Cyprus for goods that are supposed to go to Gaza.
And then those goods would eventually be shipped to Israel.
And if Israel thought it was OK, then they would take them in through the border crossing.
So it seems like there's a lot of.
A lot of resistance to making any positive change in Gaza as far as opening it up at all.
And like you say, it's not like it's not like the Gaza Strip, this hugely densely populated borderline starvation society wouldn't have a bunch of refugees pouring out of it if they were allowed to leave.
So it's kind of puzzling for Israel, given their history of encouraging, you know, Palestinian refugees to leave the country and then not get a right of return that they're so determined to keep everyone stuck in Gaza.
Yeah, well, I don't know.
And that's where it still stands.
Now, there was you mentioned the ship trying to escape to Cyprus with some wounded that were seized by the Israeli Navy.
God dang, that's actually a thing.
News.
And I want to come read all about it.
Yeah, I know.
It sounds like I'm making it up.
And no, it's true.
But then so but there was another attempted flotilla recently, right?
Did they make it?
What happened to them?
I mean, people, aid groups attempting to break the blockade to help the people of Gaza in at least a symbolic way.
So far, none of those none of those flotillas have been successful.
And wasn't there just one in the last week or two?
It was a few weeks ago.
I think it was three weeks ago.
I want to say.
But I just remember reading about them leaving from Northern Europe somewhere, I guess.
Yeah.
I don't know if that one how close that one got.
They certainly never reached Gaza.
And apparently nobody was massacred like happened on the Mavi Mamara.
But.
And that's probably because they're from Northern Europe.
And that would be a diplomatic problem for Israel if they killed a bunch of Northern European.
I don't know.
It wasn't a diplomatic problem for them when they murdered Furkan Dogan, an American citizen.
The U.S. No, actually, I did have a guest on that said that they treat the U.S. treated his family very fairly after that, as best as they possibly could.
And complained to the Israelis in some fashion.
But sure looks from here like they got away with it.
Yeah, that's.
I think I think Israel probably diplomatically is more worried about Europe than about the United States.
It sort of feels like they have the U.S. in their pocket still.
Yeah.
And they can get away with.
Some Americans easily moved.
Right.
The U.S. might complain a little bit.
But even the report yesterday about Netanyahu's visiting with Putin today and the report that he was going to offer Putin a trade.
You kick Iran out of Syria and we'll see to it that all the U.S. sanctions against Russia are lifted.
I mean, that's an incredibly bold offer to say, you know, as the Israeli prime minister, he thinks he can get all sanctions against Russia just lifted on his say so.
Yeah.
All right, man, well, listen, I should let you go.
We're at almost an hour here.
OK, man, it's too bad, too, because I want to ask you about all these other things.
Well, you know what?
Can we talk about the NATO summit real quick here?
Sure.
So I like the attitude of FNATO, but, you know, I'm looking for some substance here.
And all I really see is Trump saying to the NATO allies, spend more money on American weapons.
Right.
He's not really threatening the alliance, is he?
I mean, there seems to be some reaction from people inside NATO that they're really worried that he's a wrecking ball here to disrupt the whole alliance.
But I wonder if you think that's as overblown as the rest of as well as the hype that he's actually really trying to get us out of NATO.
Oh, yeah, it's very much overblown.
And you still see media reports this morning.
I saw one saying, excuse me, saying Trump calls NATO obsolete, but these officials disagree.
And it was still quoting Trump saying NATO was obsolete from back in January of last year.
So it's like he hasn't said anything new about it.
It's just that they're still playing that up.
And even that was just a phrase, right?
Because he was saying what we need to do is fight against terrorists more.
So that was, you know, it was only the first half of the sentence anyway.
Oh, right.
And Trump's conceded since then that at the time that he made a lot of those statements that were perceived as anti-NATO, he didn't really know what NATO was.
He didn't really understand it all that well, which I thought was incredible itself that this guy who was running for president.
What was the detail?
What was it that he didn't understand about it really being a military alliance and the Article 5 and all that or what?
I'm not really clear.
He was just sort of saying, oh, I was a real estate guy in New York and NATO doesn't come up a lot in those discussions.
So I didn't really have a lot of like a good handle on what NATO is and what they do.
And which is a weird thing to admit when you're first having run for president and then are recently inaugurated as president that you're like, well, NATO, what's that?
Yeah, man.
You know what?
We all know what NATO is.
It's a social club where hoity-toity types from wherever you're from.
But the other side of town go and stand around and look important and drink wine and wear nice clothes and impress each other and stuff.
And oh, yeah.
I mean, it pledges us to nuclear holocaust over nothing if it comes down to it, you know.
But anyway, a lot of important people get to feel really important.
And that's what really matters.
Right.
And Lockheed gets to cash some checks.
And I think Trump tries to play up the European fear about his position on NATO to try to get them to spend more on their militaries because it's going to be spent on U.S. weapons.
But ultimately, I don't think he intends to try to do anything like pull us out of NATO or disavow Article 5 or anything like that.
I mean, it's just a bargaining chip and it's part of what we've seen a lot with President Trump in the last year where he's trying to make deals the way he would make deals as a businessman, not the way diplomats make deals.
That he's trying to be like, you know, if you were going to buy a used car and you don't get the offer, you like you threaten to walk away.
And I mean, really, that's I think a lot of what happened with Iran was making demands, not getting the demands met and saying, I'll walk away.
And then finally, they tried to call his bluff.
So he felt obliged to walk away.
But I don't know that he's got specific plans of what to do when he doesn't get his way.
I think he's just trying his best to get his way on everything.
And they'll give it to him, too.
I mean, what does it cost them to raise taxes a little bit or spend a little bit less on one thing and a little bit more on that?
They'll do it.
And they'll free as much as they can.
And then they won't when they they'll choose.
They'll choose the alliance over domestic spending if he makes them.
Yeah.
Some of those countries, it just doesn't make a lot of sense for them to spend two percent of their GDP on the military.
I mean, a country like Germany doesn't have any enemies on any of its borders.
But see, that's the whole thing.
Right.
We have this entire narrative about the Russian threat and the fact that America has to use a whip to try to get the so-called allies here, the people that we're there in the name of defending, to spend any money at all on this, just goes to show that when the rubber meets the road, they know that there's not a threat.
They're not scared of Russia at all.
And they don't even or if they are, they think whatever America will handle it, which seems to indicate they're not very afraid, you know.
Right.
And I mean, the only countries you see really taking those threats seriously are the Baltic states.
You know, you see Latvia and Lithuania and Estonia.
They and they're going to spend their two percent because two percent of almost nothing is still almost nothing.
I mean, it's not like those countries have vast, vast economic fortunes to spend on their militaries anyway.
So it's very easy for them to meet that meet that U.S. demand.
A country like Germany, on the other hand.
I mean, they they have an enormous economy.
They would have to spend huge amounts of money to get up to two percent.
And it would be for no real reason.
I mean, they they would they would fairly quickly become the world's third largest military.
Just just by getting to two percent and.
They don't need the world's third largest military, and they've done quite well without it.
Yeah.
And seriously, who wants to see another war between Germany and Russia?
How bad do you do?
In fact, you know what?
I mean, you look at Minsk one, but especially Minsk two.
That was Germany and France laying down the law.
They came to D.C. first and told Obama, look, we're doing a peace deal here thing.
And he was like, OK.
And then they went and did it because they saw where that was going.
The Ukraine war was threatening to really escalate.
And it's rare that you ever see certainly anyone inside the so-called Western Alliance, the American imperial system, stand up and do the right thing like that.
But that just goes to show what a level of crisis it was that may and not may.
But what's your name?
Merkel and Holland did that.
Yeah.
Yeah, man.
Anyways.
Anyway, so, man, I should let you go.
Thanks very much.
Come back on the show, Jason.
I'm sorry I can't talk to you about every single one of these articles that you've got here at news.antiwar.com going back since the last time we spoke.
But we've got to call it quits sometime.
But thanks very much, man.
Appreciate it.
Sure.
Thanks for having me.
All right, you guys.
Jason Dentz, he's the news editor at antiwar.com.
News.antiwar.com.
And he's got articles about everything, man.
Just go and dive into that for a few hours and you'll be smarter.
All right, you guys.
And that's the show.
You Know Me.scotthorton.org, youtube.com, scotthortonshow, libertarianinstitute.org.
And buy my book, and it's now available in audiobook as well, Fool's Errand, Time to End the War in Afghanistan.
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