08/31/10 – Haroon Siddiqui – The Scott Horton Show

Alright y'all, welcome back to the show, this is Manitowoc Radio, I'm Scott Horton, our next guest on the show today is Haroon Siddiqui.
He writes for The Star, and he's got this article called, To Tackle Domestic Terrorism, End Foreign Wars.
What could those two things possibly have to do with each other?
Welcome to the show, how are you doing?
Oh I'm doing well, thank you for having me.
Well I appreciate you joining us today.
So doing your part to educate the Canadians, that's good, because they need to understand this blowback theory too, since they're involved in the NATO war in Afghanistan, right?
Yes, they are, we've been there from day one.
And how many Canadian soldiers are in the Afghan war right now?
2,500, 150 have died so far, but we have had different manifestations of Canada's involvement.
Right after 2001, when the Americans went in, Canada went in with the Americans, but we were mostly concentrated in Kabul, but from 2006 onwards, we took over the Kandahar region, which is where we have been very busy, and that's where we are, and according to a parliamentary vote, our mission ends in July next year.
So that's where things stand as far as Canada is concerned.
Alright, so I guess you're making the claim in here, or I'll go ahead and let you make it.
What was the motivation?
There have been some attempted terrorist attacks, some bogus, and maybe some real in Canada, since then.
Is it radical Islam, or is it perhaps the Canadian intervention in Afghanistan that motivates these people?
No, you see there have been four well-known cases in Canada of attempted terrorism, and in three of those cases, people have been charged, people have been convicted, or they have pleaded guilty, so the charges were not trumped up, they were for real, the threat of terrorism was for real, but all, and what we have had now is the latest, which is the fourth case, which is just proceeding, three people have been charged, and three others may be involved, and all four cases, the why of it is very important, because all four cases, the individuals involved, for their own twisted logic, said they wanted to get Canada out of Afghanistan, so they took to these illegal, violent ways of overturning a democratic party's decision.
So, one clearly says that these are unacceptable, that goes without saying, anyone who wants to think of doing things violently must be charged, must be marched off to jail, and the last point that needs to be made is that no democratic society can be held hostage by terrorists into changing its foreign policy.
All of that is a statement of the obvious.
Next, the point that I raised is that is all true, but at the same time, if all four cases have been motivated by Afghanistan, we need to think, what are we doing in Afghanistan?
Fact remains that we were there in 2001, as were many NATO nations, and I was one of those that supported that invasion, to topple the Taliban, for the simple reason that all the 19 murderers of 9-11 had an address, and that was care of Al-Qaeda, which was care of Taliban, care of Afghanistan, but the Taliban and Al-Qaeda were toppled in two months, so what have we been doing there since?
Then the counter-argument becomes, we are there because we want to bring democracy, we want to uplift the status of women, and so on and so forth.
This is the same kind of argument that a lot of colonial powers throughout history have used to say, we are there to uplift the wretched local people, teach them the good things of life, except we are not even doing that very well, because the Taliban are controlling what?
Half of Afghanistan, two-thirds of Afghanistan, or even one-third of Afghanistan, and the writ runs large in many, many parts of Afghanistan, so we are not even succeeding in doing what we claim to be doing.
So, we have to rethink the entire mission and say, we are failing in our own declared mission.
That's my argument.
You see?
It's funny to see, isn't it?
Well, not really funny, but in a way, it's ironic seeing the former British colonies of North America taking up the white man's burden, as the British told themselves they were doing.
Yeah, we're slaughtering Pashtuns because we've got to teach them about having a parliament and all these things, you know, as though they don't have their own ways of, you know, the loya jirga or whatever, that wasn't invented by the British, that's their own custom, you know?
You see, I mean, Time Magazine had a cover some weeks ago that had this figure of this poor woman, girl, whose face had been all disfigured because acid had been thrown by the Taliban and so on, and the premise of the Time Magazine cover, as well as the entire article, was the following, look what will happen if we leave Afghanistan, this is what will happen.
They seem to be disconnected with reality.
This is happening when we are there, for God's sake, you know, this incident that they refer to is taking place now.
We are there now, so what is the argument here?
I mean, the people are so disconnected from reality that they don't even think.
Well, and you know, I think one of the most important overlooked stories of this whole year has been the rise, the re-rise to power of General Dostum, who is, you know, one of the most throat-slittenest, mass-rapist, skin-people-alive, lunatic warlords in the whole society.
He used to work for the KGB, and now he's Hamid Karzai's Secretary of Defense that we're over there propping up in power.
He's the guy that did the Afghan massacre in 2001 that Newsweek broke the story where he just machine-gunned and suffocated all those people in trailer beds.
True, true.
In fact, you see, because this thing has not worked.
My opposition and my criticism and my skepticism is not ideological in any way, shape, or form.
As I said, I supported the original mission.
But we are not succeeding at what we are saying we want to do, right?
We said we want to uplift women, we want to educate the people, we want to free the country of the excesses of the Taliban, but we are not succeeding at any one of those things.
And why are we not succeeding?
Besides the fact that, for whatever reason, and one says this as a friend, sadly, that America has lost the capacity to do anything competently.
I mean, all we need to do is look at Iraq.
You know, tomorrow, the combat mission is supposed to end.
And what have we achieved?
4,400 American soldiers dead.
God alone knows how many injured and wounded, not looked after in the United States.
100,000 Iraqi civilians, as a minimum, dead, dead, dead.
We don't have electricity, don't have basic security that we can provide.
We have destroyed a civilization.
So, America seems to have lost the capacity to do good.
They always manage to pull defeat from the jaws of victory, which is what they did in Iraq, which is what they did in Afghanistan.
And here we now have this whole long argument that it is Islam, it is Muslims, it is jihad.
Of course, some of it is jihad, some of it is misguided nonsense about Islam.
But why don't we look at our own actions as to what we have done?
Right, well, you know, I really like the way you said that there's no reason whatsoever why any Western society, any democracy, or anybody anywhere, ought to let their foreign policy be dictated to them by terrorists.
But, of course, the real question is whether we're doing the right thing in the first place.
If we're going to be doing it anyway, and it gets us attacked by terrorists all the time, well, then maybe we should just stop.
Yeah, because is it an accident that all four terrorist cases in Canada, unfortunate and horrible as they are, is it an accident that all four are motivated by NATO's and Canada's presence in Afghanistan?
What are we supposed to do with that?
Ignore it?
Turn a blind eye to it?
Not talk about it?
All right, well, hold it right there.
We've got to go out to this break, but when we come back, we'll talk more about domestic and international terrorism and its true motivations with Haroon Siddiqui from Toronto Star.
Toronto Star, right?
Toronto Star.
Canada's largest city, largest newspaper.
There you go.
Star.com.
All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
This is Anti-War Radio.
I'm talking with Haroon Siddiqui.
He writes for the Toronto Star.
That's thestar.com.
And he writes for the Toronto Star.
And he writes for the Toronto Star.
And he writes for the Toronto Star.
And he writes for the Toronto Star.
And his article in question here is To Tackle Domestic Terrorism, End Foreign Wars.
And so, well, you emphasize democracies and how we can't let, you know, bad guys who kill civilians or plot to determine what our foreign policy is and all that.
And it reminded me that Robert A. Pape, the professor from the University of Chicago, who wrote the book Dying to Win, the strategic logic of suicide terrorism, emphasizes that suicide attacks don't really work in China.
And the Uyghurs try it sometimes.
But the Politburo really doesn't care.
The Politburo in China figures that we got a billion-plus Chinese.
What do we care if you blow up some?
They're not going anywhere, and so the pressure doesn't really work on them.
But suicide attacks especially, terrorism in general, is much more effective against democracies because they have to at least pretend that they're our servants and that they have our best interests in mind.
And so the purpose of terrorism, of course, is in the reaction, it's asymmetric warfare.
And so if they can get us to bog ourselves down in the mountains of Afghanistan and bleed our empire to death and crash it on the rocks the way they did the Soviet Union, that's fine.
But if they can convince the American people that it's not worth living in a police state and that we're supposedly from terrorism all the time, that maybe we ought to just abandon our empire, well, then that's just as good, too.
And so that's why this kind of tactic is especially effective against Canadians and Americans, for example.
It's why we ought to pay attention, because who does want to live in a police state or an empire anyway?
The chief conclusion that Professor Pape made in that book was the following, that no sooner had occupations ended, than the suicide attacks also ended.
So there is a co-relationship between the two that he drew that some people don't want to hear about.
But that was his conclusion after a very scientific study that no sooner had the occupation ended, than the suicide bombing and the terrorism also ended.
And you were talking about the mountains of Afghanistan.
I mean, I covered the Soviet invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, 1980 to 1988.
And we are seeing an exact replay of what transpired at that time.
Now, NATO is not as cruel and as inhumane as the Russian troops were, who were doing literally carpet bombing of some villages and so on.
But nonetheless, in terms of the guerrilla tactics, exactly what happened then is happening now.
How was that war waged against the Soviet soldiers and so on?
By the Afghan Mujahideen?
And whom and where did they mount their counterattack from?
Across the border from Pakistan.
Who supported them?
Ronald Reagan and the CIA and the Saudis.
So that jihad was good.
This jihad happens to be against us.
So it is bad.
So we need to have developed some consistency and some logic and have some sense of history as to what is happening today and compare it to what we did before.
Well, you know, Chalmers Johnson, in his book, well, I guess in both in Sorrows of Empire and in Nemesis, says that the choice of empires really, when it comes down to it, is to give it up or to live under it.
And so he says, you know, the Romans chose basically to leave their home and turn the place into a nightmare in Rome itself.
And then, of course, the whole thing collapsed anyway.
They weren't able to sustain it.
But the British, Chalmers Johnson says, the British, after World War II, they realized that they were basically bankrupt, that they couldn't maintain the empire anymore.
And so they just gave it up.
So, you see, you don't even have to go to such highfalutin ideology and philosophy.
Just examine what we have been told, what we were told by George W. Bush, what we are being told by Barack Obama, what we have been told by the Canadian Prime Minister, Mr. Stephen Harper.
The central argument has been, we ought to be in Afghanistan, we ought to be in Afghanistan, because if we are not there, they will come here after us.
They'll attack us as terrorists, right?
The counterargument was, they might come here precisely because we are there in their country, occupying their country and causing collateral damage of civilians.
What has transpired now is, in fact, worse.
They don't even have to come here.
We'll do it for them.
That's what's happening now.
You don't even have to be ideological about this whole thing.
Just follow the common sense.
So, if we are not there to establish the empire, if we are there to stop terrorism, we have failed.
If we are there to uplift the women and bring them democracy and all the good things of life, we have failed.
So, back to my question, what are we doing there?
Well, the president yesterday said, it looks to him like we're securing resources for the Chinese.
It's their investments.
I have stayed away from all of those theories.
We are there for the mineral resources.
Well, he was saying, in effect, I don't think he was saying that's the purpose of the war.
No, I don't.
He was saying, you know, that's what we're doing.
And you see, the Pentagon put out a report about 8 weeks ago saying the mineral wealth of Afghanistan may run into billions of dollars.
It sounded desperate, you know, that somehow there's light at the end of the tunnel that we'll get some resources and so on.
But that was, A, that didn't sound for real, and B, that was not the declared purpose of our going there anyway.
Yeah, I mean, that really was pretty cynical.
I mean, that's what people, when they're suspicious, say, well, we're just there for the resources or something.
That's what would make it not justified.
And then they use that to try to bait the American people into thinking, oh, yeah, well, good, we'll just go in there and take their resources.
If they ever told us that that was the purpose of the war, we'd have never supported that.
I'm not saying that that is why they have released this report.
If you're a casual observer, it seems extremely foolish and quite cynical.
Yeah, well, so what's the political climate like in Canada?
Have you all had enough of this yet?
When are you leaving?
We are supposed to leave in July next year, and our prime minister sensibly has said we will not extend our military mission, combat mission.
So we may find some civilian role for Canada in Afghanistan, which is a sensible thing to do, if, in fact, something civilian can be done under the circumstances.
Back to my original point that we have managed to pull defeat from the jaws of victory and we have made such a mess of it that, in fact, civilian work is not possible, has not been possible.
I mean, your own president, whom I love and supported to a great extent, he said, along with his military surge, there will be a parallel civilian surge.
We are yet to see it, you know, because it's not possible.
Because if it's all in mayhem and we are barely holding ground, how can civilians do what they are supposed to do?
It's just a total mess.
It boggles the mind, actually.
Well, sure, and we saw their big, I don't know, I guess it was McChrystal's mistake to drum up so much media attention to the giant government in a box.
They were going to deliver to Marja.
This was going to be the benchmark, the test case for starting the war all over again with the brand new CNAS coin doctrine.
And it's a complete miserable failure.
The town was 20,000 or something, not 80,000, like in the lie.
And they still can't even pacify a town of 20,000.
You're right.
One feels saddened by what has transpired.
You can't even say that with any degree of pleasure.
It's just a sad situation.
Yeah, well, of course it is.
I'm not so confident about the legitimacy of all these bogus terrorism cases, including the ones in Canada.
It seems like there's almost always an informant on the inside that tricks these people into saying something stupid into a microphone or something.
But every time we've seen that the line that the informant uses is, look at what Israel's doing in Palestine, look what America's doing in Iraq and Afghanistan, look at the oil, look at this and that.
They never say, don't you hate freedom.
They never say, don't you hate the fact that Western women can vote in primary elections and things like this.
The snitches always use foreign policy as the lure, as though the FBI or the Canadian police give them Michael Shoyer's book and say, here's your talking points, here's how you recruit someone into anti-Western terrorism.
Right.
I've always given the benefit of the doubt to the police forces as well as the judicial system.
Oh, you have a different tradition down here.
Innocent till proven guilty.
Anyway, I've got to go.
The music's playing.
I really appreciate your time, Haroun.
This is Antiwar Radio.