For Pacifica Radio, November the 8th, 2020.
I'm Scott Horton.
This is Anti-War Radio.
All right, y'all.
Welcome to the show.
It is Anti-War Radio.
I'm your host, Scott Horton, editorial director of Antiwar.com and author of the book Fool's Era, Time to End the War in Afghanistan.
You can find my full interview archive, more than 5,000 of them now, going back to 2003, for you at scotthorton.org and at youtube.com slash scotthortonshow.
All right.
Introducing our assistant news editor at Antiwar.com, Dave DeCamp.
Welcome back to the show, Dave.
How are you doing?
I'm good, Scott.
Thanks for having me.
Very happy to have you on the show here again.
And as of this recording on Friday afternoon, we still don't know yet who's going to be the president.
And I guess with all the threatened lawsuits and so forth going forward, we still probably won't know by the time this airs on Sunday morning.
But, you know, there's a couple important aspects to foreign policy that are at play in this election.
And in no particular order, I thought we could go over some of those today.
And starting with Afghanistan, where last February, the Trump government signed a deal with the Taliban to get us out by next May, which may not be at which time the American government may not be under his authority at all.
So what do you know about what's going on in Afghanistan?
I know there's a lot of news about the Taliban and ISIS attacks and all kinds of things going on there.
And what do we know about Joe Biden's current stance on the withdrawal from Afghanistan?
Well, there's been a big spike in violence in Afghanistan between the U.S.-backed government and the Taliban.
At the same time, there's intra-Afghan talks going on in Doha, Qatar.
But things aren't really looking too good.
There's been a lot of fighting.
And then also this week, there was an ISIS—ISIS claimed an attack in Kabul University.
And I think the death toll is up to 35 now.
A gunman stormed the college and shot it up.
So yeah, the situation is really bad in Afghanistan.
And with the potential Joe Biden administration coming in, I'm afraid that this withdrawal isn't going to happen, especially with the spike in violence.
Because what we know from Joe Biden, he did an interview.
Unfortunately, they didn't discuss foreign policy.
That just shows how far down the list of priorities it is for voters.
It's pretty sad.
Right.
It's not only mentioning the presidential—I guess in one of the debates, they asked a couple of questions, but certainly nothing substantive, really.
No, no.
All I remember was some tough talk about China and Russia.
Right.
Nothing about the eight or 10 wars, depending on how you count them, that are ongoing at the moment.
Yeah, yeah.
But Biden has said in an interview with Stars and Stripes in September, he went over his foreign policy.
And he said that he can't guarantee a withdrawal from Afghanistan, Syria, or Iraq, which he says that he would prefer to keep a small force there for counterterrorism purposes.
So if that's what Biden—because candidates generally campaign on being anti-war or ending wars.
Even George W.
Bush, there's that famous clip of him and Al Gore debating, and George Bush was saying the U.S. shouldn't be the police of the world.
And we all know how that went down.
So if Biden's saying he can't guarantee a withdrawal, he wants to keep a small force, especially with this big uptick in violence.
He didn't even pretend like he wants to end the wars.
And it didn't seem to hurt him at all.
Yeah, he said something like he shouldn't, the U.S. shouldn't intervene in the affairs of the countries.
But, you know, if he wants to keep a small force there for counter—in Afghanistan, it's just going to continue the war because the Taliban is going to keep fighting and the government, and it's just a mess.
And so, also, today on Friday, the commander, the U.S. commander of the Combined Security Transition Command, which is like, it's the U.S.-led kind of international coalition with NATO, he said that the violence is too high.
So the U.S. is going to continue supporting the Afghan security forces, meaning they're going to probably keep bombing the Taliban, which is something that hasn't happened all too much since the U.S.-Taliban peace deal was signed back in February.
I think the last time we talked, in like the middle of October, the U.S. admitted to some airstrikes on the Taliban because there's been a spike in violence, so.
Well, and that was when they were assaulting the provincial capital of Helmand province, Lashkar Gah, and the Americans were helping the Afghan government repel that assault, which, you know, I'm trying to remember now exactly what the peace deal says, the February 29th deal between the Americans and the Taliban says about support for the Afghan government in the meantime, specifically.
I'm not sure if that's really detailed in the peace plan, you know.
You know, they made a pledge to the Taliban and the U.S. not to directly attack each other.
Mm-hmm.
And the U.S., they say that these actions are consistent with the peace plan because the Taliban pledged not to wage like major offensives on urban areas.
So I guess that Lashkar Gah offensive they, you know, they said broke the conditions of the agreement, so.
And there's also been claims of al-Qaeda being embedded with the Taliban.
The Afghan government's been saying that, the Taliban's denying it.
I think, you know, the forces in the Afghan government don't want the U.S. to stay.
They know they can, al-Qaeda, oh, is their kind of their, the key to getting the U.S. to stay is saying that al-Qaeda is still embedded with the Taliban 20, almost 20 years later.
Yeah.
Well, they just forgot to throw in Russia this time, but I'm sure they'll get back to that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Now, so, and regarding the violence, you talked about the attack at Kabul University, and I didn't realize the numbers had climbed that high now.
But as you said that that was the so-called Islamic State branch there, ISIS-K, but then the Americans are still blaming, or is it the Afghan government that's still blaming the Taliban for that anyway, even though the Taliban had denounced the attack?
Yeah, they usually do that.
They kind of blame all this stuff on the Taliban.
Yeah, it's no mystery why they're bringing up al-Qaeda either.
And by the way, in all of your review of all this news and all these accusations against al-Qaeda, have you ever seen, and I mean this sincerely, like I'd be perfectly happy to see an example that I had overlooked, but have you ever seen a specific accusation of why we should believe that any person killed over there or identified over there is a member of al-Qaeda at all, other than just the Afghan government says so?
I mean, me?
No, I haven't really seen anything to do with that.
I mean, if they even had said, well, he's Egyptian, and so he must be al-Qaeda.
Like, I wouldn't say that that's really a convincing argument, but at least it would be an argument.
It would be something that like, well, what is this Egyptian fighting aged male doing in Afghanistan?
Maybe he is, you know, a friend of a friend of Zawahiri.
But I'd like to see a specific accusation, since I haven't seen any evidence of a real al-Qaeda fighter in Afghanistan in more than a decade.
Maybe this whole time since 2002, early 02, in Operation Anaconda.
At the end of October, the Afghan government reported that they killed an Egyptian al-Qaeda guy, actually.
Abu Musin al-Masri was his name, but in the Ghazni province.
So, you know, it's possible that they killed this guy, but it's tough to know how effective, or if he was really in communication with Zawahiri, or if he was just kind of hiding out there.
Well, there you go.
So they did at least claim that a guy that they killed in Afghanistan was from Egypt.
So that is the most substantial evidence of association of any person in Afghanistan with al-Qaeda that I've heard in years and years and years.
And then as you say, we don't even know who they killed or what.
But anyway, at least they're making a specific claim for the first time in a very long time.
But it's obvious why they want to push that narrative, because that's the key to the safe haven myth, to make the Americans change their mind and refuse to leave.
And you know, when you talk about Biden wants to leave counterterrorism forces there, back in 2009, this is what made him the best guy in the Obama government.
Because during the argument over whether to triple the war under David Petraeus in the giant massive failed surge, he was the one who said, don't do this.
And he really tried to talk Obama out of it too.
You know, he didn't just, according to, you know, good reporting, a substantive reporting on this.
But what did he want?
He wanted to just leave 20,000 guys there to fight al-Qaeda, who weren't even there anyway.
And that's what he says he wants to do now, leave 20,000 guys there, and maybe take drones back to Pakistan, see if we can find some Arabs hiding in Afghanistan, in Pakistan somewhere.
So in other words, in his senility, he's stuck back in 2009.
And just we're going to go ahead and do what I always wanted to do back a decade ago, a dozen years ago, by the time he's sworn in.
Yeah, that's not good.
No.
And then, and that's, by the way, that's, you know, twice as many troops as we got there right now.
And that means essentially canceling the deal with the Taliban, the Trump deal, if he does so.
Well, yeah, right now, there should be about 4500 troops there.
But and then one thing that didn't really get any attention was this Washington Post story from last month, that revealed the US has been secretly helping the Taliban fight ISIS in the Kunar province, like the Northeast, in the Korangal Valley of all places.
Yeah.
And this got like no traction.
You know, you would think that that's pretty scandalous that the US is giving the Taliban air support.
And it's this unit of JSOC, and they call themselves the Taliban Air Force.
So that could be a whole who knows, maybe we'll just become friends with the Taliban.
Well, you know, I mean, at least, of course, they should just withdraw.
But at least this is a recognition that the local Taliban are not international terrorists.
The Bush government was lying when they were trying and the Obama government for that matter, trying to conflate these people with the people who attack this country.
They're just not the same group at all.
And so, you know, this is really the same thing that Bush and Petraeus did in Iraq in 2007, was they made a deal with the local Mujahideen that if you stop attacking us, and at least for now, stop attacking the government, we're propping up in power and start attacking the foreign fighter bin Laden nights, then we'll call a truce with you.
That makes perfect sense.
Why should America be at war against, you know, the posh tune militiamen of South and Eastern Afghanistan?
How about look, as long as you guys keep Al Qaeda down, you don't have a problem with us.
Now, I don't think that means we got to fly air support for him.
But that's what you get with the US government, man.
They're either on one side or the other, but they can never just stop.
Yeah, and this was going on in 2019.
It's probably still going on to some extent when Trump, if you remember back in like September 2019, he was supposed to have a meeting with the Taliban at Camp David.
You know, part of his negotiating was that he was bombing the hell out of the Taliban.
He broke records in 2019, 2018 and 2019 for the most bombs dropped on that country since they started recording in 2006.
So probably the most ever, because it was more than during the surge and stuff.
And that means, of course, massive numbers of civilian casualties because they have no kind of intelligence on the ground whatsoever about who they're bombing really at all.
Yeah.
And there was yeah, there was some really horrible stories.
I remember one from that month, September.
They killed like 30 pine nut farmers in Afghanistan.
They had like permission from the Afghan government to go harvest their nuts.
And then they just got, you know, bombed.
Yeah.
Mike Flynn, who was Stanley McChrystal's right hand man under Obama's surge, he said that, look, fighting against these guys from the air like this, he ridiculed it as anti-insurgency rather than counterinsurgency because it's just counterproductive.
It doesn't do anything.
You're killing so many innocent people that you're radicalizing a whole population against you and just digging yourself into a deeper pit.
And then, of course, that was his argument for the surge was if we just flood southern Afghanistan with GIs, then we'll have good intelligence and then we'll know who to kill, which that half of the argument is obviously completely stupid and failed.
But the first half of the argument that we don't know who we're dropping bombs on from 35000 feet.
Yeah, pretty compelling point there.
Yeah.
And yeah, so this was going like this was going on while the U.S. was also helping the Taliban against ISIS or, you know, the so-called Islamic State in Afghanistan.
So and yeah.
Which is, I guess, if you're a Taliban fighter down in the Helmand province, you ought to get up there to the Korengal Valley where you're a moderate rebel and the Americans support you.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You got to keep up with the times, man.
Yeah.
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All right, listen, so let's talk about Israel-Palestine here.
So this is one of the very worst things that, of the Trump years, assuming they're over here, sort of looking like it now, but at least one of the worst things he's done so far has been, and he's still got a few months to go, either way, has been his Israel-Palestine policy.
The so-called deal of the century farce, which is essentially the end of even the pretension of the two-state solution, although maybe in a kind of horrifying way that's progress, but then you have the recognition of Syria's Golan Heights being stolen by Israel and now officially recognized by the United States as Israeli territory, and of course moving the embassy to Jerusalem, which helps to solidify the whole narrative that all of Jerusalem is an Israeli unified city, which then of course necessarily precludes East Jerusalem from ever being the capital of a Palestinian state.
And yet his competition here, Joe Biden, is known as the worst Zionist in all of Washington, D.C. until Donald Trump came to town.
And so I wonder whether he's even going to try, does he say he's going to try to dial back any of this whatsoever, or he's only swearing before the Israelis that he's even worse than Trump?
Don't worry.
So a few things that Trump has done, it looks like Biden, he's not going to reverse any of Trump's moves, I don't think.
For one thing, Biden said earlier this year that he didn't agree with Trump's move to move the embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv, but he said he wouldn't reverse it.
And then there was a report that a Biden advisor told, I believe it was the Jewish News Syndicate, a Jewish magazine, a Biden advisor told them that Biden would not reverse the recognition of the Golan Heights, which isn't really that surprising.
The only thing he might be a little less worse on is Trump's vision for peace.
Netanyahu and Trump, they wanted the unilateral annexation of those areas of the West Bank.
It's like 30% Jordan Valley and then the settlements.
But I think Biden would prefer a more politically palatable approach, like a slower, the de facto annexation that they do, building settlements, demolitions, slowly taking over the West Bank, which is also what Benny Gantz prefers.
He's the defense minister now, and he's set to take over as a prime minister next year after him and Netanyahu.
Neither one could get a real victory in the last round of elections.
They had three elections.
That's another thing is that the Likud, they fear that they think a Trump loss is going to be bad for Netanyahu.
And that's kind of what, because Netanyahu really put all of his eggs in the Donald Trump basket, and he did get a lot of things out of it.
I don't get what they're supposed to lose by having Biden in there, though.
I mean, they might be right that Trump is a slavish in his devotion to Likud's interest as anybody has ever been, but so is Biden.
I don't know.
Maybe they don't have quite the personal rapport, but remember that time that Biden was on his way to Israel and they announced a bunch of new settlements while his plane was in the air.
And so for revenge, he sat and pouted on the tarmac for an hour and was an hour late to dinner instead of turning around and flying home.
This is the vice president of the United States at the time.
Yeah.
It's more so like politically for Netanyahu.
It's not about, you know, the hard line right wing.
They actually said it in this.
There's a Times of Israel story.
Likud officials are talking.
They said, oh, we're not worried about Biden with settlements and all that.
Just politically for Netanyahu might not be the best because they're hoping to call another election before Gantz becomes a prime minister.
And they think Trump losing is going to hurt Netanyahu.
But they're going to still get all the great things out of Biden that they did out of Trump when it comes to Palestinians and weapons deals and all this stuff.
And there's been this year, despite the pandemic, there's been a record number of plans advanced for new settlements, construction approved.
And there they reached a four year high in the amount of demolitions of Palestinian homes in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
They just just the other day on Election Day, they knocked out an entire Bedouin village in the Jordan Valley, left 70 something people homeless, 41 kids, people that lived there their whole life.
Yeah.
So they're really emboldened by Trump and they're not they're not worried about Biden.
Yeah.
And that's something else that the just very recent uptick here, and I guess it was in the Israeli media, right, where they were saying, obviously, this, you know, to get away with a big one like this, they decided to wait until Election Day.
Until, you know, all the national media or, you know, most of the international media had all their attention turned to DC.
Yeah, pretty cynical move there.
I guarantee you, if the United States ever really gets into a violent contest with the Chinese in some kind of naval battle, that'll be when they go ahead and do the last trail of tears, that forced march purge, and, you know, make room for all that Lebanon's, you know, the Israelis need their Lebanon's realm.
So they're just going to put the Palestinians eventually, they'll put them in in boxcars or just forced march from at bayonet point into the Jordan River into the Sinai Desert and steal what they call Judea and Sumeria, as though that makes it not somebody else's property, which it is.
But, you know, and I wouldn't be surprised if it was American Likudniks who helped get us into a war with China, just so they could take advantage.
Remember, on September the 12th, Donald and Fred Kagan went on the radio and said, George Bush should send the Marines to cleanse the West Bank of Palestinians, the civilians to purge them all off of that land.
Yeah, and I mean, this might be an obvious point, but if they ever get their war with Iran, I think they're really just going to use that to destroy Gaza.
You know, they'll just say it's everybody's an Iranian proxy.
And that's how they'll just be able to pummel Gaza, you know.
People might be saying, Yeah, but who's Fred Kagan?
Well, he's the guy who made Obama triple the Afghan war.
That's who he is.
Yeah, yeah, he's he's Robert Kagan's brother.
And that makes him Victoria Nuland, the guy who helped Joe Biden do the coup d'etat in Ukraine in February 2014's brother-in-law.
And then Kim Kagan is Robert Kagan's wife?
No, that Kim Kagan is Fred Kagan's.
Fred Kagan.
Yeah, he's the husband of the lady that runs the Institute for the Study of War.
Yeah, and that that think tank really like crafted those surges in Iraq.
Well, that was really the Center for New American Security.
Yeah, was the Afghan surge.
But Fred and Kimberly Kagan both were a huge part of that.
And yeah, and, you know, running around with Petraeus and promoting the entire counterinsurgency doctrine fad of 2009 and all of that.
So yeah, these are very powerful people, man, the Kagan still, and the people around them.
While we're on Iran and Israel, I just wanted to say real quick.
Yesterday, there was a report in Reuters, it was anonymous sources, but there's stuff has been good on the arms sales that the Trump administration informally notified Congress of a sale, like almost $3 billion in armed Reaper drones to the UAE, on top of the F-35 sale that came with the normalization with Israel.
And Israel has pretty much signed off on these sales, because they got a guarantee from the US that they're going to get a bunch of weapons that Netanyahu has said, like, we all face the same threat, meaning Iran.
So these peace deals are kind of building up this anti-Iran armed to the teeth alliance.
And of course, those Reapers are just going to be killing the Yemenis.
Yeah, yeah.
And, and the UAE, like we talked about a lot how the weapons sold to Saudi Arabia and the UAE end up in the hands of al-Qaeda in Yemen.
But from what I understand, it's especially like kind of more so the UAE, who is backing al-Qaeda in Yemen.
Yeah, so that's right.
Yeah, it's their mercenary army that the al-Qaeda guys are really integrated into.
And it was the UAE who gave them all the MRAPs.
Can't you just see a bunch of al-Qaeda guys sitting there flying American Reaper drones that they got from the UAE?
Yeah, killing Houthis.
Yeah, they got some pretty, there was a report, they got some pretty advanced, like vehicles from the UAE, from what I understand.
And they've been using them in battle.
That's one thing that CNN said that was true in the last couple of years.
Yeah, yeah, it's absolutely crazy.
And, and of course, the idea that, you know, Israel has to be compensated because now they are in an arms race with the UAE, who America's arming as part of their bribe to sign the peace deal with Israel.
Yeah.
In the first place, I mean, this is completely outrageous.
That, you know, I'll tell you what, how about you guys unsigned the peace deal, and then we won't give them any weapons.
And then we won't have to give you any more weapons.
Yeah.
But yeah, anyway, it's the American people don't rule DC.
Riyadh and Tel Aviv have a hell of a lot more influence in Washington, DC than the American people by far.
And that's the rumor that Saudi Arabia, they might be one of the next Arab countries to do it.
And they're probably gonna be asking for weapons too.
All right.
And now speaking of Israeli drones, how about their cluster bomb units that they're sending off to Azerbaijan for use in the ongoing war in Nagorno-Karabakh?
What's happening there?
Yeah, things aren't.
So since September, Azerbaijan and Armenian forces have been fighting over Nagorno-Karabakh.
It's an ethnic Armenian enclave that's been kind of a de facto independent state since like 91, well, 94.
And Azerbaijan has been making gains in the fighting.
Things aren't looking good for the people in Nagorno-Karabakh.
The UN said about 90,000 people fled Nagorno-Karabakh to Armenia.
And that's a lot, because who knows if the numbers are right, but I'm sure they're somewhat right, because there's only 150,000 people living in that enclave.
Thousands have been killed.
It's pretty bad.
And it kind of looks like Azerbaijan is just going to keep going.
They're calling on Armenia to withdraw all their military from within Azerbaijan's borders.
They're internationally recognized borders.
I know you've had Danny Sarsen on to properly go over the history of the conflict.
The borders were drawn by the Soviet Union way back, kind of a divide and conquer the Armenians thing.
And yeah, so Azerbaijan, they get a bunch of weapons from Israel.
They're supported by Turkey, who is apparently sending in fighters from Syria, some of the moderate rebels.
They deny it, but there seems to be some credible reporting on it.
And the US is kind of sitting calling for a ceasefire.
But yeah, so that's what's going on there.
It looks like there's been three attempts at ceasefires.
They all fell apart right away.
And I think Azerbaijan is pretty, I don't think they're going to stop at this point.
And even Iran has kind of taken their side.
You mentioned some raw numbers there.
Do you have a percentage of how many of the Armenian civilians have been cleansed from that region so far?
Yeah.
Those numbers from the UN, that's all I got.
They said there's been 90,000 have fled out of 150,000, which is a lot.
And it's clear then that that is the mission really is they want to retake this land and they want to cleanse the Armenian civilians from it.
And I mean, cleanse always in ironic quotes, folks.
That's what they call it.
Yeah.
So that's what it, I mean, especially with the election now, they're not going to stop.
And I think even Russia, all the media reports say Russia is going to get involved, but I don't think they have any interest in getting involved in this fight.
They've said that they'll, because they have a defense pact with Armenia, they said if the conflict spills into Armenia's borders, that they would intervene.
But I don't think it would once Azerbaijan gets Nagorno-Karabakh.
And if they want to get that land, there's a couple other districts that Armenia controls.
That's technically within Azerbaijan's borders.
All right.
Listen, I'm so sorry that we are over time and got to go, but everybody, that is the great Dave DeCamp.
He's over there at news.antiwar.com with Jason Ditz, news.antiwar.com.
Thanks so much for your time, Dave.
Appreciate it.
All right, Scott.
Thank you.
All right, you guys, and that has been Anti-War Radio for this morning.
I'm your host, Scott Horton.
I'm the editorial director of antiwar.com and the author of Fool's Errand, Time to End the War in Afghanistan.
Again, you can find my full interview archive, more than 5,000 of them now, going back to 2003 at scotthorton.org and at youtube.com scotthortonshow.
I'm here from 830 to 9 every Sunday morning on KPFK, 90.7 FM in LA.
See you next week.
