Welcome back to the show.
It's Anti-War Radio.
I'm Scott Horton, and our first guest on the show today is Jason Dittz, our news editor at AntiWar.com.
That's news.antiwar.com.
He's written more than 5,000 articles there in just the last, what, year, year and a half?
About two and a half years.
Oh, about two and a half.
Still 5,000 articles.
That's like, what, twice what Raimondo's written in this whole time.
And he's been writing there regularly since 99.
So that's a hell of a lot of writing, Jason.
And it's great stuff.
I don't know what I'd do without you.
Honestly, I'd have to go back to, you know, doing my work myself.
And I'd hate that.
So I'm very happy that you do what you do.
I was wondering if you could sort of give us a rundown, maybe kind of an update on the last few days' worth of protests in the Middle East.
And I'll let you know now that I'm going to have Imad El-Assi back on the show to talk about Egypt.
And I'm going to have Kelly Vallejos on to talk about Iraq.
But there's a hell of a lot of revolutions besides those going on.
So let's talk about them.
What do you think is most important right now?
Well, Libya is certainly the biggest deal because it's the one that the U.S. is most likely to meddle in.
All right.
And so how are things there?
I guess our only hope is that the rebellion can succeed before the Americans get a chance to call it our business, huh?
Well, that's the thing.
It's putting a lot of pressure on the National Libyan Council, the leadership of the rebels, to try to wrap things up in short order, which it doesn't seem like they're very capable of conquering Tripoli away from the mercenary forces within such a short period of time.
And Qaddafi's even made some counterattacks because they've been trying to rush so much.
It really is a race to beat out the eventual U.S. invasion.
Well, it seems like it's a real stalemate there, right?
The rebels' attacks against Qaddafi's forces have been repelled and vice versa lately too, right?
Right, right.
It's interesting how the media in the West has covered it because when it's the rebels being repelled, the story is, oh, the rebels will never be able to do this on their own, we need intervention.
And when it's Qaddafi's forces being repelled, it's he'll keep attacking until we intervene.
Either way, this narrative is that the U.S. has to do something.
Yeah, heads I win, tails you lose.
Right, and of course the stories are always prefaced with this supposed plea from the National Libyan Council to intervene, which I don't know where they're getting this, because right in their founding charter that they made up three days ago, one of the first things they say is they're explicitly opposed to foreign ground troops invading Libya.
Well, but still you could have a no-fly zone and a Berlin airlift and hire the Egyptians to bomb and all those kinds of things, right?
You could have things like that, but I think to the extent that some of the rebels might see those as appealing, they're overestimating what they would accomplish and underestimating the damage they would do, because realistically if you have that no-fly zone, Secretary Gates has already said the first thing they would have to do for that no-fly zone is destroy all the anti-aircraft weapons in the country.
Well, if you look at CNN stories about how poorly trained the rebels are, one of the main features is they've never used anti-aircraft weapons before.
And look at all these poor rebels trying to figure out how to use the anti-aircraft guns reliably.
And, well, that's the thing.
A lot of the anti-aircraft weapons, I would say the majority of them in fact, are in rebel control.
So when the U.S. is imposing this no-fly zone, most of it's going to involve bombing rebel targets to start with.
Well, the thing is, the best I can tell anyway, which what the hell can I tell from Los Angeles, but it seems to me like there's no real organized force there prepared to have real authority, and certainly from Hillary Clinton's position or David, well, I guess whoever's the commander of CENTCOM now, from their position, or would it be AFRICOM?
Anyway, how are they supposed to be able to pick and choose as to who's going to be our next loyal torture dictator there, right?
It's a giant mess.
If they're going to intervene, their first problem they're going to have to sort out is who are they even backing?
Because, of course, as you say, it's officially in their charter.
That means there's a major proportion of the rebellion that does not want America to come and steal their revolution, as they put it to Desi.
Right.
And I think we see the support coming from the ones that assume that they're going to be the ones that are backed by the U.S. to be the new dictator, if indeed the U.S. does occupy the country.
But for the most part, the people on the leadership council don't want the foreign invasion, because virtually universally the protesters and the rebel fighters are opposed to it, and it's going to completely destroy the credibility of the revolution there.
Well, it is amazing, isn't it?
To me, even more amazing than the fact that the people of Libya are rising up and seem to be on their way to overthrowing Muammar Gaddafi is the ability of the Washington press corps to go along with the White House and government narrative that somehow America is on the side of the people of Libya, even though every single one of these revolutions, including the one in Libya, is against an American-backed dictator, every single one of them.
And yet, for everybody from Paul Wolfowitz writing in the Wall Street Journal to Hillary Clinton, and supposedly there's a big space between them, the consensus is that the poor oppressed Libyan people desperately need our help.
What are we waiting for?
We must go assist them in our Superman-type way, like saving a kitten from a tree.
Never did anybody in the Middle East any harm at all, certainly not the people of Libya.
That's the incredible thing about all of these revolutions, is that they start out with President Obama sort of delaying taking any position at all, sort of trying to get a feel for what's going to happen.
And we saw that in Egypt.
The few people who did speak out that were part of the administration, mostly State Department people, were condemning the Egyptian protesters and saying that Mubarak has to stay no matter what, until it was pretty clear that he was going anyway.
And then they switched sides and said, yeah, the U.S. demands that he step down immediately.
And in Libya, there wasn't really the public comment in favor of him, but much the same way, there wasn't really any comment at all until it started to be clear that the rebels had the momentum and that he's got very little control left.
And then the U.S. started demanding his ouster, which in this case seems to have been a mistake because apparently Gaddafi had enough money to hire enough mercenaries to keep from being completely overrun by the protest movement.
And now the U.S. is stuck with having demanded his ouster and him not leaving.
So they're left with a growing number of senators saying, well, we'd better invade then, apparently just to save face.
Yeah, boy, and it always starts with Lieberman and McCain, doesn't it?
And John Kerry.
Right, yeah, of course.
All right, well, now they're trying to get a U.N. resolution for this no-fly zone, and yet they can't because Russia and China are going to veto it.
So then I guess that's just the window dressing, and the next step will be to try to get NATO to come together, Serbia-style, huh?
Well, that seems to be the ideal, but NATO doesn't seem any more eager to interfere than the U.N. is.
Well, maybe they could just get the American politicians in D.C. to go and fight the thing.
Before that, hang tight just a second.
We'll be right back, y'all.
Jason Ditz from news.antiwar.com.
All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's Antiwar Radio.
I'm Scott Horton.
We're on Liberty Radio Network and Chaos Radio Austin.
Talking with Jason Ditz, he's news editor at antiwar.com.
That's news.antiwar.com.
So now if there's anything else really important to say about Libya, please finish up there and then talk to me about some more countries in the region, because I know it's not confined to Libya.
Well, it's definitely not confined to Libya.
That's just the most interesting one at the moment.
We've got Bahrain.
We've got Yemen.
We've got Algeria.
All right, well, now let's talk a little bit about Algeria, because obviously Bahrain, that's home of the Fifth Fleet, a very important subject of discussion.
We've heard very little about Algeria, I think, so why don't you elaborate there if you can.
Well, Algeria has had this emergency rule a lot like Egypt's state of emergency for decades now, and that was one of the key demands of the protesters, is that they get rid of that emergency law, which they actually did.
That was so far the only real victory they can claim in Algeria, but they did actually get rid of the emergency law.
Unfortunately, while the emergency law was always the excuse for banning public protests before, officials insist that the protests are still banned even though the emergency law is now gone.
It hasn't been as brutal as Libya, of course, but it's really incredible how sort of haphazard the Algerian regime has been in trying to quell their dissent.
Their first solution when they first heard that the protests were going to break out there was to ban soccer matches.
To ban soccer matches, I guess just because it's a lot of people getting together, huh?
Yeah, they wanted to minimize public gathering, and they were worried that people would be conspiring in the stands of soccer matches, and they had a couple of halfway big international soccer matches coming up that they had to, I don't know if they moved them to another country or if they had to just forfeit them outright, but they didn't take place in Algeria, that's for sure.
All right, now talk to me a little bit about Saudi Arabia.
There's been very little out of there, but I guess some people maybe know that it's sort of the northeastern part of the Arabian Peninsula is where the oil is, and that's where the Shiite minority live, and apparently that's the center of discontent in that country right now.
Right, and if you're looking at a map, it's pretty easy to see where it is.
It's the part right by Bahrain.
If you follow the bridge across Bahrain into Saudi Arabia, that's the region where the protests are happening, and that's the region where the Shiites live, and it's the region that has a good chunk of the nation's oil.
And now I guess I read something about some people have been rounded up, presumably leaders.
I know there had been an attempted Facebook group being set up, but from what I read, they announced they wanted their protests to be on the 20th of this month.
Way too much notice for the state in that case, I think.
Well, right, and that's been a problem in a lot of countries.
I've seen countries in southern Africa declaring protests into April, and it gives them so much time to round up the leadership.
It's hard to tell if those protests are even going to happen.
But the protests in Saudi Arabia are happening, and there have been people rounded up by the government for protesting, and the interior minister said that protesting is inherently un-Islamic, so they're trying to use a religious basis to stop the protests.
Yeah, I think that's a Wahhabi thing, that you're supposed to render unto Caesar or some kind of thing, like a Republican.
Right, basically, and the Council of Scholars for the Saudi government concurred with the interior minister's claim.
It's basically an appeal to divine right, that they're claiming that God has chosen them to rule this country, and protests against the regime, no matter what they're doing, are protests against God.
God, is that what they're calling the British Empire nowadays?
I thought it was the Commonwealth, you know?
It's an incredible claim, particularly when they're making it at the same time that there are public protests across the entire Muslim world.
Virtually every Muslim country has protests of some sort, maybe not as big as Bahrain or Libya or Egypt, but everyone's got something, and in fact, it's even starting to spill out into some non-Muslim countries.
Right, yeah, well, it would have to be, I guess, a religious belief, that you're supposed to just go along with your government, no matter what, because on a rational sense, that doesn't make any sense.
What if your government happens to be run by Bill Clinton or something?
There's nothing legitimate about one of those.
Right, I guess the assumption is God would never let that happen.
Right, he never has, right?
Certainly not in Saudi Arabia.
I think one of the less-mentioned protests is Croatia.
Oh, yeah, well, that's the first mention of it.
I've heard this whole time, so do tell.
Well, it's not the biggest protest.
It's been 10,000 to 20,000 people.
But, well, of course, it's an entirely non-Muslim country.
I suppose they probably have a small Muslim minority like any European nation, but it's really the first country in Europe, other than Albania, which is a Muslim country, to see this sort of massive public protest demanding major reforms and an ouster of the current regime.
I think that's interesting, and it'll be interesting to see if it spreads.
Yeah, well, indeed.
That's the whole thing about this.
It's almost magical about this movement.
It all sprang from a very sad act.
A guy in complete desperation lighting himself on fire in Tunisia is literally the spark that set this whole thing off.
But then people just across two massive regions, and now, as you're indicating, third and fourth regions far away from the original uprising in Tunisia, are learning by the precedent set and the example that, hey, all we've got to do is just not put up with this and we can win.
If the people of Libya can overthrow the same difference, Hosni Mubarak, then maybe we can do it too.
They won't all be successful in getting rid of their dictator, but I think pretty much they'll all be successful in getting some kind of concessions.
Well, absolutely.
I think the most telling thing out of that is an admission from some of the top Israeli military commanders yesterday.
They were discussing they've spent the last year planning for possible popular uprisings in the West Bank, because they figured that they would start after the peace talks collapsed.
But now just the assumption is that sooner or later the Palestinians in the West Bank are going to try what the Egyptians tried and what the Tunisians tried and what everybody else is trying.
And their take on it is, despite having a year to prepare and despite being this enormous military that really has no qualms about cracking down on Palestinian civilians, they really can't do anything.
If this uprising happens, they're already saying Israel will lose.
If the Palestinians demand independence in the West Bank, they will get it.
Well, I wonder if anybody in Palestine was listening, or do they have any kind of free press there at all?
Well, it makes perfect sense why the IDF would prefer to shoot at people who are at least armed with rocks or something.
I don't know how that's supposed to be a fair fight.
But yeah, if the people of Palestine went full-scale Martin Luther King on them and just started marching around quietly with signs that said, I am a man and things like that, even the Israeli state might not be able to withstand that.
Just declare independence.
You can do it.
Historically, they've met nonviolent protests with a very violent reaction.
We had one in the Gaza Strip a couple of years ago, I think three and a half years ago.
It was shortly before Hamas took over.
There was a big nonviolent protest where people formed a ring around the Gaza Strip, and they met it with a violent reaction.
And it wasn't really covered in the media at the time, but I think...
Well, things have changed now, and if they can keep the protest up, I mean, that's what Gandhi did.
He threw the truncheons to the skull and kept sitting there anyway.
That's what it's going to take.
I think they would have a hard time spinning that as something different than what's going on in Egypt.
I was trying to get this guy on who wrote this piece for Tom Dispatch about how all the propaganda about the scary Muslims, how that narrative is already having a hard time withstanding the truth of who the people of the Muslim world are as we see in these news stories.
Even with the bogus narrative about how much the Obama administration cares about the people of Libya, still, well, apparently the people of Libya aren't all a bunch of terrorists if they're all a bunch of wonderful helpless civilians that we need to help so bad.
And look at them.
Why, actually, they look like the guy that lives on my street.
They are people after all.
They're not just screaming Mohammed Jihad and trying to blow up everything like in whatever neocon caricature that they've led Americans to believe in up until now.
Right, and the popular protests in Egypt and in Tunisia look very much like the historical popular protests in South Korea or in public protests in the U.S. or in Europe.
I mean, people are pretty much the same the world over, especially when they're sick of something that they see as an injustice.
Indeed.
Well, I wish the American people were more like the people of the Middle East in this instance, that's for sure.
But it might be coming.
Yeah.
Well, I guess it all just depends on the price of bread, doesn't it?
Well, the price of bread and the price of gasoline and a few unpopular crackdowns.
Yeah, innocent relatives jailed, that kind of thing.
All right, everybody, that is the great Jason Ditz.
His website is news.antiwar.com.
All those top headlines, most of those are his news summaries of all the world's events every day.
The guy reads every newspaper in the world all day, every day, unlike anyone you've ever heard of.
