All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's anti-war radio.
I'm Scott Horton.
And our next guest on the show is Phil Giraldi.
He's a former CIA and DIA officer contributing editor to the American conservative magazine and executive director of the council for the national interest foundation.
And of course, a regular contributor to antiwar.com.
Welcome back to the show, Phil.
How's it going?
Okay, Scott.
How are you?
I'm doing great.
Appreciate you joining us today.
Good.
All right.
So, uh, you know, uh, it was funny.
Charles Featherstone was on the show and he was saying the most impressive thing about the Arab spring to him is how, uh, Israel and Al Qaeda both are so marginal.
They have virtually nothing to do with what's going on here.
All they can do is just sit around dumbfounded.
What do you think of that?
Well, I think that's a, that's basically an accurate analysis.
This thing is happening all by itself.
And, uh, I would add to that group, the United States has, uh, has very, very little leverage over most of what's going on.
So, uh, Israel basically has to accept what's going on.
Al Qaeda is a marginal player because, um, you know, it really is not their agenda.
Uh, and, uh, I, I think that's an accurate assessment.
All right.
Now, okay.
I did want the fall of all the American backed dictatorships in the region, but I guess they assume that after a decade or so of America waging war over there, that people would be rallied to their cause.
And I guess you're saying it just hadn't worked out that way.
They want revolutions, but not Al Qaeda like ones.
Well, I mean, they're obviously Al Qaeda has a, has a very specific, uh, longer agenda than just getting rid of these leaders.
And, uh, I don't think the longer agenda necessarily appeals to the Arab street.
So I think that's, that's, that's essentially what probably what, uh, Featherstone was saying.
And that's what I would say that, um, uh, the whole Al Qaeda package has a lot of other loose ends that are not very attractive.
Yeah.
Um, well, yeah, good.
I mean, hell, it was pretty obvious.
I remember, uh, you know, reading, I forget what now, but it seemed credible at the time about how, after some suicide attacks inside Saudi Arabia and what, 2006 or something like that, the poll numbers across Saudi Arabia were, Hey, we way prefer the house of Saud to you guys.
Forget it.
If this is how you're going to be.
Yeah.
Cause you know, basically there is, there is relatively little support.
There was some support, but relatively little support, uh, among the, the, the, the Hoi Polloi among the people in, in these Muslim countries for, for suicide bombers and these kinds of attacks.
And, uh, I was wondering how to say that.
Sorry.
I always wondered how to say that.
I always just read it.
Oh, okay.
Hoi Polloi.
Hoi Polloi.
It means the people in Greek.
Oh, there you go.
Yeah.
But anyway, it, uh, it, uh, is, uh, there's very little sympathy for it.
And, uh, basically, you know, people sometimes support the objectives and things like that because they are, uh, cognizant of the fact that, uh, their governments are corrupt and hopelessly corrupt.
And that's part of what Al Qaeda is saying, but the rest of the package is not appealing.
Right now.
Well, what about these reports about, uh, Al Qaeda in Libya and they all came, uh, the, the ones that went to fight as Al Qaeda in Iraq, uh, during the worst of that war against the Americans were all from the east.
And these are the guys we're fighting for now.
Some so say the neocons at least.
Yeah.
Well, there are those stories, but you know, I'm, I'm not so sure to what extent these stories are verifiable.
There's a, they're not only the, uh, the ones who went to fight in, in, uh, in Central Asia or Iraq, of which there are probably very few Libyans, but also, of course, there's been a long time, uh, Al Qaeda affiliate in North Africa in general, which runs all the way over from, you know, Tunis, uh, to, uh, Mauritania and, uh, they've been very active.
They certainly have some presence in more remote areas in Libya.
And how many people you think are part of that?
I don't know.
I think we're talking about maybe, uh, hundreds or, or low hundreds.
I don't think we're talking about very many people.
And I don't think, I don't think there's any, uh, sense of this, uh, this rebel movement, uh, in any way being influenced by them.
I don't think, I think that's a false assumption.
And, uh, but of course, you know, Well, what do those guys have to do with Al Qaeda anyway, really?
Uh, it's, uh, they're the, you know, it's like McDonald's.
They're the franchise.
They basically, they basically support the agenda, uh, that Al Qaeda has, which is the Salafist agenda.
In fact, the Salafist, uh, you, you would argue, you could argue the Salafist agenda originated in North Africa, originated in, in Algeria and places like that.
And, and the fact is that, uh, so they, they have a certain community of interest, but it doesn't mean that tactically or strategically they operate together.
All right.
Well, is it crazy for me to think that, I don't know, three weeks from now, after the Marines invade the place, there's going to be suicide attacks and then we're going to have to have an entire new theater of the war on terror, because this is now the new, uh, you know, as Dick Cheney would say, the geographical center of gravity of where this kind of thing is going on.
And we'll use them as fly, use Libya's flypaper to lure all the terrorists there and kill them.
And it'll be just like 2004 all over again.
Well, I think you might be right, but I think the, the, the reasoning is, is a little bit different.
I, you know, the thing is, if, if you, uh, if you read the, the serious studies that have done have been done about suicide bombers, uh, you know, Robert paper, university of Chicago, the indication is that the, uh, suicide bombers are a response to occupation.
They're not necessarily an Al Qaeda thing.
Yeah.
I guess I'm already, I'm assuming here that the U S is going to have to invade eventually to get their way and get rid of Gaddafi.
I think that's a safe bet.
I think that it's, it's pretty clear that now that Obama has committed himself to getting rid of Gaddafi, it's clear that the rebels are not going to be able to do it by themselves.
So you're going to have to put people in there, whether it's special forces to train the rebels, which could be a long and painful process, or you put your own people in to, to finish them off more allegedly more quickly.
But these things are never quick.
Are they?
No, afraid not.
It, well, it's amazing how quickly they can get into them, but, uh, I see nothing but a very ugly chain of cause and effect in front of us here.
Uh, I wonder if you saw this piece in McClatchy about, um, this guy Hifter, I'm sorry, uh, Khalifa Hifter, who is quite obviously, uh, according to this article by Chris Adams, uh, asset of the CIA.
He's a Libyan expat.
And the last paragraph reads, uh, basically that nobody's sure what this guy does for a living, but he lives in a real nice house in suburban Virginia and has a big family.
Yeah, I, I did see that article and I think he's, he's there now helping lead the rebellion.
Yeah, he's quite likely a CIA person.
I would, uh, I would think that he fits the profile, shall we say?
Yeah.
Well, so, uh, I guess, well, they didn't have to sell a bunch of lies about Sarin and mustard gas and whatever to us, right?
They just, uh, waltz right in with hardly an excuse at all.
Well, I think that, you know, there certainly are enough good excuses for, for good, for going against Gaddafi.
I mean, Gaddafi did kill a bunch of Americans, uh, Pan Am 101.
He killed a bunch of French citizens when he downed a UTA flight around the same timeframe.
And, and Gaddafi is a, is a murderous thug.
There's no question about it.
But, but the broader issue is to what extent does the United States, uh, have some kind of obligation or, or should we be creating this, uh, democracy promotion myth, uh, which would feed, uh, not only Libya, but it will, you know, you could use the same arguments against Syria.
You could use the same arguments against, uh, Iran.
Uh, I don't think they'll use the same arguments against Saudi Arabia and, and Bahrain, but you certainly could.
So the question is, where do you draw the line?
When do you stop all this stuff?
And, and once you start, you're on a, you're on a road that's, uh, going to lead to nothing but trouble.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, that's really, uh, to get back to the original question about, uh, the relevance of Al Qaeda in this.
Uh, if there are ground troops and an occupation in Libya, if there's a massive intervention in Syria, perhaps an invasion of that country, if this thing continues to progress, what's that going to do for, uh, you know, the message of Osama bin Laden and his group?
Because after all, it seemed his message did seem pretty plausible in a lot of minds over there.
It seemed like in 2003 and four, and maybe it wore thin pretty quick, especially the way they killed so many innocent people in Iraq.
Uh, but, um, seems like, uh, you know, something like this could really give them a boost.
We could be just basically spreading his terror war, uh, across North Africa where it didn't exist.
Yeah.
Well, I, you know, the fact is every time we invade another Muslim country, it's, it's a propaganda in his favor.
There's no question about that.
And, and I think that, uh, there was some reluctance on the part of the white house to get too heavily involved in this for that reason.
But as we're seeing there, they're sliding down the slope right now.
Yeah.
They just can't help themselves.
What's the point of having this fabulous army if you can't use it?
All right, everybody.
It's Phil Giraldi.
He's a former CIA and DIA officer.
He writes for the American conservative and antiwar.com.
And we'll be right back with more of this after this.
All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
It's anti-war radio.
I'm Scott Horton.
I'm talking with Phil Giraldi from antiwar.com and the American conservative magazine.
It's most recent article is called neocon foreign policy.
And, uh, this gets to the, uh, other part of where we started here, Phil, and that is Israel's relevance or irrelevance here.
Uh, it's funny the way, uh, this article reads, basically, it sounds like from at least the neocons in Washington's point of view, and, uh, I guess, uh, that reflects, uh, Likud in Israel pretty well too, this Arab spring is all about Persia.
That's right.
Obviously, you know, the, uh, the target that's still on everybody's mind in Washington and also in Tel Aviv, um, is Iran.
So you always have to be careful.
You know, how you relate to Iran.
I think that, that, uh, I didn't say it in the article, but to a certain, uh, extent, the, um, the article that Iran is the emerging threat is buttressed by all of this stuff because, uh, they're basically the neocons are saying, look, all these Arab regimes are going down.
Uh, there's going to be a period of democratization in which they're going to be unstable and weak, and who's going to be the winner and who's going to be the loser and who's going to be the winner and who's going to be the winner.
So it's a, every argument is, is ultimately turned to, um, make a case for being tougher with Iran.
Yeah.
And of course, that's what all the heat on Syria is about too.
Sure.
That's right.
Syria is, is the surrogate for Iran.
Like I, I, I commented, uh, I was at a meeting on Monday and I commented that, uh, it's funny how there've been a whole bunch of editorials in the Washington post and a New York times about getting tough with Syria, uh, and, and, and, and, uh, in the Washington post and the New York times about, uh, getting tough with Syria.
And actually, if you look at the numbers, Bahrain has killed more demonstrators than Syria has.
Okay.
And, uh, there's not much out there talking about getting tough with Bahrain.
So I get it.
It's much worse than that.
Yeah.
And Yemen far worse than either one of them.
And, uh, so it's a, it's a question of, they're playing politics with, uh, with this kind of stuff.
No, I don't know.
I asked this about, uh, uh, from Steven Waltz on the show yesterday.
I don't know.
Maybe it's a failure of my imagination.
Uh, I guess I screwed up on the Libya thing too.
Um, is it really possible that they'll invade Syria, that this will end up with a war against Syria and then Iran, somebody has got to be a cooler head up there.
I know Admiral Fallon is gone or whatever, but come on.
Well, you know, it's tough to say.
I think that, uh, there are a lot of people who are quite aware of the fact that taking on, uh, two more wars in that region would be, uh, not only unmanageable, that would be disastrous in terms of other consequences.
But at the same time, you know, there's a lot of pressure to do it.
Netanyahu, uh, spoke last week and he said that, um, if the, uh, the sanctions currently in place on Iran don't work, uh, then the next step is to attack them.
And he even suggested who might attack them.
He said the United States should do it.
And, uh, so this is, you know, this is kind of their, um, Netanyahu certainly has his own political problems inside Israel and it, it's hard to say how long he's actually going to be in charge.
But if he's, if he's not in charge, he'll be replaced by another nutcase like Avigdor Lieberman.
And they passed a, I guess, you know, two days ago, this new citizenship law, which will make it relatively easy to disenfranchise Arab citizens of Israel.
So, uh, you know, these are extreme, uh, nutcases and, uh, there's no question, but that they're capable of anything and they're capable of creating a situation to try to draw the United States into a war and, uh, but, you know, at the same time, um, uh, there are a lot of people, I think, signaling to them that this is not a good idea.
I think, uh, Admiral Mullen, for example, has had a couple of missions to Israel in which he's, he's, um, privately assured them of American support for their security, but at the same time, they have to ratchet back on the aggressiveness.
Well, I mean, it seems like in a way, maybe I've just been kidding myself, but it seemed like the danger of war with Iran had cooled down, at least for now, sort of thing, certainly the propaganda against them has over the past few months.
But if you know, what's happening in Syria now turns into a civil war and then US/UN or some other kind of intervention from the West like that, that seems like the way into war with Iran right there, maybe no way to stop it after that.
Well, I think that, yeah, there is a certain danger of that.
I think, uh, uh, the people I know that know Syria very well believe that Assad is, is, is essentially unshakable, uh, that, that these, these demonstrations will probably lead to some moderation of policies and things like that, but they don't see it going beyond that, but they've been wrong before.
They were wrong about the Shah of Iran.
They were wrong about Mubarak.
Uh, somehow these, these movements can sometimes develop their own inertia, which, um, which can even bring down a dictator.
Yeah.
It seems like, uh, East coast types tend to always conflate what they think with what the people think and you know, what the elite think with what the people think.
And probably, uh, that's why they miss a lot of things, right?
Popular revolution out the window, but they're sitting there drinking tea with the local leader and believe everything's fine.
Yeah.
When you're having a martini at the Four Seasons, it's a, your perspective is a little bit different than some Arab guy who's trying to sell oranges so he can feed his family and has a policeman take his oranges away.
Uh, that's, you know, there, there are different perspectives.
Yeah.
All right.
So, uh, you know, there was one article in Haaretz where I think it was Shimon Perez was saying, now this is really problematic that we've lost Egypt because, uh, it was always nice to know that if we launched a war with Iran, that our Southern flank, we had our pal Mubarak who's going to keep everything in hand for us.
And I guess I have to assume that the Israelis and the Americans are working double shifts to try to, uh, you know, control events in Egypt right now.
Although I'm not hearing too much about it or reading too much about it anywhere.
Well, it's mostly been a U S effort.
There've been a number of U S military, uh, high rollers already that have been over there talking to the Egyptian general staff and everything to try to keep this thing on course.
Um, I don't know whether they're going to be successful or not.
Clearly there is, uh, a popular sentiment for ratcheting back a bit on, on the peace treaty with Israel, um, to basically open the border at Rafa to make it easier for the Gazans to pass in and out.
So that would certainly be an issue.
I, I'm not quite sure how that's going to go.
Yeah.
Does it seem like, uh, the protesters are, are ever going to get their way?
It seems like, you know, if they, if their revolution really did make a difference, that, uh, blockade at the Gaza strip would be the first thing to go and it's still sitting there.
Well, it isn't, it isn't.
I, I, I gather that there has been a lot more movement through it, but officially, yeah, it is still there.
Bear in mind that this whole thing about Egypt is a bit of a misconception.
I mean, Egypt is essentially controlled by the military in terms of, uh, their penetration in the economy, in terms of their penetration in the political system and everything like that.
So this is the winner, no matter who wins, ultimately, it's still going to be the military that's calling a lot of the shots.
So yeah, they pretty much just got rid of their pretend civilian president.
That's right.
And there'll be another one to replace them.
And maybe there will be some liberalization.
Maybe there won't be, uh, there will be certainly some, some token liberalization, but the fact is that the military still calls the shots and, and essentially they're going to be looking out in terms of what their interest is.
Do we really want to rock the boat with the Americans or do we want to do this?
So you want to do that?
That's the way they're going to see it.
Yeah.
And they'll be the ones who decide.
Right.
Yeah.
Well, and I forgot where I learned this, but something like two thirds of Egypt's food resources are imported from the West and particularly the United States.
I mean, they're not going anywhere.
Yeah, that's right.
They, they have a, uh, they have basically a problem with a huge population that gets growing very fast.
They don't have jobs for them.
They don't have food for them.
And that's not going to change for any government.
Yeah.
Although it's getting harder and harder to buy that American food with those inflated dollars, which seems to be at the root of a lot of this revolution in the first place over there.
Well, not only there, but also here.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, you know, I wonder whether, uh, Robert Gates will call for the military to stand down when the American people rise up over the cost of their bread.
That would be an interesting question.
Uh, would American soldiers shoot American civilians?
Uh, the Egyptians refuse to do it.
Uh, I don't know.
Uh, I don't think we're ever going to see a revolution here because the American people have been so, um, propagandized and cowed that I, I, I don't see much of that revolutionary spirit, uh, except on the page of anti-war, of course.
Uh, but, uh, you know, I really don't, I, I, I sometimes think, oh yeah.
Ron Paul ran Paul, things are going to start moving, but then all of a sudden they grind to a halt.
Yeah.
Well, you know, it's, uh, Murray Rothbard always counseled long-term optimism because after all we're right.
And, you know, statism doesn't work.
This is madness, all this, uh, empire building and all the rest of this, but short-term pessimism, because after all, it's a pretty steep uphill battle that we got to fight here.
Uh, you know, it's a war of ideas.
It's going to take a long time.
What that's what Ron Paul's doing is, you know, getting in the minds of people that were hopefully decisions they make, you know, way on out from here will be somewhat informed by, you know, what they learned from him, that kind of thing.
That's probably the best we can hope for right now.
Yeah, I think you're right.
And, but, you know, the, the basic problem is where, you know, we're like what Sisyphus pushing the stone up the hill, it keeps rolling back down.
That's the problem.
Yeah, exactly.
I mean, they, they just waltz right into Libya and go, oh yeah, well, we're doing this because we're the good guy in the middle East there to give everybody democracy, you can see all about on the daily show, that's our hypocrisy is we don't invade enough countries to give them freedom.
And so that's proves that we're selfish or whatever.
Amazing.
All right.
Anyway, uh, as usual, uh, you got it straight where everybody else has a back ass words.
I appreciate it, Phil.
Okay.
Thanks, Scott.
That's Phil Giraldi, everybody.
Antiwar.com/Giraldi.
