All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's anti-war radio.
You gotta love Bob Higgs' Sony optimism, right?
Nah, I don't think we'll have a complete Weimar Republic hyperinflation.
Then again, a long-term stagflation is the rosiest view I could possibly think of, and if anything better than that happens, I'll be shocked.
Great.
All right, well, here I am stuck in the middle with you, I guess.
All right, next on the show is Jason Ditz.
Oh, by the way, if you're listening to this and MP3 later, that Robert Higgs interview won't be run on antiwar.com because it wasn't antiwar enough, but it'll be over at scotthortonshow.com if you want to hear it.
All right, next on the show is Jason Ditz.
He's our news editor at antiwar.com.
That's news.antiwar.com.
Welcome back, Jason.
How are you?
I'm doing good, Scott.
How are you?
I'm doing pretty good.
Thanks very much for joining us today.
I think let's start, well, I should hit refresh before I go running off in the mouth here.
Yeah, 140 killed as Syria tanks storm city of Hama is our top headline.
Why don't you tell us what you know about that?
Well, it's pretty much the largest single violent crackdown in the five months that Syrians have been protesting against the Assad government.
Hamas been a major site for protests throughout the past few months.
Some some weeks we've seen hundreds of thousands of people in that city alone protesting.
And here we were on the eve of Ramadan was talked that they were going to have protests every night throughout the entire month.
And Syrian tanks rolled into town and just started killing people at random.
Now this town, Hama, this is the place where Assad's father massacred like what was it 20 or 50,000 people or something?
Right.
Back in the late 1980s.
I forget which, which, you know, multiple of 10s of thousands of people it was there must have been 20.
But anywho, so now, this whole thing in Syria, I guess of all the Arab spring and now summer type revolutions going on, this is one that I maybe have my head wrapped around the least.
There's so many different competing factions there.
And, you know, I was reading this thing at race for Iran, you know, the leverage blog, and they were saying that there's so many factions that support Assad who, even though they want reform and badly and right now, they think that Assad is the best channel to do that, not this revolution in the streets, which is as huge as it is, it's still only these, you know, some factions.
And I don't know whether you can tell from where you're sitting, does it look like they're getting anywhere in terms of overthrowing the Baathist dictatorship?
They are, but it's, it's slow going.
They're not really making any progress towards actually ousting him.
But every time there's a violent crackdown, the protests just get bigger the next day.
So really, the, the driving force behind this protest has been Assad and has been orders to kill protesters.
We started out with just a few hundred people in Dara five months ago, and that turned into a few 1000 and a few 10s of 1000s, and then hundreds of 1000s.
And now it's upwards of a million on a good day of rallying.
Wow.
And that's all based, basically, you're saying in reaction to Assad's reaction to just the minimal protests that as it started, right, it started so small, and so, so trivial.
But as things have gotten worse, people are just not willing to put up with it anymore.
And each crackdown has just brought more and more people out.
And I would imagine that we're going to see that again, in response to these latest crackdowns in Hama.
Yeah, I mean, the tank storming the city like that, not just is there the immediate reaction, you know, from the people who knew those killed and that kind of thing, but it's very symbolic, right tanks assaulting their unarmed protesters in the streets and things like that is, we should expect a huge reaction to that.
Well, there are a lot of amateur video on YouTube of the aftermath of the massacre.
And it really is worthwhile to check some of those out.
If you just look up Hama massacre, there's going to be hundreds of videos.
But it's, it's really, you know, when you hear 140, it just sounds like a statistic.
But these aren't just people that laid down and died for in at some random date, it was, I mean, these are pretty bloody, bloody scene.
I mean, there are videos of people with their heads partially blown off people losing limbs.
This is just a really stark, horrible massacre.
And it's 140 is a lot of people, but I think the reaction is going to be even more than the than the figure would indicate, just because of how brutal and gruesome it's been.
Yeah.
Well, you know, I just took your advice.
And you're right, there are a lot of results from 1982.
And from right now, of video of different Hama massacres.
Now, what do you know of the reaction in Iran and Saudi Arabia in Turkey, in Iraq?
How did they feel about what's going on in Syria?
They worried about it.
They're for it.
Well, I think Iran is certainly and I'm referring to the government's not not the people, of course, really, the Iranian government certainly concerned because, well, Assad has been an ally of theirs for quite some time, and it seems like he's really losing control of the situation.
They've sent advisors to Syria to try to help him get the situation under control.
But just from the example of how Iran handled their own public protests, with, you know, very selective, but comparatively minimal numbers of killing, compared to Syria, just wholesale massacring people in cities, it doesn't seem like the Iranian advice is getting through.
I guess, in Washington, DC, they're saying they support the people because why not?
You know, they don't support Assad, but they're not or are they doing anything really to achieve regime change there?
Not really.
There's been some long standing funding of certain opposition groups, but it's not clear how big those opposition groups are in the grand scheme of things.
And if anything, when the US State Department comes out and says we've, we've been supporting the opposition, and we've been funding these groups, it really hurts more than it helps in Syria, because it gives Assad the excuse to say what he's been saying all along.
See, these, this is just a foreign coup attempt.
Yeah, well, you know, it's always the question when we talk about DC, is it stupidity or the plan is so predictable.
And, and yet, I think we still have to just assume that the State Department people can't see past the end of their nose, you know, it's the same thing.
This is how Ahmadinejad got elected in Iran was Bush came out and said you Iranians better not vote for the right winger back in July of 05.
And they all said, Yeah, you know what, we think we just might.
Thanks for, you know, reminding us the election was in the morning.
But it did actually work in Lebanon, to some extent, because Vice President Biden showed up right before their election and said, he better vote for the Hariri faction over the Hezbollah faction.
Or else there's going to be, you know, huge retaliation from the US and all the foreign aid is going to be withdrawn and everything.
And the Hariri faction did end up winning that election narrowly.
And of course, they've since lost power because once the election was over, it didn't really matter every time there was a dispute with Israel or anything, the US announced that they were revoking the aid anyway.
And there were even times where the US announced that they were planning to revoke their aid, when the aid had already been revoked and hadn't been restored yet.
Yeah.
Well, you know, we're always stuck with history just began or whatever.
But it was, you know, after the assassination of Rafik Hariri, they forced the Syrian army out, which just empowered Hezbollah that much more in southern Lebanon, the Israelis bombed them, which just empowered them that much more, which leads to, you know, Biden and his threats.
But anywho, we'll be right back.
It's Jason Ditz, news.antiwar.com.
I need to stop saying anywho, I think.
Anyway, it's Antiwar Radio.
I'm Scott Orton, and I got Jason Ditz on the line.
He's our news editor at antiwar.com.
Jason, let's talk about Libya for a minute.
How's the war going?
Great.
Oh, well, it depends what your goal is.
If your goal is to keep the war going as long as possible, it probably is going pretty well.
Oh, well, yeah, of course, that's what I meant.
Didn't I tell you that I'd invested all of my extra savings in Northrop Grumman stock?
Okay, I don't have any savings or Northrop Grumman stock.
Okay.
Anyway.
Yeah, well, they said it was gonna take days, not weeks, whatever happened to that?
Well, the days went past, and then the weeks went past, and they didn't really accomplish anything.
So now we're talking months.
And yesterday, the defense secretary for Britain, Liam Fox, conceded that they don't even think this war is really winnable.
It's basically just going to continue until there's some random palace coup or something and Qaddafi gets assassinated.
So, I mean, I guess the political pressure is such that nobody's sending in troops.
They're basically crying, Uncle, you had a piece the other day about how they're saying, well, maybe we do need to go ahead and leave Qaddafi in power in the West.
Right.
But then the following day, they announced that they were expelling all of Qaddafi's negotiators from Britain and from Germany.
Right.
Officially recognizing the opposition as the government of the whole country.
Right.
So there doesn't seem to be much momentum for negotiation, even as they acknowledge that the war isn't working, and they don't expect it to start working anytime soon.
So it seems like they're just content to leave this sort of like Iraq in the 90s, the status quo of bombings and a lot of rhetoric and just assume that sooner or later things are going to work themselves out.
Right.
Yeah.
Air power from, you know, 50,000 feet or whatever, where nobody can possibly fight back.
That's the democratic way of war, I guess.
Well, that's Lyndon Johnson.
He'll tell you.
Well, so really, that's it then, is a lucky strike on Qaddafi himself.
There is no even belief among the Western powers that the Libyan rebels could win this thing at any point over that.
From Secretary Foxx's statement, their belief is that the rebels are lucky enough to be holding onto their territory and that it's pretty much going to be a stalemate going forward, which is why other groups have talked about a partition of the country, because neither side does seem to have the ability to take out the other side.
But NATO doesn't seem to be favorable to the partition and neither do the rebels.
So it seems like the war is just going to continue.
And NATO isn't even saying, well, it's a question of us getting a lucky shot in on Qaddafi.
They're just saying, well, sooner or later, one of his underlings is going to just decide enough is enough and assassinate him.
Yeah.
Well, of course, that worked in Iraq, didn't it?
Real well.
All right.
Well, now tell me about this, the assassination of Abdel Fattah Yunus.
Who is this guy?
And what's the faction fight going on there?
This is a rebel leader killed by other rebels, huh?
Right.
And he was he was the interior minister of Libya at one point of the Qaddafi regime.
And eventually he got promoted and promoted by this rebel faction until he was the commander of their whole military.
Then all of a sudden he gets arrested and accused of being secretly in league with Qaddafi, which where they came up with that, they never really said it just seems to be a deeply held belief by some of their leadership.
And on his way to court, he gets assassinated by some other rebel troops.
Well, then it seems like as Justin writes in his piece, it's this guy.
What's his face?
The CIA guy from the McClatchy story who's been living outside of Langley, Virginia all this time for years and years.
Haftar, who he's the main beneficiary of this, correct?
Oh, certainly.
But it seems like we're seeing a lot more splintering of the of the faction as the transition council tries to act like a government and tries to monopolize its control over the region and tries to ban all of these rival militias.
We saw another fairly ugly clash in Benghazi over the weekend of just one of the random militias that had set itself up as a rebel militia.
They accused them of being pro-Qaddafi and attacked them and killed several of them as well.
Well, you know, I read the most hilarious thing that I'd read in a while about John McCain writing a letter to the rebels and saying, will you please back off some of your atrocities and war crimes?
Because I'm trying to stick up for you here and you're making it difficult.
Well, yeah, it makes it makes them look bad, but the reality is that they're they're acting like a government in that region is expected to act.
So it's probably not all that surprising.
Yeah, that's true.
I guess, you know, that's the exact same thing that they accused Qaddafi of the same Qaddafi that John McCain was trying to sell armored personnel carriers to as recently as, you know, last year.
Which I just like that C-130s and armored personnel carriers were for transporting troops to where he's trying to get them to invade Chad or that's for putting down internal revolts or did he not even think of that?
Well, I think weapons sales are sort of an end unto themselves for the U.S. right now.
It doesn't really matter what they're going to be used for.
We sell countries like the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, just enormous amounts of weaponry with no clue what they possibly could intend to do with it all.
Yes, certainly not put down their revolts.
Yeah, all right.
Well, so there's so many wars, we don't have enough time to talk about all of them, but can we fit in a bit here about Iraq and the future of the American occupation?
Well, we can certainly try.
The latest with Iraq, it seems to be that the Maliki government is looking to just ignore Parliament entirely, take a page out of the U.S. book and just circumvent the Iraqi Congress and try to approve an extension of some sort without such a vote.
And well, so what's the reaction in the Parliament to that?
Well, there hasn't really been a public reaction yet, but I would only assume that it's going to be a negative one because, of course, the 2008 vote to extend U.S. troops through this year was incredibly difficult in Iraq's Parliament, and it only came with the promise of this grand national referendum on the U.S. occupation, which never came.
And it seems like the votes only going to have gotten more difficult since then.
Well, you know, I guess I don't really know and people say otherwise, but I kind of get the idea that Maliki doesn't want the occupation to continue.
And maybe his army guys, you know, they like having American help and that kind of thing.
You know, some of his generals and all that.
But I kind of get the idea that he's playing the same game he played in 2008, which is, gee, you know, I'm trying to get them to go along with it, but they just don't seem to want to when his heart really isn't in it.
Am I wrong?
What do you think?
Well, it's really hard to say, but it seems like a few months ago he was saying absolutely not.
There's no need for troop extensions.
And now he's saying, well, it depends what Parliament says.
Oh, and by the way, military personnel that are classified as trainers don't count, and we don't even need to ask Parliament for them.
So it seems like he's buckling under the pressure and is giving a lot of ground to the U.S. demands to be asked to stay.
Well, but is there a difference in numbers at all?
I mean, obviously they're going to call combat troops whatever they want to call them, you know, as a matter of euphemism and all that.
But trainers seems to imply a very limited number, much less than they wanted.
They wanted to leave 10,000, 20,000 troops, right?
Right.
And it's not really clear how many trainers were talking here, but certainly they could use about any excuse to say, well, these guys are trainers.
Sure.
All right.
Well, I'm sorry.
We'll have to leave it there.
We're all out of time, but I really appreciate your time on the show today, Jason, as always.
Sure.
Thanks for having me.
Jason Ditz, everydaynews.antiwar.com.
