Alright y'all welcome back.
It's anti-war radio I'm Scott Horton Next up is John Glazer assistant editor at anti-war calm and Man, he's been setting the blog on fire over the last few months It's so good to have you on that blog and on this show.
Welcome back John.
How are you?
Pretty good.
Thanks for having me.
I'm very happy to have you here I was wondering if you could teach us a little bit about Barack Obama's war on behalf of democracy and freedom in Bahrain How's that going?
Yeah, well, you know, it was interesting when when Obama got word of Muammar Qaddafi's execution, you know the one where they beat him and dragged him on the ground and kicked him in the head and allegedly now perhaps Stabbed him sodomized him with a combat knife and then shot him in the head when he got word of that incident He used it as an opportunity to Say, you know This is you know good for the Arab Spring It's another dictator down and this is a warning to other dictators in the region, you know, you can't last for long Which is an interesting thing for him to have said considering that he?vehemently and enthusiastically supports many of these dictators in Bahrain as you point out is a perfectly good example Recently So so like last month they the State Department issued In the way that they're required to a notify that notification about their plan to send Bahrain 53 million dollars worth of arms and weaponry And military training and equipment So this is just the latest in that they've they've done it many many times in the past In fact, they've armed for the most part all of Bahrain's government But they had to do this notification and it was reaching finalization just last week or two weeks ago and Overwhelming international condemnation as well as pressure here at home from human rights groups Push that to a temporary hold so that is on hold Because of course it's understood very clearly that the Bahraini government is going to continue to use Such weaponry provided by the u.s.
Against its own citizens This has been going on especially since February with when Arab Spring protests had their had Open live rounds Opened on them from security forces in Bahrain and the situation doesn't seem to be getting any better So but that's that's sort of the status quo in Bahrain.
So this lie about Obama supporting democracy and development in the Middle East is Belied by his relationship with the Bahraini dictatorship Now if I remember the way this thing started the protesters when they occupied Pearl Square It was really the roundabout there around square What they said was hey, we would like for you to stay the king king your highness But we would like a constitutional monarchy where we can pretend there's some semblance of law.
Would that please be?
Okay, that was more or less where this thing started That's precisely right and and they they did it peacefully And they did they were asking for civil government.
They were asking for the rule of law And that's in contrast by the way to Bahrain's recent history pre Arab Spring where they have been known to torture and illegally detain and Do things the way that dictatorships do these people these Bahrainis were just?peacefully non-violently asking for a country in which they couldn't be abused but American influences is Influencing that small country that small government of that small country of very very much in in the direction of maintained Dictatorship because if the population in Bahrain gets too much Control if policy starts to reflect the will of the people there Washington won't get its way in the Gulf and that's very important to Obama and his minions Anyway, so can you tell us a little bit about the police state crackdown?
As far as you know, what's happened to the protesters?
And of course a big part of that is the doctors who treated the wounded protesters One thing I read recently said they're going to get new trials since originally they were all just Sentenced to solitary confinement for decades for daring to treat the wounded That's right.
So initially a number of scores of doctors and nurses were arrested for the crime of treating As patients those protesters who had been injured by government security forces And this has been condemned by the international computer to community and various human rights groups And they've been putting a lot of pressure on the Bahraini government to Actually, you know do something about this and it you're right it recently they have called for a retrial in which these these Medical professionals will get another chance at freedom for not committing any crime at all But you know the story gets ugly If you take a little deeper because while these while these medical professionals were in custody Many of them who were detained Came out and claimed that they had been tortured beaten hit with Electrical cables and so on and so forth.
In fact a princess in Bahrain is specifically Pointed out as one of the sort of torturers in chief in These Bahraini prisons and it doesn't seem like The Bahraini government is going to you know push for some accountability for the people who were tortured and so on so forth So that's that's ugly furthermore despite the fact that we don't hear about it too too much in the media There are daily daily protests in Bahrain.
I mean daily people and night people are going onto the streets to protest and It wasn't so long ago that you know a tear gas canister was Was shot and and it hit a boy in the head of the 16 year old boy I believe and he died and his family is not getting any justice And that sort of thing happens every once in a while a little over 30 people have been killed Directly by security forces and you know hundreds hundreds more maybe thousands injured So that that's a little taste of how things are on the ground But the problem is that the Bahraini government actually also Jailed about 40 to 50 people when in last month they had by elections because the people pushing for by elections to To actually put some people that actually they feel represent them into Parliament and they it was it was basically a show and the opposition parties Boycotted it and so therefore they had no chance that at putting in people with voices and so they just they just arrested People as part of the opposition who boycotted so that's again.
That's a little taste of how things are on the ground over there Unfortunately, yeah, well, they're not much different than New York Times where the whole spin is that the crown prince who's in charge of all?of this persecution He's the Western leading Democratic moderate type who we can work with who's really not so bad It's the king who's doing all this brutalization Right that that's the typical evasive Tone from the New York Times.
Yeah, it really is amazing.
Well Back when this goes in the category I guess of like Justin was saying in his recent article that evil makes you stupid Where like Lindsey Graham doesn't know that he's not supposed to say on TV that yes now we'll steal all their oil about Libya and Michael mall Admiral Mullen made the same mistake and saying that the difference between Libya where we're intervening supposedly on the side of You know the little guy against the dictator and Bahrain is that Bahrain is our ally and I guess he could have added Qaddafi's expendable for our PR stunt Um, anyway, we're gonna pick up right there when we get back from this with John Glazer All right, y'all welcome back to the show it's anti-war radio I'm Scott Horton.
I'm talking with John Glazer Assistant editor at anti-war comm you can find him at news dot anti-war comm he's keeping Jason Ditts company over there and Tearing it up at all times at anti-war comm/blog I urge you to just go ahead and make that one of your home tabs.
Why not?
I would I do it is alright now you wrote a little review John of Michael Hastings new piece in Rolling Stone Which I don't want to talk about so much, but I want to talk about this part of it Hillary Clinton quote We didn't get off to such a great start with Egypt.
Let's reverse that with Libya now Doesn't have everything that I would you know have crammed in there in it, but I'm pretty sure more or less what that means is Scott Horton is right and Was right that the reason America intervened in Libya wasn't because there was anything wrong with Qaddafi In fact, he was even willing to buy weapons from America and everything else but he was expendable and they needed to change the narrative from America is Obviously the bad guy in Egypt to America's on the side of the little guy against the evil dictator in Libya And so that was the final argument that convinced Clinton to support the this war apparently was As I guessed back then for the PR sake in order to confuse the narrative from America's the bad guy in each and every one of these revolutions That's right, I think that it's clear and you you you actually were the first one that I heard to to put forth this this theory in it and it plays out as a result of As as revealed by Hastings report, which I have problems with as you know, but Yeah, I mean the problem with that that narrative is that It's It's it's going to war for PR purposes.
It's going to war in order to overshadow your Incessant unceasing and committed support for charity in other parts of that region And and that's that's really the big the big problem with with the Libya intervention Especially I mean we really need to get into the fact that The the NTC and their rebel fighters are not exactly the poster boys for Democracy in the region their torturers and rapists and murderers is what they are That's right.
It was just last week right after the killing the execution in fact of Qaddafi that they found 53 could not pro-Qaddafi loyalists who had been Executed in a hotel that was under NTC control they had their hands Bound behind their back and many of them had a shot to the head Well, and I talked to David Enders on this show where he was in the refugee camp interviewing the women who said yeah They come and grab women at night by the dozens and rape them yeah, they're bad guys and it takes a lot of propaganda to actually Torque this intervention into sort of a pro Arab Spring pro-democracy light But the evidence is not just belied in Bahrain We have to think you know the evidence is also belied note notably in Yemen Which is you know?
Even worse Atrocities have been happening in Yemen that have been happening in Bahrain People just in the past week or two up to 70 people have been killed And that's just the last week or two and have been over the month.
It's been you know in the high hundred Largely peaceful protests there as well although there are tribal elements fighting each other But you know after There was a lot of pressure in the same way that there is in Bahrain To stop supporting Ali Ali's Abdullah Salah the president of Yemen And he's still using our weapons against people by the way, but after after the Al-haqi killing It was amazing to see Obama ministration officials again They had been dormant for a while, but again come out and heap loads of praise on the Yemeni administration regime for allowing them to You know help in the fight against terrorism and allowing them to kill an American Citizen without due process so now he's back to being a great guy And it's worth pointing out that Yemen still has a hundred and twenty million dollars Allocated to them for the request of the fiscal year 2012 budget That comparable amounts were last year and this year and the year before that in 2005 we sent them the Tens of millions of dollars of military equipment complete with shotguns machine guns sniper rifles Which they by the way have been?
Putting snipers on top of buildings that aligned the streets of Arab Spring protesters and opening fire live rounds We're not talking rubber bullets here Yemen is another example of Obama's you know Strong commitment to tyranny and despotism and state terror and it doesn't even end there We can go to Egypt and realize the fact wait Let's stay on Yemen for a second here because you know I think it's worth pointing out without you know Haven't been there and knowing everything about it.
It's at least likely or or quite plausible I would say that the only reason that the Salih government is able to hang on to power is because of American aid he's got the Houthi rebellion in the north He's got the socialist rebellion in the south and then in the capital city.
They hate his guts, too I mean, what does this guy have going for him other than American money and American arms John?
You're what you're largely correct because he has such a weak administration and for a while He was even out of the country receiving medical treatment for wounds.
He took during a an attempted assassination In some now, but you're pretty much right there is a support base In north in the northern part of the capital which is you know?
They have the part of his tribe which goes back you know generation But they support him because you know they they get guns and butter from his being in power And they're a very very small portion of the entire country most of whom does not want him to be president There's opposition tribes.
There's the Houthi rebellion And then there's this massive popular protest against his rule many of whom are young You know democratically minded people the winner of the most recent Nobel Peace Prize A woman whose name I have trouble at how wacol Carmen Just won the Nobel Peace Prize She's been on the streets in Yemen for since the beginning and her and many many others Like her are just a youthful peaceful Revolution that want to see accountability and civil government and rule of law and stop having such a dictatorship But again as we see in Bahrain in Yemen u.s.
Influence guns and butter Are too strong to allow a democratic process to?
Arise and Obama is not even but he's barely even suffering any Criticism from this sort of dictatorial policy in the media.
He still has supporters who claim You know he's a champion of human rights and all this it's it's disheartening to see such People's you know such an ignoring attitude towards the unfortunate realities of this presidency well You know yeah, I wanted to reemphasize very quickly what he said about how after they allowed the assassination of the American citizen preacher a locky in their country the Administration, I believe it was Obama himself and the Secretary of State Clinton both lavishly praised the dictator Salah the absolutely shameless it completely just ignoring the reality of You know his role in crushing the Arab Spring there That's right Obama.
I'll quote him.
He said this success success being Assassinating an American citizen without any due process This success is a tribute to our intelligence community and to the efforts of Yemen and its security forces Who have worked closely with the United States over the course of several years you bet buddy?
Yeah, he's been working closely with you, and you've been working closely with them Yeah, I'd like to see the wiki leaks on American advisers helping them with their crowd control and putting down this rebellion, too It wouldn't surprise me one bit That's exactly right.
This is this is this generalizes throughout the region unfortunately And Obama wasn't the only one that day to to praise the solid came from the State Department and Hillary Clinton as well Let me ask you real quick is it okay if I keep you one more segment here after the top of the hour break Because I didn't want to let you elaborate about Egypt, and and I see your new piece about Uzbekistan here at anti-war comm/blog I'd like to talk about with you as well Sure thing yeah America.
We're We're the light of Liberty coming at you with the J. Damn Oh by the way I guess I'll go ahead and squeak in here before the music starts playing if people go back to 2009 when Obama lied and said the beginning of the end of the Afghan war would be this last July He also in his West Point speech said at the end by the way Yemen and Somalia you're next and in fact he'd been bombing them as we've been reporting at anti-war comm for weeks and Continued bombing them for weeks leading up to the attempted Christmas Day attack where Abdulmutallab Supposedly was put on the plane in Yemen in the first place So maybe a little bit of a lesson and blowback for you there You can read amnesty about the cluster bombs and the children that died All right, so welcome back to the show It's anti-war radio I'm Scott Horton and lucky me John Glazer staying on the line for one more segment here He's our assistant editor at anti-war comm you find him on the blog mostly and also at news dot anti-war comm And you were switching over to Egypt and I interrupted you and made you stay on Yemen for a minute So let's go ahead and talk about America's democracy and Liberty promotion in Egypt for a little bit here Of course if we know the history of the u.s.
Relationship with Egypt, we know it's not very much different from that with Yemen and Bahrain Mubarak was a terrible dictator Bob while we all know that But there was a real chance and Obama the Obama administration Continued to support Mubarak right to the very end until it was impossible to do so any further And You know Egyptians ousted him and now he's standing trial But there you know Egyptian democracy is just not a sure thing Right now and what there are a couple of reasons for but one of the main ones is that America continues to support?the ruling Military Council which has made bad on its on its promises things like Repealing the the emergency law which which cracked down which cracked down on press freedoms and and and and political freedoms and free speech freedoms Speaking bad of the of the leaders and so on and so forth so so what we see is continuing abuses some of them are just isolated, but some of them are more fundamental to the Transition in Egypt right now and again, there are real reasons for it Namely if the people gain enough legitimacy in the political sphere over there The the policies will start to reflect what they want and that is unacceptable to Washington policies like You know subservience to Israel policies like giving prominence to American investment in that country Things like rendition which who knows you know the extent to which that's still going on or the extent to which it will be re-upped in the future Egypt would be a good ally to have to help torture people so This is this is sort of the status quo in Egypt, and we sort of have to wait And to see how long it'll be before Progress actually starts to take hold.
I'm actually cautiously optimistic, but I did want to Mention Uzbekistan who have this is I've been looking at it recently and it's sort of it sort of encapsulates What our whole conversation has been about and what it sort of encapsulates the Obama administration's foreign policy Even with regard to the Arab Spring even though there doesn't seem to be many Arab Spring protesters in Uzbekistan It's a central Asian dictatorship, it's one of the worst in the world the Bush administration supported it handsomely in order to supply American troops in Afghanistan with military equipment and the rest of it And we set up bases there and so on so forth, but in like 2005 2000 2004 2005 International condom date condemnation forced a sort of souring of the u.s.
Relationship with with Uzbekistan and But lately The Obama administration I should say that Uzbekistan is probably even a worse dictatorship than Bahrain Or or Yemen the the guy is notorious because the the president there Islam Karamoff is Notorious for Boiling people alive and raping them with broken bottles.
This is what he does to his prisoners And it it's anyone who speaks poorly of him could be a prisoner We should we should keep in mind the State Department even just recently Issued their latest sort of report on on Uzbekistan.
They said they condemned him for torture mistreatment of detainees illegal detention Arbitrary arrest denial of due process restrictions on freedom of speech you can go on and on and on harassment of religious minority groups Yet the Obama administration has been cozying back up to that dictator so they can better execute the Afghan war Because you know, they've had souring relationships with Pakistan but Hillary Clinton just got back from a trip with Karamoff Where she was supposedly the media praised her for you know, sticking it to him and you know Chastising him on how brutal he is and saying hey if you want more support from us Which he's already getting because they lifted sanctions which allow the resumption of US military foreign sales To that country, but you know, she supposedly chided him for all the human rights violations Which is not true at all.
She just went there To show her support and and renew the relationship between the US and that horrible dictator But this is the this is the problem.
We already mentioned the fact that that Obama supporters and even most sort of moderate Americans who don't pay that much attention Don't give him any flack for this Obama's in the clear for all of this But no one no one recognizes the contradiction between the Obama we heard about in 2008 who promised Respect for human rights and transparent government and the change from the Bush years and then then hasn't that's one thing We've already mentioned that but another thing that I just plainly don't understand is Why?
This should be tolerated why it should Dictatorships be supported with guns and butter all around the world from Latin America to the Middle East to Central Asia and Nobody do anything about it.
Why should that be allowed?
Why shouldn't the Obama administration and the main decision makers?
Implementing these policies face trial.
Why are these not indictable offenses?
Why is it not an indictable offense to imprison the people of Yemen or the people of Uzbekistan?
And and maintain a dictatorship over their heads when it's possible that they might get something else Something better something more democratic something more humanitarian Why why are these people not on trial?
I mean if I was paying some Jerk bully on the playground to go beat up people and and coerce them and make him steal money from them and so on So forth sort of a mini little playground dictator.
I'd surely get in trouble for that.
That's that's an indictable offense I'd be in jail Why in the world do the would do the leaders of the free world supposedly?
The the people heading the government in America not get any flack Legal moral or otherwise for these horrible horrible policies which imprison millions of innocent people Well, I mean, I don't know There's just no accountability and it's really it's because of the unreality of the whole situation It's like Carl Sagan used to talk about people just lost in the dark grasping at superstition They got no real ground to stand on to understand anything There's an argument going on at salon.com this week about whether America is an empire or not 20 years after the fall of the Soviet Union and we've been at war ever since and now we're going to argue we're going to begin to argue about whether this is a Liberal hegemony or a blood-soaked monster just like every other one that came before it.
Come on, but that's I Saw that on salon.
I saw the segment the TV segment on MSNBC It's such a joke to see supposed experts on television trying to influence people's thoughts about how the world works and not recognize the fact that The America the American Empire is in fact an empire it's pathetic.
I mean, it's it's a sad reflection of the Intellectual culture that we have here Sure.
I mean look you just basically defined empire We have to support this tortured dictator who boils people to death so that we can have Supply routes for our forever war in Afghanistan That's about you know, a third of its lifespan through at ten years right now That's right.
And one of the things that PJ Crowley said in defense of you know This the argument that we're not an empire.
So he said, oh, you know We're drawing down in Iraq an empire would have stayed in Iraq as much as they could Well, first of all The Obama administration did try to stay in Iraq as much as they could in Violation of the deal that was that was scheduled to for all of them to leave in December 2011 That was set up by the Bush administration and it's obviously clear that we're not leaving.
We have an expanded diplomatic presence there we have thousands of military Contractors mercenaries.
Well, and if we're gonna keep their tens of thousands of troops, they would have had to start the war all over again What they're afraid, right?
We've accomplished our our mission in Afghanistan in Iraq, which is to make it a client state that's why we're mostly drawing down Yeah.
All right.
Well, we're all out of time.
Thank you very much for your time, especially for staying over with us John.
Appreciate it Thank you, John Glazer.
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