All right, everybody, welcome back to the show, Antiwar Radio.
I'm your guest host, Zoe Greif, filling in for Scott Horton.
I'm happy to be here, and I'm real happy to welcome our first guest today, John Glaser.
He's news editor at Antiwar.com.
Welcome to the show, John.
How are you doing?
Very good.
Thanks for having me on.
Well, thanks for being on.
I really appreciate it.
We're wondering, me and the audience, I'm certain, just what in the heck is going on in Syria?
There's so much to talk about.
There's Hillary Clinton's lies about attack helicopters.
There's John McCain's most recent belligerence.
There's these massacres and who's responsible or isn't, the BBC fake picture.
Where do you even want to start, John?
Well, in the mainstream, Syria is being framed as a humanitarian crisis in which a terrible dictator is brutalizing his own people who want a democratic change in government.
But that's really only half true.
And even the part that's true is immensely more complicated than that.
I mean, first of all, the Syrian opposition is not the kind of popular uprising we saw in Egypt, for example.
The opposition fighters represent still a minority of the Syrian population, which doesn't, particularly like Assad, doesn't trust the opposition.
That's partly because the opposition includes Sunni extremists, some of which may be aligned with elements of al-Qaeda.
A UN investigation found last month that both the Assad regime and the Syrian opposition fighters or rebels have committed serious crimes and atrocities and killed innocent people.
Well, that's not surprising.
Right.
This should create concerns about providing them with U.S. support, even though Washington has made no bones about supporting the worst kinds of criminals and terrorist proxy forces in the past.
The other thing that should concern people about providing aid to the rebels is that they have no top-down organization.
They're very ragtag, fractured, disparate groups of localized militias that nobody can seem to really get a handle on.
So this leads to both not only moral problems, but practical problems with aiding them.
Well, for example, the Free Syrian Army is based in Turkey, isn't it?
So if you wanted to send the Free Syrian Army supplies, you'd have to go to Turkey.
And I can only imagine how that works and then how they'd get from Turkey to Syria.
Do you have any insight on that?
Elements of the Free Syrian Army sort of hide out in a refugee camp in Turkey.
But what you're really referring to is the Syrian National Council.
There you go.
Thanks for correcting me.
Right.
This is a group of defectors who are expatriates and living in Turkey and actually some other places as well.
They are trying to be a de facto sort of leadership that might be able to replace Assad.
But they're even more disorganized and disparate and fractured than the actual opposition fighters in the Free Syrian Army.
Luckily, the Obama administration has been apprehensive about intervening militarily in Syria, in part because, as administration officials have repeatedly said, including White House spokesman Jay Carney, further militarizing the conflict would only worsen the humanitarian situation, causing an even more dramatic descent into sectarian war.
The risks to civilians would also increase.
I mean, the Assad regime, unlike the Qaddafi regime in Libya, has considerable military defense capabilities, including anti-aircraft and anti-ballistic capabilities.
And in order to take these out, you know, in some sort of American bombing campaign, which some people are advocating for, Washington would have to destroy them.
But the problem is that they're located in urban areas, which would undoubtedly lead to civilian casualties, a whole new refugee crisis, and probably considerable infrastructure damage.
One other reason that the administration is not apprehensive about direct military intervention is because support for such military action is lacking in the United Nations Security Council.
Both Russia and China have blocked Western intervention, and so any action against the Assad regime would be remarkably, you know, antagonistic towards Russia, which is still a close ally of Assad.
Russia's stake in Syria provides Moscow with valuable geopolitical influence that they're not going to give up.
I mean, Syria provides Moscow with a reliable buyer of Russian arms.
Russia has a military base in Syria, gets key access to Syria's naval ports.
Syria's proximity to Israel gives Russia, you know, a clear seat at the table in terms of any international peace effort in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
But most importantly, in terms of the Middle East, which is a region that Washington still reigns supreme over in terms of, you know, imperial hegemony, Russia has Syria, and this provides them with an opportunity to push back against Western imperialism, and show that the U.S., you know, that Russia too is a world power with its own interests, and so on and so forth.
So this leads to a situation, what I've called in my writings, a problem of intervention.
Many people have said that if only Russia would stop supporting Assad, you know, a political transition could take place, and the violence would be put to a stop.
But, you know, the only way Russia would give up their client state in Syria is if they could be assured that Washington and its allies would not try to exploit a transition for their own interests, which is a virtual impossibility.
I mean, if anything happened in Syria, Washington's going to try to get its hands on it, and put in, you know, someone that will conform to their interests more than Assad had.
So outside, this leads to outside powers continuing to meddle.
Russia and Iran are supporting the Assad regime, and the U.S., EU, Gulf Arab states are supporting the rebels, and this is emboldening both sides, and prolonging the conflict, and making some sort of a political settlement, you know, much more remote.
Well, you say prolonging the conflict, let me ask you, if it wasn't for western powers meddling to encourage and supply the so-called rebels, and for Russia and others for, you know, supplying the so-called, or the actual Assad regime, excuse me, would there even be this civil war in the first place, or would Assad just have crushed it, and it would have been a story for a week or two and over, and we would not even be talking about it now, do you think?
That is my guess.
That's what probably would have happened.
The thing is that, you know, and this happens over and over again in history.
It happened in the Kosovo conflict in 1999 as well.
What happens is, when a dictator feels like he has, you know, a world power behind him, he is going to continue to do everything he can to keep his hands on power and, you know, eliminate any opposition.
Similarly, the rebel fighters, if they didn't think that they could attract western aid and assistance, and also aid and assistance from the Sunni Gulf Arab states, they would not be risking their lives, because they know that they cannot match the powerful Assad regime.
So this is a situation where both sides feel like they have the backing, or at least the eventual backing, of other world powers, and they think they have leverage.
But if they take that leverage away, if all this foreign meddling wasn't going on, both sides would have to compromise or quit one or the other.
Wow.
So the West and the Russians and the Gulf states and seems like anyone who can is just meddling in this and stirring up more hornet's nest and more trouble.
That is not surprising, but it is saddening, definitely.
That's why I call it a problem of intervention.
What we're seeing is that foreign powers keep meddling and prolonging the conflict.
And the only way that they would stop the meddling is if they believed that their rival powers wouldn't try to exploit a political transition for their own interests.
I mean, if powers would just mind their own business, there might be a political solution that is viable in Syria, and there might be a chance to end the bloodshed, which is considerable.
Yes.
Please talk a little bit more about that, because for a while there, the national news was covering it a lot.
And of course, presenting everyone that died as the fault of Assad and every other anti-Assad force as good and wonderful.
And it was very black and white.
But what was actually happening?
I mean, everyone's committing atrocities and everyone's killing everybody, right?
That is true.
I mean, I think it's hard to know specifically what has gone on in detail, because journalists, of course, aren't allowed.
International observers only see a small percentage of things.
But we can talk about that more after the break.
Yeah.
Sorry to ask you a question and right up on a break.
My bad.
We're talking with John Glazer, a news editor at Antiwar Radio, and we're focusing on Syria.
We're trying to figure out what the heck's going on.
I am anyway.
And John's trying to tell me if I'll just shut up enough and let him talk, maybe I'll do that next segment when we continue talking about Syria.
More on the other side with John Glazer, Antiwar Radio.
Welcome back to the show, everybody.
It's Antiwar Radio.
I'm your guest host, Zoe Greif.
I'm talking with John Glazer, news editor at Antiwar.com.
And we were rudely interrupted by the break, and I rambled too much anyway.
But you were about to explain how in Syria all sides are committing atrocities.
And so let me just ask you to please pierce the veil of Western media distortion.
And can you tell us what's really going on on the ground as best you can, John?
Well, unfortunately, the answer is no, I can't.
Nobody really knows what's going on in detail on the ground.
We know there's lots of bloodshed and both sides are committing atrocities.
The UN report that was issued last month is evidence enough of that.
We also know that, you know, the opposition has elements of Al Qaeda in it, despite the sort of freedom fighter talk that you hear from people like John McCain and Lindsey Graham.
The infamous Hula massacre, in which 90 or 100 people were massacred in the town of Hula.
You know, it was widely, widely reported in the Western media and all over the world that this was done by the Assad regime.
But it turns out, you know, later on reports came out, there was reports in the German media in particular, which were investigative reporting, you know, say, with evidence and eyewitnesses saying that this massacre was actually committed by Sunni extremists within the opposition, and it was framed in order to look like it was done by Assad.
The problem is that this account, the account that has surfaced in the German media, is about as, you know, worthwhile and about as, you know, provides us with any evidence as all the other Western media propaganda.
We simply don't know what is going on, who's doing what in Syria.
And this, of course, is a bigger problem than it even sounds, because despite how I explained earlier that the Obama administration is opposing military intervention, they have unfortunately already begun providing lethal and non-lethal aid to the Syrian opposition, partly through Turkey, partly through the Sunni Gulf Arab states like Saudi Arabia and Oman and, you know, United Arab Emirates and others.
You know, this is very troubling for the reasons that I went into, because the opposition is, you know, evidently very unfavorable people, and it puts Washington in a position where its technical policy, however timid or aggressive, is pursuing regime change in Syria.
And again, that leads to all sorts of problems.
But with regard to the overall conflict, I think it's very important to push back on the Western narrative that has been dominant.
The thing is that, you know, the bloodshed and suffering in Syria is very bad.
It's a humanitarian crisis.
But, I mean, we should have a, put it in perspective.
I mean, think about the, you know, 800,000 people that were murdered in Rwanda in the 1990s.
We heard very little about intervention there.
The civil war in Sri Lanka, you know, lasted for two decades, up to 100,000 or so violent deaths.
Darfur conflict, 400,000 civilians dead, and so on and so forth.
So we need to put Syria in context and realize that the reason it's being given disproportionate sort of weight is because of the geopolitics, not because of humanitarian situation.
And it's funny, you listen to advocates of war, advocates of intervention, like McCain and Romney and John Kerry and Lindsey Graham and the rest of them.
And what they talk about, you know, the humanitarian crisis is almost a footnote.
What they really talk about is going into Syria, instituting regime change in order to get at Iran, because Syria, of course, is an ally of Iran.
The politics of this and the geopolitics, and the sort of imperialist notion about intervening, that's what really counts.
That's why this conflict is being portrayed as disproportionately grave.
And that's why pundits and politicos are calling for intervention.
The conflict itself and the humanitarian bloodshed, that's merely a pretext.
Of course, they're killing people.
And of course, it's morally wrong.
But we're wanting to focus on the lies and how their lies and disproving those lies so that other people don't buy into them.
That's what we try to do here at Anti-War Radio.
And that's what Jason Diz, excuse me, and John Glazer both do for Antiwar.com.
Now, can you answer me a question, John, explain to me in the audience, who exactly backs the regime?
And what is an Alawi?
And what's at stake for them?
And please expand on that.
Well, the Assad regime is made up of mostly Alawite Shia sect.
It's a sect of the Shiite religion.
And they've held power there for decades.
They're aligned with Iran, of course, because of their similar Shia background.
And Syria, as I said, has some geopolitical interest in Syria.
And, you know, I went into that in the last segment.
So, you know, who's supporting Assad?
That's pretty much it.
But who's supporting the Syrian opposition?
That is the US, Europe, some European states, at least, the Gulf Arab states, who are funneling aid and weapons to the opposition.
And so this is, again, like I said, is creating a situation where both sides are emboldened.
And, you know, the conflict goes on and on and on.
What a mess.
What a mess, John.
Well, where do you want to go from here?
I mean, I guess we're we don't know what's really going on in Syria, except that it's really bad.
And if the Western forces would quit meddling, and if Russia and the Gulf states and Iran and everybody else would quit meddling, then I'm sure that the Assad regime and these rebels, whoever they are, could work something out.
But fat chance of that happening, huh?
Yes, it is a fat chance.
I mean, what we have to do here, our role should really be explaining why an actual military intervention would be so disastrous.
I've tried to do that.
The other thing that's important is that we need to explain to people that what's going on now in terms of aiding the opposition is also bad.
I mean, I wrote a blog post recently drawing parallels between the US support of the Mujahideen in Afghanistan when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in the 80s.
That led to some obvious blowback, because what happened is the Taliban got to power all of these sort of, you know, unsavory Islamic militants got to power in Afghanistan after the 80s, after we helped them out the Russians.
And then, you know, they housed Al Qaeda.
And then, you know, the rest is history, 9-11, and then an invasion of Afghanistan.
That was, even now, that's sort of seen as, I sort of seemed to good at the time, but oh, hell, what a screw-up kind of foreign policy artifact.
And what's happening now is that we're aiding the opposition.
And there's all sorts of immediate drawbacks to that, which I've gone into.
But there's also the long term.
I mean, I know in the State Department, I bet, it's been 10 years down the line.
And what kind of effect, what kind of Mujahideen, what kind of blowback we're creating by aiding this opposition, who we know very little about.
But we do know that it has elements of Al Qaeda and elements of Sunni extremists that have committed crimes.
So, you know, aside from the immediate tactical and moral issues of giving support to these fighters, the arrogance of power-wielding foreign meddlers like the U.S. and the EU is really a thing to marvel at.
Not only do they think they're all-knowing and all-powerful enough to craft and mold a particular outcome pursuant to their unscrupulous interest, but they also have the hubris to disregard possible consequences that their interventions may breed far into the unforeseeable future.
So while they're making the conflict worse, they're also potentially laying the groundwork for future catastrophes.
Yeah, well, I was just going to add, I know my Greek drama well enough to know that after hubris comes tragedy, comes the fall.
And that's what you're getting at, that all this is going to lead to something really, really bad down the road.
And I certainly hope you're wrong, but I know logic.
And Mr. Spock would say, yeah, you're right, John.
Yeah, we do have some things to be thankful for.
And despite the fact that Russia is supporting a terrible, terrible dictator who has committed atrocities, Russia's vow to block anything at the Security Council is in a way preventing any U.S. intervention.
And so I think that even the Obama administration, which they've said repeatedly, understands that an intervention with the military would be too detrimental, make the conflict worse.
And what we have to do now is try to get them to stop aiding the opposition and prolonging the conflict longer than it needs.
Well, I guess other than exposing the lies that they're telling for the lies that they are, I'm not sure what the average person can do, but follow the bad news at antiwar.com.
What do you think, John?
Is there anything else we can do?
Just read antiwar.com and complain until your ears hurt.
All right.
Well, we're out of time for the show.
Thank you so much, John, for joining us.
It's John Glaser, news editor at antiwar.com, talking all about Syria.
Thanks for your time on the show.
Bye-bye.
