07/27/12 – Philip Giraldi – The Scott Horton Show

All right, y'all, welcome back.
I'm Scott Horton.
ScottHorton.org is the website.
Keep all the interview archives there.
Next up is Philip Giraldi.
He's the executive director of the Council for the National Interest.
That's CouncilForTheNationalInterest.org.
Of course, he's the contributing editor at the American Conservative Magazine and a regular contributor as well to AntiWar.com.
Welcome back to the show, Phil.
How are you doing?
I'm fine, Scott.
How are you?
Thank you for joining us here today.
So let's see.
Back in the days when you were the CIA, did you ever work in Syria?
I know you worked in Turkey for a long time, right?
Yeah, I did not work on Syria.
Syria was not considered to be a problem back then.
It wasn't a problem, he said?
No, I mean, there were no issues about Syria.
I mean, Syria was basically, it was under the older Assad, and it basically was a place that was not particularly friendly to the United States, but at the same time, we weren't running any major operations against it.
And I guess there really is no interest there.
They don't have a lot of oil or anything like that.
They're not a threat to any American interests in the region, really?
Well, that's one of the great mysteries about all of this nonsense going on now.
I mean, there is no real, there are some minor American interests in terms of Syria and what happens in Syria and so on and so forth, but the people like Turkey are the ones that have major interests there, and the U.S. just does not, and it's always mystified me that we, our Secretary of State has felt compelled to be commenting on Syria about once every two days.
Yeah.
Well, and, you know, I was reading this thing by Robert Dreyfus where he talks about how, I think he's referring to her when he talks about all the shrill denunciations of Assad, but that basically the Obama administration approached politically the entire time since some of the very first protests has been, they're, you know, never at all to push for any kind of political settlement whatsoever, but just to demand that Assad must go.
I mean, you refer to his old man, the former dictator that he inherited the place from, that guy had killed a lot of people and America had no problem working with him on, say, the first Gulf War, for example, but now all of a sudden, he must go and they can't climb down from that.
And so now it's just on, it's a regime change, but it's just hiring a bunch of other people to do it.
But why, other than to make Hillary Clinton feel better about herself, or what is this?
Yeah, this was one of the, again, one of the great mysteries.
All of a sudden, I mean, this free Syria army kind of disappeared out of nowhere, and within about 30 days, Hillary was immediately calling for a regime change, which, as you correctly point out, meant there was no room for negotiation.
And now we're getting all kinds of fanciful numbers thrown out by the neocons in terms of how many Syrians have already died, how many Syrians are likely to die.
They're making it look like it's some kind of humanitarian mission.
Right.
And so then, is it all just about Israel?
Is this what Benjamin Netanyahu wants?
Because part of me thinks, you know, without being able to, you know, be a fly on the wall and really know about their councils or whatever, I think somebody in there's got to have an IQ better than 100 who can say, this is actually not in our long-term interest to have this regime change now.
Not this way, anyway.
Yeah, I don't think it's particularly about Israel.
I think the Israelis themselves are somewhat ambivalent in terms of what they want to see.
On one hand, they want to see a state like Syria break down into its constituent parts so it won't pose any threat to Israel, but on the other hand, they recognize that getting rid of the guy in charge, like getting rid of Mubarak, means that you open the door to all kinds of other stuff, and like the Turks in particular are bracing themselves for a major refugee problem, and also the creation of what they fear, which would be a Kurdish enclave right on their border.
Okay, now, so to what degree is the United States government running this thing?
Because I guess you were the first one, really, to break the story, weren't you, back last December at the American Conservative and at Antiwar.com, that there's a new finding on Syria where Barack Obama's authorized the CIA to step up their operations there, and then, of course, Pepe Escobar and others have been writing a little bit about that, Eric Margulies, but then, just I think in the last, what, three, four weeks, the New York Times and the Washington Post both ran front-page stories about Phil's right.
The CIA is really coordinating the Qataris, the Saudis, you know, I guess they're coming up with the money, and the Turks are doing a lot of the weapons transfers and whatever, and the CIA is trying to pick and choose which of the rebels get armed and this kind of thing.
Are they really running the whole show?
Well, I think they're not running the whole show.
That's part of the problem, that they're involved, but at the same time, there was a piece in the Washington Post this week saying that the CIA actually has no assets on the ground inside Syria, and they don't know what's going on.
So this is probably closer to the truth than anything else, but the CIA is involved, the Turks are basically providing the actual physical bases for what's going on inside Syria.
In the paper today, it came out that the center of this is Adana, where the U.S. has an air base, and so that physical presence is coming from the Turks, and the money is coming from the Gulf states and the Saudis.
So it's kind of a confused thing.
Nobody knows who these rebels really are or what they represent or what they might do in six months if they get rid of Assad, and it's just a total mess.
So I read this thing about Prince Bandar, do I still have it here?
I think it was in Haaretz.
Did you see that, about how Prince Bandar is running a lot of this out of Saudi Arabia?
Yeah, I did see that, and apparently that is correct, that basically the Saudis are in it up to their eyeballs.
This is the guy that's known as Bandar Bush, for how close he was with the father.
That's right, yep.
And now, one of the things that threw me off in there, and I just don't know enough about it I guess, this is the part of the narrative where it got too complicated and lost me, that Bandar represents a faction of the Saudi royal family that is against the Muslim Brotherhood, and against what's going on in Egypt, and against the Muslim Brotherhood coming to power in Syria.
But it would seem to me like pushing a regime change against the Ba'athists in Syria is a really bad way to limit the power of the Muslim Brotherhood there, and I always thought that the Saudis and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and in Syria got along pretty well, but maybe I don't know what I'm talking about.
Well, I mean the Saudis are basically into exporting their own particular brand of conservative Islam, and so they don't really have a lot of room for the Muslim Brotherhood, and relations with them, I think, have been relations of convenience rather than any kind of real ideological connection.
So I think that, yeah, sure, the Saudis don't particularly want the Muslim Brotherhood because they don't want any competitors, and basically they think they have a lock on the kind of Islam that they want to see, and this is unfortunate because this kind of Islam has a tendency to morph into very unpleasant fundamentalist-type strains.
Right, so I guess if it really was just a civil war in the country and, you know, however, by hook or crook the Assad regime fell, the default next organized non-state power, next most organized non-state power in the country is the Muslim Brotherhood, and so this is what the Saudis are trying to do, I guess, is push the regime change but try to determine by getting in from the very beginning who ends up on top at the end?
Well, you know, the Muslim Brotherhood, the Saudi problem with the Muslim Brotherhood is basically that the Muslim Brotherhood represents political Islam in a way that infringes on the prerogatives of the Saudis, and the Saudis would like to see a Sunni-dominated government basically, you know, run by someone who wouldn't be a challenge to Saudi authority in the region.
So, you know, it's a kind of funny balancing act.
It's like the Turkish role is also rather ambivalent, I think.
On one hand, the Turks really need stability in Syria because they don't want an independent Kurdish regime there, which will be staging attacks into Turkey, but on the other hand, you know, they want to see Assad go because they fear that he's going to be turning on them now because they've been supporting the rebels, which of course makes common sense.
So it's like, you know, you win or you lose no matter which way it goes.
Right.
All right.
Well, geez, I don't have time to ask my next question, so I'll just give you a slow-motion outro here.
It's Philip Giraldi from the Council for the National Interest, the American Conservative, and Antiwar.com.
We're talking about the regime change via civil war in Syria right now, and when we get back, we've got to talk about the future of Kurdistan.
Big change is coming to Kurdistan, and more about Islamic fighters flocking to Syria, as Patrick Martin says in the Globe and Mail.
May you live in interesting times.
Hold tight.
We'll be right back after this.
All right, y'all.
I'm Scott Horton.
ScottHorton.org is the website.
We're on the Liberty Radio Network, and we're talking with Phil Giraldi, Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, contributing editor at the American Conservative Magazine and regular contributor to Antiwar.com, former CIA and DIA counterterrorism officer, and we're talking about, well, hell, the rebirth of Al-Qaeda.
I want to ask you about the Kurds and all that in a minute here, Phil, but first, it seems to me like the Obama administration was just a few months back celebrating their final victory over Al-Qaeda.
Now, they still want to say that Al-Shabaab and Al-Qaeda in Yemen and whoever are still a big enough deal that we have to spread our war to there, but at the same time, they're saying that real Al-Qaeda, bin Laden and Zawahiri and their Egyptian and Saudi friends out there in no man's land on the Afghan-Pakistan border that they're done for.
We won the war.
Good for us.
We're the Democrats, and we kept America safe and all this, and now, I mean, you look at the situation, Al-Qaeda in Iraq was the biggest real Al-Qaeda that ever existed, and they were pretty much done because the insurgency had more or less ended and the local Sunni Iraqis had got sick and tired of the Saudis who'd come to be the suicide bombers and were completely crazy and trying to take over their country where they live, and so had really significantly marginalized them, it seemed like, and so now, Obama's given them a brand new battleground, a brand new terrorism university to start the whole Al-Qaeda in Iraq phenomenon all over again and spread this thing even further, which I guess is a great way to get more enemies if that's what you want, but is it good for anything else?
Not that I can tell.
I mean, you know, this should have been predictable that basically you create a power vacuum and you invite people in, and the people that are going to come in are basically the people who have an agenda and are probably two steps ahead of you right from the beginning.
It should have been completely predictable.
You know, as usual, the government didn't seem to notice what was going on, but the reports are, as you've noted, are increasing that there is an Al-Qaeda presence, without a doubt, among the Syrian dissidents, and as you say, they've given them a new lease on life, yet another Arab country that's in turmoil.
Yeah, I don't get it.
I mean, it's the same thing with Netanyahu as it is with Barack Obama.
I get it that he's a jerk, but why is he so stupid?
Well, the problem is that all of these characters can't think beyond the next election, and that's what they're focused on and that's all they worry about, and Obama is a total clown.
I mean, except by comparison with Mitt Romney.
I mean, Mitt Romney is at a whole different level in terms of stupidity when it comes to foreign policy.
I mean, how embarrassing is this trip to London, which is now morphing already into the trip to Israel, in which he and Obama are exchanging who can be the bigger friend of Israel at the expense of the United States.
I mean, it's just ridiculous.
It's like we've hit rock bottom as a country with these people.
Exactly.
Very well said.
I mean, that's going to be, you know, especially once the conventions are over and it's really just down to Obama versus Romney and they just search in vain for differences to try to amplify.
That's what they're going to do is they're going to fight about Israel, and the only fight is going to be who's more willing to let Benjamin Netanyahu's position supplant their own, if they ever had one.
That's right.
And it's not just there.
I mean, anybody who really feels that there's a significant difference in terms of what they're going to do to the U.S. economy, I mean, you forget that, too.
I mean, these are both big state people.
That's exactly what they are.
And their solution is to spend money and to create more institutions.
And they're both going to do that.
There'll be funny rhetoric coming out of some of them, you know, about deficits and stuff like that, but they don't really care about that kind of thing.
Right.
Well, and look, the future of the Mideast War.
I don't know if you ever saw that movie V for Vendetta, but there's a scene where the, you know, Fox News, British, I guess Sky News is on in the background.
And they're saying, yes, America's war in Kurdistan continues to rage right now.
And I remember thinking that is probably a pretty educated guess about the future right there.
And, you know, what you have here is right with the Kurds, ethnicity that's never had anything like a real autonomy or a state of their own this whole time.
And that old world kind of way where people tend to have their stands and that sort of thing.
And it's always been divided.
And so you have a ton of, I don't know the numbers, but very many Kurds in Turkey, in Iraq, in Syria, in Iran.
And now I guess this is a part of the strategy of the war there in Syria is that Bashar al-Assad is granting extra autonomy to Kurdish parts or maybe not, maybe disputed parts where some Kurds are anyway inside Syria.
And this is, I guess, just provoking Turkey even more.
And, of course, it brings up the question of consequences for northern Iraq.
And I don't know about Iran.
What do you have to say about all this?
Well, I think what Assad is playing, he's playing a death card here.
He's basically saying to the Turks, OK, look, you've been messing around with me.
Now I'm going to mess around with you.
And this is how I'm going to do it.
I'm going to create a de facto Kurdish state.
And boy, is that going to give you problems.
Right.
Because that's going to encourage the Kurds in Turkey to agitate more for, if not outright joining, having autonomy of their own.
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, this is going to encourage every Kurdish patriot to turn up the heat.
And this stuff just doesn't make any sense.
I mean, we're reaching the point where everything that goes on is just, it's like a vicious cycle that doesn't have any exit strategy.
And that's what's so amazing about this stuff.
It's like, you know, when are these guys going to figure out that when you get into these things, you have to kind of figure out how to get out.
And it's just amazing.
I'm just, you know, every morning I'm afraid to open the newspaper or pump up the Internet, see what happened the night before.
I mean, it's just, it's horrific.
It's horrific what's going on.
And it's horrific the kind of political leadership we have in the United States.
Well, and now, I don't know, what do you make of the future of this war there?
I mean, we have a very strong alliance with autonomous Kurdistan in northern Iraq.
We, in the 1990s, the U.S. helped arm and support the Turkish, a brutal counterinsurgency by the Turks against their Kurds.
Now we have our enemy in Damascus setting his Kurds free to disturb the rest, or the rest of the states that have to deal with them.
Is that going to turn into a brand new war, you think, like, say, for example, in Iraq where Kirkuk is still in dispute?
Well, I think the possibilities are endless here.
I mean, it's not like anybody has really figured out, you know, what this is all about and where this is going to end.
And I know the last time I saw Chas Freeman, somebody was asking him about what's going on in Syria, and he said, the honest answer is that nobody has a clue.
And I think that is the honest answer.
And you magnify Syria by a factor of ten in terms of how we don't have a clue anywhere else.
And the possibilities are endless.
You know what, I prefer nefarious conspiracy to just blind, deaf, and stupid blundering into each of these things.
You know, if Netanyahu, for whatever reason, had hypnotized Hillary Clinton and was calling her on the red phone and saying, here's what you're going to do, I'd like that better than just all of these people are a bunch of self-interested, dimwit politicians who are, you know, could set the whole world on fire if you don't keep them corralled, you know?
Yeah, I think that's basically the danger we have.
These people are not driven by any kind of, you know, in the old days there used to be when communications were slower and everything, people kind of could ponder issues and figure out what the national interest might be in terms of certain policies.
But we don't see that anymore.
This is all like, you know, instant response and lies and stupidity, and you just see it over and over and over again.
To a certain point, I think you get very numb at all of this and what's going on.
At least I do.
Yeah.
And I don't know what to think anymore.
It's just like I'm perpetually angry.
Why are these people doing this to my country?
And why do I see this idiot Mitt Romney standing up there like a buffoon and singing God Bless America to this crowd of post-60-year-old white retirees who are cheering him on?
I mean, what is going on here?
Yeah, it's a bad time.
I guess, well, you know, it's an empire.
And so the basis of the whole distribution of power and resources and everything there in D.C., it's all based on the worst sort of corruption.
So that kind of thing just spreads.
I mean, well, for example, like a good candidate might have been Ron Paul.
But, of course, the empire can't have that.
Mitt Romney is definitely the choice of the empire, just the same as Barack Obama, you know?
It's got to be that way.
Even John Huntsman would not have been a bad choice.
I mean, it was a guy who was willing to speak at least some of the truth.
And he got immediately marginalized.
And you had nothing but nutcases, you know, competing against each other, with the exception of Paul.
Yeah.
Bachman and Perry and Cain.
Remember all the different frontrunners?
What a good time that was, huh?
Santorum, Gingrich.
Bachman?
Bachman?
Well, you know, the cool part of this, and, you know, I never call you Dr. Giraldi, and you've got to appreciate the long-term historical view of just what a mockery America made of itself as it died.
I mean, this is really kind of great.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, there's going to be a history book about 20 years from now if we still have a publishing industry that will basically say that America committed suicide.
Yeah.
Oh, man.
What a catastrophe.
Well, there you have it from a former CIA officer.
And you know how it is in the media.
When the former CIA officer says something, you know it's true.
Right.
Thanks, Phil.
Okay, Scott.
That's Phil Giraldi, everybody.
The Council for the National Interest.
That's councilforthenationalinterest.org.
Also, check out Phil's writings at the American Conservative Magazine, at theamericanconservative.com, and, of course, at antiwar.com as well.
We'll be right back.