01/31/14 – Kevin Zeese – The Scott Horton Show

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All right, you guys, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
This is my show, The Scott Horton Show, on the Liberty Express, libertyexpressradio.com, the great Alan Butler and family, over there at libertyexpressradio.com, also at dailypaul.com, or dailypaulradio.com, I guess that is, sorry about that.
And yeah, and like that, so good.
Scotthorton.org, that's my site.
Okay, our guest today, looks like he'll be the only guest today, it's our friend Kevin Zeese.
Welcome back to the show, Kevin, how are you doing?
Great, thanks for having me on.
How are you doing?
I'm doing real good.
Now, so, I'm sorry, I don't have it prepared.
I need to try to think off the top of my head about your bio.
You're a lawyer, and you're on the board of the Save Chelsea Manning thing, right?
That's right, and my main project is Popular Resistance, which is a site about the resistance movement in the United States and around the world.
It's popularresistance.org.
I'm also in the steering committee of Come Home America, which is trying to unite the right and left against war.
And I'm also a co-director of It's Our Economy, which is an effort to democratize the economy.
So I've got a few balls in the air.
All right.
Now, yeah, Come Home America, that to me is the most important project of all.
I wish I had a zillion dollars, man.
I would put a zillion dollars behind Come Home America and make that the thing.
Money would make a difference, there's no question about it.
All these projects, resources are needed to really help good people do good work.
Yep.
And, yeah, Come Home America, the left and right libertarian coalition, we don't care what you believe about anything except let's all agree, let's end these wars.
Let's roll back this empire and let's do it right now.
Yep.
That's good stuff.
All right, comehomeamerica.us, that is.
All right, good.
So, Kevin, now, you've got a piece here with Margaret Flowers.
I'm sorry I'm not familiar here, but it ran in Truthout, correct?
And it's going to run at antiwar.com.
Oh, good.
Yeah, it's running in a bunch of outlets.
It's basically looking at the Syrian so-called peace process.
And, you know, sometimes they tell us something is for one thing and it's actually for another.
It happens quite often, actually.
Hang on, hang on.
Let me make sure everybody's got the title to Google up while we're talking here.
Is Syrian Peace Conference Laying the Foundation for War?
That's the title of the article here.
And now, so, yes, saying one thing and doing another, please explain.
Well, that's, I think, one of the biggest problems we face in understanding what's going on around us.
The government and the corporate mass media puts out a line, you know, that we're going to war for democracy, right?
Or we're, you know, we're going to increase employment by passing the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
Or we're going to have a Syrian peace process to prevent war.
Often the truth is the opposite.
And I think the way the Syrian peace process has developed is quite evident that there's no real likelihood of finding any peace in this process.
And that what it's really doing is laying the foundations for war.
And there are a number of reasons that way we've come to that conclusion.
And so I just, we put it out there so people would, in the anti-war movement, would start to prepare for what we see is it's going to be a coming drumbeat for war.
We need to stop the attack on Syria once again.
Right.
Okay.
So, yeah, that's an important point that, you know, people got to, those of us who are going to stay good on this, we've got to have our arguments in a row so that, you know, we can't be intimidated out of the debate by the war party.
Exactly.
We have to, I mean, it's so important.
I mean, a lot of our job as activists is to let people, you know, see the truth, lift the veil so we can see what's happening.
And there are basically three reasons why we think this peace process is doomed to failure.
First, they cut out Iran.
Now, Iran, you know, they have Saudi Arabia in there, they have France in there, they have all sorts of countries that are part of this peace process, but Iran was invited and then disinvited.
Disinvited because the United States and its opposition, Syrian opposition group, you know, wanted Iran out.
And so they took Iran out.
I think that was a terrible error that showed that this is a rigged process.
They only want one result, and Iran has to leave because it opposes that result.
The second reason why we see failure is because of who else was not invited.
There has been a civil society opposition to Assad that existed before this war began, and that civil society is not included in these negotiations.
So Syrians who've been working for transformation have not been included.
Second, a lot of on-the-ground fighters are not included.
There's only one opposition group included, and that's one that has been endorsed by the United States, and anyone else who has not been endorsed by the Western powers is excluded.
And that leads to a real problem, because let's say they negotiate a peace or a ceasefire, you know, some kind of stopping of the war for a short time.
The people who are in that room aren't all fighting the war.
In fact, the main fighters are outside of that room.
And so Assad agrees to a peace process or a peace, and then on the ground, in reality, those who are not in that room continue the war.
So then Assad responds when he's attacked, and the United States says you're buying the peace agreement, and the only way to enforce that is to go to war.
And so it's almost a guarantee for Assad to face military attack by the United States if he agrees to peace in this process.
And the third thing and most important reason why this really is a fraud is because the United States and at least the one Syrian opposition group that's there has been insisting that before negotiations can begin, Assad has to agree to leave government.
And, you know, they claim it's based on the preconditions for this meeting, the Geneva Accords that led to this meeting.
And, of course, when you read those agreements, there's nothing in there about Assad leaving.
There's talk of a transformation of the government, but it doesn't say Assad can't be part of that government.
So it's a false statement by John Kerry.
It's a false statement by the Syrian opposition that the United States supports, and it's a false basis for negotiation.
The United States government, Israel, Saudi Arabia, have wanted the Assads out since before.
Since before the current Assad going back to his father.
And this is a long-term geopolitical goal because Syria is very important to Russia and very important to Iran, two countries the United States is in opposition with.
And so this is really about the U.S. getting more control over the region, Saudi Arabia and Israel getting what they want, and weakening Russia and Iran.
And so the precondition of having Assad leave shows that this is really a phony negotiation.
And, again, that presents an opportunity for an exclusive war.
You can see the U.S. mass media saying something like, Assad refuses to participate in the peace process.
He refuses to agree to the conditions that were set by all the parties.
You know, it would be a lie, but our media lies to us often.
And so for those three reasons, the Assad factor, the lack of inclusion of Syrian civil society in the fires on the ground, and the exclusion of Iran, this peace process is a fraud.
And it's really designed to lay the groundwork for U.S. military intervention in the region.
In other words, in a short time from now, John Kerry will be saying, Look, we tried to deal with them, but we can't deal with Bashar al-Assad.
Exactly.
Exactly.
Okay, now...
Kerry has just been proven, so far in his term as Secretary of State, to really be a big war supporter.
When the last round of the Syrian war was popping up, he was pushing war much more aggressively than the Pentagon was.
The Pentagon was trying to hold him back, explain why it couldn't work, why it was a bad idea, why it would be counterproductive, but Kerry was pushing hard for war.
And you saw in those hearings before Congress, Defense Secretary Hagel being pretty silent, the military command being pretty silent, and John Kerry doing all the talking for war.
Right.
Yeah, and it's funny too, because here he is, he's at least...
I don't want to get too far diverted off onto the separate subjects, but as far as Kerry goes, he's at least kind of halfway pushing to try to have a peace deal in Palestine, and a peace deal with Iran.
And of course, the whole point, like you're saying, a huge part of why to work toward the overthrow, or at least the diminishing of the power of the Ba'athists in Syria, is to hurt the Iranians.
At the same time, he's the one trying to make peace with them harder than anybody else in D.C.
What the hell is that?
That's exactly true, and as far as Israel and Iran, I think we've got to watch those processes closely too.
I really doubt what the U.S. government says they're doing when they're doing it, and really look closely to see what's really going on.
Right.
And we can get back to those subjects later on too, but I want to make sure we get all this Geneva stuff covered.
Now, first of all, what you say about Kerry invoking the Geneva I Accord as saying that Assad must go, it doesn't say Assad must go, it says there will be some kind of transitional this, that, the other thing.
Now, the Syrians themselves signed on to that back at Geneva I, correct?
Assad signed on to that?
Not only did they sign on to that, but Russia signed on to that.
Russia is Syria's closest ally.
See, that's what I thought, was that the Syrians had agreed, Assad himself had agreed, that he would end up leaving power at the end of the transition to the new regime.
He was willing to agree to that before they even came up with all the steps of what it's going to look like after he's gone.
It actually didn't say that.
It didn't say Assad would agree to leave.
It said there would be a transition in government.
That couldn't really mean a new election.
And Assad could be a candidate.
It doesn't mean Assad's not going.
We don't know what that means.
I was thinking the discrepancy was just whether it means now or ever, but you're saying it doesn't say that at all.
No, no, it doesn't mean Assad leaving.
That's right, it doesn't even say Assad leaving.
It doesn't even say Assad would leave.
If he held elections in Syria right now, he'd win hands down.
Well, who knows, but I think that's probably a good guess.
I mean, you know, there are people who support him there, and his family's been in power for a long time, and that carries a lot of weight with people who live in countries.
But, you know, so who knows what it would mean.
I don't know whether he'd win an election or not.
I have not polled these Syrian people.
I have not seen any polls with the Syrian people, so who knows.
And he certainly has made some mistakes, serious mistakes, as president, too.
So it could be, if there was a real campaign, who knows what could happen.
Well, I don't think hardly anybody there likes him, but there are a lot of people who prefer him to a good beheading, so.
Well, the alternative is always, in elections, the alternatives always matter.
You may not like the incumbent, but the alternative may be worse.
That's true.
In fact, all the complaint I do about Obama, can you imagine if it had been John McCain all this time, how many of us would already burn to death in nuclear fireballs by now?
Holy moly.
Or Hillary Clinton.
Oh, my God.
Yeah.
I mean, there's a lot of worse choices.
I mean, Obama is, you know, disappointing to a lot of people for good reason.
I don't mean that we're disappointed.
I never expected much from him, but I think he's made a ton of mistakes.
And he's a very disappointing president.
He's not done very well.
He missed tremendous opportunities on really solving economic problems and ending wars.
He just didn't make it happen.
And so he's been really bad.
There's so many worse choices from Romney and McCain to Clinton, all who ran against him.
I don't think they'd be doing any better.
They'd probably be doing worse.
All right.
Now let me ask you this.
You know, tea leaves, Kremlinology kind of a thing, without anything real definitive.
It seems like, oh, crap, now we've got to go out to this break.
Well, my question going out to this break is, it sort of seemed like some Israelis and Democrats in D.C. were getting it through their stupid skulls that backing al-Qaeda in Syria actually is not a very good idea, and that maybe they would change their policy or at least tone it down.
We'll find out what you think of that when we get back from this break.
It's the great Kevin Zeese from comehomeamerica.us.
Hey, y'all.
Scott here.
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All right, you guys, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
This is my show, The Scott Horton Show.
I'm talking with Kevin Zeese from comehomeamerica.us and popularresistance.org and other URLs like that.
He's got this piece running at Truthout.
It'll be at antiwar.com tomorrow.
What the hell did I do with it?
Here it is.
It's called, Is the Syrian Peace Conference Really Laying the Foundation for War?
And so let me set that question up here again real quick.
Kevin, we've been talking about this.
I've been talking about this with you and with other people on the show for years and years and years going way, way back about how any of these neocons who think that they're going to get a regime change in Syria and they're not going to get anything like what, anything that would be acceptable to them after a regime change in Syria, they must be crazy.
Their plan for Iraq was they were going to get a Hashemite king like in Jordan, a minority, a different minority emperor backed by the United States to rule and lord it over the Shiite minority.
If you read David Wimser talking about how, oh, don't worry, the Shiites love the Hashemite kings.
It'll be great.
No, they just turned the whole country over to Iran.
It's not a de facto Israeli emirate like Jordan.
It's an Iranian one, or at least most of it is.
So these guys, all their expediting the chaotic collapse and whatever, they don't know what the hell they're doing.
They never get what they want.
And anyone for years could have told them if they listened to this show, they could have heard people on this show saying, well, me saying, look, your best chance if you get rid of the Baathists, your lucky would be to get the Muslim Brotherhood.
That's if you're lucky.
Those guys would be the moderates.
But more likely you're going to be dealing with a bunch of suicide bomber kooks left over from the Iraq war and whatever.
I mean, this is all so foreseeable.
And yet the policy has been, well, you can describe it in your own terms if you want, but it seems to me like the policy's been for two and a half, going on three years now, that America and Saudi Arabia support the jihadists in their work to overthrow Assad.
But then, oh, and this is what I was going to say and was saying before the break.
It seems like they kind of finally started maybe going back through the archives and listening to some stuff from six years ago, telling them not to do this because they're saying, well, geez, the Israelis and the Americans too, saying, huh, well, maybe if we got rid of the Baathists and we just had a bunch of suicide bombers on our northern border, that actually maybe that would not be preferable to our current situation.
So I just wonder what you think of it.
I mean, it seems like John Kerry got the memo, if that is right at all.
But I don't know.
What do you think?
Well, I think the United States has a very confused foreign policy, and the United States empire is not as strong as it would be in this time of one superpower world.
They really thought they could dictate and get what they wanted, and they've now discovered in Iraq and Afghanistan and Libya that they can go to war, they can explode a lot of things, destroy a lot of things, but they can't put in place a government that necessarily will agree with them.
But I think they also have the conclusion that if they can't put the government in place they want, it's better to have these governments that oppose them out, so that if a country is in chaos, in civil war, in tribal war, divided, weakening itself by internal factions, that's better than having someone in office who opposes their agenda.
They at least neutralize their country.
But now let me ask you this.
In what way does Syria oppose America or Israel's agenda?
They torture who they're told to torture.
They haven't said a word about the Golan Heights in 20 years or whatever.
What's the problem?
And you could say the same thing about Qaddafi in Libya.
But these are viewed as countries that are allied with Iran and the Soviet Union, I mean, excuse me, with Russia, and therefore they're on the wrong side.
And if you want to have hegemony in the region, you have to have pro-Israel, pro-U.S., pro-Saudi Arabia.
That's the triad right now that they want to see dominating that region.
And so that's, I think, what the view is.
Now, the other bizarre thing about this is creating foment and wars and civil wars and tribal wars in the region is really also inconsistent with the U.S. trying to move so much force to Asia.
You know, the Asian pivot encircling China because it's becoming an economic rival is also going on.
And so it's really kind of crazy because we don't have the troops to be in multiple wars in the Middle East and then also moving troops to China.
So it's a very confused foreign policy.
Well, and if, you know, if they want, say, like half a war and maybe not a whole regime change, but let's just weaken Assad and then, you know, at some point somewhat call it off and go from there or whatever, they're in a real bad position now where even if they really wanted to do a peace deal, you can't bring al-Qaeda to the table, right?
I mean, even if you can somehow, you know, do a Skype conference call with Ayman al-Zawahiri and Prince Bandar and everybody, you're not going to be able to call off a bunch of suicide bomber prisoner beheaders.
These guys are going to keep killing until they feel like they're done.
Who can call them back?
You can call them to Geneva, Switzerland to sit down at a big oak table and have a conversation about this stuff.
Well, that's an interesting image.
A lot of those, you know, that problem really is coming from Qatar and Saudi Arabia.
They are the ones that have been funding this, the more extremist groups down there.
It's not all that, but there's so many different factions that came to find them all.
So I think they've created a very difficult situation to calm down, and they're probably just going to have to burn themselves out fighting, because I don't know.
I mean, Saudi Arabia can withdraw its money.
The U.S. is now, you know, arming people in Syria with anti-tank weapons and with small arms.
You know, this is so amazing.
And a secret vote.
The U.S. Congress approved arming some of the factions, the so-called moderate factions in Syria, you know, with small arms and anti-tank weapons.
A secret vote for a war policy.
That's just so incredible.
The way they did it was it was part of the NDAA, and I guess parts of that law are secret.
And so that was voted on by the Congress in secret.
Well, and what moderates among the rebels in Syria?
There never have been.
I mean, the closest thing they had to moderates was the Al-Farooq Brigade, because they wanted to hold elections rather than just have an outright dictatorship of the imams or whatever the hell.
And yet the Farooq Brigades, that's the cannibal guy, was from the Farooq Brigades, the guy eating the guy's heart or liver or whatever in the face.
I know, I know.
So those are your moderates, and the Free Syrian Army, you know, the New York Times even says the Free Syrian Army quit existing back the end of December.
Right.
It fell apart completely.
And yet the United States is now arming so-called moderates based on a secretly passed law.
Bizarre.
What a crazy country we are.
Yeah, it is.
It's ridiculous.
I mean, secretly passed laws?
After the Congress stops a military attack on Syria because the people responded so aggressively from across the political spectrum, saying, no, we don't want another war, and the Congress said, okay, we won't do another war, and stops Obama from going forward, then they have a secret vote after that to arm factions in Syria?
I find it just to be totally bizarre.
But then again, we've had this secret negotiation going on for, you know, four years now for the Trans-Pacific Partnership, you know, to give us economic hegemony over Asia and the Pacific, and that's been done in secret.
You know, they plan to try to pass it through Congress without Congress really seeing the law in any serious way.
And so, you know, this democracy has gotten so strange, and calling it democracy is getting harder and harder.
By the way, real quick at the end here, can you talk a little bit about the torture report put out by the government of Qatar and Christian Amanpour on CNN?
Oh, man.
At the dawn of this.
How skeptical are you about those pictures there?
What is all that?
Oh, I think I'm totally skeptical.
There was a really excellent article in the Christian Science Monitor by a reporter who looked at it.
You know, he said that this was a one-source report, you know, they had one source for it, and that one source was anonymous and has been part of a group that's been trying to overthrow Assad since 2011.
And they even admit that much of it.
So for all we know, these are pictures of Bahrainis being tortured by American tax dollars.
And the other thing that's so weird about it is it was so rushed.
You know, three days after they interviewed this guy, the report was finished.
And of course, it was paid for by Qatar, which is one of the biggest antagonists to Assad in the region.
It all adds up to something that needs to be looked at very carefully and questioned very closely.
How do you verify where pictures came from?
Who's doing the torturing?
Who was tortured?
And the exaggerated numbers, they only looked at a small percentage of the photos before they issued the report, and the number 11,000 was extrapolated from a very small percentage.
So 11,000 is a guess figure on top of this being a rushed report written based on one anonymous informant.
So I think there's lots of questions about it.
The timing, obviously, was set.
So it would be the beginning of the Geneva conference, the peace conference.
And so they got the kind of propaganda they wanted to get out before the conference started.
Man, that's Christiane Amanpour.
You know, any other story with a single source like that, like say if it was to, you know, lie us into war with a country that she didn't want bombed or something, she would never go with such shoddy sourcing.
She's gone terrible.
Are there any countries that she doesn't want to bomb?
Maybe I set up a false premise.
She's become such a warmonger, it's really pitiful.
And CNN has had a drumbeat for war in Syria now for a couple of years.
They've been one of the most aggressive networks pushing for war in Syria.
So it's very hard to trust them.
Of course, we should mention here, too, about how they've had to back away from their claims about the rocket attack from last August.
Exactly.
They couldn't have been fired from nine kilometers away, more like three, and that's rebel territory.
Exactly, exactly.
And now they've hired the former Israeli ambassador to the United States, who is a former American citizen who went out and renounced his citizenship to become the ambassador from Israel to the United States.
Now they've hired him as a commentator so they can bring some balance to it.
Michael Oren, right?
Yeah, he's the guy who said last October, yes, I prefer al-Qaeda to Hezbollah.
That's why you prefer al-Qaeda to Hezbollah in Syria, because Hezbollah is backed by Iran.
Same guy.
Well, thanks a lot, Scott.
Thank you, Kevin.
I sure appreciate it.
Everybody, that's the great Kevin Zeese.
Comehomeamerica.us.
Find him on antiwar.com tomorrow, this Syria piece.
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