02/19/14 – Philip Giraldi – The Scott Horton Show

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Alright you guys, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
This is my show, the Scott Horton Show.
And first up today is Phil Giraldi.
He is the executive director of the Council for the National Interest.
He writes for UNZ.com.
That's U-N-Z, UNZ.com.
For antiwar.com and also for the American Conservative Magazine.
And Phil, before we get into the subject matter, let's talk a little bit about your upcoming event here with the Institute for Research Middle Eastern Policy on reassessing America's relationship with Israel at the National Press Club next month.
Tell us all about it.
Yeah, this is going to be an all day event on March 7th, which is a Friday.
And we, it basically is, four groups are sponsoring it, Washington Report Magazine being one of the others that some of your listeners are probably familiar with.
And we're basically going to be looking at the Israeli-American relationship and various aspects of it.
In other words, is it good for the United States, is it bad for the United States, should it be something different?
We're going to be talking about a number of things and we've assembled a panel that includes some very high-level people, including Stephen Waltz, who was the co-author of the book on the Israel lobby, Harvard professor, Justin Raimondo, many of your listeners I'm sure are familiar with him.
And there will be a panel that I will be on with four former CIA people on it.
I think it's probably the first time in history four CIA people are caught together in one room.
Wow.
Yeah, that's going to be something.
I remember Christopher Ketchum wrote in Counterpunch.
This is an essay or a news story that you're featured in as a source, but it begins, scratch a CIA agent and he'll start telling you all about Israel's covert actions in the United States.
Basically, this is a chip that all of you guys carry around on your shoulder.
It's what you know about that none of the rest of us know about, what they're really up to here.
Well, come to the summit and you'll find out.
Wow, great.
Okay.
And this is on March the with, which?
March 7th.
It's Friday, March 7th.
There is a website.
You can go to natsummit.org, where you'll get all the information on speakers and how to register.
Okay, great.
Yeah.
And Karen Katowski is going to be there and all kinds of others.
That's going to be great.
And now, let me ask you this about this too.
You mentioned Stephen Walt there.
It occurs to me that just for a long time, you just really could not get away with in, you know, I guess, New York, DC polite society with mentioning the influence of the Israel lobby over American foreign policy without the charge that you're anti-Semite actually sticking.
But then what happened was Walt and Mearsheimer wrote that book, The Israel Lobby.
And they, you know, a lot of people attempted to smear them with that.
They're both such, you know, reasonable gentlemen, basically just intellectual, you know, academic types with their academic realist foreign policy theories and all of that kind of thing.
And they so obviously don't hold a grudge about this.
They're just being honest in a sense.
And the fact that they weathered that storm, that really changed everything and made it possible for people to really be able to go ahead and talk about this.
And they'll still smear us, but it doesn't really work anymore, does it?
Yeah, it really opened the door to the discussion.
And now, of course, you have other people like Peter Beinart coming in on it, and Max Blumenthal in the recent books.
And they have the advantage of actually being Jewish, and they are taking a hard, cold look at Israel.
There's another book that just came out that I think the author's name is Judas, J-U-D-I-S.
Yeah, from The New Republic.
Yeah, John Judas, about the years of Harry Truman and how what was then the kind of precursor to the Israel lobby putting pressure on Harry Truman to create the state of Israel, even though he knew it was not in America's best interest.
Yeah, there's a good review of that by Scott McConnell in The American Conservative today, as a matter of fact.
And by the way, just a slight footnote, since you brought him up, Judas is actually the author of a great piece from 1995, which unfortunately was a little bit premature.
Its title, it was From Trotskyism to Anachronism, a biography of the neoconservative movement and how they were a bunch of nobodies that nobody ought to listen to ever again by 1995.
But he wrote that for Foreign Affairs.
And it's a great history of who these kooks are and how they came from the Trotskyite left to the Republican Party.
And now, as you mentioned in your new article, which we're going to discuss in a second, moving back again into working with the Democrats.
Yeah, that's right.
I mean, essentially what we're looking at is a group that really has no anchor, has no fixed position, politically speaking, except being fanatical about Israel.
And a lot of the other policies and everything, they shape around that fanaticism.
In terms of domestic policies, I've known quite a few neocons, and they're liberal Democrats, essentially.
I mean, you know, they're in favor of abortion, they're in favor of gay marriage, all the kind of touchstone issues that normally Republicans and conservatives shy away from.
Yeah.
Well, and on economic issues, too, I mean, Irving Kristol wrote two cheers for capitalism and all of that.
So they've always been very regulatory statey and very welfare statey and all these things from the very beginning.
Never changed that part of their stripes.
They just thought the Republicans were better warmongers for the time being.
Yeah.
And big government, big government all the way.
And so now, to be specific, Robert Kagan, who he's not just some neocon, he's really one of their intellectual leaders, I think.
Not that they all agree on every little thing or whatever, but he's the co-author of Toward a Neo-Reaganite Foreign Policy from 1996, calling for benevolent global hegemony with William Kristol, and a great many works justifying neoconservative policies, especially the invasion of Iraq in 2003, of course, and staying the whole time, etc.
And now it's his wife that's got us in all this trouble, or got herself in all this trouble, being caught on the phone plotting about who ought to be the next ruler of Ukraine.
So again, in your article, you actually talk a little bit about her professional history and how it was that she came to have this position at this time.
Can you go over a little bit of that for us?
Yeah.
Well, basically, I mean, she's a neocon, just like her husband.
Her great leap forward was essentially to work for Dick Cheney in the White House as his deputy national security advisor.
She was working for Scooter Levy, who was the national security advisor for Cheney.
So it was all a kind of cozy neocon arrangement.
Kagan, one has to imagine, used his influence to get her the job.
And then she basically was appointed ambassador to NATO, again by Cheney Bush.
After that, became State Department spokesman for Hillary Clinton, who of course is a Democrat, but is an extremely hawkish Democrat.
And I think you basically would have to say that Hillary Clinton has pretty much the same foreign policy as Kagan.
And so she, you know, some of the articles say, oh, well, she's comfortable with Democrats and Republicans.
Well, that's one way to look at it.
But the other way to look at it is that essentially she's far right in terms of her foreign policy views.
And there's a constituency in both parties for that.
Yeah.
Well, you know, the way I always put it is the centrists are the true extremists.
You're more likely to find someone who is, you know, outside of the consensus to the good on the right and the left.
But you always have a conservative Democrat like Hillary Clinton or a liberal Republican like John McCain in the center who are for every mad policy that anyone with any principle at all would oppose, you know?
Yeah, that's exactly right.
There's a kind of a mishmash of people in the middle that kind of swing one way or the other depending on what the issue is, but really have no fixed viewpoints apart from this generic America is the kingmaker and we have the right to intervene and be aggressive.
I mean, that's both a Republican and a Democratic thing.
All right.
Now, so take us back to the 1990s when, you know, after the Soviet Union fell apart.
I mean, it was gone Christmas Day 1991.
It was a thing of the past with the resignation of Gorbachev.
And then how long did it take to incorporate how many of these Eastern European states now into NATO?
Phil?
Well, it's they're all they're all in NATO now, more or less.
The only ones that that's that still have not been officially brought in are the ones that are right on the border of the Soviet Union or of Russia or the former Soviet Union.
And that would be in Ukraine and Georgia, basically.
The others are all now part of NATO.
There was an agreement as the Soviet Union was breaking up that the NATO and the United States would not take advantage of the situation and would not push NATO eastward.
And yet, in spite of that, we basically broke the understanding.
And this is to a larger extent explains why Putin basically is, as shall we say, hostile towards us at times.
It explains why it happened.
All right.
Now, so what is the American interest in I mean, why do they care that much about Ukraine that they're they're willing to go to this much trouble, as you mentioned, you know, as as is to be expected, you have American backed NGOs, basically, you know, so-called smart power, color revolution stuff going on here, backing the protesters.
What's so important about Ukraine?
Well, I don't think there is anything that really is important in terms of a U.S. national interest.
I think that essentially what we're seeing is more of this pushing towards the east, pushing against Russia.
And Ukraine is becoming kind of the guy in the middle in this process where the United States is insisting that the Ukraine become more Western European.
And the leadership, which was elected in a fair election of Ukraine, has been saying that we get a better deal from closer ties with Russia.
So it's a it's that kind of situation.
But the United States doesn't really have a big horse, you know, to play in this race.
I don't really get most of it.
But going back to what we started out talking about, the neocons have this thing about Russia and there are probably a lot of different ways to define it or to explain it.
But the fact is, you see John McCain doing this all the time, there are constant attacks on Russia, which are not really in our interest as a country.
Our interest is to have a good relationship with Russia.
And yet they're constantly banging on Russia, both in Congress and in the media.
And even in the coverage we're seeing over the last week and a half of the Olympic Games, like Russia is the enemy.
Yeah.
It's strange.
I mean, I guess I don't know.
I was too young, maybe in 19 was it 1980 where they had the Olympics in the Soviet Union?
Did they have that much open disdain or were they pretending to be polite back then?
Well, you know, the argument that this is when you talk about irony, the argument in 1980, I remember well, because I was overseas with the agency and this was a big issue.
We were running all kinds of propaganda against the Russians and even including t-shirts to embarrass them and that kind of thing.
But the fact is that the argument was that the Russians, my God, were in Afghanistan.
Yeah.
Oh, that's right.
That was the argument back then.
That was the argument.
And now we have the United States and we're all over the goddamn place.
And, you know, we're condescending towards Russia, saying that the Russians, because they have laws against homosexuality and because Putin has anti-democratic tendencies, therefore there was a call to boycott the Olympics for that reason.
So yeah.
And as they say, the media and everybody else has been on the Russian case ever since.
Yeah, it seems like they can lighten up now, 25 years after the end of the Cold War, but maybe not.
All right.
Hang tight.
We got to take this stupid break and then we'll be back with Phil Giraldi from the Council for the National Interest right after this.
Hey, all.
Scott here.
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All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
This is my show, The Scott Horton Show.
We're at the Liberty Express and Ron Paul, Daily Paul Radio and all that.
Yeah, you know, Anomaly Radio, scotthorton.org.
Phil Giraldi's on the phone.
We're talking about American intervention in Ukraine.
They've got what amounts to at least a citywide civil war going on right now.
It looks like, well, the government versus the protesters.
I don't know if there are mobs out on the side of the government at this point, but things are looking pretty hairy in Kiev.
And of course, this is all in the context, and this is just part of being a Syrian or being a Ukrainian or anywhere else in the world.
If you're from a small, weak state, then you don't really get to have domestic policies that aren't wrapped up in the games of foreign empires.
And so, you know, whichever side these people on are on, even if it's just their own side, they're in effect on our side or on the Russian side in this too.
And so anyway, in that phone call between Victoria Nuland and Jeffrey, whatever the ambassador to Ukraine there, Phil, when they were talking about F the EU, we want to have this guy instead of that guy.
What exactly was the dispute there?
Do you know?
Was it that these two guys had, because they were both from the opposition, the two guys that they were arguing about should be, you know, in order of rank there in joining the coalition government with the Yushchenko or whatever.
But so I wonder what was the big deal there?
Do you know?
Because I read this thing by this Yale fella, Wallerstein, Emanuel Wallerstein, who said that he thought that for some reason that this represented the American fear that the German pick was actually someone that was closer to the Russian position.
But that didn't seem to make sense to me, but I don't know.
Well, what I've heard is that the issue with the Europeans was that the Europeans were not moving fast enough to support the opposition.
That's what I heard.
Now, the other issue is that there were two opposition potential candidates.
And the issue was that, again, this is my understanding, that Newland and the ambassador were discussing which one would be a more viable candidate.
Neither one obviously is an independent player.
They're both looking for U.S. support on this.
One of them is an ex-professional boxer, Klitschko.
And they were basically saying that he might not be as viable a candidate because of his background, one would suspect, as the other guy.
But basically, this is the United States talking about, you know, replacing a regime, replacing the government with a candidate of its choice, and talking very confidently about going about and doing this.
But not really having a split with the Germans, other than how to get it done right.
Where's your efficiency?
Get it, you know, glue this thing together.
Yeah.
It was a tactical.
Yeah.
It was a tactical dispute.
But the fact is that the United States and the Germans and others have been pouring millions of dollars into supporting the opposition in Ukraine and, you know, other places also like Belarus.
And, you know, this is an ongoing job for the National Endowment for Democracy and other NGOs supported by the U.S. government and others that are essentially in the regime change business.
They wrap it up by saying, we're bringing in democracy.
But, you know, every time they claim to bring in democracy, they bring in a new gang of crooks that are exactly the same as the old gang, except generally they speak better English because they know they have to get their, you know, they have to meet with the ambassador and they have to get their points across.
It's just it's ridiculous.
Well, you talked about how they're legitimately democratically elected as far as that goes.
Yeah.
I mean, they defeated the guys that we installed in the last push in 2004, right?
That's exactly right.
That was who they finished cleaning the clock of was Timoshenko, the gas prince.
That's right.
Yeah, that's exactly right.
And it's like, you know, it's like it's almost like the Ukrainians have no say in this matter.
It's a question of who the United States wants them to have and what kind of government they want them to have.
But the irony, of course, is the United States is incapable of doing this kind of thing.
We're not as good as the British and the French were, you know, around 100 years ago.
We can't quite get it right.
We go and we mess everything up.
And then six months later, it's still a mess.
And you see that in the Arab Spring, where we got, unfortunately, involved.
You see that all over Eastern Europe, where the pastoral revolutions have basically failed all of them.
And it's just, you know, it's just it should be a joke.
But Victoria Nuland and these other people that are well placed in in State Department and in policymaking, unfortunately, keep making the same mistakes over and over and over again.
Yeah.
Well, and, you know, you mentioned in your article, John McCain's statement that we're all Georgians now back during the crisis of 2008, where Georgia started it and was trying to get America to back them up in a war with Russia.
And John McCain, it's a good thing that that guy wasn't in charge then.
I mean, he was still just running for president at the time, but still.
But anyway, what's funny about that to me, of course, is that, you know, again, I'm just from Texas.
So when somebody says former Soviet Georgia, I mean, I know where it is now.
But you know, before the last decade of study of American foreign policy, I mean, that's the hinterlands.
That's the far end of the earth where no one from anywhere around me has the slightest idea where that is.
It is almost just to say, no, no, not Georgia, Georgia, former Soviet Georgia, something that is so far removed from your life, it could not possibly be any of your government's business.
It has nothing to do with anything going on around here at all.
I mean, who's got even the slightest business tie to former Soviet Georgia other than, you know, Lockheed?
Well, we know that John McCain's foreign policy advisor had a consulting fee, shall we say, working for the Republic of Georgia.
I wonder if that had anything to do with it.
Yeah.
Randy Schoenemann there.
And yeah, you know, I mean, they said it was Susskind said that Dick Cheney was pushing.
I guess there are multiple reports of this, actually, two or three different reports said that Dick Cheney was pushing George Bush to do something about it.
Let's hit the Russians in the tunnels where their tanks and trucks are coming under the Caucasus mountains.
Right.
Right.
Yeah.
You know, I mean, a slight risk of a hydrogen bomb exchange, but not that big of a deal.
Probably.
Well, for Cheney, it would be OK.
He had probably a bomb shelter over over here at the secret White House in Virginia.
And so he would probably not be hurt.
Location.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, I saw McCain on one of these hairdos.
I forgot his name on CNN yesterday.
Cooper, Anderson Cooper, interviewing John McCain.
And, you know, of course, this is the same no matter what they're talking about.
If it was a social security question or whatever, the construct of the question can only be, you know, so run on sentencing like mine.
They set it up so very briefly.
So there's a lot of killing going on in Syria.
Sometimes the good guys kill people, but other times, Mr. McCain, the bad guys kill people, too.
So what do we do?
Well, the answer is, well, we got to back the moderates who are against both sets of bad guys.
It's a two front war.
That's right.
And so we got to back them good, said John McCain.
So my question to you is, how feasible is it that we can prop up an army?
I mean, assuming they really started now and I know you've been reporting since December 2011 that Obama had signed findings authorizing covert action in Syria and stepping up support for these kooks and all that.
But what if they started now and they really spent the money and put the equipment down and tried to train up an army of moderate Sunni jihadi fighters to take on ISIS and to take on the Baathist government?
You know, if John McCain paid you one billion dollars to make it happen, Phil, how long would it take you to win the war?
What would it look like?
Well, you basically have to recruit a force of mercenaries, assuming you would win it.
And how many would you need?
Yeah, well, there's no indigenous moderate force there.
I mean, you know, they've kind of been subsumed in various directions.
And you have the crazies and you have the government, which is increasingly ruthless.
And you know, people in the middle are getting ground down.
And I don't think there's any way to do what McCain is talking about, apart from recruiting a considerable force of mercenaries, maybe training them in Jordan or Saudi Arabia, and then shipping them over under European and American officers and with air support and doing it that way.
You know, it's just that these things are impossible.
You can't identify the moderates.
You can't basically, you can't take the time to properly train them or anything like that.
It's just the whole concept is ridiculous.
Well, and isn't that what ISIS is?
The mercenary army sent by the Americans and the Saudi Arabians?
Well, ISIS has its own agendas, I think, too, clearly.
And it's certainly supported by the Saudis.
The extent to which it's supported by the United States is probably considerably less.
But yeah, I mean, there are a whole bunch of players right now that essentially are running around, you know, with their own agendas and just killing each other.
The whole thing is obscene.
There was some video showing on The Guardian today about the extremist-occupied part of Syria.
I think the city was called Raqqa.
And they were talking about how they are enforcing Sharia law to an extreme level, including stoning women to death and that sort of thing.
And, you know, there are no good guys over there.
And John McKay sure as hell is not a good guy.
Yeah.
Well, you know, when he went over there, it was his own people.
It was, in fact, Elizabeth Obagi, the fake PhD student scandal girl.
She was the source.
It wasn't like an anonymous source claims.
It was, no, it was his entourage just said out loud, no problem, to The Daily Caller that, yeah, McCain wanted to have a pajama party and spend the night with the Northern Storm Brigade.
But his security detail had to talk him out of it.
And then if you just Google Northern Storm Brigade, Time Magazine's got video of him saying, yeah, we fought in the Iraq War against the Americans.
These are the guys that he was piling around with.
And they were the kidnappers of a bunch of Shiite pilgrims from Lebanon and stuff.
So these are the moderates he wants to back.
Yeah, absolutely.
Amazing.
Yep.
All right.
Oh, and you should have seen it, because on CNN, this is just the conventional wisdom.
Yeah, we've got to back the moderates.
Everyone knows that, the moderates.
All right.
Thanks, Phil.
Appreciate it.
All right, Scott.
Take care.
That's Phil Giraldi.
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