05/12/14 – Patrick Cockburn – The Scott Horton Show

You hate government?
One of them libertarian types?
Maybe you just can't stand the president, gun grabbers, or warmongers.
Me too.
That's why I invented libertystickers.com.
Well, Rick owns it now, and I didn't make up all of them, but still.
If you're driving around and want to tell everyone else how wrong their politics are, there's only one place to go.
Libertystickers.com has got your bumper covered.
Left, right, libertarian, empire, police, state, founders, quote, central banking.
Yes, bumper stickers about central banking.
Lots of them.
And, well, everything that matters.
Libertystickers.com.
Everyone else's stickers suck.
All right, y'all.
Welcome to the show.
Back to it, I mean.
I'm Scott Horton.
This is my show, The Scott Horton Show.
Live here weekdays from 3 to 5 Eastern at APSradionews.com.
And a lot of other places, too.
ScottHorton.org.
And our guest today is the great Patrick Coburn from The Independent.
That's independent.co.uk.
He's Middle East correspondent there.
The author of quite a few books, including Muqtada, Muqtada al-Sadr, The Shia Revival, and The Future of Iraq.
And you can find, I guess, pretty much all of his stuff for The Independent reprinted at unz.com as well.
Welcome back to the show, Patrick.
How are you doing?
Great, thanks.
Good, good.
Very happy to have you back.
And a very important article here.
Not only is it very informative and very well done, but it's on a topic that gets hardly any recognition or coverage at all.
And that is the situation in Bahrain, which is a little tiny island nation in the Persian Gulf, where America stations the Fifth Fleet and supports the local monarchy there.
So before we get to the royalty in the UK and their relationship with the royalty in Bahrain, can you first of all just tell us a little bit about Bahrain and the ruling family and how it works there?
Well, you said Bahrain's a pretty small place, but it's also a very divided place.
In fact, I've never been in a place so full of hatred.
And the hatred is between the Shia majority, about 60-70% of the population, which really doesn't have any power, and is ruled by the Al-Khalifa kings, monarchs, who are Sunni.
There is continual discrimination against the Shia.
The protests they held in 2011 for democratic reforms were crushed with incredible brutality.
Saudi Arabia sent 1,500 soldiers as a causeway, linking Bahrain to the mainland of Saudi Arabia.
And things haven't got much better since.
At that time, doctors in the hospital who treated injured demonstrators were savagely tortured.
There was briefly an inquiry into what had happened, which confirmed everything, denied that there was any evidence of any Iranian involvement, which is what the kings are always saying, monarchs are always saying.
And there we are today with basically a very oppressive regime, a majority that holds demonstrations, riots, we can't do a lot about it.
All right, well, there's so many things to touch on here.
I guess, first of all, can you tell me anything about the Fifth Fleet and what all that entails?
That could be anything from a couple of battleships to a couple of carrier battle groups, as far as I know.
Yeah, this is the main US base in the Gulf, and it's in Bahrain, it's just outside Manama, the capital.
The US is always pretty shifty about Bahrain, because Britain as well, because there both countries are accusing Bashar al-Assad of Syria, of crushing an uprising by his people, by holding total power over them.
And hold on a minute, if we feel so strongly about that, why are we supporting the Al-Khalifa dynasty in Bahrain, which discriminates against the Shia, which is an absolute monarchy?
And you hear pretty well nothing out of Washington or London.
So this seems to me the height of hypocrisy.
Yeah, you know, I remember back when, in fact, I just found this recently, the transcript is still online from Meet the Press, when David Gregory back in 2011 asked Admiral Mullen, who at that time, I forget if he was the head of CENTCOM or the Director of National Intelligence, anyway, same difference for this point, and David Gregory asked him, well, you say that we're overthrowing Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, because we care so much about human rights and against dictatorship and that kind of thing, but how come we don't take that same position in Bahrain?
And Mullen said simply, Bahrain is our ally.
And so, in other words, our interests there are in propping up the monarchy.
And so the majority of the people there who feel oppressed under the thumb of that dictatorship, to hell with them.
Yeah, I'm afraid that's about the size of it.
Yeah, at least he was honest about it, kind of, although it sort of put the lie to what he was claiming was his motivation or America's motivation for the intervention in Libya at the very same time.
I mean, in this case, as you're saying, it's a minority dictatorship, what we'd be calling apartheid, I guess, if it was different races instead of different religious sects, but it's minority dictatorship over, I guess, a majority or even a super majority of the population of the country, right?
Sure, yeah, I mean, this sort of hypocrisy, you know, is a theme throughout, I think, Western policy in the Middle East that if you look at Syria, there we are protesting against and trying to overthrow Assad.
He says a dictatorship, that's true, that there was a popular uprising, that's kind of true, or at least was.
You know, and who are our big allies to do it?
Well, it's, you know, the biggest, the most reactionary, absolute monarchy in the world.
Saudi Arabia, assisted by many monarchs like Bahrain, like United Arab Emirates.
I mean, they don't come less democratic than these countries.
They don't come less sectarian for that matter.
And yet we're trying to supposedly establish a democratic secular state in Syria, you know, so this is kind of absurd.
The self-interest of the countries who want to overthrow Assad, which determines their policy, not any feeling for the Syrian people.
Right, well, I'm afraid we're going to get back to Syria here in a minute, Patrick, but on Bahrain, do I remember right that back in 2011, the protesters were actually not pushing their luck too hard, and they started out just saying they would like to have some kind of constitutional reform, not to necessarily overthrow the monarchy, because not that they were for a monarchy necessarily, but they didn't, it seemed at least at first, they didn't want to push their luck, but they thought, well, maybe we could get some kind of, you know, constitutional monarchy where we would have some sort of process in law for, you know, fair trials, this kind of thing, the beginnings of a pretense of rule of law, basically.
And that was what was crushed so harshly there in the Pearl Roundabout in the first place.
Yeah, I mean, the Pearl Roundabout was the center, the pearl was meant to be the symbol of Bahrain, and there was a big monument with a sort of pearl, and it was actually made out of an enormous pearl at the top of the monument.
And not only was it the demonstration crushed, but the whole monument was bulldozed immediately afterwards, although the same monument at that time appeared on the Bahraini currency, perhaps the only country in the world where a government has destroyed the symbol of its own country, which was on the currency it used.
Yeah, well, we keep our symbols, but we destroy all the things that the symbols stand for here in our country.
But I can relate, though, in a perverse kind of way.
Yeah.
All right, now, so what about Iranian agents?
Because I have to admit that it makes sense that politicians in Iran, revolutionary guards, officers in Iran, that they would seem to have some kind of interest in helping Shiites sort of exiled across the straits there in Bahrain, helpless before this Saudi and American-backed Sunni monarchy.
So is it true that they're intervening, or that's just a...
Well, no, I mean, there was something called the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry, actually called together in a brief spasm of liberalism, never seen before or since by the Bahraini government in 2011, had very sort of distinguished members, led by an American-Egyptian lawyer and legal expert called Bassioni.
And they produced an enormous report, 500 pages.
And one thing they didn't find was any evidence of Iranian involvement.
So it's just not there.
I was looking actually at WikiLeaks, American diplomatic cables from a slightly earlier period, sort of 2008, that era.
And the American diplomats in Bahrain are saying, every time we meet the king, King Hamad, and every time we meet senior Bahrainis, they say, ah, the Iranians are plotting against us.
They're behind opposition to the monarchy.
And we, this is the American diplomat speaking, always say, show us some evidence.
And they never have any evidence.
I mean, you can look, anybody can look, put in Bahrain and WikiLeaks, and that'll come up pretty soon.
But these people did get themselves into a great state of paranoia.
I think it's true of dictatorships throughout the world, people who ban all criticism of themselves, that when they suddenly start looking at the internet and so forth, or they see people demonstrating in the streets, they overreact.
They sort of think, this is the revolution coming.
And then they sort of act.
So they make much more of a revolutionary situation out of what might be a reforming movement than was there before.
Same thing true of Syria, by the way.
I think overreaction to the initial demonstrations, which was what really put the uprising on the road in 2011.
And in Bahrain, they did exactly the same thing.
As I said, they crushed these demonstrations with immense brutality and tortured anybody they could really get their hands on.
And of course, like many torturers who believe in a great conspiracy against themselves by the Iranians, by the Shia, when they find no evidence of it, despite torturing people, it means that that conspiracy must be even worse than we thought.
Because all these guys are keeping silent about it.
They must be highly trained about resisting interrogation.
So we're going to torture them more.
We're going to torture more people.
That's the way these guys think.
That's the way all dictatorships work.
Yeah.
Oh, man.
And then on top of that, as you write here, more than 30 Shia mosques bulldozed.
There's some hard feelings that aren't going to be better again for a long time.
Now, I'm sorry, Patrick, I've got to put you on hold as we go out and take this break.
But I'll thank you for holding.
And when we get back, everybody, more with Patrick Coburn on Bahrain and Syria, too, after this.
Oh, John Kerry's Mideast peace talks have gone nowhere.
Hey, I'm Scott Horton here for the Council for the National Interest, at councilforthenationalinterest.org.
U.S. military and financial support for Israel's permanent occupations of the West Bank and Gaza Strip is immoral, and it threatens national security by helping generate terrorist attacks against our country.
And face it, it's bad for Israel, too.
Without our unlimited support, they would have much more incentive to reach a lasting peace with their neighbors.
It's past time for us to make our government stop making matters worse.
Help support CNI at councilforthenationalinterest.org.
All right, you guys, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
This is my show, The Scott Horton Show.
In the middle of talking with the great Patrick Coburn from The Independent in London.
That's independent.co.uk.
He's Middle East correspondent there.
He's the author of the book, Muqtada.
And this piece is called, Prince Andrew Praises Bahrain, Island of Torture.
And I think, Patrick, this will be the closest we ever get to royal gossip on this show, but I think it's instructive.
The same reason, I think, that you chose to write about Prince Andrew here, of just what we're caught up in, what this imperialism looks like, you know, to those who have to see it up close on the receiving end there.
Could you tell us a little bit about Prince Andrew and the scandal around his recent visits to Bahrain?
Yeah, Andrew is a Duke of York in a circle of the royal family.
He's always had a relationship with Bahrain.
He's always been going there.
Now, just recently, despite...
There's very few places in the world that hasn't been headed up in lights that torture goes on there as much as Bahrain.
You know, even if you look at the UN reports on it, the UN rapporteur on torture, who, by the way, is excluded permanently from the island.
Even the US State Department says that this is a country that no political change can take place peacefully, that people are put in jail on the vaguest charges, and people are tortured.
And, of course, all the human rights groups, like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, say the same thing.
But this didn't deter Andrew from last month announcing that he was going to be the open and be the guest speaker on a sort of conference on Bahrain in London, which is to show what a tolerant, nice, religiously diverse, free place Bahrain is.
I mean, this is a complete PR venture on the part of Bahrain.
Theoretically, or it's meant to be, given by the Bahrain Expatriates Association.
But although the opposition suspect that the government is behind it somewhere.
Now, Andrew has a history as regards Bahrain, rather a funny one, actually.
He was always going there.
But exactly what was happening there was revealed a former British diplomat wrote a few years ago, saying that the British diplomats in Bahrain regarded Andrew as a complete bore, as a rude self-regarding.
And he cites various examples of this.
He always traveled in style.
He always brought a ballot with him.
The ballot carried an ironing board, because even when staying in five-star hotels, Andrew liked his trousers to be creased exactly right.
And he needed a ballot with an ironing board to do this, you know, so you can't make this stuff up.
And he...
This is what defines high society that makes people like him better than people like us, right?
Yeah, I mean, even sort of by the lowly standards of the British royal family.
Well, this is pretty appalling, you know, his behavior.
But, you know, why does he do it?
Well, this diplomat thought it was a sort of inferiority complex.
Actually, I think it's a much simpler reason that there you have somebody like the Duke of York, who's kind of a pretend sort of prince, pretend king.
And suddenly, what he'd really like to do is have authority over people.
He'd like to have power, you know, like the kings 500 years ago in Britain.
And he really likes the idea of rubbing shoulders with the king of Bahrain or the royalty in Kuwait or United Arab Emirates or Saudi Arabia.
This gives him a thrill, because this is what he'd really like to do himself.
That's funny.
And, of course, the real punchline is Britain is only the ridiculous junior partner in this empire now.
It's not even the British empire over there anymore.
So, you know, even when it comes to the Middle East, it's never mind 500 years ago, he's, you know, at least going back to last century, trying to find a time when what Britain said was what went over there rather than what America says.
I think there's that, but I'm not sure.
I think it's even just simpler.
I think it's just a personal aggrandizement, likes to feel he has real power.
Yeah, well, you know, for me, the fact that I guess, I don't know, Patrick, maybe I shouldn't take the American Revolution so seriously, but I sort of kind of do.
The republicanism as a improvement upon monarchy and that kind of thing.
And yet, so then the fact that Uncle Sam, the U.S. government backs every king and sultan and Amir and so-called president and self-appointed potentate over there in the Middle East is a real thing of mine.
Like it's, you know, supporting.
I couldn't agree with you more, Scott.
I think that, you know, these elites, you know, the 1%, what they'd really like is the 1% not only to have all the money, but have all the power.
They really don't like this.
Whatever they say, they really don't like democracy.
They don't like other people having a say.
They don't like other people having a share.
And I think that's why, you know, the Bushes got on so well with these, Prince Bandar and the Saudis.
You know, they love these guys.
Now, some of them, of course, are just paid off.
You know, it's, you know, it's just cash in the bank.
But for others, I think it's a thrill of seeing what they would like to be, which is completely in control.
Yeah.
Well, and then for the American people to not get it and believe the hype about American support for democracy while all this is going on is just sort of the adding the insult to injury at the end.
But back to the injury here, can we talk about Homs and the government of Syria moving back into Homs and the rebels fleeing?
I guess I saw one or two reports that said that, well, yeah, but where are they going to go?
They're moving back toward the Iraqi border.
And now those forces are reinforced and we'll be able to claim that much more territory in other places, just playing whack-a-mole kind of a thing.
What do you think?
To a degree, yeah.
I mean, Assad is succeeding in the center of the country, Homs, around Damascus in that area.
And the 1,200 fighters, gunmen, have moved out of the old city of Homs.
They've moved sort of north, probably towards Aleppo or further east.
So, you know, the old city's in ruins.
What happens now?
There's more fighting in Aleppo.
A rather peculiar situation has happened there, actually.
About 10 days ago, the opposition, the rebels there, who held the east of the city, controlled the pumping stations for the fresh water, for the drinking water, and they were trying to turn off the drinking water in the government-held section.
But somehow they pushed the wrong button or twisted the wrong valve and they managed to turn off all the drinking water, including the areas held by themselves.
So in Aleppo now, there are queues of women and children everywhere, you know, with kettles and pots and pans, filling it with water from fountains or wells, you know, outside the mosques or anywhere else.
It's pretty polluted water.
But it's that or nothing.
So, you know, it's still a pretty ruinous situation for the Syrian people.
Well, now, I don't know if there's really kind of any grand design or even just plain old design to American policy over there in the Middle East, but it does seem like there's a real effort and real optimism about striking an Iran nuclear deal.
And I know that's still only a first step, but it seems like since that is the huge, albeit fake, outstanding issue between the US and Iran, that maybe that could really mean a real beginning to the end of the Cold War with Iran.
And then that changes the whole so-called logic of the crisis of the Iran-backed Shiite crescent, right?
Redoes all the so-called calculus, as all the geniuses in D.C. like to call it, about who does what and how bad it matters.
Like, for example, who cares if Assad is still the...
I mean, who in the empire cares whether Assad rules Damascus as long as he's not Iran's kingpin in Damascus?
Yeah, I think that there's a lot in that.
I think, you know, if there is a deal of agreement with Iran, then Iran and then the negotiations over Syria or talks and Iran is there, then a lot of things can happen.
Earlier in the year when we had the Geneva II talks and John Kerry was saying Iran can't be there until they agree that this is transition, that Assad is going, which was ludicrous.
Which was ludicrous because Assad holds 13 out of 14 of the provincial capitals of Syria.
He's kind of winning at the moment.
Why should he go?
So if you say that, you're basically saying this war can go on.
You know, you may look as though you're holding a peace conference, but actually it's kind of, in a way, a war conference.
And that's what's happened.
You can only really bring an end to this war by all the players being there.
I mean, the US, Russia, but also Iran and Saudi Arabia and perhaps Turkey.
Everybody has to be there because so many people are involved in the Syrian disaster at this time.
Well, you think anyone will try to, anyone on the American or the Western side will try to take advantage of the opportunity created by the Iran nuclear deal to then move forward with something like trying to work out a peace in Syria?
I don't know.
I think they equivocate because this has not gone well for them.
This was meant to be one in the eye.
You know, this is meant to damage Iran.
This was meant to damage Hezbollah.
This was meant to damage Russia.
Actually, they're all going to emerge stronger from this.
I mean, my feeling, Scott, is that in 2011, a lot of people, including the US and Washington, the West European states, the Saudis, the others, they all got very high up the tree saying Assad is going to go tomorrow.
You know, if you look at the quotes of what they were saying then, 2011, early 2012.
So Assad's still there.
Regardless of what he does, it's kind of a humiliation for them.
I mean, this isn't what they said was going to happen.
They've sort of suffered a defeat and they just don't want to admit that.
So you have these sort of pretend negotiations, which they say Assad must go.
Why should he go?
And, you know, then you can argue whether he's good or bad, but that doesn't really enter into it.
I mean, he's going to stay for the moment.
And so I think there's a great amount of hypocrisy in the outside world by pretending that the supporters of the rebels are looking for a peace, while really they're quite reasonably happy for the war to go on.
Right.
Yeah.
They were just telling McClatchy newspapers the other day when they were talking about sending tow missiles, anti-tank missiles to even more groups over there that just as long as they can, you know, basically paraphrasing the Israelis, that as long as they can just keep the war going, make sure they don't want to help the rebels win.
They just want to make sure that there are rebels still.
And as long as they can, you know, keep them active, then that's the status quo that they seek to maintain.
It's a weak Syria, and it's not too humiliating for them.
Not very low level war.
I mean, the numbers of refugees are saying 9 million refugees or 9 million displaced.
That's more than Iraq, internal and external displaced, if those numbers are right.
Yeah, that's right.
I mean, I think there's great cynicism about this.
And that goes on, all these people, they stay in the refugee camps, more refugees are created.
And this isn't to say that, you know, all these people are created to be refugees by bombs being dropped from Assad's helicopters.
But, you know, if one's saying, how could this war end?
Then, you know, the record of the US and the outside powers is really pretty bad.
They've stoked it.
They're keeping it going.
Right.
All right, everybody.
That is the great Patrick Coburn.
Thank you so much for your time on the show again, Patrick.
I appreciate it.
Thanks, Scott.
Enjoyed it.
All right, everybody.
That is the great Patrick Coburn.
He is at The Independent.
That's independent.co.uk.
He's the author of the book, Muqtada.
You got to read that book.
Muqtada al-Sadr, the Shia revival and the future of Iraq.
And he's at UNS.com.
Check out Prince Andrew praises Bahrain, island of torture.
And check out his five part series on the new rise of Al Qaeda, the third, fourth generation of Al Qaeda fighters in Iraq and Syria.
They're at The Independent and at UNS.com.
And we're way overdue to play a Fox News.
So plug your ears.
The military industrial complex, the disastrous rise of misplaced power.
Hey, all Scott Horton here.
I'd like for you to read this book, The War State by Michael Swanson.
America's always gone to war a lot, though in older times, it would disarm for a bit between each one.
But in World War Two, the US built a military and intelligence apparatus so large it ended up reducing the former constitutional government to an almost ceremonial role and converting our economy into an engine of destruction.
In The War State, Michael Swanson does a great job telling the sordid history of the rise of this national security state, relying on important firsthand source material, but writing for you and me.
Find out how Presidents Truman, Eisenhower and Kennedy all alternately empowered and fought to control this imperial beast and how the USA has gotten to where it is today.
Corrupt, bankrupt, soaked in blood, despised by the world.
The War State by Michael Swanson.
Available at Amazon.com and at Audible.com or just click the logo in the right-hand margin at ScottHorton.org.
We should take nothing for granted.
Hey, Al Skye here.
First, I want to take a second to thank all the show's listeners, sponsors and supporters for helping make the show what it is.
I literally couldn't do it without you.
And now I want to tell you about the newest way to help support the show.
Whenever you shop at Amazon.com, stop by ScottHorton.org first and just click the Amazon logo on the right side of the page.
That way the show will get a kickback from Amazon's end of the sale.
It won't cost you an extra cent.
And it's not just books.
Amazon.com sells just about everything in the world, except cars, I think.
So whatever you need, they've got it.
Just click the Amazon logo on the right side of the page at ScottHorton.org or go to ScottHorton.org slash Amazon.
Hey, Al Scott Horton here for The Future of Freedom, the monthly journal of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Edited by libertarian purist Sheldon Richman, The Future of Freedom brings you the best of our movement, featuring articles by Richman, Jacob Hornberger, James Bovard and many more.
The Future of Freedom stands for peace and liberty and against our criminal world empire and Leviathan State.
Subscribe today.
It's just $25 per year for the back pocket size print edition.
$15 per year to read it online.
That's The Future of Freedom at FFF.org slash subscribe.
Peace and freedom.
Thank you.
Today's show is brought to you in part by Audible.com.
Get a free audio book download at AudibleTrial.com slash Scott.
Audible has over 100,000 titles to choose from for your iPhone, Android, Kindle or MP3 player.
For Scott Horton show listeners, Audible is offering a free audio book download with their free 30 day trial.
I personally recommend Dirty Wars by Jeremy Scahill.
It's great for anyone wanting the inside story on the cruel and counterproductive terror war of the Obama years.
You can sign up for a free 30 day trial and download Dirty Wars at no charge by going to AudibleTrial.com slash Scott.
That's AudibleTrial.com slash Scott.