06/04/14 – Flynt Leverett – The Scott Horton Show

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Welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
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All right, our next guest on the show today is Flint Leverett.
Now, let me tell you a little bit about Flint Leverett.
He's formerly a CIA analyst and a State Department official and also was on the National Security Council.
And his wife is Hillary Mann Leverett.
And she was also with the State Department and the National Security Council.
And they both left the Bush administration in protest over their Iraq and Iran policy back, oh, I don't know, say, almost a decade ago now or something like that.
And they've got this great blog called Going to Tehran.
And that's also the title of their book.
Going to Tehran, Why America Must Accept the Islamic Republic of Iran.
And now this most recent article, you can find it at the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity and also at their blog, going to Tehran dot com.
It's called Obama at West Point Doubling Down on a Failed Syria Policy.
And now that I think about it, I was also supposed to say that Flint teaches international relations at Penn State.
Welcome to the show, Flint.
How are you doing?
Hi, Scott.
Thanks.
It's very good to be with you.
Very good to have you back on the show.
That was supposed to be first.
Currently, you're a professor of international relations at Penn State.
And if I lived in Pennsylvania, I'd take your class.
I'd love to have you in my class.
That would be a lot of fun, although I'd probably have to duct tape my mouth shut before I came in the door and nobody else would get to learn anything.
All right, well, so let me ask you a bunch of things here.
The Syria policy, you say you're criticizing Obama's speech here in this article with Hillary.
And and what he had to say about his Syria policy, you say he's doubling down on it.
I say, what is his Syria policy that he's doubling down on?
His Syria policy has basically been his Syria policy since April 2011, about three weeks after unrest broke out in Syria.
His policy has been to both from the United States and working with with other countries to provide support to this basically externally created armed Syrian opposition and to use these opposition elements to overthrow the government of President Bashar al-Assad, the the motives for the policy were twofold.
One, the administration was concerned in the early stages of the Arab awakening that Iran was going to emerge as one of the big beneficiaries of this.
And so you wanted to try and overthrow one of Iran's more important partners in the in the Arab world.
And secondly, the administration just wanted to make a bigger point that up until that point, it was basically only pro-Western authoritarians who are willing to subordinate their country's foreign policies to the United States that were being overthrown or seriously challenged by the Arab awakening.
And the administration thought it would be nice to make a point that even governments like the Syrian government, with a record of, let's call it foreign policy independence, could also be brought down.
Those were the two motives.
And the policy was support externally this armed opposition.
And they thought Assad was going to be a pushover and he was going to collapse.
And anybody who knew anything about Syria would know, A, that wasn't correct.
And B, would have some really serious questions about even if you could pull that off, whether that was really a desirable state of affairs.
But the administration didn't really seem to want to bother itself with those questions.
Well, you know, as far as they thought it would be easy.
Hell, you were on the National Security Council, the United States of America.
That's an unexperienced.
A lot of other people get to have Flint are people who sit on the National Security Council, except for you, dumber than rocks or what?
Because on this little bitty show, I mean, and I admit I work hard on getting the email addresses of really great experts like you.
But, you know, I don't have any special training or education in any of this stuff.
I'm just doing my little thought experiments about, well, let's see if these guys win.
Well, then then what happens?
Or, hey, let me ask you this.
What's the ethno tribal religious makeup of this country and who's on whose side?
Things like this.
These are just obvious questions for anyone to ask.
And, you know, I don't have a million staffers to ask.
I got Eric Margulies.
Right.
And I say, hey, Eric, who's who in Syria?
And he goes, well, here's how it is.
You know, a journalist who knows a thing or two about it.
They don't have anybody who knows a thing or two about it up there.
Sure.
Sure.
They have people who know who know things.
But the problem is the difference between you and a sitting president, whether it's a Republican or Democratic president, you start from a premise of I want to know what's going on on the ground.
And then I'm going to think about what American policy should be on the basis of my understanding of on the ground reality.
Yeah, exactly.
And and but, you know, people who sit in the Oval Office, they have agendas.
They don't start out wanting to know what's on the ground truth in Syria, what's on the ground reality across the Middle East as a whole.
They basically have an agenda.
And, you know, in the spring of 2011, the Obama administration's agenda was we have to push back on Iran.
We have to weaken Iran.
We have to keep Iran from gaining through the rise of popularly elected and, you know, in many cases, Islamist governments in the in the Arab world.
We have to stop that.
So the you know, the question is not being asked what's on the ground reality in Syria.
The question that's being asked is, OK, if we want to get rid of Assad, what are our options for doing it?
Right.
OK.
So, you know, staff members kind of, you know, respond to the questions that come to them from from higher up.
It's kind of an exceptional staffer who will say, you know, Mr. President, Mr. Secretary, I'm sorry, but, you know, you're really asking the wrong question.
Yeah.
Well, you know, I guess I've read enough Woodward and Clancy books where I kind of get how those those sort of incentives work and what mice these deputies turn into when it comes to those higher ranks and everybody just trying to make their boss look good and all those weird incentives.
Daniel Ellsberg's book is great at explaining bureaucratic incentives as well.
Secrets.
Yeah.
Talks a lot about that.
But so.
OK.
But still, I mean, on this show for years and years and years, ever since I first heard of David Wumser, I've asked, OK, but then what?
I mean, if you really could get rid of the Baathists in Syria, then the most moderate that you could hope for on the other side would be the Muslim Brotherhood or something, right?
Now, this is the game.
This is the thought experiment we've been playing on this show for 10 years.
Yeah.
You know, it's you're absolutely right.
The Muslim Brotherhood would be in relative terms by far the most moderate plausible outcome.
And they seem to have been marginalized by all the crazies who really have come to the fore in the last couple of years of war.
And some of our friends like the Saudis worked very hard to make sure that the more radical groups got more weapons, got more money.
I think actually, you know, if you look at sentiment among Syrian Sunni Sunni Islamists, you know, they had already over the even before all this started over the previous decade, couple of decades, you know, I think they had basically, to a large extent, given up on the Muslim Brotherhood anyway.
And they were turning toward more radical current because the Muslim Brotherhood was basically in exile.
And so they were turning to more radical currents who were who were closer to home.
I remember even, you know, 10 years before all of this started, you know, having Syrian friends tell me that they could is back in 2003, they could take me to mosques in Aleppo where you could buy bin Laden tapes.
And and so, you know, Syrian Sunnis, the Islamists were already getting more, more radicalized.
And, you know, once you open this Pandora's box, you know, it was just going to become, you know, a really great expansion opportunity for for al Qaeda.
All of that was perceivable.
There were people, Hillary, me, but others too, who said, you know, from the beginning that this wasn't going to work.
And here were some of the bad consequences that were going to flow from from from trying right now.
I'm sorry.
I'm going to stop you right there.
We got to go out to this break, but we'll be right back, everybody, with the great Flint Leverett, former CIA State Department National Security Council, now teaches international relations at Penn State and wrote the book and keeps the blog going to Tehran back in just a sec.
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All right, you guys, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
It's my show, The Scott Horton Show.
We're on the Liberty Radio Network at LRN dot FM and at Scott Horton dot org.
Noon to three weekdays here on LRN dot FM.
Oh, that's Eastern Times.
All right.
Talking with Flint Leverett about Obama's speech and the continuation of the policy.
Now, Flint, the way you characterize the policy here, I think you call it regime change.
But when I talk with Ray McGovern, he says not the Israeli policy of just keep either side from winning and keep them fighting forever.
But maybe they've even the Israelis and the Americans have even scared themselves with what Syria might look like, where Assad to actually fall.
They just they just want to keep the thing going as a low level conflict and I think empower al Qaeda, really.
But they see it as wearing both sides out the old Andrew Sullivan flypaper thesis, as though there's some limited number of fighting age Sunni males to be radicalized in such situations.
But anyway, no, yeah, no, I mean, I I've heard that that argument that the policy really is to, you know, kind of let both sides fight it out and don't you don't really want either one to lose.
I just say, you know, I think in some ways that that could be a kind of fallback.
I think pretty clearly the motive going in was, we're going to knock off Assad, as that didn't materialize, you know, and people are kind of looking at the situation inside government, then, you know, when you're evaluating the situation, one of the assessments could be, well, okay, we haven't achieved our first objective, but maybe this isn't so bad, because, you know, Iran is having to pour resources into supporting Assad.
And, you know, some guys on the other side, we don't like are getting are getting damaged.
So we don't have to rush to end this thing.
But then, as you say, with the with the rise of the jihadi elements in the opposition, to such an extent, you know, even even the administration has gotten gotten concerned about this.
And so, you know, but but there's this inherent contradiction in in the policy, you know, you can't just sort of sit there from Washington, or even with some CIA officers out on the ground, you can't just, you know, sit there and decide with any measure of confidence or accuracy, oh, these are quote, unquote, good or moderate oppositionists.
They'll never turn the stuff that we give them against us or our friends.
And these other guys here, they're bad.
And so we won't give them stuff.
I mean, this is all you know, once you've given the stuff out, you know, it's it's done.
And you're not going to be able to get it back.
And you're not going to have any control over where it ends up.
When, when there are some stories that the CIA has been helping the whole time, which that's all really true, then it makes my question beside the point, but the way they put it is, well, the Saudis and the Qataris are funding them.
And yeah, the Turks and the Jordanians help with the Free Syrian Army.
And from time to time, we give them some non lethal aid and all that.
But that sounds to me like not very plausible deniability at all, who's the hegemon here we are.
And at least, you know, again, with the thought experiments, if Obama told the Saudis, you know, back in 2011, or yesterday, hey, knock it off, they would knock it off, right.
So this is his operation to use the Saudis and the Qataris to fund the rebels there.
It is it is absolutely.
And I think you're right that, you know, for various reasons, in terms of his own domestic politics here, you know, Obama made a calculation that at least initially, he didn't want the United States to be directly providing military aid.
But as you say, from early on, the CIA was working with others, the Turks, the Qataris, Saudis, with others to help them sort out, supposedly, whom they would give their support.
And you're certainly right that, that, you know, these other countries would not have been supporting the opposition, at least not to nearly the extent that they did, without a very clear indication from Washington, that this was something that Washington, that Washington wanted.
Yeah, so now, well, all right, never mind the accusations of high treason, because I don't want to sound like some birther, like I think Obama's actually an Islamist or whatever.
He thinks he's too clever by half, using ISIS and using al-Nusra to get his dirty work done.
But the thing is about it is it's not the Reagan years anymore.
And we have since had a real war with these guys.
They've had a war with us.
They blew up our embassies.
They tried to sink one of our battleships.
They attacked us on September 11th and killed 3,000 people.
And so I think it sort of kind of is high treason.
But I guess my real point isn't what trouble Obama should be in for it.
It's, again, I guess, again, back to the madness of the policy and the way it's all phrased.
I mean, they acted all along like, you know, it's moderate rebels, moderate rebels.
In fact, I think the final straw was when Kerry testified to McCain last summer that, oh, no, the vast majority of the rebels are secular, moderate, America-loving types.
And the whole room burst into laughter.
And that was it.
Now everybody admits that, OK, the rebels really are al-Qaeda guys.
The only ones who are out of favor with al-Qaeda, not the Islamic front and the Nusra front, but the ISIS guys, is because they're too brutal.
They're too Zarqawiite for Zawahiri's tastes anymore, and are a little bit out of control with all the suicide bombing and prisoner beheading.
So really now, what moderates?
Because I see this all day on Twitter, this dissonance where they admit that, you know, I mean, all the foreign policy expert types I follow on Twitter.
We got to help the rebels.
Obama's just not doing enough.
And even his own, Hillary Clinton and Petraeus and Dempsey and everyone say he should be doing more, but more to help who?
Who are these moderates, Flynn?
Do they exist at all, or do they just mean that al-Nusra renamed itself the Islamic front so that now it's OK to commit treason and give weapons to those who've sworn their loyalty to Ayman al-Zawahiri?
You're exactly right, but I think there are two important points at play here.
One is that, I mean, the notion of holding Obama accountable, it's politically impossible because there is not really any opposition to him on his theory of policy.
If anything, to the extent that Republicans are critical of him, they're critical of him for not having bombed Syria last year.
They're critical of him for not, like, giving tanks to the opposition, that sort of thing.
And so they're not going to, you know, with a few, I think, very honorable exceptions like Senator Paul, you know, they're not going to really try and hold Obama accountable.
The other point is that even as it has become known that, you know, these jihadi guys are gaining prominence in the opposition, they're still for too long, and McCain is a perfect example of this.
About a year ago, McCain actually went into Syria for about an hour and a half and met with some oppositionists, and even just on that, you know, kind of drive-by encounter, some of the guys that McCain ended up meeting with, you know, turned out to have some, you know, pretty unpleasant, you know, deeds in their background, like targeting Shia religious pilgrims, things like that.
And when McCain came back and one reporter actually had the wherewithal to ask him, well, you know, if we give more support to the opposition, how do we know it's not going to go to bad guys when you couldn't even go to Syria for an hour and a half and meet with oppositionists and not, you know, be shaking hands with bad guys?
And McCain didn't even try to defend it.
He just said, literally, but at least they won't be working for Iran.
You know, and I think it really shows what the mindset is, that, you know, you would rather give weapons to Al-Qaeda if they'll get used against Iran than, you know, actually look out for long-term U.S. interests.
Right.
And at least he's honest at that point about it.
By the way, one more thing about the Northern Storm Brigade there that he went, and according to The Daily Caller, according to Elizabeth Obagi, who set it up, she told The Daily Caller, so it was no accusation.
It was his own group that said he wanted to have a sleepover with the Northern Storm Brigade at their little hideout.
And but his security guys pulled him out of there.
But it turns out that if you just look up Northern Storm Brigade, the first thing that comes up is a Time magazine interview with them where they say, yeah, we're veterans of Al-Qaeda in Iraq.
We went and fought the Americans in the Iraq war.
So never mind kidnapping some Lebanese.
They're hardly human at all to an American.
But how about that?
These guys killed American soldiers in Iraq, presumably.
That's right.
But as Senator McCain himself said, at least they won't be working.
They're not working for Iran.
I mean, it's really a kind of bipartisan craziness.
Yeah.
Well, and you know what?
That was the same thing that Michael Oren said as well.
The former Israeli ambassador, he was outgoing Israeli ambassador to America at the time, said it was very clearly talking about Al-Nusra and ISIS and saying that, you know, Al-Qaeda, these bad guys compared to those bad guys, Hezbollah is backed by Iran.
And so that's all that matters to us.
Whoever's anti Hezbollah.
Now, of course, this is only empowering Hezbollah and giving all of their guys years of experience fighting and and all of these other things that are actually benefiting Hezbollah.
Not that he would admit that.
But it just seemed to me how well, again, I guess back to sort of the cognitive dissonance of people knowing better, but doing this anyway, where Iran really isn't an enemy of America.
Iran's crime is declaring independence from America.
But Al-Qaeda attacked us on September 11th.
These guys have sworn loyalty to Zawahiri.
So how this is how this could be debatable in any office in Langley or in Washington, D.C. is absolutely beyond me.
I just cannot understand it.
Oh, I can understand it.
But it's just so outrageous that it seems like somebody would be like Dempsey.
You would think Dempsey would be against this, but he's critical of Obama for not doing enough for this.
What?
You know, I think actually, if you, you know, in the uniform military, I think I think the enthusiasm for providing more stuff for these guys in Syria is very much under control.
But, you know, at the upper levels, you know, generals like other officials, you know, they, in many cases, they respond to the political signals and the political, what they perceive as the political incentives in front of them.
All right.
Well, here's the dumbest question of the day.
Is there anything that can be done for a peaceful resolution to this conflict and not have 15 years civil war like Lebanon back when?
Yeah.
If the United States and other external supporters of the opposition would get serious about, first of all, I mean, not providing more weapons and dropping an insistence that you can't have any kind of political process, any effort at a settlement until Assad is, you know, is gone, you know, and actually get serious about trying to broker some sort of settlement between elements of the opposition and the Syrian government headed by President Assad, you know, if the United States would do that, I think the chances for a peaceful settlement would, would, I mean, they definitely would be appreciably improved.
It would still be a diplomatic challenge in a lot of ways, but you can at least begin to work on it in a serious way.
And by the way, I'm sorry, I'm keeping you over time here, Flint, but let me ask you one more thing here.
Going back to who's who in Syria.
And this is something that you've addressed on the show before.
And in, I think in this article, you talk about it too.
If I understand the demographics, right, it's something like 70% Sunni Arabs are the population of Syria.
And then the 30% are those ethnic and tribal groups, more or less, obviously, there's some blurry lines here, but more or less, they're the ones who support the ruling coalition, the Shiites, the Alawites, and the various sects of Christians, and maybe some of the Kurds, I guess the Kurds supposedly are split 50-50 here.
Yeah, so it's about, it's about two-thirds the population is Sunni Arab, but not all Sunni Arabs are Sunni Islamists.
There's a not-trivial part of the Sunni Arab community which doesn't want to live under al-Qaeda, may not even be that enthusiastic about living under the Muslim Brotherhood.
I mean, you do have a significant portion of the Sunni Arab population that like the Christians, like the non-Sunni Muslims in Syria, you know, they support the Assad government because it's a secular government that they think is the best plausible alternative to a Sunni Islamist order, which they don't want.
And so, Hillary and I have been contending since the beginning of this conflict that Assad has the support, if you do the math, you know, the non-Sunni Muslims, the Christians, the Sunnis who don't, non-Islamist Sunnis, let's call them, you know, it's well over half of Syrian society, and Assad has been able to retain that throughout this conflict.
And I think, if anything, the popular support for the opposition is dropping as these jihadis gain ever more prominence.
Yeah, well, and they've been losing the battles too, forced out of Homs and all that.
All right, well, I'll let you go.
I appreciate you staying on so long with us, and I sure hope people go and look at your great blog.
It's going to Tehran, Obama at West Point, doubling down on a failed Syria policy.
Thanks very much for your time, Flynn.
Thank you very much, Scott.
Bye-bye.
Oh, John Kerry's Mideast Peace Talks have gone nowhere.
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