08/13/14 – Ted Snider – 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.
I'm at scotthorton.org and libertyradionetwork.com, lrn.fm.
Our first guest today is Ted Snyder.
He's a regular contributor to antiwar.com.
Well, first of all, welcome back to the show, Ted.
How are you doing?
I'm doing good.
Thanks, Scott.
Good, good.
All right.
So this new article, we're running it tomorrow, the American response to ISIS, their patterns, not coincidences.
All right.
So you seem to think there's some kind of coherent thinking behind American foreign policy.
It can't possibly be right, but wait, before we get to that, no, I'm just kidding.
Before we get to that, though, I just wanted to give the, you know, catch people up the latest headlines here.
We got airstrikes so far, all still up in the north, as far as we're being told.
We have a transition of power where Maliki is, you know, being pushed out basically, but in favor of a new Dawa party candidate to be the prime minister.
And we have headlines coming out that they're considering a rescue operation, which presumably would be fleets of Blackhawks, I guess, to try to get the Yezidis all safely into safe regions of Kurdistan, et cetera, like that.
So that's, you know, and Obama, of course, has said this is not going to be over in weeks and and left the door open to, you know, widespread intervention.
You know, he says he doesn't want much intervention.
He has said we're going to deny ISIS a safe haven.
So that sounds like a pretty a pretty blank check that he can write himself.
That's where we're at today.
But so this article is, you know, catching us up on the history of how it was that we got here.
And certainly everything that happened that the CIA, the State Department, the National Security Council, the president decided to do on this, the military, everything they've done was deliberate.
But I guess we'll see whether there's a kind of grand strategy to it all or or what it is exactly.
Think about that now.
I'll finally be quiet and give you free reign to explain your position here, Ted.
OK, Scott, thanks.
You know, I found the thing going on with ISIS be mystifying in a number of ways.
And and the first thing that kept surprising me was America's silence on the whole advance of ISIS.
You would think that in a region where they're trying, you know, the war on terror to try to stop groups like al Qaeda from advancing, you'd think that as ISIS was advancing, that would be the, you know, the number one concern for America.
And yet Obama maintained this incredible silence while while ISIS advanced.
So that was kind of surprising.
And then all of a sudden, this reversal of policy and America's intervening.
And so for me, the two really big questions were, why was America silent as ISIS advanced?
And then why did America suddenly stop being silent as ISIS advanced?
And there was a lot of discussions, a lot of sort of coincidences.
And what occurred to me is that the coincidences were coincidences.
They were patterns.
And that if you looked at the patterns, you could find a consistent pattern in American foreign policy that's not so different from the patterns in American foreign policy we've seen for decades.
So the first the first pattern that I thought, which wasn't a coincidence, is why is America silent while ISIS advances?
And I thought the way to answer the question of why America's silent while they advance is to look at where they're advancing.
And if you look at where they're advancing, they're advancing through Syria and Iraq.
And now, Robert Fisk has reported recently into Lebanon.
But that's not a coincidence.
It's a pattern, right?
If you look at Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, you see precisely Iran's three greatest allies in the region.
And I don't think that's a coincidence.
It means that the ISIS advance is completely coincident with America's foreign policy interest.
We've been trying to take Assad out of Syria for a long time with the assumption that Assad was Iran's number one ally, which has actually been a mistake for a long time because Assad and Syria haven't been Iran's number one ally for a while.
Al-Maliki and Iraq have been.
So this offers an opportunity to take out Assad and Al-Maliki, as well as moving into Hezbollah territory, which is Iran's number one sort of proxy power in the region.
So America, I think, can sit by quietly while ISIS does its work because ISIS is coincidentally doing America's work.
So I think that the reason for the silence was that it worked for American foreign policy.
And if it seems bizarre to be working with your enemies, then you just have to look back at American history to see how consistently we have worked with our enemies from World War II on, where America often sided with fascists and Nazi collaborators in the fight against communists all through Europe and the Far East, through Afghanistan in the 80s, you know, arming the Islamist groups like the Mujahideen against Russia.
And then even currently you see the continued allying with Nazi-type organizations in the Ukraine.
And you also see the backing of radical Islamist groups in Syria.
Coincidentally, ISIS is the same group we're fighting now.
So you get them working with their enemy to get rid of the current enemy of the day.
And then you think, but the problem is you get left with ISIS in power, and surely America doesn't want that.
But the thing about that is twofold.
One is all you have to do is look at the Salafist government in Saudi Arabia to see that America really doesn't have a problem working with their enemies as long as it works really well for them.
And the other thing is, if ISIS takes out the governments that back Iran, because this is really almost everything lately is about Iran, if ISIS takes them out and you get stuck with ISIS and in the end you don't want ISIS, then you just remove ISIS.
And there's a long history in American foreign policy of using the worst dictators to accomplish your purposes in a region.
Because the nice thing about a really horrific dictator is that when you're ready to take him out, you can always use the fact that he's a horrific dictator to justify your taking him out.
That was done with Saddam and Noriega and the whole history of taking brutal people out that you put in for the justification that they're brutal.
So that answered the first question.
The first question was answered by they were silent while ISIS advanced because the ISIS advance worked for them.
Do you want me to go on or do you want to cut me off first?
Yeah, no, go ahead, because we can do all the follow ups in the next segment.
So go ahead.
So then the big question is, if the reason you let ISIS advance was because it served your foreign policy, it served your interest, then why suddenly stop ISIS from advancing?
Why go against the motivation of the first one?
And I think the thing is that they're actually not inconsistent at all, because though America benefits from ISIS's success in the Levant, it would be better to get rid of al-Maliki and Assad without ISIS.
Although, you know, it's good to have ISIS do what you couldn't do.
If you can do it without them, that would be great, too.
And the nice thing about the ISIS advance is that before it was completely successful in Iraq, it offered America enormous leverage in Iraq, because here's Iraq with one quarter of it already being taken over by ISIS.
So America can leverage that by telling Baghdad that we're only going to come and rescue you from ISIS if you get rid of al-Maliki, which is the purpose, right?
The regime change and the governments that are allies of Iran.
If you get rid of al-Maliki, we'll come and help you.
And so what happens when you look at this as not a single event, but an event in the sort of causal historical chain, is right before the bombing, you get Obama saying that he's willing to commit to strikes in Iraq.
But if you look at his wording carefully, what he's really saying is that we're willing to do strikes in Iraq if you put in the government that we won't put in.
So for example, Obama says that Iraq is going to have to show us that they're willing and ready to try to maintain a unified Iraqi government that's based on compromise.
He says that we're not going to let ISIS establish a caliphate in Syria and Iraq, but we can only do that if we've got partners that are on the ground or capable of filling the void.
In other words, we don't have partners in Iraq capable of filling the void, so we're not doing it, but we will do it if we get the government that we want.
So first he says, we'll go in and help if we get the government we want.
Then he goes in to help, and within days of that, you get Iraq's new president moving to take out al-Maliki by not nominating him to run again.
So you get this sequence of three events.
The first event is, we'll help you if you get rid of al-Maliki, then America starts helping, and then immediately they get rid of al-Maliki.
So either way, whether ISIS goes in or doesn't, America can use this to accomplish regime change in Iraq.
And I think that's not a coincidence, that's a pattern.
All right.
Now hold it right there.
We'll be right back, everybody, with the follow-up questions and more with Ted Snyder.
Hey, Al.
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All right, you guys.
Welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
I got Ted Snyder on the line.
He's been writing articles lately for antiwar.com.
This one will be running tomorrow.
And boy, I think you sure are right about what you say here, Ted.
And I wanted to point out this interview of Barack Obama by Jeffrey Goldberg from March of 2012.
So not quite even a year into the Arab Spring revolt and then slash hijacked jihad in Syria going on there.
And Jeffrey Goldberg says, can we talk about it as a strategic issue and what else can be done?
And Obama just goes straight forward.
There's no doubt Iran is much weaker.
But if we can get a transition in the government in Syria here and get rid of Bashar al-Assad that would be, quote, a profound loss for Iran.
And they both throw in an obligatory thing about the poor little people they care so much about.
But they make it very clear.
And Obama even jokes along the lines of, I could tell you.
Oh, he says, I tell you, but your classified clearance isn't good enough.
Laughter.
So one of those or I'd have to kill you kind of jokes only.
He botched it.
So so there you go.
He admits exactly what it's about is bringing Iran down a peg.
I'll go ahead and mention this.
I won't play it because it takes too long.
But I'll mention this clip.
You can Google it real easy, everybody.
It's Orin, O-R-E-N, Sunnis versus Shiites.
In fact, Google it's Jeffrey Goldberg again.
Google Orin, Goldberg and Sunnis.
It'll come right up on YouTube.
And he said the same thing to the Jerusalem Post last October.
And that is that he, speaking for the Israeli government, says, listen, we prefer Al Qaeda suicide bomber, prisoner, beheader, lunatics to Hezbollah and Assad because they're backed by Iran and we don't like Iran.
And so I know that there are Americans who have their policy about they don't like Iran either.
But then again, the official policy of the president and his government is now to at least make nice on the biggest outstanding issue with them and resolve the nuclear deal, which they are at least legitimately trying to do and probably will succeed in doing.
And here's a country that's declared independence from America, but it's actually not an enemy of America.
And when you talk about regime change in Iraq, Ted, you're talking about getting rid of Nouri al-Maliki, the Dava party guy, and replacing him with the new guy, Abadi, the Dava party guy, along with the consent of the president of Iran, who has insisted that Maliki step aside and let this go on.
And that's no aberration.
That's been the exact same story since the start of this war in 2003, is that America has been fighting for Iran in Iraq, whether they like Maliki or not is kind of beside the point, obviously.
It's the United Iraqi Alliance government that they're fighting for, the Shiite government and mostly filled with sock puppets of the Iranians this whole time.
And if you remember, too, Scott, both Iran and the States made it clear a number of weeks ago that they would be willing to work together in a non-military way in Iraq with regard to ISIS.
So if non-military leaves political, then Iran's cooperation or at least endorsement of the American choice could suggest that they are working politically behind the scenes together.
So they've got to get rid of Maliki.
But if a government is going to succeed in Iraq, it's got to be Shiite and it's got to have the approval of Iran.
So that's just that kind of working in this behind the scenes as well.
Yeah.
Well, and then you just go and look at Julian Borger and Robert Dreyfuss and James Bamford and their work about Israel's role.
And of course, the neoconservatives role on behalf of Israel align us in a war with Iraq in the first place, which turned out just to benefit Iran so much that that became the excuse that, oops, well, I guess now we've got to redirect, as Seymour Hersh called it, the redirection.
Now we've got to back Fatah al-Islam in Lebanon and back Mujahideen Muslim Brotherhood and worse in Syria.
And that was right around the time of the awakening, too, in Iraq to redirect toward the Sunnis, even the worst of the Sunni al-Qaeda types in order to contain the results of what they'd done for Israel and that benefited Iran the most in the first place.
And now they still just continue on the same path.
As you said, turning at the very least a blind eye and really, of course, helping the Qataris and the Saudis and everybody back the Mujahideen war in Syria all along.
At the same time that they've been helping the Iraqi government, not as much as they could have, I guess, in order to contain these guys, keep them out of Baghdad and now full scale bombing runs in order to keep them out of Kurdistan.
And so it's interesting, too, if you look at this pattern that I was that I was suggesting that this has to do with Iran, as you're saying, and you look at the countries that ISIS went through without America putting up a roadblock, which is Syria, Iraq and Lebanon.
But then you look at what happened when there was concern that ISIS might move into Jordan, which is not an ally of Iran, but instead an ally of Israel and the United States.
And as soon as there was any mention of ISIS going into Jordan, then the Daily Beast ran an article quoting Israeli officials saying that if ISIS went into Jordan, then the Israelis and probably the Americans would intervene.
So you get this pattern that as long as the countries ISIS is moving through are Iranian allies, America lets it happen.
But the moment ISIS goes outside of that Iranian sphere, then America doesn't let it happen.
So it's not only the countries that are being invaded that show that the pattern is about Iran, it's also the countries that are not being invaded yet that show that it's really about Iran.
Yeah, well, and, you know, think about it, that the Israelis have even more interest, depending, I guess, on the level of Benjamin Netanyahu's ambition here to go ahead and provoke this even worse, let ISIS get even more powerful in order to justify intervening in Jordan.
You talk about tigers to the Euphrates.
Let's get it on, right?
And then what happens?
Mitchell Prothero says, boy, Israel moves into Jordan on the other side of the river.
And then you're turning over the whole damn table at that point.
And the entire Middle East goes up in flames in ways nobody can predict.
Yeah.
Holy crap.
And, you know, this can also and, you know, this is speculative, but this can also have to do with the nuclear deal they worked out with Iran, because one of the things that's also striking that I haven't written about yet and I haven't seen much on is that not only was America silent as Iran's allies got overrun, but Iran's been pretty silent, too.
And that's also interesting.
Like, why has Iran let their three allies get overrun like this?
And, you know, speculatively, one of the possibilities is that this is about the nuclear deal, that if the nuclear deal succeeds, which it looks like it might, then the two things America wanted to do with Iran is not only de-arm them, but also isolate them.
And this would be a way that if you did get Iran with civilian nuclear power, you would be enhancing the isolation of them by taking Iraq and Syria and Lebanon away.
So you'd sort of be giving on the one hand, but taking on the other hand away.
And the other thing is that if Iran did get involved, then the State Department could use this as a justification that Iran is interventionist and getting involved in the region, and therefore we can't negotiate with them because this is, you know, what we've always said about, you know, the mad mullahs of Iran.
So I think there's also the possibility that this is linked to the how to come out okay of the Iran nuclear negotiations as well.
And that's purely speculative, but it's a thought.
Yep.
Very good point.
All right.
Well, listen, I really appreciate your time and I appreciate your articles that you write for antiwar.com.
I'm pretty sure I've approved all of them.
It's great stuff there, Ted.
Thanks a lot, Scott.
I'd love to be on your show.
Thank you.
All right.
That's Ted Snyder, everybody.
He writes about American foreign policy and history, and you can find his articles often at antiwar.com.
This one is called the American response to ISIS.
In fact, it goes on.
Let me see here.
There are patterns, not coincidences.
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