09/19/14 – Dahr Jamail – The Scott Horton Show

Hey, I'm Scott Horton here.
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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.
And our next guest today is Dar Jamal.
He's the author of Beyond the Green Zone and The Courage to Resist.
He was an unembedded reporter in the last Iraq war, and he's still a hell of an expert on it.
Well, the next one, the new war.
Welcome back.
How are you doing, Dar?
Hey, thanks, Scott.
Good to be with you.
Very good to have you here.
It's darjamal.com, right?
Dot net.
Dot net.
Sorry.
Well, geez, I guess I'll just ask you what you think of the president's strategy for taking on the Islamic State.
He says he's going to destroy it.
He's not going to use any ground troops to do it, but he's got a coalition together, and they're going to back the rebels in Syria, and they're going to back the inclusive new government in Baghdad, and they're going to whoop up on these ISIS guys.
What do you say?
What strategy?
You know, that would, in some, be my response.
I mean, you and I, Scott, for now, what, going on almost a decade, have been amazed in talking about the folly of one U.S. administration after another of what they've done.
Of course, the Bush administration, it was so easy to watch what they were doing, but now I would argue that just in the same way as inane as the Obama administration's so-called strategy is, that what's different?
I mean, now they're trying to regurgitate a plan, basically Bush's surge strategy, which was all about tying in with regurgitating a plan that Saddam Hussein used to try to control restive provinces like Anbar, Nineveh, et cetera, by finding tribal sheikhs who will play ball, front them a whole lot of money in order to have them control their fighters under their control, and to keep them from going after the government.
And that's basically what the U.S. is looking at now in Baghdad, of trying to get, basically break it down on a province level, try to get various provinces, again, to kind of a reiteration of the Sunni awakening strategy to go after these guys, coupled with ongoing airstrikes in Syria, direct collaboration with the Assad government, which is an amazing feat for them to have pulled off on the ground as well as politically.
And what's changing on the ground?
They're not having any success so far with any of these so-called strategies.
And of course, we know, history shows us, and we've talked about this repeatedly, that airstrikes are only going to make things worse.
And that's exactly what we're seeing.
Oh, well, there's just no doubt about that.
I mean, unless they're, you know, they would have us imagine these pictures that we've seen of convoys of Toyotas out on the highway where there's no collateral damage around.
Go ahead and straight the hell out of these guys.
It looks like a lot of fun, but that's not really what we're talking about.
We're talking about airstrikes on cities full of people who have not necessarily, you know, joined up to be fighters for ISIS at all.
Right, exactly.
And that's a blow back there.
Right, exactly.
So there again, that's why we have all these people on the ground giving either direct or indirect support or sympathy to ISIS, because they're being attacked by either U.S. airstrikes or the government in Baghdad.
And that's that's why they're getting their strength.
And so when you just simply increase those tactics, which is exactly what the Obama administration is doing, let's get more arms into Baghdad for that government.
Let's increase our airstrikes.
Let's look at the possibility of using our own ground troops there.
And that's yet to be determined.
And all of that just feeds straight into what ISIS wants, which is, you know, look, the more you come after us, the more local support we're going to have, because the more people are going to depend upon us for their own security and to keep the Baghdad government troops out of their area, which is a really key pivotal play, because that's essentially what got ISIS into Iraq and gave them the foothold that they enjoyed from the very, very beginning, because people were across western Iraq, mainly the Sunni population, were under direct ongoing assault from the government of Baghdad.
And that's not stopping.
Mm hmm.
Well, yeah.
And, you know, it was clear, I guess hardly anybody noticed this.
I guess maybe I didn't recognize exactly how big of a deal it was at the time.
But, I mean, I certainly took note and incorporated into my understanding of how things were going there.
And that was, you know, more than a year ago now, say like a year and three months ago, Patrick Coburn reported on the withdrawal of huge parts of the Iraqi army.
I don't know exactly divisions, brigades, this, that, the other.
But many members of the Iraqi army, units or whatever they were, withdrew from areas near Mosul anyway, up in the northwest, because it just wasn't their territory and they didn't feel like they had the support from Baghdad to be out there.
And so this was sort of, you know, the fall of Mosul before it fell, you know, where parts of the, in other words, the de facto separation, the giving up by Baghdad of Sunnistan was already in process, at least, you know, in effect before ISIS even came back across the border a year later to declare a state.
They already had, you know, that little influence over there at that time.
But now so and a big part of that, of course, is like you're referring to the awakening movement there.
The Maliki government never lived up to their end of the bargain that will keep all of you guys on the dole in, you know, the way Petraeus had put them on it.
As long as you promise not to fight us, we'll incorporate you into the security forces, whatever, whatever.
The Maliki government never wanted to meet those benchmarks, never did meet them.
And so it's kept them frozen out.
Now, I have to say, when I hear you talk about how part of the strategy is to redo the awakening movement, I'm saying, hey, at least that makes sense.
I hadn't even heard that.
But if they wanted to say that, like, hey, the natural enemy of ISIS is the Sunni population they're attempting to voice their rule on, that actually has precedent.
As you said, it worked for Saddam.
It worked for Petraeus in a way to turn the tribes against the Islamists, to marginalize them.
After all, they are kind of totalitarian monsters and don't really make a lot of friends everywhere they go, engender a lot of popular support wherever they go.
And so, you know, at least that would make sense.
But I wonder whether you think that Abadi and the new government in Baghdad are even going to try that.
I mean, obviously, the Americans don't have enough of a presence there to engineer a kind of Sawa or whatever the hell like Petraeus did.
But can the Abadi government, will the Abadi government even try to bring the tribes and Sunni stand back into the Baghdad fold or that ship is already long sailed or what?
Well, that's it.
And I think it's a situation where it's a strategy that might look good on paper and make some logical sense, as you just described.
I mean, compared to backing the rebels in Syria still, for example, which is complete la la land.
Right.
But I mean, if we just play out some of the roadblocks in front of basically the Awakening Council's part two, first of all, how can you convince these guys who, you know, tens of thousands of them literally have been killed either directly by Maliki's forces or current government forces or radical fighters or other former Iraqi resistance fighters?
Their families killed off.
So many of them pushed out of their homes, pushed out of the country altogether.
We're talking about tens of thousands.
For years, these guys weren't ever paid, yet continued doing their security positions, hoping against hope they would eventually get paid.
So how do you take what's left of that force that's been screwed over in every way possible and convince them, hey, look, this time it's going to be different, even though the Americans aren't here directly as they were previously, even though they're not the ones making the massive cash drop offs to the sheikhs in charge of you anymore, even though we have a new government, a new leader of the government in Baghdad, but we really don't have proof yet that they're handling things very differently.
Despite all that, trust us.
How's that going to work?
Yeah.
In other words, the benchmarks were supposed to be accomplished back in 2007, and it was too late then, clearly, as we see by the result.
And we see why, too, because Bush took away any incentive that the Shia parties had to compromise with the Sunnis, because screw you, we already got Baghdad.
So what are you going to do about it?
And they were the, quote, strong federalists, like Abdulaziz al-Hakim were the ones that America backed.
And the Dawa party, you know, basically in concert with the Supreme Islamic Council.
So they got what they wanted.
George W. Bush, Shia-stan in the south.
And so why bribe the Sunnis?
Go ahead and suffer under the Islamic State.
What does Baghdad care about that?
Oh, man.
And now I talked all the way up until the Sanford and Sons started playing.
Hey, listen, everybody, I'm on the phone with Darja Mail.
Well, Skype, but so to speak, you understand.
And when we get back, I'm going to try to talk less and ask him more questions and see what he thinks about the serious side of this so-called strategy to switch him back to Assad or still pushing regime change against Assad.
More in a minute.
Hey, I'll Scott Horton here to let you know.
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All right, you guys, welcome back to the show.
Talking with Darja Mail about Iraq War Three.
It's amazing to me.
It's not just Dar.
It's everyone who knows anything about Iraq is saying, oh, my God.
Pardon me.
I have some objections to how this is supposed to work here.
People seem to believe in the Iraq side of the strategy a little bit more because at least the government of Baghdad is asking for our help.
And, oh, that makes things much simpler.
Well, yeah, not so much as you've been hearing.
And but on the Syrian side, everyone agrees in every major news story about it that this makes no sense whatsoever.
There are no moderates.
And even if there were, you're going to train five thousand of them for a year and then they're going to be able to take on Assad, Hezbollah, the Al-Nusra Front, the Islamic Front, Arar Al-Sham and the Islamic State all at the same time.
Huh?
A year starting a year from now.
Huh?
And what moderates are you supposed to be doing this with?
And this is what everyone is asking.
All up and down Twitter, all of the most kind of mainstream conventional thinking, you know, pseudo experts and somewhat experts on this.
Everyone is just saying this is crazy.
How is this supposed to work?
What do you think?
One of the classic definitions of insanity is doing the same behavior over and over and expecting a different result.
You have no idea how many times my different guests have said that to me in the last month, probably like 10 different times.
And it's not you repeating yourself.
It's all of my different guests keep saying that.
Sometimes they mention Einstein.
Sometimes they don't.
It's hard not to because it's so amazing to me that we're watching these major events play out on the international stage.
This is, again, one of the biggest ongoing stories on almost a daily basis.
And they are literally recycling and regurgitating the same strategies, trying to make it look as though it's new somehow and selling it to people and trying to make it look as though this is going to be effective and this is what we're doing to solve the problem.
I mean, it's as absurd as, you know, a Daily Mash story recently, which they're basically for those in the U.S. listening, that's the U.K. equivalent of The Onion, a satirical online magazine.
And they basically ran a story that said, hey, you know, the U.S. has done all these airstrikes and immediately following them, peace is broken out across the Middle East.
Right.
I mean, because that's basically what their strategy presupposes that we're supposed to believe that is going to happen.
And so now, how is this strategy of newly announced strategy, so-called strategy, that we're going to take this certain number of rebels, train them very specifically for the next year and turn them loose?
How is that any different in any way than what they've already done?
But now, so I got this weird theory about the war here, and I guess we've talked about this somewhat.
A lot of what you've said has helped help me informing my own thoughts about all this.
It seems to me like we're in this kind of weird situation where ISIS is a very weak is, you know, one of the weaker states in the world.
They got the crappiest part of Iraq.
They have very little revenue and have absolutely no legitimacy in terms of cooperation with any other state in the world.
Nothing official anyway.
No kind of official trade relationship or diplomatic recognition from any other of the hundred and ninety something countries in the world.
They're completely isolated, they're completely landlocked, and they're surrounded by, you know, deadly enemies.
People who are absolutely sworn to their destruction like the Shia of southern Iraq, the Iranians and and their other Assad and their other enemies around them.
And so it seems like.
Oh, and then.
But the problem is, if America intervenes to help any of those actual groups move in to Islamic State territory, the new caliphate territory to try to overthrow them, that that is likely to blow up in our face.
If we back Assad, then that's a really big deal because then we're siding with Tehran, et cetera, et cetera.
And same thing, really, if we back the Iraqi army or the Shiite militias, if we back the Kurds to try to come in.
I don't think the Kurds could really sack Mosul anyway, but if we tried to get them to do that, then there's all the other consequences come from that.
So it seems like we have them almost perfectly helpless, perfectly surrounded.
And if we do anything, we'll make them stronger.
The best thing, never mind from a libertarian principle, non interventionist point of view, but just from a utilitarian point of view, it looks to me the best thing to do is sit here and do absolutely nothing and let the local tribal system turn on them eventually, which should be pretty soon.
What do you think?
I would agree with that and then add that, you know, but that's where the Obama administration and of course the administration before it have made themselves such an amazing bed right smack in the middle of this mess, because now internationally on the political stage, they have to appear as though they're doing something because everyone knows this is all you know, the genesis of all of this is the US involvement there from 2003.
And of course, well before that, but we're at fault, we're responsible.
So ergo, we have to appear as though we're doing something and they can't, as you just said, you know, anything they do is going to make it worse.
And that's exactly what we're seeing playing out.
But I would agree.
I think it's the only solution is going to be a local solution with no direct involvement from the West whatsoever.
And instead, again, of course, we're seeing the opposite.
And I think that that's actually an extremely good description and explanation of why and how everything continues to go worse and will continue to go worse.
And, you know, I've been saying that kind of thing over and over again, and I keep ticking off, you know, the Shiites and the Alawites and the different reasons why we ought to not back them.
But, you know, Michael Shoyer was on the show yesterday and he mentioned how, well, what if we bring in an army of these kind of secular sock puppets or not maybe secular, but these sock puppet Sunni regimes like the Saudis or the Egyptians in there?
Oh, man, that's even better than for ISIS.
That's even better than bringing in and being the air force for the Iranians.
If you're going to be the air force for the sock puppet sellout, Western belly crawling trader, sock puppet dictators, that's just going to be the ultimate in discrediting them and crediting ISIS.
So, you know, good thing the Saudis don't fight any of their wars.
We fight all their wars for them.
Or that could be a real problem.
But yeah, and oh boy, would that make things even much more complicated.
But, you know, the other two things I want to leave folks with before we wrap up our time together today.
Real quick, sorry, I talk too much.
The, you know, we have to keep in mind, you know, we're looking at over 100 Iraqis being killed almost every single day.
Today alone, almost 200 killed and almost the same number, again, wounded in airstrikes and attacks across the country.
We have to remember how many Iraqis are suffering directly from all of this.
That is the bottom line, the most important thing underneath everything that we're talking about here.
And it's all a direct result of U.S. policy in the region that's gone on now for decades.
We have to remember that.
And the other thing too is just to remember that the Obama administration and all these so-called strategies and plans moving forward, this is all evidence of an administration that does not know what it's doing, does not have a solution to this problem.
And that's why everything they're doing is going to continue to make it worse.
And we can expect this thing to be the juggernaut and the elephant in the room going forward, especially as we continue to get into campaign season for the 2016 presidential election.
And this is this is going to be a deal breaker in that so-called election as we move forward towards that as well.
Yeah, it seems like everybody in every party who has any chance whatsoever at the presidency is on board for it, too.
So I'll just be out hawking each other.
I can't wait.
Hey, thanks very much, Dar.
You're the best, dude.
Thanks a lot, Scott.
Always a pleasure.
That's Dar Jamal, everybody.
It's at darjamal.net.
We'll be right back with the other Scott Horton in just a sec.
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