11/05/14 – Philip Giraldi – The Scott Horton Show

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All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
This is my show, Scott Horton Show.
Went a little bit over time with Mike Swanson there, so make sure and check the archives at scotthorton.org slash interviews.
All right.
Our next guest today is Phil Giraldi.
He is the executive director of the Council for the National Interest.
At councilforthenationalinterest.org, he writes for the American Conservative Magazine and unz.com.
Welcome back to the show, Phil.
How's it going?
Fine, Scott, although I'm not too sure with the elections last night, but that's possibly something we can talk about.
Yeah.
Well, go ahead and start with that if you want.
What do you make of it all?
Well, I think for me, the big issue is to kind of figure out how this is going to affect foreign policy as bad as our foreign policy is.
I think it can only get worse.
We're going to we're going to probably see John McCain as head of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Oh, Jesus.
I hadn't even thought that far ahead yet at all because I just hate electoral politics.
But you're right.
John McCain, the mad, the mad bomber is going to be in charge.
And, you know, that's going to, I think, put a lot of pressure on the administration to to up the ante in Syria and Iraq, which is not a good thing.
And I also see that, obviously, there's going to be a lot of pressure on the administration not to cut any kind of deal with Iran in terms of their nuclear program.
So it's it's it's it's a lose lose, I think, in terms of the some of the stuff that I'm most focused on.
Damn that Barack Obama.
He could have had a deal with the Iranians by now if he had really pushed.
And he put it off and he put it off.
And now it's all in the hands of the Republicans to allow him to do it or not.
Yeah, that's pretty much the way it's going to play out, I think.
The fact is, I mean, Obama can do it.
But if he if he does it in the face of resolution after resolution coming out of the Senate and House condemning him for doing it, it's he's he's a kind of a risk averse guy.
He's not going to do it.
Well, he needs their cooperation on some of the sanctions relief, right?
Yeah, well, he has kind of been, you know, 50 50 on getting cooperation.
But the fact is that they have always said that Republicans have always said that they were reserving judgment on this and they were waiting to see what would come out of it.
And I think that the clear message is going to be negative.
I don't think that enough Republicans will get behind any effort to come to an agreement with Iran and the administration will be under intense pressure not to do so.
That's so funny.
You know, we're just talking with Yosef Butt about how they're finally giving up this the so-called possible military dimensions gambit of these obvious Israeli forgeries here, screwing up the talks that I mean, hadn't even really been part of the talks.
It's just the IAEA's beef.
And they're finally getting the last of the obstacles out of the way for this thing.
And yet now electoral politics intervenes.
Yeah, yeah.
So I don't know.
It's you know, it can certainly go another way.
Some of the some of the leading hawks on Iran, of course, were people like Menendez in New Jersey, who will no longer have the chairmanship of the House Foreign Relations Committee.
So there are, you know, there are some angles of this that might kind of turn to our advantage in terms of those of us who want to see some kind of agreement.
But we'll have to see how it plays.
I have my suspicion will be that we'll see all these positions getting a lot harder.
Yeah, it's just too bad.
Seems like, you know, with Gareth's reporting about the again, I mean, different version of the same kind of deal we talked about before about maybe transferring the uranium stockpile to Russia so that nobody can cry about the stockpile being part of the breakout.
And it really seems like they're putting these details to bed here if they would just get a move on anyway.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, he had his opportunity and he decided to to waver on it.
And from 09 on, right, his whole presidency.
Yeah, that's been that's the story of the whole presidency.
Exactly.
Yeah, I mean, he I mean, he well, I guess the Israelis help him botch the negotiations in October 09 when they hired Jandala to kill a bunch of generals.
But they could have worked past that.
Probably.
They'd really tried to.
Yeah, I think so.
I think there was a there was really a window about a year ago when both sides really wanted to come to a deal.
And it looked like they were almost there.
And that's when suddenly, you know, Wendy Sherman discovered that there were other issues that had to be addressed, like ballistic missiles.
So it was like a situation where the Iranians couldn't win because no matter what concessions they made, there would be something else still out there.
Right.
All right.
Well, so now let's make sure and talk about this article here, because and this applies to, well, the two worst culprits on this entire Iran issue, the United States and Israel, the two states that are really behind this entire manufactured crisis, as Gareth Porter puts it.
And the article at UNS.com is called Exceptionalism Rules in Tel Aviv and Washington.
And geez, I always thought exceptionalism meant our country is better because we're all dedicated to liberty and justice first, which is different than we're all dedicated to being Frenchmen first or we're all dedicated to being Uzbeks first.
We're all dedicated to freedom and liberty and justice here.
And that's what makes our country great.
I didn't I didn't I have no idea where it got implied that that meant.
And so we have a license to murder as many of you as we feel like, because we're now that much better than you.
We can kill them all.
But apparently that's the same kind of ideology passing for consensus in in Tel Aviv and in D.C., as you say.
Yeah, the thing that interested me and that I wrote this about was the fact that, you know, Obama is obviously, by some accounts, at least on the outs with Israeli policies, most notably the expansion of settlements yet again.
But the fact is, Obama is blind to the fact that Israelis are behaving basically just the same way the United States does, and the same way his administration does.
So there's there's not a whole lot of difference between a Netanyahu and an Obama in terms of their their view of what they can get away with in the world.
I mean, I noted in the article that, you know, I I cringe whenever Obama cites himself as the leader of the free world.
I mean, who gave him that title?
Where did he get it from?
And who basically acquiesced into into letting him get away with it?
So he gets away with it and he gets away with doing things like killing U.S. citizens and attacking countries with which we're not at war.
And Netanyahu essentially does the same thing.
They both have a a sense of of exceptionalism is the way it's expressed.
But you would call it different things.
And basically, these are people who have a what appears to be a moral compass when they're looking at other countries, but they have no internal moral compass in terms of how they behave.
Yeah.
Well, and it's, you know, just as in the case of Israel and America in in both situations, it's murder, suicide.
The whole thing is completely ridiculous.
I always think of Ron Paul saying, you know, as long as we won't, you know, be honest in our examination of what it is we're really doing here, then this ignorance is at our own peril.
We're going to blow ourselves up doing the wrong thing if we're not even honest with ourselves about the world we live in and what it is, what our role is in it for crying out loud.
Yeah.
I mean, the thing is, you know, it's like I bet if you if you if you gathered 20 or 30, you know, policymakers are talking heads in Washington in a room and and you ask them what they really thought about what's going on in Syria and Iraq.
You probably get a pretty good consensus answer, which is that essentially this is this is pointless and useless what we're doing.
And but nevertheless, the machine keeps kind of turning and turning and turning and it comes out with these bad results.
And the results of, you know, we've had 20 years of bad results now.
And the fact is, they can't seem to get off the horse.
I mean, OK, this ain't going to work.
So what if you really think ISIS is a threat?
Let's come up with something realistic that that addresses the problem.
But I don't see any any sense of that happening.
And it's like, you know, Netanyahu, if he if he wants to shore up a certain constituency inside Israel, decides to attack Gaza and kill a lot of civilians to show how tough he is.
You know, this is not a whole lot different than what Obama is doing.
I mean, the people the people are basically seeing guys who are acting out in certain ways to make points that are essentially political.
Right.
Yeah.
Perfect mirror images of each other's policy right there.
All right.
It's Phil Durali from the Council for the National Interest.
We'll be right back in just a sec.
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All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
I'm talking with Phil Durali from the Council for the National Interest.
The American conservative magazine and Unz dot com, where his latest is exceptionalism rules in Tel Aviv and Washington.
And so we're talking about the elections and the re-rise of Netanyahu's men in the Senate and all these things.
I want to ask you real quick, Phil, could you please explain to the people about what's going on with the new settlements in East Jerusalem and the controversy at the Al-Aqsa Mosque?
Well, the two issues are separate.
The Al-Aqsa Mosque is somewhat simpler to explain.
The Al-Aqsa Mosque is the third holiest site in Islam.
It's, according to some Israelis, built upon the site of the Third Temple, which makes it also a sacred site for Jews.
And the controversy is due to the fact that by agreement after the 67 war, the Al-Aqsa Mosque was essentially governed by Jordan and given over only to Islamic worship or Muslim worship.
And there are some Jewish might describe them as extremists who want to overturn that and allow it to be used by Jews to pray to.
Obviously, this would create a mini civil war right there in the middle of Jerusalem.
And it's a very strongly felt issue on both sides and has caused rioting in Jerusalem.
The other is about the settlements Obama or Netanyahu has gone ahead and approved plans for.
I think it's two thousand seven hundred housing units.
They're mostly in what used to be regarded as East East Jerusalem, which is the Arab part.
But some of them are on the West Bank also.
And the whole world basically is condemning this.
So you and virtually every nation that's made a comment on it, because this is a clear indication that Netanyahu has no interest in coming to any kind of agreement with the Palestinians.
Well, and then didn't he even say in his U.N. speech that, well, listen, you know, it says in the Bible, all this land belongs to us, all of it.
So if we ever negotiate anything like a shadow of a Palestinian state lit of any kind there, it'll only be because we feel like it, because we're nice if we feel like it, not because it's their land at all.
I mean, yeah, that's that's right.
I didn't know that they said things like that in U.N. speeches.
Yeah, no, he he said it a number of times at the U.N. and also to his audiences in Israel that essentially he regards it, as did his political patron, Yitzhak Shamir.
The whole area is Judea and Samaria, Samaria.
And as far as he's concerned, that's part of Israel.
So the question is, do you set up a couple of mini statelets on that land for the native Arabs to live and occupy the rest of it?
How you go about doing it?
That's essentially what he's doing.
Yeah.
Well, and so just like with the Iran issue, it seems like Obama back and forth, back and forth.
He tries to compromise with the Israelis.
OK, you know what?
If you guys will will give us an honest negotiation in Palestine, then we'll do the sanctions against Iran and put off a deal with Iran.
And then the Americans do their part and the Israelis don't do their part.
And then they switch and they go, OK, well, here, let us go ahead and pursue the the thing in Palestine.
And you guys back off our deal with Iran a little bit.
And then the Americans, you know, do their part and the Israelis never do theirs.
And back and forth they go.
And yet, just like in the talking back and forth through Jeffrey Goldberg and whatever, it is the case that Obama is the I wouldn't call it the free world necessarily, but he is the leader of the world empire.
And Netanyahu is just the prime minister of the tiny little satellite state.
So it does seem to be a pretty incongruous relationship there.
What really explains that, that Netanyahu talked down to our president the way he does?
Well, obviously, Netanyahu has a lot of advantages.
I mean, he has basically an extremely powerful domestic Israel lobby in the United States, which encompasses all kinds of power centers of the media, politicians that essentially are afraid of of saying anything negative about Israel.
It's a it's it's not like Obama is up against.
If somebody were pushing the Palestinian interests, for example, or Iranian interests, there is no interest and no support whatsoever.
Israel has a very powerful lobby.
There's no question.
And, you know, it's a it's a it's a it's a tradition.
It's been a tradition, certainly for American presidents just to go with the flow on Israel.
And it has been the case ever since, certainly Lyndon Johnson.
And Obama is continuing that tradition.
But the problem is the incongruities in this relationship are becoming more and more evident.
The damage it does to the United States in terms of our own interests, it's become clearer and clearer.
So it's it's something essentially that there has to be a breaking point somewhere down the road.
I'm not so sure when it'll be or if it'll even be in my lifetime.
But the fact is that essentially the relationship has no real basis apart from political maneuvering.
Yeah, I mean, it does seem like that.
If you even brought up the idea for an instant of, well, let's get our ally Israel to help us in our war against ISIS.
I mean, the whole thing is completely laughable on his face.
It's only worth saying as something sarcastic.
Oh, yeah.
Our great, reliable ally.
All that could do is make matters so bad that probably set the whole damn region on fire.
If we use our allies to help us do anything.
Sure.
That's why Israel has never been involved actively as an American ally in any context.
There used to be the myth during the Cold War that Israel was some kind of unsinkable aircraft carrier in the Middle East.
Well, that was kind of nonsense, too, because the reason why the Arab states were pretty much lined up against the United States was because of Israel.
So it's it's it's that kind of thing.
You can twist the argument any way you want and make it fit your preconceptions.
But the fact is, the fact remains that Israel has always been a liability for the United States.
Yeah, well, no doubt about it.
And so now to what you said about the and I'm sorry, we're jumping around a little bit here, but hey, it's a lot of interesting stuff going on when it comes to the Iraq-Syria war, where you say you get any of these, you know, any five residents of Washington, D.C. or, you know, people with power in a room.
They'll admit to you that this policy makes no sense, but they're continuing it anyway.
And I think Tom Englehart had it right that it's an escalation machine and that where the generals are so willing to contradict Obama on this at all.
Yeah, we're sending ground troops.
All right.
Hagel said, well, you know, really, we already got ground troops over there, which, of course, is true.
But he's saying it in a way that he's contradicting the president, who's saying that he does not want that to be the policy.
These guys are only advisors and helpers.
They're not ground troops.
Obama insists.
And it seems like maybe he really doesn't want to escalate, but the rest of the government insists on it.
And yet, as you said, they all understand that the policy makes no sense.
Even Hagel doesn't say what he wants it to be.
But he says you better decide what your policy is on Assad and say what it is, because nobody even knows what it is.
Yeah, yeah.
Dempsey has said the same thing, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs.
And essentially what they're saying, you know, read between the lines, is they're saying, look, if you want to go down the road, we're going down.
The only way to do this is to send in American ground troops in overwhelming force.
And, yeah, you'll destroy ISIS if that's what you want to do.
But then there'll be a lot of blowback and collateral damage as a result of that.
So that's one way to do it.
But anybody who looks at it in a more serious way, as I know you have on your shows, it's unless the local people basically can come together in one shape or form to oppose this ISIS problem.
There is no long term solution.
And that's that is the only solution that will work.
And that will not wind up killing a million people.
So but, you know, that again, that requires a lot of political finesse, which we haven't seen out of Washington since probably John Foster Dulles died.
You know, it's that kind of thing.
Yeah.
Well, and instead we it's an absolute disaster over there.
You know, I was talking with Landay from McClatchy Newspapers yesterday about how here you have this Sunni tribe on the far side of Fallujah out in western Anbar being slaughtered by ISIS and begging the Iraqi Shiite government saying, we love you guys.
We'd way rather be allies with you than the Islamic State help.
And they said, nah, screw you guys.
I mean, I don't know if they even had the ability to help, but it sounded more like they made a deliberate decision that they actually don't care if ISIS kills any Sunni tribesmen who resist them, any would be awakening types to try to overthrow them from beneath, you know, the Sunnis who've actually been conquered by ISIS.
Apparently the Iraqi government that we're backing over there, that the U.S. is backing over there, they don't really care who rules Sunnistan, not right now anyway.
Yeah, and the people that do care are the Iranians and the Syrians.
And, you know, if you could get some kind of motive, you don't have to jump in the bed with these guys, but if you get some kind of motive preventing development to exploit the fact that, hey, this is a critical issue for those guys.
And you exploit that if you really want to reduce what ISIS is capable of.
But, you know, there's not this kind of long-term thinking capable in the United States.
I don't know if you saw it, but Chas Freeman last week spoke at the National Council for U.S.-Iran Relations annual meeting.
Oh, no.
And if you get a copy of his speech, it is wonderful.
I mean, he lays out all these issues in such a way that you sort of sit there and wonder, why isn't this guy our Secretary of State?
Right, yeah, he was the guy who could have been the chair of the National Intelligence Council.
Right.
Which is like the head on the Voltron of all the different parts of the gigantic vampire squid of the national security state up there.
Yeah, that's right.
Which, wow, that would be, I mean, that's a very important position.
That basically means he can put the kibosh on whatever phony excuse the government needs drummed up, the politicians need drummed up.
He can just say no, like the NIC did under Thomas Fingar back in 2007 with the Iran NIE, that kind of thing.
That's correct.
Yeah, it drives me crazy every time I read something reasonable by that guy.
And I just think, oh, man, I didn't even know they had guys like that in the government at all.
And I don't agree with him on everything because he thinks the government should exist and do things, and I disagree with that vehemently.
But he mostly doesn't want it to do completely insane things, which is what everybody else wants it to do.
Yeah, you know, if I could pull together a group and just kind of let them run the government, at least in terms of foreign policy, it would be Chas Freeman, it would be Fingar, it would be Paul Pilar and Andrew Bacevich.
And these guys are realists.
They understand that the U.S. has interests, but they're totally rooted into a clear understanding of what you can and can do and should or should not do.
Right.
Yeah, well, I'd settle for that cabinet, you know, if we had to have a government.
If we had a Ron Paul administration, Bacevich as his secretary of state, that kind of thing, or secretary of defense, I could see that.
Sure.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, thanks very much, Phil.
Great to have you back on.
Okay, Scott.
Take care.
See ya.
All right, y'all.
That's Phil Giraldi.
He's at the Council for the National Interest.
That's councilforthenationalinterest.org.
They're the anti-Israel lobby, the pro-American lobby in Washington, D.C., also at the American Conservative Magazine and at unz.com, U-N-Z, unz.com.
Hey, y'all.
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