11/09/15 – Gareth Porter – The Scott Horton Show

Hey y'all, Scott Horton here for Liberty.me, the great libertarian social network.
They've got all the social media bells and whistles, plus you get your own publishing site and there are classes, shows, books, and resources of all kinds.
And I host two shows on Liberty.me, Eye on the Empire with Liberty.me's Chief Liberty Officer Jeffrey Tucker every other Tuesday, and The Future of Freedom with FFF founder and president Jacob Hornberger every Thursday night, both at 8 Eastern.
When you sign up, add me as a friend on there.scotthorton.liberty.me.
Be free. liberty.me.
Alright you guys, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
It's my show, The Scott Horton Show.
Look at that mean old Republicans, man.
Donald Trump says, take the oil.
That's how to defeat ISIS, just occupy all the oil fields and starve them out.
Good thing the Democrats are here.
Because they've got a peace conference.
And they're going to conference us up some peace.
I guess the Obama administration has finally given up on regime change.
They've finally given up on unending war, bleeding both sides forever.
And they've finally decided, I guess since the Russians called their bluff on ever getting rid of Assad, they've decided, okay, let's all meet at a table and hash this out and we'll have peace.
But yeah, Gareth Porter doesn't seem like he's buying it because the title of his article is The Sham Syrian Peace Conference.
Which is my least favorite kind of peace conference.
Anyway, hey, welcome to the show.
Gareth, how are you?
I'm fine.
I'm really like a kid in a candy shop with all this stuff going on right now.
There's so many things to write about.
Well, I know you type fast, so that's good.
Not fast enough.
We like reading what you write and interviewing you about it.
That's the deal.
That's the consensus around here.
All right, The Sham Syrian Peace Conference.
I've got to tell you, you know, I'm not really an optimist or anything like that.
But I was happy to see, I mean, it must mean something that they actually want to have a peace conference.
I mean, the pseudo peace conferences they had back in 2012 were nothing but a sham and a joke.
And it was obvious the Americans didn't mean it at all.
Assad must leave as a precondition to any negotiating at all.
And this kind of, you know, dead letter, rambly style offer you can't possibly accept sort of a thing.
But now this is sort of kind of different, but no.
No, not really.
In fact, the 2014 conference that was U.N. organized was based on not the premise that Assad must go, but rather unconditional negotiations.
So, you know, in fact, the Syrians were part of that U.N. sponsored set of talks.
And, of course, the opposition didn't want to participate.
They refused to participate at that point, except for the moderates who were corralled into the negotiations by the United States.
So, in fact, you know, we really haven't advanced very far at all.
In fact, I would argue that this is not progress at all from the 2014 talks.
So I think, you know, we have to look at a possible or probable other motives that is other than the intention to actually force the beginning of negotiations for peace in Syria.
I think that, you know, the alternative explanation for a genuine interest in jumpstarting negotiations or the certainly an expectation that that is what is going to come out of these talks is public relations.
And I think that both the Russians and the Americans in this case are primarily using this as an opportunity to advance their public relations interests.
This kind of conference, because you are going to describe the Russians PR interest in joining the Russians are really big gainers, you know, in in this peace conference, because this clearly helps to quiet the criticism of of Russia's military intervention, particularly in the United States and in Europe.
So they obviously gain from this and the clearly the Obama administration felt that it was in their interest as well to show that, you know, they really do want peace in Syria and they're doing their best to push push the ball forward.
Of course, what they mean by that, you know, the way they define progress or or a movement toward a peace in Syria is that they're going to get the Russians to press pressure the Syrians to tell Assad he's got to go and or to tell Assad he's got to go.
And that's going to be the way that we get this done.
And that, of course, is completely in the land of fantasy.
I mean, that's simply not going to happen under present circumstances.
And that's really that's really the primary point that I'm making in my article.
Excluding the Syrians is the proof that they're they don't even they're not even really trying here.
But so I mean, it's it's proof that that this is simply not a real a realistic exercise in negotiations, because what you what you have here is is the major military forces opposing the Syrian regime in the field are ISIS and al-Nusra Front.
And they're jihadist allies.
And neither of those two groups are interested in the slightest in negotiating a peace agreement with any authority in Damascus because their aim is creating a caliphate on both sides.
Both ISIS and the al-Nusra Front and their allies.
That means that that means that the whole notion that you could have a negotiated settlement to end the war at this point is just a nonstarter.
I mean, you might potentially get some of the moderates who are still hanging out there in the field who are at this point relatively weak to to agree.
But that's not going to do any that's going to make any difference.
All right, hold it right there.
Yeah, they're mostly mythical anyway.
The moderates.
All right, y'all got any Skype problems?
We'll be right back with Gareth Porter and the fake Syrian peace conference right after this.
Hey, I'll check out the audio book of Lou Rockwell's fascism versus capitalism narrated by me, Scott Horton at audible.com.
It's a great collection of his essays and speeches on the important tradition of liberty from medieval history to the Ron Paul revolution.
Rockwell blasts our status enemies profiles our greatest libertarian heroes and prescribes the path forward in the battle against Leviathan fascism versus capitalism by Lou Rockwell for audio book.
Find it at Audible, Amazon, iTunes, or just click in the right margin of my website at Scott Horton dot org.
Hey, I'll Scott Horton here to tell you about this great new book by Michael Swanson, The War State.
In The War State, Swanson examines how Presidents Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy both expanded and fought to limit the rise of the new national security state after World War Two.
This nation is ever to live up to its creed of liberty and prosperity for everyone.
We are going to have to abolish the empire.
Know your enemy.
Get The War State by Michael Swanson.
It's available at your local bookstore or at Amazon.com in Kindle or in paperback.
Just click the book in the right margin at Scott Horton dot org or The War State dot com.
All right, you guys, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
I'm talking with the great Gareth Porter, author of the book Manufactured Crisis.
Iran never was making nukes, dummy.
Or something like that.
The great book, the definitive book on Iran's civilian nuclear program.
And also about 100,000 wonderful articles that you ought to read about what's true and what's not.
This one is called The Sham Syrian Peace Conference.
And so, I mean, I know the answer is complicated and depends who you ask and who's really in charge and these kinds of things.
And so you can use whatever qualifiers you want.
But what the hell is the Syria policy at this point?
Anyway, it seems like when John Brennan said, well, you know, we thought about it and we decided that maybe debathification and the complete and total destruction of the Syrian state to the benefit of al-Qaeda might not be a wonderful idea.
After all, it took us four years to figure this out.
But now we're thinking that maybe even without Assad, we want the government in Damascus to stay.
It seems like he's got to mean that to say that, right?
Or no?
Have they given up on regime change?
What is it that they want at this point?
He does mean that.
And in fact, it's not a new position with regard to at least the intelligence community.
They have been saying at least for two to three years now, starting in 2013, that they don't want the state structure, particularly the Syrian army, to be dissolved or to be defeated.
And so that has been a pretty standard position, a public position taken by the national security folks in the Obama administration for quite some time.
The problem is, as your question, I think, accurately reflects, the White House does not really have a straightforward strategy or plan to deal with Syria.
In fact, what has happened is that the Obama administration has sort of drifted along from one decision to another.
For example, going along with Petraeus' idea of a covert operation to arm the moderates, quote unquote.
But in conjunction with Doha and Riyadh, that is with Qatar and Saudi Arabia, who really had their own ideas and ended up obviously shoveling a lot of arms into the hands of folks who ended up as part of the al-Nusra Front-led alliance.
So, I mean, that was really the beginning of this whole trend in U.S. policy to essentially hand over the initiative to the Sunni Arab bloc led by the Saudi, but with Qatar playing a very active role.
And I think that really is the fundamental dynamic that has determined de facto U.S. policy ever since 2013 or early 2014.
And that problem looms very large in the future of this whole issue, because it seems very clear that Obama is not prepared to break with the Sunni bloc, with the Saudis.
In fact, his fealty to the Saudis seems to be complete and unalloyed.
At least that's the indication thus far.
I can't see any evidence that contradicts that.
Well, they do seem to be getting away with the propaganda model here that, well, if ISIS is even more extreme than al-Qaeda, then I guess al-Qaeda must be moderate compared to ISIS.
Well, in fact, what has happened is that the United States is not just tolerating, but cooperating with a strategy that treats al-Nusra Front as a useful instrument in the Syrian conflict.
And that means that, in fact, everything that the United States says at a peace conference or about peace really has to be debunked, because the United States is in fact carrying out a policy, a de facto policy, that involves using jihadists to try to put enough pressure on the Syrian regime to force them to basically say, OK, Assad will step down in six months or nine months or whatever.
And that is a totally unrealistic objective and a means which are immoral and just crazy.
Hey, treason is the only crime defined in the U.S. Constitution to prevent abuse of that term.
But providing aid and comfort to the enemy, in this case, Mujahideen fighters who are sworn loyal to Ayman al-Zawahiri, the butcher of New York City, absolutely qualifies.
If we have Attorney General Bruce Fine right now, all these guys would be in prison.
All of them.
Well, no doubt that's true.
But we shouldn't get our hopes up.
Yeah.
No, Ron Paul didn't win in 08.
That's the thing.
That's why we live where we live and how we live right now.
But now, so check this out.
I'm not going to give them credit like they're all smart, like Brzezinski claims to be the genius who lured the Russians into Afghanistan by backing the Mujahideen even before the Soviet Union invaded in 1979.
Larissa actually says that, yeah, that's true, but I don't know if it was a reaction or not.
But anyway, point is that now that the Russians are in Syria and have called the Americans bluff, I immediately thought, well, geez, maybe that's why they've been backing the Mujahideen all this time.
It's not just get rid of Assad for Israel and Saudi.
It's lure the Russians into this trap.
See if we can cross their line and get them to come in here and get bogged down in a no win war, just like give them their own Vietnam, just like we keep giving ourselves our own Vietnam again and again and do it to them.
And then Robert Gates said before the Senate, apparently Obama's position is just let the Russians get bogged down and weaken them that way.
And then Mark Perry was just on the show talking about what the generals think about Russia and all these things.
And Mark Perry said that the generals have told him some of them quietly, he said, have said that they're happy to see the Russians bogged down in a no win war in Syria and basically let them have it.
And it'll be bad for the Islamic State and Al-Qaeda, the American people's enemies, if not our government's enemies.
And it'll be bad for Russia, who apparently everybody's supposed to hate for whatever reason.
So it looks like there's at least something to it.
So what do you think?
Here's what's really going on.
I mean, the U.S. really was not expecting the Russians to do this.
That simply was not the calculus that has been at work for the last couple of years in U.S. policy toward Syria.
I mean, this was a surprise.
This was a strategic surprise.
Yeah, I agree with you about that.
So what about now, though?
But now, of course, yes, these generals are going to be saying that, A, because it's embarrassing for U.S. generals to be in a position where the Russians are there fighting in a war that the U.S. opted out of, in terms of actually a major operation.
They've had very limited operations against ISIS.
And that's the best way for them to sort of save face, really, isn't it?
To say that, oh, yeah, we want the Russians in there because they're going to suffer.
And I'm not saying they don't believe this, but I do believe that that's what is at work.
Yeah, it's post-hoc rationalization, I understand.
It's post-hoc rationalization, precisely.
All right.
Now, listen, quick, before the music starts playing, tell them about the thing that's happening tomorrow right after this show.
Yes, thanks.
Thanks very much.
This is a very interesting experiment, I would call it, for reinventing, as they call it, the U.S. foreign policy.
And I'm going to reinterpret that or interpret that to mean U.S. foreign and military policy because, of course, you can't separate them.
And I think everyone would agree with that.
But it's being put on at 2 p.m. tomorrow, Eastern Time, from 2 p.m. to 3.30.
And it's going to be a conversation.
I'll be involved in it, as well as Bob Scheer and some other interesting people.
And what I'm going to do is try to lay out a more radical approach to this problem of reinventing U.S. foreign policy, which says, look, the only way to do that is to basically deconstruct the whole system, which has produced this state of permanent war.
And that is a very difficult long-term process.
It's not as easy as saying, well, we ought to have peace building and we shouldn't try to maintain a military balance in the Middle East or whatever sort of discrete argument you want to make about what our policy ought to be.
I'm not against doing that, but it has to be accompanied by something more than that.
That's what I'm going to try to lay out.
So those people who were listening in may be interested in following this.
And you can make comments or ask questions either online if you go to the Reinvent website.
And you can also tweet using the hashtag smallrreinvent.
So people can join in and participate in this either by asking questions or making comments as well.
Cool.
And now what's the link again to get there?
Okay.
The link is at Reinvent.
And it's the Reinvent.
It's just reinvent.com?
Reinvent.net.
And there will be a page there for the event that has to do with reinventing foreign policy.
And that will give them the URL for joining in.
Okay.
Awesome, man.
And we're into the break now.
But I'll tell them again when we get back from the break and I'll talk about it again on the show tomorrow.
Thanks so much.
Thanks, Gareth.
All right, y'all.
That's the great Gareth Porter.
The book is Manufactured Crisis.
Buy it.
Hey, you own a business?
Maybe we should consider advertising on the show.
See if we can make a little bit of money.
My email address is scott at scotthorton.org.
Don't you get sick of the Israel lobby trying to get us into more wars in the Middle East?
Or always abusing Palestinians with your tax dollars?
It once seemed like the lobby would always have full-spectrum dominance on the foreign policy discussion in D.C.
But those days are over.
The Council for the National Interest is the America lobby, standing up and pushing back against the Israel lobby's undue influence on Capitol Hill.
Go show some support at councilforthenationalinterest.org.
That's councilforthenationalinterest.org.
Hey, Al.
Scott Horton here.
It's always safe to say that one should keep at least some of your savings in precious metals as a hedge against inflation.
And if this economy ever does heat back up and the banks start expanding credit, rising prices could make metals a very profitable bet.
Since 1977, Roberts & Roberts Brokerage Inc. has been helping people buy and sell gold, silver, platinum, and palladium.
And they do it well.
They're fast, reliable, and trusted for more than 35 years.
And they take Bitcoin.
Call Roberts & Roberts at 1-800-874-9760 or stop by rrbi.co.