12/14/15 – Daniel McAdams – The Scott Horton Show

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What a great name for an institute.
Welcome back to the show.
How are you doing?
Hey, Scott.
Thanks for having me on.
Very happy to have you here.
And sorry for the mix-up.
My computer exploded.
Well, one of them.
Of the NSA.
Yeah.
Well, no, it was probably just a 10-year-old old laptop.
It's probably full of gunk, too.
Anyway, you wrote a great thing, as you often do.
This one is rerun today at the blog at Antiwar.com, Israel's Al-Qaeda Rescue Program.
And well, it's a subject we've covered a bit in the past.
Asa Wynn-Stanley from Middle East Monitor, I think it is, had compiled a whole lot of different stories along these lines.
But we've got some new ones.
In fact, I guess maybe I could start by asking, didn't they say after the Druze in the Golan Heights had shot up that ambulance full of Al-Qaeda guys, that they were going to, okay, sorry, fine, we're going to call this off now.
Back a few months ago, Dan.
Yeah, I do remember reading that, you know.
And what I found so remarkable, and why I really wanted to write this up, is how completely open the Daily Mail article was that I sort of commented on, you know, this is a totally open thing.
They invited reporters to embed with the Israeli military, all kinds of photos, some of them are IDF photos, some of them are taken by journalists.
And so this is not something that they're keeping a secret.
It's actually something that they're putting right out there in the open.
That's amazing.
I mean, I guess it's sort of like a limited hangout kind of thing where they're saying, well, we just care so much about humanity and this kind of thing.
But and, you know, frankly, they're already busted, but it really seems amazing.
And I wonder whether you think, I guess they must be making a difference for Jabhat al-Nusra and against their enemies in Hezbollah, huh?
Well, I think if, I mean, if people just stopped for a second to think about it, kind of like I did, and just, I mean, I've been reading about it, like you, I'm sure Scott, for quite a while, and I've seen many things on places like Minneapolis, Alabama about it and all sorts of things.
But, but, you know, you sort of scratch your head.
Number one, when you think of great humanitarian concern for Muslims, the name Netanyahu doesn't immediately spring to mind.
So it's difficult at first to get your head around the idea that he has such an outpouring of humanitarian concern for Muslims everywhere that he wants to rescue them.
And if you can get past that, then you think, well, hold on, these are supposedly the worst of the worst, who, if they had their way, would have wiped Israel off the map.
What the heck are you doing patching these guys up?
I mean, is it sort of laying it up there again, the worse, the better, you've got to patch up these worst guys so you can point to them and tell the rest of the world, look what terrible guys are in the neighborhood.
We should be justified in wiping them all out.
I mean, it's at that level of cynicism, it's hard to know.
Yeah, I don't know either.
It's really something, though, here's the part that really gets me, is what if the Americans find out?
I don't mean the government, which obviously is in on it.
But I mean, the American people, because, you know, for all the hype about, oh, boo hoo about Iran, this and Russia, that and we got to pivot to contain China and whatever.
Only people, only foreign powers or anything like a foreign power that's killed a lot of American citizens lately is al-Qaeda.
And here are very closest, most wonderful ally in the Middle East.
Our very special relationship is very obviously backing the American people's enemies.
And you know, we're at a thing where, you know, yeah, they changed the name to al-Nusra, but that hadn't really stuck.
I mean, everybody knows al-Nusra is al-Qaeda and that ISIS is just a break off from that.
No better, certainly.
And so it just seems to me like when I put myself in the shoes of an Israeli government public relations person or whatever, that like, hey, maybe we should keep this a secret, guys, or something like that, rather than being so blamed about this.
It just seems crazy to me.
If you think about the propaganda that Americans have been subject to, particularly after Paris and San Bernardino.
But I would say certainly for the last year and a half, you know, from when Obama decided he wanted to start bombing Syria and made up all sorts of things.
But this has been non-stop, 24-7.
There are radical Islamist jihadists out there.
They are coming to kill you unless you kill them first.
And now, as you point out, at the same time we're being treated to this 24-7, to the point where now a majority of Americans think we should send troops, just not them, over there.
You have that on one hand, but on the other hand, we have something so completely opposite, which is our greatest ally in history, and the United States itself, and our other allies, are actually helping these people.
And whether it's directly or indirectly, you know, Israel is sort of semi-indirectly helping them by patching these guys up.
The US, if you are most charitable, would say they are indirectly helping them by all of these mistakenly dropped weapons that they seem to snap up all the time.
So even the most positive, you'd say, hold on a minute.
On one hand, you're telling me this is the most dangerous thing in the history of the world.
We've got to spend another several billion dollars to get rid of these guys, but you're going to help them at the same time?
And I just wonder if Americans just aren't dizzy by the propaganda.
Yeah, well, that's the thing, you know.
They cry all day about radical Islam this and radical Islam that.
They never stop and point out who's on whose side over there.
I mean, obviously, there's an entire sectarian civil war.
Not that they're fighting over who's a blasphemer.
They're fighting over power.
But that's basically the split is, you know, Riyadh on one side, Tehran on the other and all of that.
And but TV just won't tell you.
And they won't say, yeah, America is on the Sunni side against the Shiite side.
And yes, the Sunni side includes the guys what knocked your towers down, killed your cousin.
Yeah, which you were supposed to hate for 15 years.
But now you're sort of supposed to forget about it because, you know, there are places like the Doha Center, which purport to be this think tank of, you know, wonderfully intelligent people, people like Charles Lister there who are literally, literally cheerleading for Al Qaeda in Syria, being paid by Qatari dollars to do it, you know, so it is it is absolutely disorienting all of this propaganda.
Yeah, it's funny, because think back to like the 1990s, where, you know, the Chinese, not just some people of Chinese extraction, like Johnny Chong or whatever, but actually, James Riotti and John Wong, who were, you know, tied with the Lippo Group Bank, which was owned half owned by the People's Liberation Army and all, and they're putting a little bit of money, not even much, just a few hundred thousand dollars into Clinton's campaign.
And this is like the hugest thing in the world, the influence of outside powers, money in American politics.
And then you look now at all the foreign money behind all the think tanks and all the policymaking groups in DC.
It's almost unbelievable that they're getting away with it.
It's so far gone now that there's nobody left at the Department of Justice to prosecute anybody for it.
Yeah, there's a revolving door, there'll be somewhere.
I think you probably saw the same piece I did a few months ago, I believe in the New York Times, which I found astonishing, outlining all the foreign money going to think tanks, you know, and this this is not charity, this is this is to affect, you know, political foreign policy of the US and it does a very good job.
You know, I'm not sure if you saw it, but I guess you're probably doing the show with Dr. Paul today, but Obama gave his speech at the top of the hour and, you know, there's a lot there.
But part of it was, and we're continuing our training of Iraqi and Syrian forces, a little vague since we're on the side of the Shiites and the Shiastan Iraqi army in eastern Islamic state.
But what he means by forces in Syria, in the Shiite aligned Syrian army, it's some jihadists, just not others.
And he so obviously used such vague language to try to paper over the difference there.
It's ridiculous.
I'm sorry, we got to take this break.
We'll be right back in one sec with Dan McAdams.
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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.
I'm talking with Dan McAdams.
He used to be Ron Paul's foreign policy advisor in his congressional office, and he is now running the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity, and you can find that.
It's ronpaulinstitute.org, ronpaulinstitute.org, and you can find this piece reprinted at antiwar.com slash blog today, Israel's Al-Qaeda rescue program.
Eh, completely crazy.
Now, Dan, I think you and I may have talked about this a year and a half ago after the fall of Mosul, that like, hey, you know, as crazy as America and its allies back in Al-Qaeda all this time, now that Mosul's fallen, and this clown Baghdadi has declared himself the caliph from his fascist balcony and everything, they're going to have to start to try to turn this ship around, right, or they're going to keep backing the jihadist forces against at least their enemies in their west unending, and then, no, yeah, they have not turned the ship around.
They've basically kept the thing going.
I mean, they've been bombing the hell out of the Islamic State or bombing them somewhat in Iraq and supporting Iraqi Shia forces against them, but they've still been helping create the space for them in Syria all this time.
And then, I, okay, look, I'm stupid, okay, I'm naive, I'm an optimist with a glass three quarters full, and I think, you know, after the Paris massacre, now they're finally going to back off of this.
Now they're going to finally say, you know what, I'm sorry, Turks and Israelis and Saudis and Qataris and Lockheedians and whoever else has your special interests in mind here, we're going to go ahead and stop backing Al-Qaeda now, and not necessarily reorient toward the Shia, but at least stop backing the war against them at this point.
It's blown up in our face so badly, and yet, I don't know.
I mean, and it seems like they have made some moves.
Obama said in his speech today, oh yeah, no, we really are going to negotiate an end to the civil war.
We really, really want to.
Do you take any of that seriously?
Has the policy changed at all?
Or they just keep saying that it's changed and then just keep going?
Well, they're just pretending that, you know, that they have, you know, changed in their rhetoric, but essentially what they mean when they say negotiate a political end to the war is regime change.
You know, it's exactly the same as it always has been.
That's why when after France was attacked by people who were not Syrian, by the way, they were all Europeans, or at least holding European passports, France immediately started bombing Syria.
Germany started bombing Syria.
Now the UK is bombing Syria.
But what they all agree on is we will never cooperate with the Russians, and especially not with Assad, because the policy still is regime change.
And the US thinks that if it cannot take him out on the battlefield, they will take him out in a conference room.
And this is why the US, and this goes to what you were saying a second ago, Scott, this is why the US has been pushing so hard for some groups that do fight alongside al-Nusra to be involved and included in these talks.
These are radical extremists, but the US is rebranding them for the sake of these talks as moderates.
The Pentagon changes the names of these organizations fighting in Syria, it seems like, on a weekly basis.
It's like watching the life of Brian, you know, watching them, no, now it's the People's Syrian Front.
Now it's the People's Front of Syria.
It's just incredible.
They're trying to, I guess, confuse people, and I think they're probably doing a decent job.
But if you look below the surface, it's still all about, we've got to get rid of Assad, we've got to have regime change.
You know, I was skeptical for a long time, but once they renamed it the Syrian Democratic Forces, I thought, now that sounds pretty legit.
Oh, they're suicide bombers?
Well, hmm.
Do they crucify people or behead them?
Let me...
Yeah, no, it is, it's totally out of control.
And so here's my thing, too, and same thing as always whenever I look at Israeli government policy, because look, we have an Atlantic Ocean for a moat.
That's not nothing.
You know what I mean?
But the Israelis, they really got to live there.
I mean, you know what, I guess I'm looking at it, pretend to be a Likudnik for a second.
Don't like Hezbollah very much, no sir.
But really, a future dominated by the Islamic State and or the Al-Nusra Front in Syria is better for Israel's security for even the short, medium, or long term?
I just can't figure that out for the life of me, and I don't care if they're allies with Iran or not.
I just cannot see it.
I mean, it adds fuel to the fire of those who I think are, frankly, a little nutty who want to claim that Israel's behind ISIS and they've created it and that sort of thing.
I have a hard time believing it, and I think it's more likely that the Israelis are probably like Washington.
They think they're the masters of the universe, they think they can create new realities and manage new realities, and they can put these people in to get rid of someone they really hate, like Assad, and then control them afterward.
That may be the case, but I have not seen it in the course of the last hundred years of this working right.
They thought they had achieved it in Afghanistan, then we had a little thing called 9-11.
So it's hubris, I guess, is what it's all about.
Yeah.
Well, boy, it seems like they're just absolutely unable to learn any of the recent lessons as far as that goes.
I can see the logic of David Wilmer in 1996 saying, eh, who cares about some stupid Islamists, but what we want to do is destroy all the former Soviet-backed Arab nationalist states.
Okay, that makes sense if it's 1996 and you're a Likudnik, but how that makes sense to anybody now after the disaster of Iraq and then wanting to move that on to Libya and to Syria?
They expedited the chaotic collapse, but the second half of the sentence was something about that way we can more easily shape the aftermath of what comes out, but that part doesn't ever seem to work.
You know?
Yeah.
Well, look, we're talking, speaking of anti-war, there was a piece that Jason Dist did on anti-war about how France, Britain, and Italy all want to go back into Libya and they want to start bombing Libya again.
And he even quoted some British officials who, without name, said Libya is almost certain to be the next in an ever-expanding war.
Man, yeah, Obama mentioned Libya today.
Oh, we're hunting them down.
We killed one ISIS guy in Libya.
Oh, yeah?
What was the ISIS guy doing in Libya, and how many more did you create when you bombed him?
I mean, this is just, this is crazy.
And I hate being right about this stuff, because back then I was saying, oh, yeah, we're going to be in Libya for 25 years.
It's amazing to me that it's taken this long to have a full-scale invasion and train up, with purple fingers, and train up a new army and clear hold and build this mess.
Because are they really just going to let it fester as jihadists stand unattended?
No, they have to make it worse.
They have to.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, this may sound funny, but maybe the best bet would be to find one of Qaddafi's sons that's being held by one of these crazy groups and say, look, we're sorry we killed your dad.
Can you please sort this out for us, so that we can get out of there?
I mean, at this point, anything could be better than what's happening there right now.
You know, at least that would be rational.
I can't say I'd favor it.
But then again, you know, it's interesting that in that Washington Times series by Shapiro and Riddell, that Dennis Kucinich and the Pentagon and the CIA were negotiating separately from Hillary at the State Department, trying to get us into the war.
Don't you love that?
What a narrative.
And that was the deal that they were trying to cut, was that they would get rid of the old man and it would be, I think it's safe, but I forget exactly which of the two sons.
But one of the two sons was a real believer who really wanted to make a Western European nation state out of Libya.
He really meant it, really believed in democracy and creating an independent judiciary and this kind of thing.
He'd been educated in the West.
And Hillary said, no, we're going to kill them all instead.
But they had a really acceptable solution in hand.
I mean, it really was.
Yeah.
I mean, I'm sure he was not a super decent guy, but I think you're right.
It was safe, I think.
And I think he was schooled in the UK.
So I mean, you know, the next generation may have been slightly more liberal.
Whatever the case, the idea that we can rebuild and tell their societies how they should be governed, even if we don't like Adafi, you know, it just keeps failing over and over.
If it succeeded once, maybe we would have to shut our mouths, Scott.
But I mean, just point out one place where it's worked.
Yeah.
Well, you know, my favorite quote of the current Iraq war is still from the Kagan's right after the fall of Mosul.
I believe it was Fred and Kimberly Kagan put out a study calling for twenty five thousand troops on the ground immediately in Iraqi Sunni stand.
And they said right in the introduction of their study, they said it is impossible to articulate a clear path to the desired end state.
In other words, we have no idea how this is supposed to work at all.
Give us twenty five thousand ground troops.
Yeah.
And if you want to find the reasons for that, just look on the page of their donor.
It's Northrop Grumman.
It's Lockheed Martin.
It's all of the war machine people, you know, people like, you know, like the Institute and like your show, Scott, I know we struggle to make do on a tiny fraction of what these guys have.
And it really is like David and Goliath.
They get millions of dollars to push for wars that make billions of dollars in profits for the war machine.
It's just incredible.
Yeah, it is.
It's the best investment in the world.
If you had no conscience, no doubt about that.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
And you could just see them to it.
Northrop Grumman and state.
What's this about?
And say, oh, OK, good.
No, no.
And state.
OK, perfect.
This is what we sent you.
That's what we need.
All right.
Hey, thanks, Dan.
I really appreciate it.
Great talking to you, Scott.
Take care.
All right, y'all.
That is Dan McAdams.
I should have mentioned that he is the host of Ron Paul's daily TV show.
You ought to watch it.
Of course, the website for that is RonPaulLibertyReport.com, RonPaulLibertyReport.com.
Ron Paul's former congressional aide, foreign policy adviser in his congressional office now runs the Institute for Peace and Prosperity.
What a proud title, man.
Ron Paul's Al Qaeda rescue program is running right now at Antiwar.com slash blog.
We're over time.
That's it for the show today.
Thanks, y'all.
Hey, y'all.
Scott here.
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