Sorry I'm late.
I had to stop by the Whites Museum again and give the finger to FDR.
We know Al-Qaeda, Zawahiri, is supporting the opposition in Syria.
Are we supporting Al-Qaeda in Syria?
It's a proud day for America.
And by God, we've kicked Vietnam syndrome once and for all.
Thank you very, very much.
I say it, I say it again.
You've been had.
You've been took.
You've been hoodwinked.
These witnesses are trying to simply deny things that just about everybody else accepts as fact.
He came, he saw, he died.
We ain't killing they army, but we killing them.
We be on CNN like Say Our Name been saying, say it three times.
The meeting of the largest armies in the history of the world.
Then there's going to be an invasion.
All right, you guys online, I've got the great Eric Margulies, spell it like Margolis, ericmargolis.com.
And he's got a brand new one about the, is it an auto regime change?
Not a CIA regime change going on in Algeria right now.
What's up, Eric?
How are you doing?
I'm struggling with the spring and winter allergy at the same time.
So I may be a little slow today, but I am watching North Africa with great interest.
My, I go way back on the Algerian question.
I almost went through it there to join the revolution when I was a high school student.
So, um, and, but I was for my mother.
You really need to write an autobiography.
Do you know that?
Uh, if you promise to buy 36 crates of it, uh, I will, I am working on it fitfully.
Oh, great.
Yeah.
I sure hope you are.
Okay.
I'm sorry to interrupt.
I just want to read that.
Go ahead.
Quite all right.
Great.
Thank you.
Uh, so, uh, Algeria, um, well, I've been waiting for a big explosion in Algeria.
It hasn't come yet.
Hopefully, maybe it won't.
But, um, we are looking at act two of the Arab spring in, uh, Algeria, which is a very important country.
It's a big oil producer, 42 million people, uh, and a dominant position in North Africa.
So, uh, it has been run by the military, the intelligence services, the, um, security services, uh, using, uh, um, Mr., uh, um, sorry, uh, using a figurehead or a compromise candidate, uh, who was, uh, stricken with a stroke and has been incapacitated for years, but he was a useful, uh, figure.
He's now in his 80s, I think.
And, uh, that was to avoid a power struggle in Algiers.
Uh, but riots, street demonstrations, peaceful ones, uh, have, uh, ousted, uh, him and, uh, are now, uh, the government is, is being still run by the army and the security services.
But there's great ferment and expectation that, uh, some new political process will happen.
Yeah.
So now, I mean, I just don't even know where to begin here at all.
I mean, to, I guess, how about, to what degree are there any sort of parties or civil society type groups to make competing democratic factions out of, or it's just going to go on to the next mustache in line, or how's that work over there, man?
Well, we're not very aware of any groups beneath the surface.
Uh, there's the, the old, uh, FLN, Front de Liberation Nationale, which was the original guerrilla group that fought the French and eventually, uh, resulted in independence.
Uh, there's surely some Muslim Brotherhood groups there too, but by and large, the very powerful, uh, and violent, uh, security forces have not allowed any other groups to develop a personality.
Yeah.
Uh, so, uh, it's hard to sell, uh, tell, but, but we do know that, uh, almost, uh, 50% of Algerians are under 30 years old.
And, uh, they are anxious for political change.
And, uh, and they're calling in street demonstrations for some kind of democracy in Algeria, which it has never had since the 1962 freedom for France.
And then, so that really does seem to be the flavor of the, the protest movement.
It's not like Syria where they're saying, long lives the Wahari and all this stuff.
No, um, it's, um, it's been very peaceful so far.
I'm surprised the security forces have been obviously received orders to use kid gloves on the demonstrators.
And, uh, because the, the present government that's called Le Pouvoir, the power in Algeria, um, is, uh, scared that the whole thing is going to blow up and run out of hand and they're going to be kicked out of office.
Yeah.
Now, I mean, democracy is not perfect, but it seems like it should be preferable, uh, you know, to have parties trade off in power through regular elections instead of having just a dictatorship and coup d'etats and revolutions all the time.
Not necessarily always, but it seems like in most cases.
So, um, and hey, it's the 21st century.
So who wants to replace this guy with another one just like him?
If you're, if it's possible to have something else there.
The likely candidate is a big fat general named Saleh.
And, uh, but he has no popular following.
And, uh, he's just a big bureaucrat who's never heard a shot fired in anger, I think.
And, uh, there are other forces percolating up, percolating up behind the surface.
Uh, but, uh, if they do gain power, very violent things could happen in Algeria.
Whose side is the CIA on?
I'm sure they're as confused as we are about who to, uh, support right now.
Uh, the CIA will be supporting the current regime, le pouvoir that I keep mentioning, uh, as they have for the last, uh, 20, 25 years.
So this isn't some kind of NED color-coded revolution where the Americans are overthrowing their old puppet or anything?
No, no.
For once, it's not.
In fact, the Americans and their allies in this matter, the French, uh, have been very strong on maintaining a, uh, the current government, keeping things quiet and peaceful in Algeria.
Uh, because what's important is Algeria's oil and gas primary supplier to Europe.
And they sit, uh, the most important power in North Africa.
There's all this ferment going on further south in the Sahara Desert.
So, um, the Americans helped the...
Well, let me step back.
In 1991, oil prices dropped.
And the then-military regime didn't know what to do.
And they very, from their point of view, foolishly, decided to hold free elections.
And, um, the, uh, free elections were won in a landslide by the Islamic Party.
A bunch of guys who'd just come home from Reagan's jihad in Afghanistan.
Yes, that's right.
Uh-huh.
And, uh, but it was a light Islamic Party, the feast from the Islamic Salvation.
And, uh, it, um, uh, it wanted to bring in basic reforms and to share the oil wealth and the gas wealth.
But, uh, the French immediately took action, uh, and the U.S. to urge the army to crush the Islamic Salvation Front, the first democratically elected regime in Algeria's history.
And, uh...
America always supports democracy for its own sake.
Eric, I saw on TV.
It's so true.
Well, that's what we're told.
And, uh, so the army moved in, and they arrested all the leaders of the FIS and threw them in jail, tortured many of them.
And interestingly, out of...
Then a revolt broke out in Algeria in the early 90s, which, uh, was led by Algerian nationalists and Islamists who wanted to fight against the military dictatorship.
Uh, a huge, bloody war ensued in which 200,000 Algerians died.
And it was incredibly brutal, with eye-gougings and beheadings, and told villages wiped out.
Uh, it was ghastly.
Uh, out of this maelstrom came a number of other extremist groups.
The G.I.A., a group, Islamique Almeid, who went into North Africa.
And today, uh, U.S. and French troops, uh, are fighting these same Islamic forces in the Sahara.
Uh, there was great fear that, uh, Morocco might erupt, but, uh, the security forces there, which are very draconian, uh, clamped down and arrested anybody who looked the wrong way.
So, uh, North Africa was shaken.
Ditto little Tunisia.
Um, in the...
And so, uh, things went back to normal with the army running things, but this, to me, is a temporary situation, and some big change is coming for Algeria.
Who knows?
Even a democratic government.
Hmm.
Well, now, so this group, the G.I.A., now, in the aftermath of the Libya war, um, when, you know, a lot of the Tuaregs who'd been working for Gaddafi went home to Mali, and the jihadis followed them right on their heels and kind of co-opted their war and caused that whole crisis in Mali.
Was the G.I.A. around there?
Were they part of that conflict down in Mali and so that would have been 2012, 13?
Yeah, they're still there in the Sahara or the Sahel, which is the northern edge of the Sahara, uh, and they're fighting, and that's why the U.S. keeps feeding more and more troops into Africa to suppress these nationalist Islamist groups.
Uh, but, you know, they're called terrorists.
That's our standard answer for everything.
But these people are nationalists, or ethnic nationalists.
Tuaregs, for example, are fighting for their own Tuareg state.
Yeah.
I mean, I think they quickly got pushed out of the way by the Libyan jihadis and others.
They're still there, though.
Yeah.
They, uh, yeah.
So, uh, there are a lot of dissatisfied, angry people in the region.
So it's, we're waiting for them now to have better leadership, uh, to see if they're going to cause a major problem.
Meanwhile, the Western powers, the French and the Americans, are sending lots of forces there to repress the, uh, West African nationalists, all related to Libya.
Yeah, that only made the news at all, really, because I'm almost sure of this, a couple of Navy SEALs murdered an Army Ranger when he discovered that they were stealing in Timbuktu, of all places.
That's a real place, right?
That's the word people use for the absolute end of the Earth, right?
But like, yeah, no, there they were in Timbuktu murdering each other, the American Special Operations Forces guys.
The American way.
Uh, Hillary in 2012 went to Algeria and said, would you please invade northern Mali for us and clean up this mess?
And they told her no.
And then she went to the French and said, all right, I tried to get the Algerians to do it, and they won't do it.
It's got to be you, because we can't now.
And so the French are there.
The French really took this opportunity to re-invade this territory there in Mali, right?
That's right.
That's right.
And Macron, the French president, is a big backer of French re-intervention in, uh, West Africa, and, by the way, into, uh, Libya and in Syria.
Yeah.
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All right, so now let me ask you about Sudan, because it got a regime change going on there, too.
Now, I know we all know this is on the famous list, Wesley Clark's list, uh, from the neocons from 2001 of the seven countries to get bumped off in five years.
Well, it was a little fast on the timetable, but it does seem to be the same list of countries, less Lebanon.
I don't know if they're on the chopping block anymore.
Not for now, but...
Uh, what do you make of the crisis in Sudan right now?
Very interesting.
Very interesting country.
Um, the Sudan used to be the biggest country in Africa, the most populous, until it was chopped apart by the U.S., uh, covertly, that created this abortion of a country called South Sudan, which had all the oil in it, and is now...
They're slaughtering and butchering each other in Stone Age tribal warfare.
Uh, the regular Sudan has been terribly mismanaged.
It, uh, by a military...
And, uh, it, uh, it's a big, important country, and there's absolutely no influence, except on its neighbors, okay?
And, um, it...
Now that it doesn't have oil, if the U.S. took its oil away, it doesn't have much else except for cotton and the Nile, because the Nile runs right through Sudan, and it rises, and part of it rises in Sudan and Ethiopia.
Um, but, uh, it's a big mishmash of angry tribes, and, uh, it's been pretty solid until now under the dictator, but, uh, by sheer...
But, uh, we are going to see, I think, a lot more unrest there.
Mm.
Well, so essentially...
I guess I'm not exactly sure.
I haven't looked too deep into it, but the military overthrew him, but the headline in Al Jazeera here says...
I love the sound of this, Eric.
We are not greedy for power.
Sudan Army promises civilian government, so...
You know, I have an old high school mate of mine visiting me, and I was just saying to him last night, I said, you know, in 1961, we overthrew the student government of the international school in Geneva, Switzerland.
We staged a coup d'etat, and we ousted the government.
We promised there would be fair elections in the near future.
And we used the same wording that these guys in Sudan have used.
One must approach this cynically.
Yeah.
Well, I didn't like they've ever had a Republican form of government there so far, but, uh, possibly anything's an improvement over the current regime, or no?
Yes, they had an Islamist government there for a while until it was ousted from power under pressure from the Americans.
Another one, huh?
Another one.
Yeah.
So same thing happened in neighboring...
Somalia.
Yeah, and in Somalia, yeah.
Is that what you were going to say?
Yes.
I was just butting in, because I thought you were going to say a different one.
No, great minds think alike.
Yeah.
Somalia.
Yeah, well, that's what democracy means.
Do what America says.
Elect the guy America wants you to elect, or else.
The man to watch, if he's still alive, is Hassan al-Turabi, who led the Islamists and was a very reasonable leader.
I don't know what will happen to him now.
It is possible that extremists could take over in Sudan.
As I said, it's a very volatile place.
But I think any new government they get will be an improvement.
Yeah.
I wonder, I haven't even kept track at all of the major fight in...
Well, I've done a very, very poor job of the fight in South Sudan that America broke off, as you mentioned there, but also, of course, of the fight between the nomads and the farmers that was called the genocide.
I guess at least a couple hundred thousand people were killed in the early 2000s in Western Sudan.
Is that still going on?
It's sputtering along.
There are clashes.
We Westerners just don't understand the region.
Par for the course there are tribal clashes over land, over grazing land, over water rights, and overseeing women from the other tribe.
And it's the same in Darfur.
It's the same in South Sudan where they're butchering each other now.
And our baby, South Sudan, it's very common.
It was common in Somalia, too.
To dignify these by calling them a genocide is not worthy.
This is just tribal nastiness and murder writ large.
Yeah, and I know in South Sudan there's been some coverage, but not too much since it's all America's fault there.
For years they supported the South in their, I guess, war of secession rather than a civil war there against the North.
There is a difference right between the Arab Muslims in the North that control the central government and the black animists and Christians in the south of the country.
So there's somewhat of an argument for separation along those lines if they really didn't feel like they were being represented.
But from the American point of view, this was, obviously, I think they even admitted that this was an attempt to make sure to keep the oil out of Chinese hands, the oil in South Sudan, out of the hands of the Chinese.
Well, you're right.
The Chinese were lurking around there on the edges of this crisis, talking about building pipelines to the coast.
But two important groups in the U.S., the religious far right, became imbued with the South Sudan issue and made a great noise about it because the South Sudanese rebels were either, as you said, animists or Christians.
So here was a chance to get back at the wicked Muslims.
The other thing is that the U.S. is trying, everywhere it goes, is trying to take over, monopolize sources of oil.
And this happened very completely in South Sudan.
The U.S. really controls the oil business there, but it doesn't control South Sudan because these people are too busy killing each other.
Yeah.
And who would have thought that the Americans would intervene and take a side in this war and do all that without having a plan for what's to take place after that?
And immediately the two most powerful factions engage in this absolutely horrible, bloody campaign against each other's civilian populations, too, in the years since then, which it's been how many years?
Almost 10 years now, right?
No, I think so.
Well, this is like Iraq.
You know, there were experts who knew what was going on in there and warned what was going to happen, but these geniuses in the government, particularly on the right-wing side of the government, said, oh, don't bother us with details, we're just going to take it, get the job done, and all these silly platitudes that they use.
And so they leapt before they looked, and this is what happens.
Probably hundreds of thousands of dead by now.
Yeah.
Boy, and it just never ends.
And it's funny because people just don't want to deal with this.
As long as you're from here, then it can't be true or it ain't worth knowing, but all you have to do is pretend you're from somewhere else for just one minute.
Just be like, hey, what if you were from Mexico or what if you were from China?
And this is the history of the 21st century so far.
This is what America has been doing to these people.
You're right.
I talked to many Republicans and Republican groups before the Iraq war, and it was always the same, oh, I don't bother with all these details.
What's the bottom line?
What's the big picture?
These kind of stuffed shirt stupidity.
And now we're blundering into Venezuela.
It looks like we may end up in another place where we don't know what the hell is going on.
So we have a penchant for butting into areas that we really don't understand, and then we regret being there once they explode.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, what's the big picture?
Starting a war is wrong.
That's the big picture.
What are you talking about?
What's the big picture?
Remember when the Japanese attacked the United States, and then our attitude was that was what made them the bad guys?
Remember that?
Yeah.
Who's Tojo now, dude?
That's the question.
Put the shoe on the other foot for a minute, and the whole thing solves itself.
Well, that's right.
But anyway, we're sticking our nose in all over Africa.
There are a number of areas where we're going to end up sending special forces and money and CIA, all running around 19th century type of imperialism.
Yeah, and it really is to just the military establishment where you can see where it's all just me too.
Sort of like when the Navy and the Air Force fight over who gets to nuke which targets and that kind of thing.
No fair that they get to nuke all the targets.
We want some too, or we're going to double up.
So in this case, you have the Air Force and the Navy have their big air-sea battle buildup in Asia, and then you have the Army with their big buildup in Eastern Europe in the name of the Russian aggressive threat.
But then you have the Special Operations Command that's left out, and they're huge now since the terror war.
It's a whole different department of the military, essentially.
And so they get Africa.
Go ahead and embed with every current government's force there.
Build it up, fight its enemies, find some more stuff to do.
Quite right.
That's quite right.
Well, every branch of the military wants its own war, provided it's not too big.
It's sort of a low-grade conflict, good for budgets, good for promotions.
And it's fun for these troops who are bored sitting in their barracks.
You know, the Chinese and the Russians are no pushover, and confronting them is going to be very difficult.
In fact, I think it's impossible.
So we'll get our butts kicked if we do that.
But, you know, buffing around in Africa, putting on turbans and playing, you know, Afghan.
Remember the CIA and rode horses into Afghanistan, all this stuff.
That's fun for the military, and these are people who don't know much anyway.
So there they are.
Yep.
Yeah, I have somewhere, I have the quotes.
I won't read them.
But in Defense News and in the New York Times, where you have these army divisions, just straight up talking about the economics of bureaucracy and saying that, well, now that we've pulled out of Afghanistan and Iraq, you know, for the most part, we're looking for other things to do to stay globally engaged.
We're looking for other projects so that we don't have to get real jobs, essentially.
So we're going to go ahead and embed with the government of Chad and kill its enemies for now until we figure out some other stuff to do.
Exactly.
Exactly.
Each of these bureaucracies wants to preserve and maintain itself.
That's the rule number one.
Go find yourself a nice little war that you need.
I'm being facetious when I say that, but unfortunately we have no business in East or West Africa.
We don't even get much oil from there anymore.
It's just keep the boys busy and boost up those budgets.
Yep.
All right, you guys, well, that's the great Eric Margulies.
His website is ericmargulies.com.
Of course, he wrote War at the Top of the World and American Raj, Liberation or Domination.
Both of those books are just masterpieces.
You've got to read them.
They're so great.
And check out his latest article, Waiting for the Second Algerian Revolution at ericmargulies.com.
Thanks again.
Thanks, Scott.
Appreciate it.
All right, y'all.
Thanks.
Find me at libertarianinstitute.org, at scotthorton.org, antiwar.com and reddit.com slash scotthortonshow.
Oh, yeah.
And read my book, Fool's Errand, Timed and the War in Afghanistan at foolserrand.us.
