For Pacifica Radio, August 20th, 2017.
I'm Scott Horton.
This is Anti-War Radio.
All right, y'all, welcome to the show.
It is Anti-War Radio.
I'm your host, Scott Horton, here every Sunday morning from 830 to 9 on KPFK 90.7 FM in LA.
My website is scotthorton.org.
You can find my full interview archive there.
More than 4,500 interviews now, going back to 2003 there, at scotthorton.org.
And I guess I usually don't introduce myself any further than that, but now I'll go ahead and add the fact that I'm the author of the new book, Fool's Errand, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, and I'm also the opinion editor of antiwar.com.
I've been hosting Anti-War Radio for you here on KPFK for six, seven years, something like that.
Anyway, and I regularly interview the great Gareth Porter, my very favorite reporter.
Welcome back to the show, Gareth.
How are you doing?
Hi, Scott.
Thanks for having me on again.
Glad to be back.
Very happy to have you here.
Gareth, he's also an author.
He wrote Manufactured Crisis, the truth behind the Iran nuclear scare, and we have important things to talk about.
I should have known, and I almost waited, but I went ahead and I didn't wait.
But I guess I'll just have to write a second edition because it turns out Donald Trump has announced today no more kicking the can down the road.
He didn't say explicitly in his tweet, but it seems pretty clear he has accepted the Mattis McMaster plan for extending the war in Afghanistan and adding somewhere around 4,000 or 5,000 troops to the effort there.
Gareth, what do you think?
Well, of course, this is at least in part the result of the departure of Steve Bannon, who was the primary figure in the Trump administration, clearly, who was pushing hard for an alternative to what the McMaster Mattis group was pushing for.
On Afghanistan and his departure, you know, clearly signals the defeat of any effort to do something other than what the war state, the permanent war state as I call it, has been demanding for a long, long time now, which is to continue the war in Afghanistan indefinitely despite the fact that no one really believes that it can be won.
No one has a plan to win it.
Nobody seriously has any doubt that that is unwinnable.
I think it's fair to say.
And so it's the permanent war state grinding on, continuing business as usual.
All right, so now when it comes to Bannon and the Bannon plan, it's clear that he was reluctant and he was reinforcing Donald Trump's reluctance.
Here's a guy who doesn't seem to be hesitant to escalate in Korea, Iran, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, or anywhere.
But for whatever reason, he's skeptical about the war in Afghanistan.
And yet it seems like Bannon's alternative proposal was might as well have been kind of a sham, you know.
He might as well have been working for McMaster and saying, well, the alternative is to just hire Eric Prince.
Because even if you could get Trump to think that sending in Blackwater makes sense to him politically, that's completely untenable.
And in fact, the Secretary of Defense, the Marine Corps General James Mattis, he's never going to stand for that.
And so it almost seems to me like Bannon would have been better off saying just pull out of there entirely, boss, and say forget it, rather than promote a plan that sounds mercenaries, war profiteers, cashing in, killing people.
And the Blackwater guys who have a reputation for lawlessness and war crimes in Iraq War II, and I guess they threw in, yeah, and we can get some minerals out of there, too, Mr. President.
And it seems like, you know, yes, that may be enough to convince Trump to do it a different way than McMaster, but it's a proposal that's so out of whack with the rest of America that it was bound to be rejected, and the rest of the military and intelligence establishment, that it was bound to be rejected, right?
Well, look, yeah, I think that within the context of American electoral politics and executive branch politics, you're right, that the difficulty of promoting a scheme for actual withdrawal, the difficulties, I should say, are really politically overwhelming.
And so, you know, we have a very complex set of calculations here that anyone has to go through who is in the executive branch who understands that, you know, continuing this war in Afghanistan is whack, as I think Bannon undoubtedly did, and I think Trump as well.
I mean, Trump, look, it might have had something to do with the fact that it's been going on for 16 years, and no one has ever made any serious case that the United States was winning or could win this war.
And indeed, you know, it's admitted that we've been losing the war.
So, you know, why continue it?
Why not just declare defeat, declare the fact that this was a stupid war to begin with, and acknowledge the truth, and just cut your losses?
That would be a rational thing to do.
But we're talking about the realities of power rather than realities of of facts on the ground in the situation in Afghanistan and the rest of the world.
So that imposes a kind of completely false set of considerations on whoever is in the White House or in the administration.
Right.
I mean, it seems like as far as the American people are concerned that, you know, maybe at one level at one point losing face by losing a war would be the kind of thing that they would, you know, regret and maybe even oppose.
We can't cut and run now.
We used to hear that, but you know what?
I haven't heard that for 10 years.
And mostly in context of about in, you know, about Iraq.
Nobody cares if we lose Afghanistan.
The politics to not lose Afghanistan are all in Washington, D.C.
It's either a matter of, you know, the interests of the permanent war state, of course, the bureaucracies themselves have these vested interests, which are extremely powerful, or it's the interests of the contractors who, you know, basically finance the electoral campaigns, much of the electoral campaigns of, you know, important people within the U.S. Congress.
So, you know, the combination of the two things makes it extremely hard to get down to reality.
But the American people, we know that they don't care about this war.
In fact, of course, nobody's done real opinion polls on Afghanistan for years now, but the last time they did it, it was, as I recall, 85% of the American people were against continuing the war in Afghanistan.
Which is why they quit doing the polls, of course.
Yeah, probably.
Yeah, let's face it.
Yeah, well, okay.
So now listen, though.
I mean, the war party gets the last word in every article and every discussion about this, even if it's a Jonathan Landay piece, which he's a reporter that I really respect as far as, you know, mainstream national security reporters.
But, of course, the last line of his Reuters article this week is, intelligence and military officials are concerned that al-Qaeda would come back and use Afghanistan as a staging ground to attack the United States.
Lindsey Graham said the same thing, only hysterically, but still.
And so what about that, Gareth?
Safe haven.
If we leave ever, if the U.S. pulls out of Afghanistan ever, then it's going to be some at least half lawless, wild land, no man's land territory out there where Egyptian surgeons can order their minions to attack us.
Look, I don't apologize for laughing, but people may not understand why I was laughing when you mentioned Jonathan Landay in regard to this point, the last point in his article, because the reason that I was laughing is that immediately it brought to mind the interesting, I think, and important fact, which no one else practically in the universe besides you and I may be aware of, that in 2009, when President Obama was under pressure by the war state, particularly the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Secretary of State at that time, Hillary Clinton, and the military services to increase the number of U.S. troops by 35,000, 40,000, and Obama was saying no.
I mean, he was, he wasn't saying no directly to them, but he was arguing against the rationale that they were giving, which is that al-Qaeda, al-Qaeda, al-Qaeda might come back, and and actually getting the CIA representative in the White House meetings to acknowledge that, you know, that was simply wrong, that there was no evidence that that was the case, because the Taliban had no use for al-Qaeda.
They had, they were quite unhappy with al-Qaeda because of the way they had been used, abused, really, by bin Laden and his folks.
And, and here's the punchline of this, of this recollection of what happened in 2009.
Jonathan Landay and his colleagues at McClatchy did a story which quoted something like 16, if I remember correctly, or 20 military intelligence and State Department or diplomatic officials who were warning that the Obama administration was failing to take seriously the danger that would would take place if it failed to ante up the necessary troops to defeat the Taliban, which was that al-Qaeda would return.
Now that, they were claiming that there was some sort of new intelligence that showed that this was a danger, which was simply utterly false.
There was no new intelligence.
This was simply a view that was being projected by the people who wanted to put pressure on Obama to, to meet the demand of McChrystal for 40,000 more troops.
And it was very effective.
There was a shot across the bow, and it reminded the White House that they could go to the media and make, make it look like Obama was not responsible, responsible or responsive to basic U.S. national security interests, despite the fact that it simply was not true.
So, you know, even Donald Trump has, and, and maybe it's because of the politics of it, he attacked Obama for years for staying there.
And so now he like really believes it, but also he's right.
So it make, that makes it easy, right?
So he's, he's said things, and I admit though that Eli Lake is my source for this, so it might be an outright lie, but I don't know.
It, it confirms my bias, so I'm gonna use it.
And, and it sounds right to me that it sounds consistent with what we know about Donald Trump refusing to make this decision that now apparently he's finally made for the last six months.
And that is that he's been grumbling that as, you know, in the cliche, Alexander the Great couldn't do it, and the British couldn't do it, and the USSR couldn't do it.
Meaning, pacify the local population that are fighting to keep us off of their front lawn, which even Donald Trump, which that needs to be like its own cliche from now on, even Donald Trump can see that there's a big difference between a local Pashtun tribesman fighting because we're fighting him versus an international Arab terrorist obeying his sworn master Ayman al-Zawahiri to try to kill every American he can, which is an entirely different set of people on an entirely different set of mission in an entirely different place.
Right, so, so actually, you know, if you're looking at the present situation, as most people who are at least minimally following the coverage of the war in Afghanistan know, the problem now is that there is a Islamic State presence in Afghanistan.
It's not that big, but, you know, they have a number of troops in various places in eastern Afghanistan, particularly near the Pakistan border, but not limited to that.
But here's the, here's the catch with that argument that, oh, if we don't, you know, continue to fight forever in Afghanistan, who knows what Islamic State might do there?
They could plan some attack from Afghanistan.
The problem with that is that who is the main force fighting against ISIS?
It's the Taliban.
It's the Taliban.
They're, you know, they're mortal enemies of ISIS, of the Islamic State.
And here's the United States continuing to wage war through its, you know, its, its client state, primarily, but not exclusively, in Afghanistan, forcing the Taliban to fight a two-front war.
And that's just crazy.
I mean, if, if we really care about the Islamic State, as we claim we do, then we would shut down the war against the Taliban and treat them like an ally against Islamic State.
But that's not what they're doing.
Yeah, or just like in the case with Syria and Assad, at least leave them alone and don't take the jihadi side against them, for God's sake.
Right, exactly.
All right, now, but so I'm glad that you brought up the Islamic State there, and it's, they're almost entirely in Nangarhar province there, in eastern Afghanistan.
And the thing of it is this, and there's a great piece, and I link to this or, you know, cite this in my book, great piece at Afghananalysts.org about how the Islamic State in eastern Afghanistan are nothing but members of the Pakistani Taliban, the Tariqi Taliban.
They are the group that became so-called ISIS.
They're not Egyptians and Saudis and, and, you know, bin Ladenites or Iraqis or any of this stuff.
They're local tribal fighters.
And then he also says that, in fact, and this won't surprise anyone or it shouldn't, the Afghan government at least tried to use these guys, one, against the Pakistani government as tit-for-tat for their support for the Afghan Taliban, and also to use them against the Taliban.
So just the opposite of what you're saying there, go ahead and let the Taliban fight them.
They were trying to use this group that now claims loyalty to ISIS against the Taliban.
That's what helped build them up in the first place.
But back to the safe haven myth, the important point being that these still are local Pashtun tribesmen, basically.
There still are not transnational Arab terrorists after American targets whatsoever.
But it's given the safe haven myth a whole new lease on life because now it doesn't matter whether they're threatening you with some Arabs hiding in Pakistan ever coming back again.
Now they can just threaten you with local tribal fighters, but who now claim loyalty to ISIS instead of the Taliban.
Right, of course, it would be helpful if the news media were at least minimally interested in trying to get at the truth rather than in peddling a storyline that coincided, you know, just by sheer coincidence, I'm sure, with the interests of the permanent war state.
Yeah, man.
So now listen, I think it's credibly reported that the McMaster plan is just let me fight for four more years.
You see, this is the this is all the thinking going on behind the the new plan is they say that the problem was that Obama announced at the beginning of the surge that it's gonna be over in 18 months and I'm gonna hold them to it.
And so in other words, he told the Taliban just hang on this time we're not gonna make that same mistake this time instead of announcing that I promise I'll bring them to negotiation point in 18 months now it's man we might get around to doing some negotiating in about four years at the end of the next section the next big plan that Trump is now signing off on then they expect to try to begin to think about how to bring the Taliban to the table after just four more years of fighting so You're right you're right Scott that that is indeed the argument that is being made and it's of course based on this completely fraudulent notion that make I must said McMaster McChrystal and and then Petraeus had some sort of plan to actually win the war to defeat the Taliban or to even blunt their the Taliban's Offensive which had been going on for something like 10 years.
In other words PR mistake They should have never promised any results of any kind.
They should have just said we want to fight some more, please I mean that is of course what they were really doing.
But yeah, they had to have the Lie had to be part of their presentation that that they could and and would be able to defeat the Taliban But the fact is that that nothing that they were planning to do nothing that they did do was working Well, the point being that McMaster has learned from their mistake that to say that look we need an escalation To keep from losing and to maybe be in a more advantageous position to negotiate later But he doesn't want to be any more specific than that because he doesn't want to be proven wrong So you're by not defining the goal.
He never falls short of it.
That's a very clever Strategic position to take now not to be specific about what we're going to do Because anything that he would say is going to be clearly open to being contradicted so yeah, you're right, but you know, the the point here is that that these people are doing nothing but PR and They know perfectly well that all they're doing is Getting another period of being able to continue to promote people to general and add stars to their uniform and To be able to get the money that comes with fighting the war in Afghanistan all the lucrative contracts continue to roll in and the generals have lucrative positions to go to when they quit the Pentagon and go to the Top positions in one of those arms contractors Yeah, well, you know when I saw the headline that said Trump's going to Camp David with all his generals and without even Bannon As quote-unquote weirdly anti-war as he was in a strange way sort of Having a meeting in the Oval Office or or in an adjacent room in the National Security Council room at the White House He can just get up and walk out and go somewhere else But when you're in the woods at Camp David with all the generals in the room, basically, it's like Saturday detention you're locked in there until the thing is over and And they outnumbered him six to one and he's got nobody is he doesn't have any other even Skeptical force in there with him at this point, does he that's right And indeed we have good reason to believe that Bannon was indeed the only person in the administration Who was able and willing to buck up?
Donald Trump sufficiently to hold off McMaster at all on on Afghanistan and and you know I I understand from my own source that that in fact Trump insisted that Bannon go with him in all of his meetings with the military with McMaster and the others on Not just Afghanistan, but other issues he counted on Bannon To know what was being said in that meeting and then to talk to him when it was over so that he wasn't just swept Away, at least that's my interpretation and now with Bannon gone I mean clearly he just has absolutely no clue as to how to respond or how to resist The arguments that there be there that they're making I mean that that's I think that's the only way to interpret the situation at this point Well, none of that is to say that Bannon is Ron Paul or anything like that He clearly is a horrible hawk on Iran worse than the others worse than the generals on Iran wanting to break the deal and Encouraging the worst kind of there.
Oh, he was right.
He was part of the coterie of people who were pushing this Idea of you know, this alarm Islam is a threat globally and that that Iran Somehow represents that threat more than any other actor in international politics You know completely out of whack No relationship whatsoever to reality.
I don't you know where he got that.
I'm not exactly sure Yeah, it sounds like some of that.
He's palling around with Frank Gaffney and some of the crazier of the neocons He say there's no doubt that it was a great Muslim Brotherhood conspiracy, you know and all of this stuff There's no doubt that it reflects his contacts with extreme right-wing Zionists I mean that that's clear but what what part of it was people like Gaffney what part of it was, you know Adelson who knows we just don't know the full story there.
All right now, so here's what's interesting about this is supposedly what got him fired was that he perhaps got drunk and called a American prospect reporter and just started spilling his guts about all of this stuff and one of the things he said was If it was up to him, basically he would offer the North Koreans withdraw from the North from the Korean Peninsula In exchange for a freeze in their program not a rollback not giving up the nukes They've already made but just if you guys will stop making more nukes will withdraw from Korea, which any peace person ought to celebrate any You know measure along those lines of any kind who cares how proportionate they are.
We have all the power they have none That's the real reality.
So but people in fact, I saw liberals attacking him that well, that's not a very good deal But here's a ban in the horrible right-wing nationalists was really must be at least in Context in this administration theory of relativity.
He was the dove Yeah, and it's not even not even relative.
I mean, you know, absolutely that that position is extremely unusual in the Recent and by recent I mean the last 25 years of u.s.
Policy toward North Korea I mean, this has been a bipartisan Implementation in u.s.
Policy for many many years for all of the post-cold war administrations that North Korea has no right to bargain with the United States and the United States is going to just put a pressure on them through military threat and through Economic pressure to force them to give up any hope of having nuclear weapons or or long-range missiles So for Bannon to take that position is extremely unusual if not unprecedented in this history, so, you know, it's it's really important and You're right that that he was criticized and I think that as I recall, I think it was CNN did a story Pointing out that Bannon was undercutting Trump on in his policy toward toward North Korea meaning that You know, he was saying publicly Something that would somehow ruin the effect of Trump's pressure on North Korea even though the reality is I can tell you without any question that the North Koreans know that to some extent at least that the threat from the United States is for public consumption and that in fact The United States is ready to sit down with them whenever the North Koreans are ready to talk So, you know, I think that there's a great degree of public relations Surrounding the the public posture of the Trump administration on North Korea and the other point I want to make is that Max Blumenthal in an interview with Real News Network made the point that it he believes there's good reason to to Assume that Bannon already knew that he was going to be ousted when he made that phone call that there had been discussions In the White House that where he was told look I'm gonna have to let you go Very reluctantly and so this was his way of responding to the situation You know knowing that that you know, he was going to be out anyway All right So now Gareth, you know, I don't know really who's worse when it comes to propaganda the North Koreans or the Americans the North Koreans did say something provocative about well We're gonna I think the statement was well I'm gonna order the military to review options for possible strikes near Guam This kind of he had added a bunch of Clintonian weasel words in there So that it was only a half threat and not a full one and that and yet in the American media It was threatens to nuke Guam which there wasn't really a threat, right?
It was a statement that he would order review about options there's not that's not actually I will do this even if you do that kind of a statement and and They really make Americans think it's like the remake of Red Dawn where who is North Korea that somehow takes over the world The poorest country on earth after Afghanistan or something.
Yeah, I mean look For all the demonization that has gone on on Iran and it and it's really terrible and it's gone on for decades the demonization of North Korea is far worse and far more extreme in terms of the the exaggeration of What the the North Koreans have said they were gonna do and what they've actually done The fact is that that the Kim family from Kim Il-sung on down to Kim Jong-un Have been extraordinarily cautious Extraordinarily clever in many ways in terms of their diplomacy toward the United States There's a whole story there that has just simply not gotten ever into the US news media About how the North Koreans have managed an extremely difficult and threatening situation with regard to the US military role in Korea since Really that the United States destroyed North Korea more completely than any Country in in the history of the world has been destroyed In 1951 the the air war against North Korea, which apparently killed three million North Koreans and destroyed I think the 60 Leading cities in North Korea, or maybe that's too few I've forgotten the exact number in any case the North Koreans have in fact been extremely rational In their management of this situation and and relied on diplomacy to a degree that is simply unknown to The American public and and really the US news media has no clue about it either So there's a whole storyline about that that really needs to be told.
All right, you guys that is the great Gareth Porter He's the author of manufactured crisis the truth behind the Iran nuclear scare.
Thanks very much Gareth Thank you Scott, all right you guys you can find Gareth at truthout.org at Alternet and at anti-war comm as well.
I'm Scott Horton I'm the author of the new book fools errand time to end the war in Afghanistan.
I've done 4,500 interviews you can hear them all at Scott Horton org and you can follow me on Twitter at Scott Horton show.
Thanks You
