Alright y'all, welcome back to the show, it's Anti-War Radio, the last hour of the week for you here, I got breaking news and I don't like it, news.antiwar.com, FBI launching mass raids of anti-war activists' homes, insists raids are related to material support for terrorism, apparently a guy named Mick Kelly is one of the victims, the warrant against Mick Kelly cited efforts to look into his ability to pay for his own travel to Palestine and Colombia, and appeared to have been little more than a fishing expedition looking for possible links to foreign terrorist organizations, including but not limited to FARC, PFLP and Hezbollah, Kelly insists that the raids were about harassing anti-war organizers and these are Joint Terrorism Task Force raids, this is what they mean by war is the health of the state, this is what I mean when I tell you that empire is murder-suicide, now do you get it, anti-terrorism units being used, not against Al-Qaeda in America, but against people like you, alright now on to important news, I'm looking at the blog at antiwar.com where we basically reprint everything that goes on over at the Loeb blog of Jim Loeb, the Washington Bureau Chief, the boss at Interpress Service, and he keeps a great group of guys over there, Daniel Lubin and Eli Clifton and Ali Gharib, and Ali Gharib joins us on the show now to talk about his Iran talking points, y'all's Iran talking points, welcome to the show Ali, how are you doing, thanks very much Scott, thanks for having me, I really appreciate you joining us on the show today, and you guys do such a great job on these Iran talking points, it's not like Republican talking points where you're telling us what to think and say, it's you doing a review of their talking points mostly, and just keeping up with every bit of important news on the topic of relations and the relationship between the United States and Iran, and Israel for that matter, and it's an invaluable resource, I highly recommend, all the news headlines are on the front page of Antiwar.com, good analysis, a really good roundup of what the bad guys are saying about that news, and the news that they're making themselves are always at Antiwar.com slash blog, and so why don't you just give us the rundown here, I guess old Loudmouth was in town and he said something rude about 9-11 and Fox News at the top of the hour says that's what makes them a nuclear weapons threat or something like that, what do you know?
Well, Ahmadinejad did kind of promote this 9-11 truth conspiracy theory, and I'm not sure that's anything more than his sort of usual ploy at distraction, which is what he does best when he comes to show, he kind of runs the circus, he's incredibly open to the media, he has breakfasts and dinners and holds press conferences and makes these speeches, and he makes himself incredibly available and says lots of incendiary and sort of off-the-wall things, and no one really talks much about the issues, for example, there's been, you know, both Stephen Kinzer and Human Majd, who are both great writers to follow on US-Iran developments, have pieces up in the Daily Beast yesterday and today where they were both at, respectively, a dinner and breakfast hosted by Ahmadinejad with academics and reporters, and they talk about how everybody asks the same questions, you know, about stoning in Iran and about Iran's nuclear program, and nobody gets to details of other things, for example, one thing that was barely talked about at all was that recently there's been some possible hints that Iran would be willing to cooperate on Afghanistan with the US, which obviously is a huge problem for the US at the moment, and yet nobody asks about this, about stuff like Iraq and Afghanistan and potential points of mutual interest, and instead everybody goes right for the confrontation and sort of a it-bleeds-it-leads mentality, and it's not really a very genuine and serious discussion about US-Iran relations, and when it is serious, it's always very limited in scope.
Well, and you know, there's a big narrative they're trying to push here, that the reason that we have problems in Afghanistan, the reason that those people won't gladly accept our gifts of liberty and schools for girls is because the Iranians are backing the Taliban, Ali.
Well, there was this kind of a moment at the beginning of the Afghan war when Iran was ready and willing to cooperate with the US, you know, Iran, a Shiite country, and the Taliban, which are Sunni extremists, are sort of diametrically opposed, there's been the Taliban and Iran very much hate each other, and if these reports of some cooperation, well, you know, we should say that first that the Taliban is such a decentralized, disjointed group that it's not like Iran is putting money into some central bank account for the Taliban if these reports are to be believed, it's I'm sure a more tactical support of smaller factions, and like I said, I'm not sure as to the reality of these reports, but if they are true, I think that there's an argument to be made that Iran was forced into this position, because they do have US occupying forces on their west and east borders, and the opportunity in the early 2000s was really blown when Iran sat down at the Bonn Conference and was really constructive with the future of Afghanistan, and you know, next thing they know, they went to sleep and woke up in the morning and Bush had placed them in the axis of evil.
This was actually very much at the beh- You mean Richard Perl and David Frum put them in the axis of evil, or Bush.
Yeah, that's right, that's right, but even more broadly in terms of policy of how to address it, you know, Marsha Cohen, who's an academic down in Miami, had a blog post a few weeks ago up on Loeblog, where she took a look back at all the news accounts of the early Israeli reaction to 9-11, and initially there were some serious questions within the Bush administration about, would they reach out to a country like, say, Iran, which was a hostile country to the US, but also hostile to the Sunni extremists like Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda, and cooperate with the US, and if this coalition would be broad and include lots of Muslim countries.
And Israel, this created a lot, a lot of apprehension in Israel, and they began sending diplomats and other officials, a string of them to Washington, delegations to basically lobby to keep Iran out of any anti-terrorism coalition on the grounds that, well, Israel and Iran are enemies, basically.
Yeah, well now, hold on a second, I want to, I'm sorry to interrupt you, I just want to make sure that everybody heard that right, and understood exactly what you're saying.
After September 11th, in fact, here's the article right here, it's at loeblog.com, it's called In the Wake of 9-11, Israel Put Iran Into the Axis of Evil, I guess that's what I meant when I said Richard Perle and David Frum, it's by Marsha B. Cohen from September 10th, 2010, and now, so, what you're saying is, in those first few months between September 11th and the Axis of Evil speech, which was the State of the Union speech at the tail end of January 2002, basically you had the flint leverets of the world working a deal with the Iranians, and they hated the Taliban, they wanted to work with us against Al Qaeda of course, since the Ayatollahs are also a target of Al Qaeda types, and it was the Israeli government and the Israeli lobby in America that made the difference, and lumped Saddam Hussein's mortal enemy, Iran, into an axis with him, like this was World War II, and they were Italy and Germany together.
Yeah, that's basically what happened.
You have, you know, if you read Marsha's article, which is really a wonderful recounting of stuff that you sort of, you know, from 9 years ago has fallen by the wayside, but you can see stuff from, like, at the time, for example, Bibi Netanyahu- I'm sorry, man, it's these hard breaks, Ali, it's my fault, I'm terrible with the clock, the music's playing, we gotta take this break, everyone google this one, In the wake of 9-11, Israel put Iran into the axis of evil.
We'll be right back with Ali Gharib.
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All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's Anti-War Radio.
I'm Scott Horton, I'm talking with Ali Gharib from LobeLog.com.
Lobe, just like your earlobe, log.com.
Interpret service.
And, well, we were gonna talk Iran talking points, but now we're talking history of the terror war, going back to the beginning in 2002, and this wonderful article at the LobeLog by Marsha B. Cohen called In the wake of 9-11, Israel put Iran into axis of evil.
And now I want to cut my mic, Ali, and let you wax on, say whatever you like about this, teach everybody whatever you think it is important that they need to know, and then we can, if we have time, move into what's going on this week, and maybe even a little bit Israel-Palestine or what have you, but the floor is yours, sir.
Well, Scott, so what Marsha's article is basically about, as I was saying before the break, is just basically rehashing a lot of the commentary coming out of Israel from official sources as well as unofficial sources at the time.
For example, Bibi Netanyahu at the time was between his first and his current prime minister, and basically there were a lot of calls for the U.S. to include in its targets in the global war on terror states like Iran, and I mean it was more broad than this, it was Iran and Syria and all the usual characters, basically anybody who might be hostile to Israel.
And it appeared like the U.S. for a moment, and even the British, when for example Blair was going to send his foreign minister Jack Straw over to Israel, and Jack Straw had made some comments about how the Israeli-Palestinian issue needed to be solved in order to take away one of the propaganda coups of radical Islamic terrorists.
And basically Straw got boycotted on his visit to Israel.
And there was a lot of apprehension with Israel and with neocons about this.
And like I said, they were lumping in Iran, Syria, the Palestinian Authority, Hezbollah, all these people as terrorists that should be addressed in the global war on terror.
So instead of saying, okay, look, we got Ayman al-Zawahiri and Osama bin Laden, and they merged their two groups together, Islamic Jihad, and we've got, geez, I don't know, maybe 200 or 300 terrorists in the world we've got to take care of here.
Instead they said, nope, Al-Qaeda is the Taliban, is Islamic Jihad, is the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, and Fatah, and Hamas, and Hezbollah, and anybody that Israel doesn't like.
Sudan, of all countries, all of a sudden their government is a state sponsor of terrorism against us.
Muammar Gaddafi had been on his knees begging to be allowed back into the fold for 15 years or something.
We've got to target him for regime change, even though just in 2000 the Brits, the SAS, and the MI6 were trying to use jihadists to overthrow Gaddafi, like a year and a half before 9-11 happened.
And, you know, it didn't stop at every little group.
Even a lot of op-eds were excoriating Russia, and that was also a message that was carried by this delegation.
As Marsha writes, there was a single week in mid-October where more than a dozen government officials, envoys, and senior military officers made official visits to Washington.
One of those was the Director General of Israel's Atomic Energy Commission, who briefed the Bush administration on Russia's cooperation with Iran's nuclear program.
And they really went after these guys.
As you say, it was only three months later that Iran suddenly woke up and was in the axis of evil.
And it's views just like these, the ones that Marsha recounts from the early kind of heady days right after 9-11, that are the types of things that, as I said, these at the time kind of fell by the wayside.
They weren't getting much coverage in the U.S., and they certainly haven't since.
Nobody talked about them in the lead-up to the Iraq War.
And now we find ourselves with a similar campaign to the Iraq War about Iran.
You know, neoconservatives are pushing hard.
This campaign kicked into high gear with Jeffrey Goldberg's publication in August of his cover story for The Atlantic Monthly, which assessed the chances of an Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear facilities and what that would entail.
And so what we're trying to do with the Talking Points every day is occasionally we have pieces by people whose views we would like to promote that we think are sort of promulgating a more sane approach to Iran, more of a realist approach to solving the problems without invading or attacking Iran.
But we also are closely tracking what neoconservatives and hawks and others are saying about it and trying to piece together themes of their writings and remarks.
And oftentimes, I mean, talk about a cakewalk.
For us, it's pretty easy.
All you've got to do is point to what these guys are saying about Iran and show that seven years ago they were saying the exact same things about Iraq.
I mean, it does not, without fail, these are the exact same themes we were getting then.
All these things about appeasement, these things about what Eli, my colleague Eli Clifton and I have come to call reverse linkage.
Linkage, of course, is the idea that's been put forward by even neocon darling General David Petraeus that solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would take away a major propaganda coup and would make it for Islamic extremists and would make it easier for the U.S. to deal with some of its troubles in the Mideast.
Just as Colin Powell wanted immediately after September 11th.
That was the CFR line.
Now we have the capital, the political capital to tell Sharon, do what we say.
We're not playing anymore.
And instead, he said, oh, I know.
We'll just do whatever Sharon says.
And yeah, and this was this was also, as I said, what what the foreign minister of the U.K., Jack Straw, was saying.
And instead, we have what we're calling reverse linkage, which basically there there there is no precedent for.
No sort of serious analysis of the geostrategics will will bear it out.
But they basically the neoconservatives have this idea that the road to Mideast peace runs through any Muslim capital, but never Jerusalem.
And so, you know, first it was Baghdad that that, you know, people like Clifford May wrote it wrote was writing op-eds in the lead into Iraq that first you've got to get Baghdad and then you have the leverage and America will be negotiating from a position of strength to be able to solve the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Well, obviously, that didn't happen.
And now these guys, you know, Jennifer Rubin has literally said the road Jennifer Rubin, who writes for for commentary, which is, you know, the kind of venom spitting neoconservative magazine.
She writes literally that the road to peace has to run through Tehran.
And and she is like, like many hardline neoconservatives, a proponent of the idea that sanctions and diplomacy have already failed.
And it's basically time to move on to bombing.
You know, it's I'm always hyperbolic, but I like to try on at least hyperbolic points of view to sort of see what truth there is to him.
And I wonder whether this is really a different situation than when America uses the CIA to overthrow somebody's government or control somebody's government.
They buy off a certain colonel here and a certain intelligence asset there, and they basically control somebody else's state from afar.
Isn't that what Israel's doing to us?
Or is it is the United States government?
They think that they want to do it this way anyway, because after all, they get to sell or buy more Lockheed planes with our money or whatever.
Or is this really the case where I mean, to me, it's it's very meaningful.
I'm not sure what it means, but it must be meaningful that Colin Powell got told, no, no, you shut up.
We're going to.
And instead, we did it Sharon's way instead of what the Pratt House would have wanted, which is where foreign policies made, which is how America's run.
I thought it had been.
Well, you know, I mean, of course, there's the the classic book by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, The Israel Lobby, which sort of puts forward a theory that you're talking about now.
I think that there I overstated it compared to their book.
Yeah, there is academic and scholarly and very careful in that respect.
And actually, your your hyperbole, as you called it, is like you say, an overstatement of their argument, but they're actually attacked for making basically what you just said, even though they don't state it in that clear terms and they're much more nuanced.
But I think that can you give me an example that what you mean that all I'm saying is what they brag, but not quite in the same words.
They don't necessarily say that the Israel Lobby controls Washington, but they say that there are that it is a pressure group whose role should be examined and what the interests.
And and there are times when the Israel Lobby's interests have been pushed as Washington's interests, which is what I was getting to, which is kind of the there's a question of whether I mean, I'm sorry, I guess I misunderstood you.
And then I was referring to the confusion is my fault.
I was referring to the way the Israel Lobby talks about themselves and how powerful they are and how everybody better vote whatever Israel's interest is, because that's what we say, et cetera, which is the same thing they would accuse me of accusing them of.
Yeah, yeah, no, no.
And I think that that one of the things that that the Israel Lobby definitely does push is that is that U.S. interests and Israel's interests are perfectly aligned, that there's no daylight between the interest of these two states, which which which, frankly, is a little bit preposterous.
And that, you know, these two states of very different constituencies, thousands of miles apart would be so similar.
And, you know, this is especially revealed by Israel's recent kind of, let's say, problems with democracy.
There are little there are little hiccups with democracy recently that that Israel does have problems, and it's not necessarily in the interest of the U.S. to align themselves in every instance with Israel.
But but I do I think that that it's worth noting that U.S. neoconservatives are very much aligned with the far right Likud party in Israel.
And and share a lot of their views.
And that's things like the you see, you know, Bibi's kind of is now at the table negotiating with the Palestinian Authority, Netanyahu, the prime minister.
Yeah, sorry.
And it's OK.
I just want to be clear.
And and at the same time, you see him imposing these conditions that will be difficult to get at.
And this is you know, there's a historical Likud aversion to the peace process and and also a historical Likud hawkishness with Israel's neighbors.
And that includes Iran, as well as all the Arab states.
And, you know, all you need to do is open up the corner blog on the National Review or Commentaries Contentions blog or the Weekly Standard blog.
And and you see pretty plain as day that there are these same historical aversions to the peace process.
And the historical hawkishness on Israel's neighbors are all pretty clear as day on these blogs.
Um, of course, you could just go to low blog and see what they're saying without having to give them the links.
But, uh, you know what I wonder?
Because here's the thing.
I don't have the stomach for it.
And that's why I rely on you guys.
I can't go read commentary all day, man.
You wouldn't like me if I read commentary all day.
But you know what I wonder about?
What do they say about John Hagee and the fundamentalist crazies?
And I don't mean that all fundamentalists are crazy.
I'm saying the fundamentalist crazies who are trying to force Jesus to come back and start a nuclear war and send all the Jews to hell forever.
I mean, this is an important alliance that the Israel lobby has on the right in America, particularly in the south.
What does Jennifer Rubin say about them?
She just loves them and they're wonderful.
Or, you know, I'm curious about that.
Well, Jennifer, actually, it's funny you should ask because at this very second, right, as you called me, I'm sitting here writing up our daily talking points and I'm writing about a blog post where Jennifer Rubin compares Obama's speech to a video by Christians United for Israel, Pastor John Hagee's organization, which he quite admires.
And, you know, this is something Jennifer Rubin has actually written that the Jewish American favoritism for the Democratic Party is a, quote, sick addiction.
And this is a quote that she picked up from Rachel Abrams' blog, which is called Bad Rachel, which is just, I mean, it's just kind of the rantings of a madwoman.
It's some pretty off-the-wall stuff.
It's totally gay-bashing and occasionally racist and certainly anti-Arab.
So this is basically Rachel Abrams, who's Elliott Abrams' wife, the daughter of Norman Podoritz and, well, actually, the adopted daughter of Norman Podoritz and the daughter of Mitch Dechter.
So therefore, brother of commentary editor John Podoritz, who, you know, this kind of incestuous neocon tangled family web.
And so these guys are really upset with U.S. Jews.
And despite what is kind of the right-wing bent of most mainstream Jewish organizations that you can read about in Peter Beinhart's New York Review of Books essay, despite that, she thinks that U.S. Jewish organizations and U.S. Jews are not nearly hawkish enough, and it's not good enough for her.
And like I said, she wants to bomb straight away.
And so she appreciates the support from QFEE for basically supporting the neoconservative and far-right Israeli agenda.
Now...
That's so amazing, you know.
I think they take it with some cynicism that they don't believe in his apocalyptic eschatological vision so that they can just kind of put that inside and say, okay, you know, we'll take the $2 million checks for settlements and these sorts of things without having to worry about the apocalyptic vision.
But it's a general shift.
You know, I think that there have been some surveys that have shown recently that American Jews are overwhelmingly liberal, and especially younger American Jews are cooling to Israel.
And there's a big discussion about where the right-wing supporters of Israel will turn for this unconditional support.
And one of those places is evangelical Christians, who, as you suggest, are not all nuts, but Christian Zionists.
But some of them are!
Christian Zionists.
Some of them certainly are.
I mean, all you have to do is open up some news sites and read about some of the stuff these people say.
And they're, you know, 12% of the population.
They're 100% mobile.
And not Zionists, but evangelical Christians.
Here's the thing, too, Lee, is that, you know, typical American Jewish values are liberal values and not right-wing values.
And these guys, these Hagiites, they're not just hardcore Christian Zionists.
They come with all sorts of other baggage, too.
Horrifying drug wars and racism against the brown and the weak.
And, you know, they disagree.
I'm sure, like, this is my issue.
I'm not taking sides, but I'm just saying.
Certainly they would disagree about abortion with most American Jews who have this terrible addiction to the Democratic Party or whatever.
This is a sacrifice of typical American Jewish liberal values over to the worst kind of right-wing Christians who disagree.
It's foreign policy completely dominating domestic concerns, you know?
Yeah, and that's very much in line with the neoconservatives.
You know, neoconservatives, kind of, some of them are a bit more complex, but a lot of them are kind of down the line, far right, and in all respects, in domestic respects and even in some social respects.
But certainly, as you say, there's a primacy of foreign policy, and Israel is very much central to their worldview.
Yeah, I mean, and you think about, like, in civil liberties terms, I'm reading about Frank Gaffney, okay?
Here's the most paranoid guy on the face of the earth, like, well, this side of Michael Ledeen anyway.
And he is so scared that everybody wants to kill all the Jews all the time, no matter who or where they are, and what are we ever going to do?
We better start another war, or three or four, before they, you know, set off one nuke and turn out all of our electricity forever, and 90% of us starve to death.
And this guy is bankrolling the website of the No More Mosques campaign, and trying to provoke racism among the, you know, I guess, southern populist, kind of, redneck, right wing, kind of people, the very same people who could just as easily turn that bigotry against him.
And he, I don't understand this, you know?
I'm not sure that Frank Gaffney is Jewish.
Oh, okay, well, still, all his friends then.
His name suggests Irish, but he is.
See, I don't know anything about last name.
It took me until I was, like, 26 until I figured out that a medal and a Berger esteem meant Jewish at all.
Like, I don't even know.
McMurphy means Irish.
What do I know about that?
Yeah, no, I'm not sure what his background is.
Well, anyway, that's all his posse, anyway.
The Center for Security Policy has joined the hip with them all.
Daniel Lubon has written really nicely about the sort of, and as well as many other people, about how a lot of these tropes being used against Muslims in America really do have shades of the anti-Semitic tropes that we saw in Europe in the lead up to World War II, as well as even in America up until more recently was sort of the assimilated Jewish ascendancy.
Right, yeah, after World War II and the, whoa, we don't want to be like that kind of lessons there, the never again.
But yeah, I mean, that's the whole thing I've been saying for years.
It's like the protocols of the elders of Islam, where, like we were saying before, every terrorist group in the world, they all have this one big committee meeting, either telepathically or whatever, where they all agree on exactly what their aims and goals are, and they're all to destroy us from within.
And every Muslim in your neighborhood is a fifth columnist.
One day, regular people have told me before, too, I suspect that the reason the Arabs own all the gas stations is so one day they can just cut off all our fuel.
You know, people really believe this kind of stuff, and it's coming from the top.
Yeah, you know, there's a historic pattern of in sort of troubled economic times, this stuff really takes hold.
And some of it is, I think, just strictly a ploy by the right to garner kind of enthusiasm for their platforms and their electoral politics.
And it's, you know, this is an age old pattern that when times get bad, people are ready to find somebody to blame.
And there's a lot of rage and people channel it into immigrant groups and minorities.
Yeah, yeah, it's it's amazing to me that the neoconservative movement, which it isn't just Frank Gaffney, it's the whole neoconservative movement or much of the neoconservative movement that's in on this, you know, domestic Muslim bashing and fear mongering stuff.
And it's just it's just amazing to me with how paranoid these guys are.
They can't see the danger they're putting themselves and their own friends in.
You don't really want people choosing whether they respect you or not based on who you are, do you?
Does anybody want that?
You know?
Yeah, you know, I saw this funny this neocon organization put out this film that I don't want to give publicity to.
But basically, the theme of the film talks to a bunch of of Christians in Israel.
And and and it's basically, you know, a plea for Western Christians to support Israel.
And what it's saying is that first, the Muslims in what is now greater Israel, which includes Israel proper in the occupied territories, first, the Muslims will come for the Jews, and then they will come for the Christians there.
And it's true that that can easily be reversed.
And you look at some of the neoconservatives and some of the most hardcore Muslim bashers, and you say, you know, first, first, they're going to come for the first, they're going to come for the Muslims, and then they're going to come for the Jews.
Yeah, you know, in American history hadn't always been the easiest thing to build a Jewish temple in this country, you know, and now stop the mosques, right?
I just, I kind of get a kick out of it.
I'll be honestly, the idea that there's this, you know, secret Sharia takeover thing.
It's like, it's like the second red scare to such absurdity, you know what I mean?
Repeated as such a farce.
Well, here's a group of people have no I mean, if they're a group at all, there's no such thing as that.
But you know what I mean?
Muslims in America have no political power at all, at all.
There's one congressman and he's got no power at all.
Yeah, it's, it is pretty amazing.
I mean, there's been a lot of talk Dershowitz recently has been promoting a book by one of his acolytes that's, that's called the Arab Lobby.
And I mean, this is just just laughable as a kind of counterpoint to the Israel lobby.
It's absurd to think that there's that much clout on the Arab and Muslim side of America.
Um, it's just, it's really quite absurd.
But on the specific point of this, these Sharia reports by Frank Gaffney in the Center for Security Policy, Dan Lubon has done a little bit of writing about it on our site.
But I also really recommend that your listeners to anti war radio go and check out a writer whose name is Matt Duss, who writes for Think Progress and many other outlets.
And he's done some great, great work on on the Center for Security Policy.
What's his last name again, Matt?
Duss, D-U-S-S.
Okay.
And so I'd recommend checking out his work.
He, you know, you can tell he's doing well, because he's been attacked by the authors of the report repeatedly.
So, so he's really hitting some sore points.
And he basically went to their, their, their release party on Capitol Hill and asked him questions.
And it turns out that these guys know nothing about Islam.
Here they are writing about Sharia and all its terrible implications for America.
And the only person on the report who knows anything about Islam readily admits that he only started looking into the faith three years ago.
They didn't consult any even quote unquote, moderate Islamic experts, Islamic law experts or anyone.
They're just kind of pulling it out of the nether and putting it down as this great, this great massive threat to America.
Yeah, it's amazing.
You know, I was, I'm gonna actually set up an interview for next week with a guy who knows a little bit about this.
I want to, I always like to attack the right from the right and the left from the left.
If I can, you know, and, uh, I was reminded of something that was put out by G Edward Griffin, who's a bit of a old Bircher and the author of the creature from Jekyll Island.
And he put out this thing right after September 11th or I don't know, maybe spring 2002 or something.
And it was called, nah, man, don't worry about Islam.
Islam's cool.
And here's a guy who's a John Bircher, right?
He believes in Jesus.
He's a, I believe a Protestant of, of some description or another and, and loves the American flag almost as much as he loves Jesus.
And obviously, you know, he's a Bircher, right?
And then, and he goes, nah, man, look, the Quran, he knows the Quran.
And he's like, look, all these passages about kill the Christians.
It's one specific instruction on the eve of a battle.
You know, he wasn't Jesus Muhammad.
He was a warlord, but there was, this was a specific thing about a specific time and place.
And you turn the page and you see that the, the Muslims, uh, who, uh, who lived with Muhammad to his dying today, lived in peace and harmony with Jews and Christians in Arabia and in that whole area.
And, uh, you know, and he just goes on and on and I'm no expert or whatever, but it's clear that you could just as easy take something completely out of context, out of the old Testament, maybe even in context and use it as an excuse for something terrible.
But the idea that somehow Islam is bent around this imperial philosophy of conquering North America or something is just not there.
It never was.
If anything, you look at bin Laden, Michael Sawyer says, you know, he's an Arab nationalist.
It's only very recently he's even bothered to mention Turkey.
His whole point really is Arab nationalism and get the hell out of here where our kind are not necessarily by religion, but by ethnicity, you know?
Uh, yeah, I mean, I, I'm, I don't know that much about, uh, about the nuances and history of bin Laden's views.
So I better stay away from that.
But I think that you certainly got a, uh, got, got something with the larger point that, you know, the vast majority of Muslims, not only in the U S but worldwide are not extremists, just, just as the vast majority of, uh, just about any group are moderate and tend to live in peace.
And, um, and, uh, yeah, it's, it's generally a small minority that works hard to, to rile up populist movements against these groups.
And as I say, it usually occurs in economic downturns, which is what we have here in the U S and do you see it manifested in this, uh, this Muslim bashing?
Yeah, especially it's ironic to see is nine years later, like that mosque in Tennessee and Murfreesboro, Tennessee, they never had a problem for 30 years.
They never had a problem after nine 11.
Uh, I think I even heard one of them saying, I think it was the same mosque that people came by and said, Hey, we understand.
We love you guys.
You're part of our community and whatever.
It's cool.
And then now nine years later, Gaffney says, jump.
And David Horowitz in like the, the lowest part of the neoconservative movement says jump.
And all of a sudden there's arson and protests and all these things, you know, nine years later and nobody even attacked Tennessee.
It was New York that was attacked and Washington DC that were attacked that day.
Yeah, that's right.
And that's, that's sort of also exposes one of the, uh, the fallacies of the, uh, of the Muslim bashers in the case of the so-called ground zero mosque is that it's not just about the fact that this is two blocks from ground zero because you see all these other mosques and other places being harassed regularly, um, as part of this, uh, this broader Islamophobic campaign.
And so, uh, so that, that's just not, you know, that, that Murfreesboro, Tennessee mosque, as you say, should be waved in the faces of anybody who says this is about sensitivity to the family members who lost people on nine 11.
No, that's not what it's about.
It's much broader and, uh, and it's gaining support in other small places all around.
Yeah.
Well, and I happen to know someone who lost some very dear friends that day and she happens to really resent her friend's lives being exploited like this to bash other helpless people.
Uh, you know, so as far as respect for the loved ones, uh, consider the, consider it the opposite.
But now like back to the subject of Iran and the talking points, I mean, you guys are doing some of the best work in the country and pushing back against these neocons and their lies, but is it working?
I mean, as you survey all these studies and you, you do all these studies every day, all of y'all over at the low blog, um, and you, and you kind of look around the major papers and the neocon papers and everything else are, is this echo chamber still just completely rule the debate?
Will we ever have honesty about Iran in the public discussion at all until it's too late or what?
You know, I, I'm, I'm pretty convinced that at this point, Obama is trying to really make progress on the dual track of sanctions and diplomacy.
Uh, I don't see an immediate bombing of Iran in the offing.
Um, I think that depending on what happens in 2012, uh, those chances could certainly skyrocket all of a sudden, but there's also this wild card that Jeffrey Goldberg has discussed about, uh, about an Israeli strike on Iran.
And, uh, so, you know, I, I don't know where things are going.
I hope that that our little corner of the internet is, is, uh, is making a difference in showing that this is a campaign that we've seen before.
And, um, I, I can't gauge things, you know, there was this, uh, we wrote about it on low blog, this, uh, Chicago council on global affairs poll, which came out and, uh, and something like, like only, uh, only 18% of Americans supported the idea of, of bombing Iran right now.
And interestingly, even if Iran, even if sanctions and diplomacy were to fail, I think it was a 49% still opposed bombing Iran compared to 47% who would then support it.
Uh, so, so it seems that, uh, in the U S there is some, if not a majority of the population that would, would be willing to, uh, take on some sort of containment policy against even a nuclear Iran, which I don't think is a situation that anybody wants to see.
But, uh, frankly, I think the alternative of attacking Iran ahead of, uh, what, uh, nuclear weapons capability or, uh, or actual nuclear weapons, um, attacking them on that basis, I think would, uh, would, would unleash sort of a massive blowback that would just be incomprehensible.
And, uh, and so, yeah, I mean, I think that there are some promising things, but certainly, uh, Obama has, has, uh, has acquiesced to escalating measures such as the, uh, the, the latest rounds of sanctions.
I think to a great extent, you know, uh, Cliff May wrote this, who's a neocon with the foundation for the defense of democracies.
He's actually the president of that group.
He wrote an article in national review probably about a month and a half ago when, uh, there was this, this report released about economic warfare with Iran, and there was a map for what Cliff May called sanctions plus.
And he noted that FDD fellows, as well as other members of the task force that had created this report had been into Congress to a brief Congressman as they were, uh, writing the sanctions package, uh, into us law.
So it, you know, that just shows that neoconservatives were still around.
They're still getting into the halls of Congress.
They're still helping to write legislation.
And, uh, unfortunately, you know, this is legislation that passed and then Obama signed.
So essentially he's signing a neoconservative, uh, escalation package against Iran.
And so they're kind of got to hand it to him, man.
I mean, these guys are the Energizer bunnies of lies and death.
They just never stop, not for a day, not for one breath.
Do they stop?
Oh yeah, they're motivated.
I mean, I think, I think that there are, they're ideologically motivated and, um, yeah, I mean, I think, I think to some extent, I mean, I think they're wrong, but I think that they are to some extent very much true believers and, uh, and they want to get their message out there.
You know, what I'd like to do is have a big kind of mandatory teach-in like at Clockwork Orange, where we just tied down the entire press corps in New York and DC to their chairs.
Like in that movie War, Inc, where they wear like the, uh, the 3d goggles or whatever to do the airstrikes along in their embedded microchip in their head.
Anyway.
Um, and we tie them all down to their chairs and we force them to learn about what it means to have an additional protocol to your safeguards agreement.
And we just take it that they're all guilty of complete and total ignorance about anything regarding nuclear technology or, uh, the treaties involved in the international laws and, and UN resolutions involved in that conflict.
And then we'll just force them to sit there and read everything Gordon Prather ever wrote 700,000 times.
And then we'll turn them loose and let them go back on TV and talk about Iran again.
Cause otherwise all we're going to get is, Oh, Iran's scary.
And then a commercial.
Yeah.
You know, uh, it's a good idea, Scott, but unfortunately, you know, a lot of this information is already at their fingertips.
And I think that there's some willful ignorance about it out there.
I'm not sure that, uh, that's sitting them down and making them listen to it would get into their thick skulls anyway.
Yeah.
Well, that's why I'm talking about tying their eyelids open and, you know, making it extremely unpleasant, but sort of, sort of, sort of, uh, enhanced interrogation.
But the opposite enhanced learning techniques, let's call it.
Right.
Well, we'll, I'll tell you what, we'll let them come up with the euphemism for it.
It'll be perfect.
Yeah.
It's not a bad idea.
Yeah.
Well, I don't know.
I mean, Hey, 3.6% versus 94%.
That's really not that difficult.
One is not weapons grade.
The other is weapons grade.
And what they got ain't weapons grade.
That's, you know, come on.
You ought to, even a fifth grader ought to be able to wrap their head around that.
Even a CNN news anchor ought to be able to wrap their head around that.
Right.
Oh, I think you give, uh, I think you give CNN too much credit comparing their anchors to fifth graders.
Yeah.
Well, that's probably true.
Any fifth grader worth of salt wouldn't come anywhere near a place like CNN.
And in fact, the few news people that I've met in person, my life are completely unimpressive.
They're basically, um, the pretty people from high school who wanted to be on TV or whatever.
They don't know anything about anything.
All they're interested in is reading their lines.
And people say, I don't watch TV.
I don't watch TV.
I watch Al Jazeera sometimes on my computer because I find that they're the best outlet for international news.
But, um, but I don't watch much TV because I can't really stand it.
And you're absolutely right that a lot of these people that you see on TV are just kind of the, uh, the pretty faces.
They're machines that just read the words that people put into their mouth for, uh, for the most part.
Yeah.
Did you ever see Wolf Blitzer on Jeopardy?
No, I didn't.
Oh, well, that one's on YouTube.
I don't know if that counts, but it's great because here's Wolf Blitzer, former front man for AIPAC, former writer for the Jerusalem Post.
He comes in, he pretends to be Mr, uh, dispassionate news analysis guy on CNN every afternoon in his situation room.
They put him on Jeopardy and asked him the easiest questions in the whole, well, gave him the easiest answers in the whole world.
He couldn't come up for, with a question for a single one.
He was the most ignorant person they ever had on that show.
He's just an actor.
He's an actor, not a reporter.
Maybe they should put him on the fifth grade Jeopardy.
Right.
Yeah.
He probably could get beat on that show.
Maybe.
All right.
Well, so, uh, let me see.
We got one more minute.
Give me one more Rand talking point here.
I'll leave greed.
Well, uh, something else that we're going to have up on the blog here soon.
Uh, let's see.
Uh, we got, we got, uh, and by F ski, who is the, uh, from the neoconservative Hudson Institute.
And, uh, she is writing about a comparing Obama and Ahmadinejad speech at the UN general assembly.
And like many of her ideological comrades, she is ready to declare diplomacy dead.
And, uh, and, you know, and we all know what means when those checklist items start getting ticked off.
And then there's one remaining quote unquote, last resort to, uh, to prevent Iran from going nuclear.
And, uh, and it just kind of shows the, uh, the double, the double ploy.
It's both to get their policy goals forwarded and also to take partisan jabs at, uh, president Obama.
Well, you know, uh, it's just like Scott Ritter wrote in Al Jazeera back in 2005.
He said, they make it look like option a, B, and C first.
We'll try to get the Europeans to negotiate.
And then if that doesn't work, then we'll try to negotiate.
And then if that doesn't work, we might have to bomb them.
But he said, no, this is step one, two, and three.
First, we pretend to negotiate with them through the EU.
Then we pretend to negotiate them in person.
Then we bomb them.
Oh, yeah.
Yep.
That's pretty much how it goes.
All right, everybody.
You look at the low blog, lowblog.com, antiwar.com slash blog for Ali Gharib and the rest of the Jim Lowe posse over there.
Thank you, sir.
Appreciate it.
Thank you very much, Scott.
Always appreciate the opportunity to come on.
