All right y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's Anti-War Radio.
I'm Scott Horton.
Our first guest on the show today is Charles H. Featherstone.
It's been a little while since we've talked to him.
He's a regular writer for LewRockwell.com, is an anarchist, seminarian, songwriter, and sometimes essayist.
Welcome back to the show, Charles.
How are you doing?
How are you doing, Scott?
It's good to be here.
I'm doing great, and I should say here in your description should be a former journalist.
I was.
I was a reporter in Washington, D.C. and New York for a while, and I worked in the Middle East, too.
It's kind of funny.
I went to D.C., got a master's degree from Georgetown in Arab Studies, and my desire, I wouldn't necessarily call it a dream, but my vision was to, I don't know, be the next Tom Friedman and have a regular slot on the McLaughlin group.
And fairly quickly discovered that the way Washington works, the things I had to do in order to get that were things I was not willing to do.
But I spent some time also in the Middle East as a reporter in Dubai working for a local paper there, The Khalij Times, and then I was an editor and editorial consultant for the Saudi Gazette in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
And my calling in life has taken me to the seminary, but of course, the Middle East is still of an interest to me, so I still pay attention and still have friends there.
Well, I remember, I guess, from the first time I interviewed you, I noticed that you know actually how to pronounce Al-Qaeda like you've been to Saudi Arabia.
Well, it is, as I understand it, everybody slurs the A in the I, but I think it is Al-Qaeda because I don't think that it would require explaining how the Arabic language works, but I think the actual pronunciation is Al-Qaeda.
And they're an interesting group because they are growing increasingly irrelevant as time goes on.
A friend and I just had a discussion about them this morning, and actually one of the things that has really sort of impressed me about what has happened in Tunisia and Egypt and Libya and Bahrain and elsewhere has been how leaderless it all is.
This is, in many ways, sort of the perfect spontaneous uprising of people.
This is more the triumph of an idea than it is deliberate organization.
Al-Qaeda is an organization that very, very much believes in leadership.
They are very much a 20th century revolutionary organization that is both Leninist and Maoist in its inspiration as far as how it organizes and how it seeks to achieve things, and that's irrelevant.
The Libyan uprising was kind of a spontaneous sort of thing.
The Egyptian uprising was kind of a spontaneous sort of thing.
That doesn't mean that there weren't people agitating for these things to happen, but it means that it was an idea that was allowed to spread and just people reacted and acted on that idea.
Well, now here's the thing, too.
It'd be nice if the American empire would, even if they kind of did it halfway the way they did in Egypt, you know, kind of as their dictatorship basically is falling apart underneath them, they kind of went ahead and said, okay, well, fine, I guess eventually anyway.
I wish they would do that with Bahrain and with Yemen, etc., but they seem, according to the New York Times, they're scrambling to figure out how to get their dictators to implement reforms so that they don't have these revolutions.
They want so badly for their puppets to stay in power, and you know, the top headline right now on antiwar.com has changed from Saudi Arabia to send troops into Bahrain to Saudi troops sent into Bahrain to crush protests.
They are already there, and that means Barack Obama has sent the Saudi troops into Bahrain to crush the protests.
Everybody knows that.
Well, and it's even, if you will, more insidious than that.
It is my understanding that there is a quid pro quo at work in which Riyadh would support the Arab League's call for a no-fly zone over Libya in exchange for a free hand in Bahrain.
Really?
That is what I have been told by someone who would know.
That is the understanding, and so I think NATO is meeting today, and the UN is meeting today.
The Arab League has already endorsed a no-fly zone over Libya, and I think four of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council are meeting today to discuss the matter.
Well, now, so, I mean, it was pretty obvious when the administration is saying, oh, well, I think it's very important that the Arab League has asked us to intervene here that, yeah, right, the Arab League is all your puppets coming together in a big meeting, and it's pretty obvious that we, you know, had them do that, but you're saying that, you know, there was a carrot, or it wasn't just a favor, they made a deal with the Saudis that said we'll support you going into Bahrain, and I guess this includes the Shiite provinces of Saudi Arabia as well, and putting down any uprising any way you feel like you need to.
Saudi Arabia is, and I hate to disappoint the fans of Israel out there who might be listening, but Saudi Arabia is the most important American alliance in the Middle East.
It is also the oldest, and it is the one to which Washington is the most attached.
So, supporting the Al Sauds and the stability of the Gulf is by far, I think, the most important American political, military, and diplomatic goal and purpose, and it has been since probably the late 1930s, but most definitely since the Carter administration.
Amazing, and I love how the quid pro quo is.
You'll help us pretend like we're the good guys on the side of the people against the dictator in Libya, because after all of all the dictatorships in the region, he's been, you know, directly on our payroll for the least amount of time, only eight years.
Yes, it would be fairly easy.
Now, I have to confess, because I have, um, when I was at Georgetown, I got to know some people who were prominent Libyan exiles, so it is very, very hard.
I am trying, but it is very, very hard for me right now to be a principled non-interventionist in regards to Libya, simply because I know some of the people who are helping organize this.
Yeah, well, look, I mean, those people could be any people anywhere in the world.
We all want to see them crush Muammar Gaddafi, and blast him off into the sun, or drown him in the deepest sea.
Nobody opposes that.
Everybody's on the side of those people, but of course, you know, it's just like the hunt for Osama bin Laden.
You give them an inch, and the American empire will take 3,000 miles.
You can't say, we want you to cut bin Laden and Zawahiri's throat.
They will kill tens of thousands of Afghans for a decade, based on a permission slip like that.
You know, it's like giving a kid a hall pass, and he takes off and steals the principal's car, and he's gone.
You know, you can't tell them to help the people of Libya.
They'll conquer all Africa.
I understand that, and that's why I am still, yes, I appreciate that.
Well, and I feel bad for these Libyans, because look, the news out of Libya is not very positive.
In fact, I was very happy to see, upon hitting refresh on antiwar.com a few minutes ago, that the rebels are saying that the town of Brega has been retaken from Gaddafi's troops.
All the headlines over the weekend basically were bad news for the rebels, as Gaddafi's forces were striking and retaking towns, forced them out of Zawiya, and were even moving into some oil towns in the east, threatening Benghazi.
But that said, the length of time it took Gaddafi's forces to retake Zawiya, and Gaddafi also risks overextending his troops as well.
I don't think anybody expected him to be able to mobilize this kind of support.
I really honestly think that when the Libyan revolution started, when the uprisings began, and it officially became the revolution of February 17th, that they expected this to be a relatively quick Romania-type uprising.
I don't think anybody expected Gaddafi to hold on this long.
But now here's the thing, though.
On one hand, okay, he's got more money to hire more mercs with.
I accept that.
On the other hand, there's been a giant revolution.
He can't just go back to the way things were.
So, you know, I don't know.
I still like to believe that his days in power are numbered.
You know, say it ain't so?
Well, you know, we're probably, he's probably closer to the end than the beginning.
And it is still entirely possible that the- Wow, come on, he's been in power for 40 years.
Yeah, that's true.
Another 40 is not likely, though he was only 27 when he took power.
Which is in and of itself an interesting fact, and something someone reminded me of when he turned 30 and said, hot darn, I haven't, you know, I don't run a country yet.
At any rate, he will go eventually.
The problem is, is if he does win, you're going to have an interesting situation in which you will have a broken country, a brutalized population, Libya will be impoverished.
And I can tell you that everybody who has sided with the rebels are going to tighten sanctions.
There will be tight UN sanctions probably on Libya should Gaddafi win, so that he won't be able to do legal business.
Hardly with anybody.
And whatever incentive Gaddafi has to behave himself, which coming in from the cold during the early years of the Bush-lit regime in the early 2000s gave him, he won't have any incentive to do that either.
And Gaddafi is kind of at the nexus of a collection of some of the world's worst regimes.
Well, and you know, I guess, you know, probably didn't make that much of a difference.
But it sure seems like all the threats of American intervention, supposedly on the side of the people there, probably not deliberately, because I don't think the Democrats are this smart.
I don't think it necessarily shored up support for Gaddafi in any way.
I mean, he's going to blame the CIA, you know, giving people LSD or whatever all he wants anyway.
But it would seem just, you know, guessing and maybe you can tell me what you think that anybody pushing for revolution or major reform in Morocco or Algeria, or Yemen, or Jordan or Iraq or anywhere else, well, Iraq, never mind.
But any of the rest of these countries, it's going to be much easier now for their government to do like the Iranians and pretend like the uprisings are all at the hands of the Americans and whatever in order to discredit them and shore up their own support.
And they'll point to Libya and say, see, the American people want to overthrow all these the American government is behind all this.
On the and that's, and that is a possibility.
On the other hand, there are also those who are saying that if the West does nothing, and again, I am not advocating for intervention, my sympathies are for it, but I'm not advocating for it, is that the Americans are hypocrites, because when there's an actual popular uprising, and you actually say you need help, and you actually do need help, they're not there to help you.
Right?
Well, which is fine, too.
You know, I mean, I'm more for that.
And it's funny, you know, because I was talking with Jonathan Landay, who's really a great journalist.
And he was saying that, yeah, we got to do something in, in Libya.
And that he says, this is part of what Osama bin Laden complained about was the, the Desert Bay of Pigs in 1991, when George Bush, Sr. told the Shia rise up and overthrow Saddam, we'll back you.
And then he left them high and dry.
He and Schwarzkopf let Saddam keep his attack helicopters, and they put down the uprising at the cost of 100,000 people who had risen up on the promise that we would back them up.
And I thought, you know, that's true.
But then again, that sure is selectively quoting bin Laden.
I mean, mostly what he's not saying is how dare you promise to help us and then not, that's not the message of get the hell out of the Arabian Peninsula, which is the title of his thought was of 96 and 98.
Exactly.
And, and, you know, this is an instance in which Western power is damned if it doesn't damned if it doesn't.
There is no winning in a public opinion, you know, standpoint for, for many Western leaders.
I do, however, think that the West and Western, particularly Europeans, but also Americans, when they are not actively interested in going to war are good at backing into it.
And I think that this will be backed into because an old fly zone is an act of war.
And it is, it is in a great many ways, a half measure.
And, and I am, this is, this is the person who, who 15 years ago wanted to be a policy person.
I am all for half, you know, half measures are in any way, you might as well go all the way.
Well, and, you know, as you said before, you know, Al Qaeda is Leninist in its tactics and somewhat in what it wants to for the world, you know, like, that's the way Loretta Napoleone says it, but they're certainly fundamentalist in their beliefs, that kind of thing.
And that's not the nature of these revolutions has not been the nature of these revolutions in any of these places.
And yet we go in there, start bombing them.
It seems like another Sunni Arab country, this time in North Africa, we're just spreading our Iraq war, our Afghan war, the same war to another Sunni Arab Middle Eastern country, making bin Laden Zawahiri's predictions and criticisms of the American empire come true.
Like, like, you know, they're writing a script for America's policy here.
Yep.
No, I, I, I agree with you that, that, that is a, a serious and significant risk, which is why I am not in the end agitating for anything.
That said, you know, again, it will end how it ends and there's not much you or I can do about it.
I will say this, as I, as I have said, I do think that the Obama administration has not wanted to look like it is taking the lead on this.
And I don't think it is actively taking the lead, but I also think that there will be probably military action and it will be backed into rather than, than gone into frontal land deliberately.
Right.
Well, and that's the thing, it'll certainly escalate once it's in no fly zone.
Once we get video coming out of Benghazi of civilian casualties, that will be enough.
I mean, you know, probably the most, the most hawkish Western leader on this is the French president.
And that will be enough, I think, for, for him and for the French ruling elites to want to take actual action.
Right.
Well, and like we're talking about it in the, in the, where the, the quid pro quo on the Bahrain issue, the Americans are working hard to get the Arab lead to ask us to intervene.
They need that, you know, I guess, international cover.
So they, somehow it doesn't quite look like an Iraq invasion.
That's exactly Barack Obama is not going to be George W. Bush.
Yeah, but he is going to be Bill Clinton, which means using NATO instead of a UN resolution, which is supposedly how you make an aggressive war legit is you get the Russians and the French to agree and the Chinese to agree with you on the security council.
And they can't get that.
Right.
Exactly, exactly.
Well, and that was like the major criticism from the left of Bush invading Iraq, only if the French and the Chinese and the Russians agree on the security council.
And when I heard that four of the five members, permanent members of the security council were, were meeting, it didn't say who the fifth was, but I'm willing to bet that that's China.
The Chinese are probably not participating in this.
The Chinese will probably let it happen in the end.
Qaddafi doesn't matter to them, but they're not going to actively, they're not going to actively say no.
They would say no to Burma.
If this were happening in Burma, they would say no, but they're not going to say no to this.
Well, you think the Russians are going to say no?
Cause that's what it takes is a no vote as a veto on the USC there.
I doubt it.
Oh, that's interesting.
I doubt it.
Um, um, you know, there's, they can probably, they can probably be bought off or persuaded.
I didn't, I don't know what it would take, but they probably can't be.
Now in Saudi Arabia is the only real dissent, you know, is it like we can see in Western TV that basically it's just the Shiite regions who are protesting and now we're out of time.
The nature of, of, of dissent is complicated in Saudi Arabia.
Hey, we got to reprise this.
You want to do the show again tomorrow or the next day or something?
I can do that.
Okay, great.
Uh, I really appreciate your time on the show today.
Everybody that's Charles Featherstone from lourockwell.com.
Check out his archive.
His latest one is called Egypt.
And, uh, yeah, let's do this again in a couple of days.
Peace be with you, Scott.
All right.
You too.
We'll be right back y'all.
