All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's Anti-War Radio.
I'm Scott Horton.
And our first guest on the show today is Eric Margulies.
His website is ericmargulies.com, spelled like Margolis, ericmargulies.com.
And he's the author of War at the Top of the World and American Raj, Liberation or Domination.
He's got a piece at lourockwell.com today called Sudan, Storm Over the Nile.
Welcome back to the show, Eric, how's things?
Just delighted to be back with you.
Well, I'm very happy to have you here.
Happy New Year to you.
Happy New Year.
And yours.
New decade.
The first one of this century is, well, at least from what our government is up to point of view, been really bad.
And it looks to me here, reading your piece about Sudan, that we're about to start this next decade off on the wrong foot here.
Well, we are.
The United States is getting ever more deeply involved in the affairs of Sudan, Africa's largest country in size, and a very complicated, murky country that's been involved in a civil war for over 60 years.
And now, well, now Washington has been working, engineering the breakup of Sudan into North and South Sudan, creating a new state in Southern Sudan, which is going to be a bombshell for Africa because the unchangeability of African borders has been a big taboo in Africa.
You just can't do that.
And now it's happening.
And it may produce aftershocks and demands by other countries for changes in their borders.
Well, now they've had a peace agreement, more or less ceasefire, Korea type situation going on there for about five years, right?
That's right.
After a lot of fighting, they've reached the North and South Sudanese officials reach a sort of a compromise, ceasefire.
But on the proviso that South Sudan hold a referendum on secession from Sudan, this referendum is now going to be held this coming weekend on Sunday, the 9th of January.
And it is widely expected that South Sudanese are going to vote to separate from the rest of Sudan.
Well, you know, it's funny.
You talk about the unchangeability about Africa's borders.
And yet, it's always seemed like just the obvious case that with the end of the European colonialism there, that they left all these borders behind.
And you basically have different nations of people, different tribes fighting for central state power.
And it seems like the land of perpetual civil wars.
It seems like the solution is secession.
And you say in your article, it's remarkable that Sudan has held together this long.
I guess it's remarkable that there's this taboo against breaking up any of these giant nation states in Africa and allowing so-called peoples, I hate that word, pluralizing a singular that way, but to go their own way, some kind of self-determination there.
Well, Scott, the problem is that with so many tribes, different ethnic groups in Africa, if you start changing one border, where do you stop with these borders?
I mean, the British are the primary culprits, but also the French, other colonial powers, the Portuguese, et cetera.
They do divide and conquer rule.
They split up tribes.
They split up linguistic groups.
And they just drew these borders willy-nilly as they did.
And that's the reason we're having so much trouble in Iraq.
And in Afghanistan as well, it's the legacy of British imperialism, which is deified by the American conservative right, but in fact has caused many of today's problems around the world.
But once you start changing these borders, there are going to be demands from all over Africa because the whole continent is fragmented, Nigeria being the next biggest example where there's violence going on now.
Yeah.
Well, and now does the State Department understand that?
And is that perhaps what they want?
The State Department, I think, has a pretty good understanding of what's going on.
What's the precedent that this will set?
Well, they may not, but they've gotten their marching orders from on high from the powers that be, whatever these powers are.
And it's pretty clear to me, as a longtime watcher of American foreign policy, that our foreign policy is driven primarily by oil.
And Sudan is the latest example because South Sudan has considerable deposits of oil.
And the United States is now engineering the breakaway of South Sudan.
It's building a South Sudanese government and administration, army, police force.
It's going to become, in fact, an American protectorate, just like neighboring Uganda and Kenya are sort of an American sphere of influence in East Africa.
Well, now, I guess I really don't know too much about this other than there's been a lot of different headlines over the years about Chinese interests in Sudan.
And I guess, as Greg Powell says, it's never about making sure we have enough oil or making sure that it's cheap for us.
It's always about controlling the oil and making sure who's getting to do the skimming off the top.
And it's not so much the oil companies as it is the states, the defense planning guidance for who controls which resources in the world.
Ideas central to that being things like keeping those resources out of the hands of the Chinese.
They can buy it from the global market, but we're doing the pumping.
That's quite right because the primary pillar of American world power is control of oil.
You know, a lot of Americans forget that when America went into World War II, America was the world's largest oil producer.
And America won World War II because we had oil.
And the countries that foolishly fought against us, Germany and Japan, had no oil.
So that totally influenced American strategic policy ever since.
Oil, oil, and oil.
And you control all the words oil, and you control the world.
For example, in 1944, the Japanese Navy sat in port.
The Japanese couldn't get airplanes off the ground.
Their tanks couldn't move.
Why?
Because the US has cut off all their oil.
So it's a decisive influence.
Right.
Well, now, so you think our intervention in Somalia, we now know for a fact, as though we couldn't infer it before from the WikiLeaks, that the US basically hired, cajoled the Ethiopians even into invading Somalia and overthrowing the Islamic Courts Union right around this time, 2007, Christmas 2006, January 2007.
Is that what that's all about, too?
Absolutely, yes.
You know, you just say the word Islamic in Washington, and it's like saying the word commies back in the 50s.
Red lights go on, and we've got to get them, commie SOBs.
Same thing with the Islamists.
The US fueled and engineered the Ethiopian intervention.
And now the US has got a bunch of African mercenaries from Uganda and Burundi and some other countries who it's paying.
We're paying through our tax money, as a so-called African peacekeeping force.
But they're just a bunch of mercenaries trying to prop up the US-installed government.
And the latest prime minister installed by the US and protected by these mercenary troops just happens to be a former New York City bureaucrat who reminds me of a shade of Hamid Karzai, another of the CIA alumni who was slotted for this role.
So the US is trying to impose its will on Somalia.
But now they don't think they're going to develop the oil resources there.
They're just going to prevent the Chinese from doing so?
That's correct.
The US is very angry about the Chinese being in Sudan.
Washington considers it an American sphere of influence, doesn't want the Chinese in there.
And the Chinese are supporting the Sudanese government, which is disobedient to US instructions.
And so it's been put on the terrorist list.
It's considered a rogue state.
And it has been marked for regime change.
It's funny.
I imagine that they thought probably for a long time that they would have to use the humanitarian crisis in Western Sudan as the excuse to get their boots on the ground in Southern Sudan.
But then apparently somewhere along the way, they figured out they don't need an excuse.
They can just do whatever they want.
Well, quite right.
And nobody's going to say anything.
The US pretty much runs the Security Council and will just order some kind of intervention.
The question is, is it worth doing?
Right.
And the American people, if they ever hear of any of this, will just assume that, well, we wouldn't be doing it if it wasn't good and necessary, because this is a democracy, after all.
You're right.
The first question will be, where?
Right.
All right, hold it right there, everybody.
It's Eric Margulies, author of American Raj.
Got some Pakistan questions coming up, Pakistan answers.
All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's anti-war radio.
I'm Scott Horton.
On the line is Eric Margulies.
Ericmargulies.com is his website.
He's author of War at the Top of the World and American Raj.
And now, his piece today on lewrockwell.com is called Sudan, Storm Over the Nile.
You know what, though?
You mentioned in here, Eric, that the American right-wing evangelical Christian movement is heavily involved in Somalia.
Now, I knew that Pat Robertson owned some gold mines in West Africa, but I really don't know too much more about that.
Can you elaborate?
Well, the Christian fundamentalist groups in the US and charity groups in Britain, primarily Oxfam, have described as human rights groups, have been active for decades in South Sudan, both as missionaries trying to convert the animistic natives on the Nile, native peoples on the Nile, or in actually trying to foment rebellion and finance it, and even profiteering claims that some of these aid groups were providing arms to the South Sudanese rebels.
It's ideological.
It's religious ideology in the sense that they're very anxious to get converts and particularly prevent the Muslims from getting converts, and it's also a way now for the evangelical groups, who are violently anti-Islamic, to really stick it to the Muslims by causing them great trouble in East Africa.
Well, now, why are the evangelical American Christians so vehemently anti-Muslim?
In part because of the rivalry to convert black Africans to Christianity and worries that Islam was at least converting at a rate of 10 to 1 to Christian conversions.
Secondly, because these evangelical groups are often described themselves as Christian Zionists, they're very pro-Israeli, ardently pro-Israeli.
They're in league with Israel's extreme right-wing settler parties for, obviously, bizarre reasons.
And they are waging their own form of anti-Islamic jihad this way.
Yeah, well, now, I've got to tell you, if it wasn't for American intervention in this, and it was just a news story come across the wire that, hey, one land full of people declared its independence from another, I don't have a problem.
Seems like, as we talked about before, the solution for Africa probably is secession.
You look at the wars in the Congo between these giant tribes fighting over who gets to control the central state there, and then all they do is just beat each other over the head with it in the very worst way.
Seems like that really is the problem.
And so, I mean, is that your take, too, that this would be fine other than it's the Americans making it happen or as accomplices to it with their own agenda?
Well, I have supported secession in the past, and I've also said that I believe that it's wrong for a country to try and force a minority group to stay in that country if they really don't want to be there.
Kosovo in the Balkans being a very good example.
It was well rid of Serbia, and the Serbs were well rid of a repressive role in holding it.
And I believed in the breakup of Yugoslavia, which was a monstrosity of sorts, too.
And I believe in the Sudan, too, if the South Sudanese really want their own country, probably let them have it.
But the problem is, well, what other demands is this going to trigger?
Sudan is a country with almost over 400 different tribes.
What's going to happen in Darfur now in neighboring Mali and Chad and these places that are also torn by these kind of ethnic and territorial conflicts?
So while I think it's good for independence, I've supported independence, I'm worried about what the price we're going to pay.
Well, I was talking with Michael Hastings about the Afghanistan war the other day.
And we were talking about kind of the economics of this power where the US Army sort of serves as the Federal Reserve, propping up inflationary bubbles and artificially raising the value of political groups that don't necessarily have it, all things being equal, in the same way that the US Central Bank props up the stock market and the housing market and things like that.
But that means that eventually the laws of physics come due.
And it seems like over the years in Darfur, that's really, I think it was in 2005, especially when everybody was really coming to the peace table and were ready to stop fighting.
And then came George Clooney and all the Hollywood liberals talking with their giant Save Darfur campaign.
And they all got it in their heads, the different warring factions there got in their heads that if the Americans are coming, not just the UN coming, but with the Americans, well, then we should wait and win them over, get their power on our side.
That way we can continue the war and actually win it.
And so the peace deal actually was put off.
And more people ended up dying.
And it just seems like these are the kinds of distortions, as far as the real consequences for the people who will become dead bodies here.
This is the kind of destruction that American intervention always sows, no matter what country we're in, no matter what the excuses or the motive either.
Well, hell, even in Kosovo, they turned the country over to the KLA monsters, right?
Well, I don't agree with you that the KLA were monsters.
If you look at the history of Kosovo, you realize that the Albanians there had a very good reason for wanting to separate.
They had been victim of ethnic cleansing three times in the 20th century.
But moving on from there to Africa, you're right.
And then Afghanistan, we Americans bring enormous corruption, flood of money, bubble economies.
It's the old post-World War II thing in Europe, where women are trading sex for cigarettes and nylons and chocolates.
And it's a corrupting influence.
You also remember the old movie, The Mouse that Roared, Peter Sellers' movie, where Groustark goes to war with the US or whatever the place was called to get money.
And this is what's fueling the war, no doubt, in Afghanistan and in West Africa.
All right, now, so on to Pakistan, there's big news about, well, anyway, I'll let you describe.
I know one of the major parties broke from Prime Minister Zardari's coalition.
But I think there's been more developments from that.
Is that government going to stand?
It's wobbling.
We just don't know.
I tell you, if it does stand, it will be only for one reason.
The government of Prime Minister Gilani is because the opposition parties, led by Nawaz Sharif's Muslim League, don't want to take over the government at this point, because Pakistan is such a horrible mess.
You know, they're smarter than Barack Obama was in the sense of, why inherit a mess from your predecessors?
Let them screw it up some more.
So there's a reluctance to do it.
But there's a desire also to take power.
But it really doesn't matter, because to quote the words of the great merchant of death, Subbado Zaharoff, the parliament in Islamabad is a little jabber house.
It's the real government in Afghanistan and Pakistan is the army.
Yeah, sort of like the United States Senate and the Pentagon.
Well, not quite as sharply drawn.
The US, we are slowly occupying Pakistan.
You know, the Pakistanis are acutely aware of that.
The only people who really don't know the American people, how deeply we've gotten involved.
We've pretty well suborned the army and taken it over.
We've suborned the security services, bought them off the police, the border rangers.
The worth of billions of American tax dollars are going to fund the Pakistani government.
They've become dependent on food imports from the US and fuel.
We have military bases there.
You know, and now the latest report is that the Americans are demanding that American homeland security inspectors be in every Pakistani airport.
Yeah, to stop timber smuggling, they called it.
And a movement of suspicious people.
So in effect, Pakistan is sort of halfway to becoming an American colony at this point, with the cooperation of the totally corrupt Pakistani government.
If it falls, another bunch of stooges will be put into power.
More billions of bribes will go out to buy the local politicians there.
So I don't really think that matters too much at this point, but it's making Washington nervous, that's for sure, because it installed the current Zardari government, and it's going to have trouble cobbling together something that looks like a reasonable government.
Well, now, and then there was that piece in the New York Times, Gareth Porter was on the show talking about it, where they're planning on a real expansion, more and more special forces, and then, as they call them, Afghan militias, El Salvador option stuff again, I guess, talking about really increasing the presence there.
But here's where I'm confused.
This guy Petraeus, unless I'm wrong, in which case he could understand different, and that would make sense.
But if I'm right about this, then he's got to understand this too, which is that we're talking about basically like invading the Rocky Mountains.
He cannot really succeed in doing anything there, even limited snatch and grab type operations.
How's he think he's going to do anything, accomplish anything in Waziristan and those tribal territories?
I've long been predicting we're getting sucked into a war in Pakistan, a nation of 180 million people, and it's a bridge too far.
It's two bridges too far.
We don't have the resources, but it is the illogic of the Afghan war that we will get sucked south from Afghanistan into Pakistan.
Well, now, if most Pakistanis think of those guys, I mean, if the Pakistani government has never really controlled, had monopoly power in those territories, and most Pakistanis kind of live in a separate society from them, would even much further intervention in those territories necessarily cause that much more instability in the rest of the country?
It would, because first of all, there are unintended consequences.
What fragile stability there is is going to be broken, releasing all kinds of centrifugal forces, bandits, other religious groups, rogue groups.
We just don't know, but what's gonna happen eventually is that any group fighting the U.S. will simply move south.
They'll retreat under attack, and that means the U.S. will be moving deeper and deeper into Pakistan, into the sea of 180 million people, 95% of whom by polls hate our guts right now, and consider America the number one enemy of Pakistan.
We have even surpassed India in that race, and it's very ominous, because it's very easy to get involved in Pakistan and stage all these attacks, but getting out could be another problem, and when we do wanna get out and have to pull the plug on the war, it could create a flood of other crises in the region.
Well, now, you know, there've been leaks to newspapers for, I don't know, at least a year, about special forces and probably CIA, I don't remember exactly, talking about how they really want to bomb Quetta.
Is that how it's pronounced?
Yes.
And that's a pretty large city there in what, southwestern Pakistan?
That's right, in Balochistan, the westernmost region of Pakistan, which is- So we're talking pretty far from the tribal territories up there?
Far from the tribal territory, well, fairly far, but in Balochistan, the Baluchi tribes have been a rebellion against the central government and Islamabad for decades.
So that's a whole other problem there.
Well, and I mean, they haven't been bombing cities, mostly, even when they forced the Pakistani army to invade Waziristan and the Swat Valley or whatever.
We're not talking about bombing major cities in the more metropolitan advanced part of Pakistan like Quetta is, right?
Well, yes, the American ambassador to Pakistan even called, openly called, for attacks against Quetta, Pakistan, but we're not talking about World War II-style carpet bombing.
No, no, drone strikes, which is worse, probably, in terms of being counterproductive.
That's right, and missile strikes, drone strikes, that kind of thing.
It won't change the course of the war, but it'll make a lot more people angry at the US, and it's a sign that we're flailing around, we're killing people without any kind of military strategy in the hope that we can just kill enough that the war will eventually wind down.
Yeah, well, you know, Gareth Porter's gonna be on the show here in just a minute to talk about how this war is all about establishing NATO as something permanent, even though there's no Soviet Union to fight against anymore, and hasn't been.
Well, I read it.
In fact, Robert Perry was on the show yesterday saying the first Gulf War was really about kicking the Vietnam syndrome.
That was really the main goal.
That's why they would do something so stupid as to make their loyal puppet Saddam Hussein an enemy, just because they needed a whipping boy for the empire to kick that Vietnam syndrome, and the more and more I'm thinking the wars are just for the war's sake, you know?
Well, they're not just for NATO, but as I've been saying for the last couple of years, if the war fails in Afghanistan and NATO's derriere is kicked there, it's going to, could result in the collapse of the entire alliance, because the Europeans will quite rightly ask who the hell needs NATO?
What is it for?
And isn't it time that we have our own United European Defense Force?
And if NATO, and NATO is America's primary control mechanism for Western Europe, just the way that U.S.
-Japan alliance is its control mechanism for North Asia.
Yeah, well, as always, I guess the State Department will be the last to know, because here they are pushing for more NATO expansion into further into Eastern Europe.
That's right.
All right, well, anyway, we're over time and out of time, but thank you very much for yours today on the show, Eric.
Great to be with you, Scott.
Thank you.
Everybody, that's Eric Margulies.
Website is ericmargulies.com.
He's the author of the book, War at the Top of the World and American Raj.
Article today, right there at the top of the page at lewrockwell.com.
