Alright, y'all, welcome back to the show.
This is Anti-War Radio.
On the line is my main man, Gareth Porter.
And if you go to my website, scotthortonshow.com, and click all interviews there, you'll find almost 1,800 interviews.
1,700 and something.
And about a 17th of those are of Gareth Porter.
He's an independent historian and journalist for Interpress Service.
We reprint every bit of it at antiwar.com/porter.
Well, it'll forward you on to original.antiwar.com/porter.
Welcome back, Gareth.
How are you?
Hi, Scott.
I'm fine.
How are you?
I'm doing great.
And, of course, people, regular listeners know there's very good reason why I've interviewed you more than 100 times on this show since, I guess, the beginning of 2007.
And that's because you're interested in all the most interesting things that I'm interested in.
And you make your case well.
And, well, I don't know.
Through your eyes, I gain so much insight into how Washington, D.C. works, what the politics of the different interests at play, whether in the actual wars themselves or back among the politicians in D.C.
I've learned so much.
I just can't get enough learning from you, Gareth.
We are both interested in where the action is in terms of wars and preparation for war.
And there's a logical connection there between what you're doing and what I'm doing, definitely.
No doubt about it.
All right, well, so the article today is Long-Term Afghan Presence Likely to Derail Peace Talks.
And it begins with an announcement by Undersecretary of Defense Michelle Flournoy.
And I was thinking maybe we could start with you telling us who's she.
Well, she obviously is the person at the Pentagon who is involved in dealing with policy.
And she comes from the think tank, the Center for New American Security, which was very close to Petraeus and which sort of became, moved into the Washington, D.C. space a couple of years ago, two or three years ago, and basically became the voice of the U.S. military as reorganized under David Petraeus' leadership in the last few years.
So she represents that point of view.
She represents David Petraeus' influence in the U.S. military.
Is it worth mentioning that The Wall Street Journal reported that it was Rockefeller Brothers Fund money that was the seed of that whole Center for New American Security?
Is that different than the foundation, say, of the Project for a New American Century?
And is that relevant, you think?
Well, it is different from the Project for a New American Century in the sense that it's a much ideologically broader range of voices that you get at the CNAS.
It represents the views of the military, but particularly those in the military who are interested in counterinsurgency, less so the voices of those who are sort of what they call the legacy military, the big tank boys and so forth.
But nevertheless, I mean, you know, this is a think tank that is broadly supported by the major Pentagon contractors, let's face it.
I mean, they get plenty of money from the Boeings and all the rest of them.
And, you know, it does represent the military viewpoint generally.
And now how powerful is this position, Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Policy?
Well, this is Douglas Feith's old stomping grounds.
This is the place where, you know, the incumbent in that position is going to be basically looking ahead and anticipating what policy issues are coming up and connecting issues of the military force with diplomacy, with foreign policy, essentially.
So it's a very sensitive position.
I would say it's very influential.
All right.
Now, so what was this announcement that she made and what's the big deal here?
Well, she announced really for the first time officially that the United States is anticipating the retention of Special Operations Forces units in Afghanistan beyond 2014 to carry out counterterrorism operations, as she put it.
I mean, this has been hinted at before, but this is really the first time that's been stated on the record.
And it was in the hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee on March 15th.
So basically this is the first time that we've had official news, official word, that the United States intends to keep combat troops in Afghanistan indefinitely beyond 2014.
All right.
Now, so that's the end of the whole back and forth argument about whether Petraeus is, you know, bullying Barack Obama into doing this or not or what have you.
Even if that was the case, it's certainly a done deal now.
Barack, she's speaking for Obama, not for Petraeus when she says that, correct?
This is clearly voicing a policy that has been adopted.
I mean, I don't think that there's any chance that Michelle Flournoy would be saying this without knowing that it has been adopted as policy.
Well, look, what's this 2014 anyway?
I mean, Obama said the beginning of the end was going to be this July.
Right.
I mean, all of this carefully orchestrated in order to, I think, certainly my interpretation, I think it's widely shared that what was happening last year was that Obama wanted it on the record.
You know, they wanted the public to think that he was on his way out by mid-2011 for political purposes because there was a congressional election coming up and the Afghanistan war was becoming increasingly unpopular.
But I think we can look back now and see that that was a political ploy, which was covering a longer-term intention to keep troops way, way beyond 2011 and indeed probably beyond 2014 already at that point.
All right.
Well, so what is this going to mean for the war on the ground there when news reaches the insurgency?
Well, I think the key point of my article here is that the significance of this is as bad as one can imagine on its own, but even worse is the implication that any effort to negotiate with the Taliban is going to be frustrated by the fact that this administration has already adopted a policy saying no matter what agreement we reach with the Taliban, we're going to keep troops there.
And that, of course, means that the Taliban is not going to be willing to negotiate because it is an absolutely fundamental position taken by the Taliban consistently, and right up to the present time, that they are definitely not going to negotiate with the United States except on the premise of a complete withdrawal of U.S. troops.
Now, you know, up to now the speculation has been that, you know, even though the Taliban have said that they will only negotiate with the United States or negotiate an agreement after the withdrawal has been completed, that, in fact, they understand that that will have to be the outcome of negotiation rather than the precondition for it.
And, indeed, my story, I think, for the first time carries the important news that conversations with interrogation of Qadishur leaders of the Taliban in Pakistan over the past several months, starting in perhaps mid-2010, have revealed that the Qadishur people are definitely willing to make a deal based on the premise that the result will be, as part of the agreement, a complete withdrawal of U.S. and NATO forces.
So this is absolutely essential to any possible negotiated settlement.
Well, now, I wonder if Petraeus is behind that, having the Pakistanis arrest these people who could be on the other side of the negotiating carpet there.
Well, I think definitely Petraeus was a major factor in the policy decisions that were putting pressure on the Pakistanis to round up Taliban leaders in 2010, 2009-2010, no question about it.
Well, see, a year ago, or maybe it was two years ago, maybe both, we talked about how there sort of was a split.
Some people want to deal with the Taliban now, and then some other people said, no, we'll do this surge and we'll whoop on them for a couple of years, and then beginning in July 2011, that's when we'll start dealing with them.
But we'll be in a stronger position by then.
That is what I believed then.
I mean, I think now it becomes clear that I don't think a diplomatic solution, political solution to this was ever really high on the agenda for the Obama administration, for President Barack Obama.
I simply don't think that he was really committed to it.
And the proof of the pudding is exactly what he has done now.
He approved this policy of a long-term indefinite U.S. military presence regardless of whatever happens in negotiations with the Taliban.
He wants to have it both ways, which you can't, of course, you can't have it both ways.
And I mean, he allowed himself to be talked into this by people who said, oh, you know, we can force the Taliban to agree to our terms, and they'll have to accept this because they won't have any choice.
Yeah, but they'll never accept American occupation forever.
Of course not.
I don't believe that's the case.
I don't believe that's the case.
I think that the resistance will continue in Afghanistan.
Well, and they've got to know that, too.
And that's really the prescription here, right, is just keep the war forever.
They know they can never create a state in Afghanistan and then leave it, you know?
We've talked about this in the past.
It's the perennial issue.
I mean, to what extent are these people knowingly, you know, deceiving the American people, and to what extent are they deceiving themselves?
And there's a lot of both.
They're mixed together, and that's what makes it, you know, trying to figure out what the thinking behind policy decisions is, whether it's Libya or Afghanistan, is very, very difficult.
Well, somebody's making a lot of money off all that opium, too.
Well, no doubt about that.
It's the main moneymaker in Afghanistan, as we all know.
Oh, ever since 2001.
But, you know, I was frankly wrong about Petraeus.
I mean, I was convinced that he must understand that there has to be a political solution to this diplomatic agreement with the Taliban, and that, as you put it, you know, he was in favor of being able to carry out his strategy for a year or 18 months, and then he would agree that we have to negotiate.
Now I think it's clear to me that he was never in favor of a real political diplomatic solution to the problem, because, you know, his hat size has gone up, as I think I've said on your show before, several sizes over the last two or three years.
He has come to believe his own clips.
He's come to believe in the idea that he is a miracle worker, that he, in fact, accomplished all those things that he claimed to have accomplished in Iraq, and therefore he can do the same thing in Afghanistan.
And, you know, you go back to that.
Yeah, but I mean, okay, if you were wrong, you were wrong then, but what about now?
He's got to have seen two years of failure right in front of his eyes.
Yeah, but, I mean, from his point of view...
And he can quit tomorrow and be a hero as far as PR is concerned, you know, but what about the truth of the war there?
He's got to know.
Well, I mean, he can quit today, but he's not going to quit today.
I mean, he's going to quit in another year, right?
I mean, he's going to quit, I should say, at the end, not another year, but in nine months.
And he's going to be arguing that he is winning and that the show should go on.
And to a considerable extent, I'm prepared now to believe that he, in fact, believes that.
That, you know, he is still the man who can defeat a resistance movement by splitting it up and by using clever tactics, by combining various forms of force and political manipulation, and that that's what he's doing and he's going to succeed at it.
Well, right on.
And, by the way, you know, everybody knows that Obama wouldn't be doing this unless it was the right thing, you know?
In fact, I was at KPFK studios last week when the news broke that Obama had appointed the chief psychologist in charge of torture at Guantanamo Bay to be in charge of counseling veterans' families or something.
And the argument rang out that, well, it must be because of his wonderful and unique experience that will make him really good at that job or something, because the first premise always is, if Obama did it, then it must be good, just like he's slaughtering Libyans because he loves them so much right now.
It wasn't plausible when George Bush said it, but people believe that about Barack Obama.
I'm watching the tweets come in to CNN right now.
How selfish are the American people who don't want to bomb Libya?
You're so selfish.
We have to help them.
Barack Obama is leading the way in helping the people of Libya.
And there it goes.
I mean, it's a done deal.
It's all it takes is, you know, a couple of weeks' worth of BS on TV and the American people will believe anything about this, you know?
Well, I think that, you know, a certain percentage of the American people believe it.
Whether it's more than 50 percent, I'm not sure at this point, but it remains to be seen.
But, you know, what is clear is this, that any time a president is involved in fighting even one war, let alone two or three, it changes him, it changes his politics, it changes everything about his administration.
You can look at every single war president and see the same thing happen.
Either that president has to be willing to subvert his own administration, and I mean that quite deliberately, he has to be willing to undermine the forces within his own administration who are insisting on war and who will profit from that war, and I mean profit in the most generic sense, you know, whose institutional interests are involved in that war.
He either has to be willing to undermine those interests and oppose those interests openly or behind the scenes, and inevitably, you know, it either has to be an open opposition to that war or he's going to become completely contaminated by it, completely changed by it, and clearly this is what has happened to Barack Obama.
The fact that, as you just observed, that Obama has named the chief psychologist behind the forms of torture that have now been recognized as torture and recognized as unworthy of a civilized country is perhaps the most telling point yet as to how far being a war president has changed Barack Obama.
I mean, he is a man who has been unwilling to oppose the forces of war for whatever reason, and I'm not going to speculate on what those reasons are.
It's not worth it.
I am.
I think he thinks it's fun to drop high explosives on people, the same as the Republicans.
It's the exercise of power.
Garrett, that's what it's all about.
Ask O'Brien in 1984.
Destroying human lives.
That's what makes a man a man.
Well, I agree with you that it is power.
It has to do with power.
I have no doubt about that.
Whether it is enjoyment of killing is another question.
But the exercise of power of dominance, unquestionably, is at the center of all wars by the United States.
Well, I have great tinted glasses.
They're all a bunch of Dick Cheneys to me.
I can't differentiate.
I really can't.
I mean, Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama versus Dick Cheney.
Who's got more evil in their heart?
I mean, come on.
I'm with you there.
I mean, the evil is in their heart.
But psychologically, trying to disentangle all the different strands is a much more difficult proposition.
But that it has to do with power and dominance, yes, absolutely.
Before I ask you about Libya a little bit here, Garrett, I wanted to ask you about this.
And I think this has come up in the past on the show, and you've dealt with it before, but I still want to overhear what your thoughts are.
Tapae Escobar does the show from time to time.
And his thing is this.
Whichever way those pipelines run is all important.
Not because of the price of gas in the tank of the American expedition driver out there, but because of if Iran and Afghanistan and Pakistan and India are all sharing a big pipeline, or if Turkmenistan's pipeline goes through this way, that way, or straight to China or whatever, it's all about the power of the state and the political forces of, you know, if push comes to shove, then we can tell China, oh, yeah, we'll cut your oil off.
Like, if they threaten to dump our dollar or something like that, we can, you know, we've got this strategery going on.
And as long as we keep the war going there, at the very least, these pipelines that the Americans don't want, never mind the ones they do want, but at least the ones they don't want are not being built, as long as we're keeping the place in a state of chaos.
And I'm sure I'm, you know, very roughly paraphrasing him there, but the part you could take from that about what Pepe says is pipelines got a lot to do with it.
What do you think about that?
I don't think the pipelines are the reason we got into Afghanistan.
I don't think they're the reason we're staying in Afghanistan.
I don't believe the U.S. military formulates its own strategy and its own policy on the basis of pipelines.
I agree with, you know, with Pepe on the general notion that the U.S. government has obviously favored one set of pipeline plans over another for geopolitical reasons, and they have used their influence with all the players they can in order to get the pipeline that will further U.S. geopolitical interest.
No question about it.
And China is, you know, one of the key objectives in this regard, I don't doubt, Iran, of course, being the other one.
But wars are, you know, too big a business to be determined by pipeline.
Wars are a much bigger business than pipelines.
That's the simple long and short of it.
Sure.
But, I mean, well, would you say that it is really part of the American or is or isn't part of the American imperial strategy to control these resources, control the governments that control these resources, so that, for example, we could cut off or threaten to cut off China if they cross us, something like that?
You know, I agree with you right up to the point where you say that the purpose would be to be able to cut off China from its access to resources.
I mean, I'm not convinced that that is, in fact, an operative notion within U.S. national security bureaucracy.
Well, you know, the earth is only so big.
I'm trying to make up a credible somebody that is worth cutting off, you know.
And the Russians are exporters, so we can't blockade them.
I happen, I mean, I still believe that the nature of global energy markets is such that there is no way to, quote, cut off China from energy markets.
I'll tell you, I'll share with you a story about a friend of mine in the military who has been a good source on a number of stories, but who I had lunch with recently.
And we got into a discussion of China and the future U.S. relations with China, policy toward China.
And he reflected the military view that the U.S. military is going to be more and more looking to preparing for war with China on the periphery of the Middle East and South Asia because of the Chinese wanting to get control of these resources.
In other words, it's turning the argument on its head and saying that it's the Chinese who are preparing to use force in order to secure these resources.
So you can see the irony, of course, that in the U.S. military, there is this notion that one of the reasons we have to prepare for war with China, if not the main reason, is that Chinese will be doing what the left is saying the United States is trying to do right now.
Right.
It's just like they don't know that they're the terrorists in the terror war.
Yeah, and my point is that I think that that is equally fatuous, just as fatuous as it is to say the United States is using force to try to gain control of natural resources.
And again, one word, Vietnam.
Okay, Vietnam.
There were no natural resources to get control of in Vietnam.
Why did we do it?
Not because of natural resources.
Because why?
Westmoreland wanted more stars?
Westmoreland wanted more stars.
I mean, that's a very shorthand way of putting a very complex set of institutional and personal interests.
Well, I've read Catch-22.
I think I understand how it works, unfortunately.
It's institutional imperatives within the military and beyond that, the CIA and all of the aspects of the national security state who did not want to give up all their Cold War programs surrounding China, all the alliances, all the military bases, all of the covert operations.
All of those things were enormously important to these people and to these institutions, and they weren't going to give it up.
And they felt that unless they fought for South Vietnam, it would inevitably mean peace with China, it would mean neutralism in Southeast Asia, and the Cold War in East Asia would be over.
And, of course, they were right.
Absolutely right.
But that was not a set of interests that they could legitimately take to the American people or even to the U.S. President at that point.
They never made the argument that they made among themselves to President Johnson or President Kennedy.
I really need to read Perils of Dominance, don't I?
You really do need to read that.
No question about it.
All right.
Well, everybody, you can tell why we keep this guy around.
Now, tell me real quick, and please give me a good answer.
No, tell me the truth.
Are we in for a decades-long war in Libya now?
I don't know, but it's definitely going to go on longer than we're being told.
Oh, man.
It's an open-ended thing, huh?
Yes.
All right.
Well, give me a longer answer than that.
We've still got three minutes.
Is this about oil?
Absolutely not.
This is the perfect example of how a war is absolutely not about oil.
Yeah, Alex Coburn had a piece where he goes, no, this is all just about the ambition of Samantha Power and Susan Rice and Hillary Clinton.
Really?
Yeah, and Sarkozy.
Right, and Sarkozy.
Yeah, I mean, this is a perfect example.
I mean, the oil industry, BP, was putting pressure on the UK government to be easy on Qaddafi.
Yeah.
Well, let me ask you a better question.
What is this going to mean for the so-called terror war and suicide jihadism and things like this around the world?
I mean, I think that we're going to see more and more in the future that the policy of NATO and the United States is making it a perfect opportunity for the jihadists in Libya to gain a serious foothold.
Well, they're saying now that we're intervening on the side of the Egyptians that went to fight in Iraq against the Americans.
So I wonder now whether once they overthrow Qaddafi, then they'll say, oh, jeez, well, we can't accidentally empower Al-Qaeda, now we've got to fix that.
That seems like the perfect open door to stay.
We've talked about this before.
I mean, the hawks always win.
I mean, they create the problem by intervening, and then they say, oh, we've got this problem, we've got to stay.
Right, and which Iraq war are these guys veterans of from fighting the Americans?
The one that we told them not to do back then?
I mean, what country did most of the jihadists from outside Iraq come from?
Libya.
And they came mainly from Benghazi.
Well, yeah, the last days of the American empire.
I guess somebody ought to pick up from Nemesis by Chalmers Johnson and write these chapters.
I mean, this is really some amazing stuff going on here.
They'll analyze this in class, assuming humanity survives it hundreds of years from now, Gareth, I think.
This is how an empire kills itself.
All right, thanks very much, as always.
Thank you for having me again, Scott.
Bye-bye.
That's Gareth the Great.
Antiwar.com/Porter.
We'll be right back.
