Alright y'all, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott and this is Antiwar Radio, and our next guest is the great Gareth Porter.
He's a reporter for Interpress Service, that's IPSnews.net, and we run all his pieces at Antiwar.com/Porter, including one, I think today or maybe it's yesterday, it's not today, Pakistan Moves to Curb More Aggressive U.S. Drone Strikes Spying.
Welcome back to the show Gareth, how's things?
I'm fine Scott, thanks very much for having me again.
Well I'm very happy to have you here.
So yeah, big news here in Pakistan, how many people got kicked out and by who and what for?
Well it appears that what is happening right now is that the Pakistanis are insisting that a large fraction, as much as 40%, 25-40% according to the New York Times, of the intelligence personnel, both military and civilian, which the United States has infiltrated into Pakistan, are being politely or impolitely asked to leave now, and that this is of course a result, as I tried to suggest in the title to this piece, of a more extreme U.S. policy over the last couple of years in Pakistan.
That is to say, more extreme both in terms of more and more intelligence people going in and specifically unilateral intelligence people, meaning that the Pakistani intelligence services don't know about these people, are not working with them, and secondly more extreme drone strikes, which are killing more civilians and doing much more political harm to the Pakistani government and its stability than the original drone strikes program, which the Pakistanis agreed to a few years ago.
So really Obama has escalated this thing, Petraeus has I guess escalated this thing far beyond any agreement that they had with the Pakistanis?
That's exactly right.
I mean the Obama administration has been the one that has been responsible for this escalation of violence and escalation of espionage in Pakistan, with the effect of causing the Pakistani military leadership now to finally say enough is enough, we have to do something to dial this back.
We have to really get the Americans to at least agree to reduce the levels of U.S. military operations and espionage operations in Pakistan.
Well so, I don't know, for years they've been willing to even invade Waziristan for us a few times, wage a civil war in their own country for us.
What is it that's going too far now?
Well I think that there are two things going on here.
One is, I mean the two different programs are causing two different sorts of problems for the, particularly for the Pakistani military leadership, with regard to the intelligence operations of the United States.
What the Pakistanis are upset with is the degree to which the United States is operating there without their knowledge.
And I mean this could be two particular problems that the Pakistanis have with the Americans, and it has to do with the conflict of interest, which I know we've talked about a number of times on your show, between the U.S. and Pakistan.
The Pakistanis do not share the U.S. view that the Afghan Taliban are the enemy, and that they are, that they should be subject to the kind of escalation of military presence by the United States in Afghanistan and in Pakistan.
And they also, of course, the Pakistanis clearly have their own Islamic terrorist network that operate against Indian interests.
And in both of those cases, it's clear the United States is sending in more and more intelligence agents to work in Pakistan on issues that are at odds with, or in interest that are at odds with those of Pakistan.
So very clearly the Pakistani military is not happy, is very unhappy with the unilateral increase in these spies by the United States working in areas which are at odds with Pakistani interests.
And then with regard to the drone strikes, it's clear that the Pakistani military was okay with drone strikes as long as it was limited to al-Qaeda leaders and leaders of the Pakistani Taliban.
But clearly the drone strikes program has evolved over the last three years or so into something that's very, very different and which targets now not only leaders but rank and file, and not just al-Qaeda and Pakistani Taliban, but also the Afghan Taliban and their Pakistani allies.
And so it now gets into, you know, it both pisses off the Pakistani civilian population across the entire country, and it works at odds with the Pakistani military and intelligence services' interests.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, so all the politics of the thing aside, what about the war on the ground?
Maybe JSOC and the CIA have really been taking the fight to the enemy and getting some hard work done over there, man, and making real progress in the war, right?
Well, you know, obviously that's what they would like us to think, and that's constantly a drumbeat of propaganda being put out by special forces, and particularly the CIA, leaking to the media.
But, you know, in fact, the consequences of the drone strikes program are really very clearly catastrophic in terms of the Pakistani government's stability.
I mean, it has really gotten to the point where I think the Pakistani military is quite alarmed about the degree to which Pakistanis are very angry about this.
And it's both Pakistanis outside the Fatah region, the tribal region where the drone strikes are taking place, and within that region.
I mean, it's both the general Pakistani population and it's the tribal people who are getting more and more angry at the United States.
And after the most recent case of, you know, huge numbers of civilians being killed in a drone strike March 17th, the tribal leaders across the North Waziristan region vowed to take revenge against Americans and said, you know, we never forgive our enemies.
We will continue to take revenge against the United States for 100 years.
And this is the kind of attitude that certainly cannot make the Pakistani military leadership feel confident about their relationship with the United States.
I think they feel that it's become more and more dangerous.
It's leaving them increasingly vulnerable politically.
I interviewed this guy, Shaukat Qadir, who was a former brigadier general and wrote a couple of things for Counterpunch.
And, you know, I brought up to him what Margulies says in which you're referring to a bit there about why the Pakistanis support the Afghan Taliban and it's to help limit the influence of the Indians there or something.
And he just laughed that off.
He kind of actually had disparaging words for Margulies at that point and said that, the Pashtun people have no worry ever of being dominated by any combination of force that includes the Indians.
And that's the least of their concern.
And so I wonder if there's any other explanation maybe for why the Pakistani intelligence, military establishment support the insurgency against their partners, the Americans in Afghanistan.
At the same time, they support, to some degree anyway, our war against their Taliban in Pakistan.
Well, I think you make a very important point.
I don't want to suggest the Pakistani military and intelligence services are disinterested and objective in their own assessment of their interests, not by a long shot.
I think that just as the United States used its Cold War with the Soviet Union to take advantage of any relationship with clients and proxies to expand its own military political power around the world.
I think the Pakistanis are undoubtedly seeing an opportunity here with their long-term historical relationship with the Taliban in Afghanistan as a way of exerting influence and power in Afghanistan, which after all is one of Pakistan's long-term policies.
It's what they have tried to do for decades now.
And so this is not a disinterested policy by any means, but nevertheless, the final consequence is still the same, which is that the Pakistanis have very clearly and probably defined their interests in ways that are at odds with those of the United States.
And now when it comes to North and South Waziristan and the federally administered tribal areas and whatever, that's supposedly where the last of the Arab Afghan army is hiding out, I guess.
And now the problem there is simply the terrain, right?
Nobody can really get there to do anything.
They can't even fly a drone that high to get where they really want to go.
Am I right?
If you're talking about, you're talking about in Pakistan, right?
You're talking about tribal areas in Pakistan.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, obviously the drones do in fact operate there.
And the U.S. military could operate with their power and so forth in the tribal areas.
But let's face it.
I mean, this is getting into the most dangerous kind of adventure that the United States could possibly engage in.
And even the military, the U.S. military, as hell-bent as it is on expanding its war in whatever areas it can possibly do so in ways that it feels would profit the military and its allies, I think that they are, and I've said this I think many times, I think they are realistic enough to understand that for the United States to try to go in with conventional forces or with any large number of special operations forces really courts disaster, much less trying to carry out an air war that would go beyond the drone strike.
I mean, I think that they're already in over their heads with regard to this drone strike program.
So I'm not defending the rationality of the U.S. military.
But even as crazy as I think they are, I don't think they're crazy enough to be prepared to wage a larger, full-scale war inside Pakistan in the tribal areas of Pakistan.
I think that's where they draw the line.
And I think that the fundamental operating principle is still for the U.S. military and for the CIA, and I'm including them in this generalization, what they really want to do is to continue their operations, continue their programs, and if possible, expand them wherever they can.
It is not to achieve any particular overall objective, but rather to continue to have the power, the prestige, as they see it at least, and the perquisites of the operations that they now have control of.
Yeah, sure.
Just like any other bureaucrats.
But I guess you're saying they know that there are limits, huh?
I think that they do sense where the costs and risks are so high that it would be against their own interests.
And I think that is indeed the case in this area, in Pakistan generally, and particularly in the tribal areas.
All right.
Well, we've seen almost 10 years of trying to prop up the Karzai government and make it the government of Afghanistan.
And have they made any progress at all in the decade in question here?
Well, I think we have succeeded in turning a relatively heavily corrupted state into a completely corrupted state, one that is so far down that road that there's no possibility of dialing it back or of shifting the nature of that regime.
I think we have so thoroughly corrupted it by pouring the billions of dollars that we have into Afghanistan that we have created a monster that is going to help defeat, is helping defeat the U.S. effort in Afghanistan.
Because, after all, I mean, the fundamental appeal of the Taliban to the vast majority of the Pashtun population is precisely the rampant injustice, the abuse of power by the elite of the Afghan government under Karzai and under U.S. and NATO protection.
And that obviously is something that simply cannot be changed because we have essentially created a structure that, you know, like many other things, simply cannot be reversed.
Well, you know, Malalai Joya, the Afghan activist, was on the show last week and her message, paraphrase, was basically just leave.
We don't want the warlords and we don't want the Taliban.
My people, the people of Afghanistan, we can work this out without you.
Do you think, Gareth, and, you know, I know that you don't think we should stay, but I wonder whether you think that the average Joe, average Sally in Afghanistan has a chance against the warlords and the Taliban that will be leaving behind to resume their civil war even more than before?
I think there are two points that I would make.
One is that I do agree that the consequence of a precipitous U.S. withdrawal, you know, would be, at least in the short term, a continuation of a civil war.
I'm not sure how long that would last.
I think it is likely that the other political military forces would be forced to abandon the south of Afghanistan to the Taliban pretty quickly and that the Taliban would still have pockets of influence and military presence in the north as well, in those areas particularly where they have Pashtun populations.
There are important centers of Pashtun population in the north of Afghanistan.
On the other hand, as I think many others have pointed out, it is not likely that the Taliban would be in a position to completely defeat their non-Pashtun opponents in Afghanistan.
I think it would be in their interest to reach a political solution with the other ethnic groups in Afghanistan.
I think that's the most likely outcome.
The second point that I would make is that even if the process takes years and years to reach a final solution between the Taliban-represented Pashtun and the other ethnic groups in Afghanistan, they're going to do so faster and more effectively and with longer term beneficial results than the United States and NATO trying to intervene and to try to bring about the kind of settlement that serves those foreign interests.
I think that's a fundamental principle that we all need to get on board with as the basis for U.S. policy.
In the end, regardless of the cost and the time that it takes for the present conflict to reach a peace settlement after the Americans withdraw, that is infinitely preferable to trying to expect that the Americans and Europeans are going to do a better job.
Right.
Well, I guess, you know, one of the arguments we could certainly anticipate would be that, well, you're just turning the country over to the Indians, the Russians, the Iranians, the Pakistanis, and let them have their proxy wars.
They're instead fighting over the poor people of Afghanistan.
We'll be leaving them behind like we did after 1989.
Well, I think the answer to that is yes and no.
I mean, undoubtedly, the Pakistanis, the Indians, Russians, and so forth, Iranians would be arming those forces with whom they have ties.
I have no doubt about that.
They would be sending arms and financial support.
But that would be a much improved situation compared with having 150,000 foreign troops with helicopters and gunships and high-powered bombs and all the rest.
I think that the Afghans would stand a better chance of bringing about a settlement sooner under those circumstances.
Yeah.
Well, you know, the whole thing is, is what a big joke this entire hypothetical conversation is.
I mean, unless the dollar breaks overnight, something like that, this war is going to be going on for how long?
Decades?
Well, I mean, I think that there's a new factor here, and that is the budget deficit and debt issue in American politics.
I think we're seeing, as of today, the beginning of a new stage in these politics in which it's going to be impossible to keep the bloated military budget off the table.
And by that, I mean not just the sort of token cuts that have been discussed in the past.
I think that it's inevitable that they're going to be forced to really make some more substantive cuts, which, as has been now that President Obama has stated publicly, that he is going to carry out a review of the American role in the world and U.S. mission, U.S. military roles and missions in the world.
And I think that may be token a new awareness that the status quo in terms of this kind of military spending simply cannot continue, and that the pressure on the kind of empire that the United States is trying to maintain, an empire of military bases and programs, simply is going to have to be dialed back.
And so I do think that that is going to have ultimately a clear impact on U.S. policy in Afghanistan.
It's going to have a very strong impact on U.S. policy in Afghanistan.
Well, I don't know.
Sounds great.
But, you know, yesterday on TV, the hairdos were talking about maybe David Petraeus should run for president in 2012.
I'd like to think he'd have to at least wait till 2016 to do it, but maybe not.
They say he's cutting and running, fleeing in cowardly terror from Afghanistan here pretty soon, right?
Yeah, I mean, I think I think Petraeus is dead meat politically because of the storyline that will, in fact, be repeated many times over the next few months, that he was too tired and was unable to maintain the strength and energy needed to manage the war in Afghanistan.
Yeah, he's still 10 times the man Obama is when it comes to that kind of strutting on TV, you know, with all the shiny ribbons on his uniform and all that.
Yeah, I just think the myth of Petraeus is in pre-fall.
I think that we're going to see the consequences of that in the coming months that I just doubt very much if his star is politically going to be on the rise in the Republican Party.
But I mean, I think it would be fine if he decided to run.
I think he'd be eminently, you know, unsuccessful.
And I think it would be probably a positive thing for the anti-empire movement if he did do so.
Wow, I don't know, man.
I mean, you look at the rest of the field that he has to deal with, Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney.
Even if he gets the nomination, I think that would probably be a good thing.
It would sharpen the debate.
And I think in the end, the consequences would be to speed up the end of the empire.
Or just help, you know, gear up Obama supporters, give him more of a blank check to continue the wars with or without Petraeus actually running them for him.
Well, I mean, I guess what I'm saying is that if there's one hope for ginning up a citizen's movement, which, as you well know, is my mantra here, that's the only way that things are going to change, that it would be to have Petraeus as a candidate.
And that would obviously energize the base of our anti-empire movement.
And I think that's what I'm really counting on as a way of speeding up the process.
I'm not guaranteeing anything at all, far from it.
I'm just saying that if there's going to be a chance for change, then I think that would speed it up.
Yeah.
Well, I hope you're right, because I think if that guy ever does become the president, he'll be inaugurated in that uniform.
He won't wear a rumpled old suit like Ike Eisenhower did.
Well, I think that he would be a terrible president, and I would expect the worst.
Absolutely.
I mean, I'm absolutely opposed to any possibility of his becoming president.
But at the same time, I think, you know, if he were to be nominated, which I don't, you know, I'm not sure that's very likely, but if he were to be nominated, I think that we would have a better chance of doing what we need to do anyway, which is to really organize a strong citizens movement across this country to go door to door and seek support for a pulling of the plug on the permanent war state, take away their funding, and permanently change the distribution of power in the United States.
Yeah, close down the Pentagon and put the Secretary of War's office in a little office building down the street from the Capitol like the old days.
Or as close as we can come to that, exactly.
Yeah, well, it's been a long while since those old days.
Well, you know, I don't know.
I appreciate your hopefulness.
I think it's pretty clear that, you know, the American people, maybe, I don't know how clear it is.
Seems to me, at least, that Afghanistan and Pakistan are just too far away, that the only way really to get the American people to change their mind is to understand how much it's costing them, how much worse off this society is here because of just the price of all that mass murder overseas, you know?
I think there are two issues that we can and need to exploit.
And one is exactly the one that you've just alluded to, that the cost is so incredibly high in terms of this particular economy, the United States economy at this stage of its history, that that needs, that has to be the first priority in any campaign by a citizen's movement.
But I would say in addition to that, we've got to do a better job of raising the issue of the degree to which the U.S. permanent war states policies and operations in the Islamic world expose the American people unnecessarily to the highest risk of physical danger that the American population has ever been exposed to.
And I think that that is a message that simply has not been hammered sufficiently.
And I would say very few Americans really have focused their attention on that.
And I think that if a citizen's movement were to hammer away at that message and document it as it can frequently, that it would make a huge difference and that we would win.
Yeah, well, I sure hope you're right about that.
Now, I don't have much hope that Ron Paul will be elected or anything like that, but I'm very hopeful for his campaign in terms of being the best speaking to her on behalf of peace and liberty since, well, the last time.
And that's something that no matter what they ask him, especially, you know, when it concerns budget matters, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, he always goes back to the empire and policing the world and that kind of thing.
And in a way, I think that really gives license to conservatives to go ahead and agree with him when before they thought they would have to be like Michael Moore to have that kind of position or whatever.
And he kind of says, no, it's OK, you could be a conservative Texas Republican Christian and be completely against all this imperialism.
And I really have a lot of hope that the conversation will continue to change, that he'll have a lot to do with changing the conversation as far as that goes.
You know, well, I agree with that.
And arguably, you know, this kind of citizens movement that I'm talking about cannot succeed without the supporters of Ron Paul being integrally involved in it.
It has to be a left right anti empire, anti permanent war state coalition, which in which the supporters of Ron Paul are very, very important.
And so I hope that your listeners will at the appropriate moment when we have a proposal to give Ron Paul for a an alternative military posture and strategy and alternative military and intelligence budget, that that your listeners will will ask Ron Paul to support this, co-sponsor it, put it in the hopper as a as a doable proposition, a doable objective that this citizens movement can then be mobilized around.
That's the only way that I can possibly see that we can succeed in turning this situation around.
Well, now, and when's this coming out and who's publishing it?
Well, what I'm talking about is something that I'm working on.
I want to bring together a group of specialists on the military budget, as well as some people are specialists, critics of U.S. terrorism policy, policy towards the towards the threat of terrorism to to put together a very short, succinct alternative policy and budget, which would be the basis for legislation.
And that's when I will go to Ron Paul and Kucinich or somebody on the other side of the aisle to ask them to put this in to co-sponsor this legislation, come up with a name like the End the Permanent War State Act of 2012 and begin to organize around it.
Because in my view, and I think you probably agree with this, the biggest single cause of disempowerment and the flaccid nature of the movement against these wars has been the feeling that nothing can be done.
There's no way that we can change anything.
This is the only way we can do it.
We have to have millions of people sign up to pledge that they will never support a candidate who doesn't who's not committed to this, whether it's for Congress or presidency, and to put pressure on the Congress to to pass this legislation.
That's when we can get change.
Yeah.
Well, I'm not so sure democracy works, but I sure think it's worth a try.
It's the most important issue facing our society.
James Madison said, you know, war is the germ of every other bit of corruption and and overturning of what we hold to be valuable in this society.
And it's the number one first thing we've got to organize to oppose.
So, as always, Gareth, I appreciate your journalism.
I appreciate your opinions and your time on this show.
Thanks very much, Scott.
Thanks for being here, everybody.
That's the great Gareth Porter.
IPSnews.net antiwar.com/Porter.
We'll be right back.
