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 the great Gareth Porter, independent historian and journalist, author of Perils of Dominance, reporter for Interpress Service.
That's IPSnews.net and of course, antiwar.com/Porter.
Welcome back to the show, Gareth.
How's things?
Things are good.
Thanks very much again, as always, Scott.
Very happy to have you here.
All right.
So I think, as you know, I was on the road and I had to move from California back to Texas and I sort of took a week off of paying attention to things.
Seems like I missed quite a bit.
And so I was wondering, you know, what kind of wisdom you come up with since the killing of Osama bin Laden and, you know, the reaction in Washington, D.C. to all that.
What does it all mean for the future of America's war in Afghanistan and such like that?
Well, you know, I think the key point that that's worth making from the start about bin Laden killing is it really doesn't make much difference at all in terms of the future of this whole question of terrorism and the U.S. war on terrorism.
First of all, it's very interesting.
I had an occasion yesterday to, sorry, two days ago, to be at an event in Washington, D.C., where Paul Pillar, the former CIA head of the CIA's counterterrorism office back in the late 90s, was speaking on this question of bin Laden and the significance of the killing.
And I actually asked him a question, you know, what about the fact that the Obama administration did not do what is normally done in situations where you have a high-value target in terms of a terrorist target who is taken down?
They always hold off on any information being made public until they are able to go through all of the intelligence, the documents and so forth of intelligence value so they can nab anybody who's named and who they've given clues about, you know, from those documents.
And, in fact, as we all know very well, within hours, the president of the United States was telling the entire world about what had happened.
And he said, yeah, well, of course, bin Laden's a special case.
And, essentially, he confirmed my strong suspicion that what this means is that the people who were undertaking this raid knew all along that bin Laden was not the operational chief that he had been in 2001 and, subsequently, he had been receding from the operations of al-Qaeda.
And, in fact, there was nothing to be lost by announcing this immediately because there was really nothing of great intelligence value that they found.
Well, that makes sense.
But then again, I mean, even if, as they claim, oh, we're finding out all these things by looking at these thumb drives and what have you, still, I mean, politically, that's too good to pass up, right?
You're not going to be able to keep that a secret.
You're going to, you know, go on TV and beat your chest about it, which is exactly what Obama did.
They could keep it a secret for as long as they needed to in order to exploit it.
And they didn't do that.
They did exactly the opposite.
And I think it's very clear that whatever information was in those drives was not operationally significant.
It did not give them any clues about people who they would be able to nab as a result of it.
And, you know, the real point of this is that this was all about domestic politics.
I mean, it's clear that the killing of bin Laden is very important to the President of the United States politically in this country.
It is not very important in terms of making a big difference in terms of what's going to happen in the future as far as the terrorists are concerned.
I mean, it should, in the sense that it ought to mean everything, one way or another, or some other thing.
The American people's reaction to it finally being done, right?
I mean, this is the Emanuel Goldstein enemy we had to get rid of, and they finally did get rid of that.
It seems like all across America, if not D.C., people are saying, all right, so now we can finally end this thing, right?
Well, that's what I think there's a large popular response that is saying precisely that.
You're absolutely right.
But, of course, the national security state of the United States is not going to do anything of the sort.
They're making the argument, exactly the opposite argument.
They're having it both ways.
You know, they're reaping all the political benefits of this, you know, that this is a decisive step in the war against terrorism.
And at the same time, they're saying, well, of course, you know, we have to continue the war, and basically nothing's changed.
As always, as we've said many times on your show, the hawks always win.
They have their way.
They have it both ways.
And that's exactly what's going on in this case.
Yeah, well, there you go.
So there was something in, well, there's been a couple of pieces in the Washington Post and the New York Times, which have forced myself to suffer, although I no longer read the National Review.
But anyway, and they say that maybe there's a rethink of Afghanistan strategy there in the White House, that something's going to change for the better.
No?
Well, I mean, that is, of course, the narrative that the Obama administration is putting out.
This is, in large part, I would argue, you know, part of the strategy of reaping domestic political benefit from the killing.
Part of that benefit is to suggest that this strengthens the U.S. hand in Afghanistan.
It makes it possible for the United States, again, to continue to bear down on the Taliban, continue to maintain the pressure, and at the same time to move more swiftly toward a peace settlement.
And that's exactly what the Washington Post article in particular that you're referring to by Rajiv Chandrasekaran, that was exactly the argument that was made.
That was the narrative that was being put forward by the senior officials that were being quoted by Chandrasekaran in the article.
And of course, that's nonsense, because, you know, in fact, the, first of all, the killing of bin Laden, I mean, the main argument that was being made, if you read carefully that article in the Post, was that the Taliban will now be afraid that what happened to bin Laden will happen to them.
That the United States can strike so deeply into Pakistan unilaterally would put the fear of Allah into the Taliban leadership.
Well, you got to hand it to Washington, D.C.
They get A-pluses on their self-esteem test.
They just really feel good about themselves up there.
That's about all they do well.
They get very high marks on self-esteem in the current setting.
I agree with that.
Very much so.
But of course, the cost to the truth is pretty steep.
Well, that means when their ridiculous premise falls flat, then the basis for the idea of any, you know, renewed negotiation or anything like that is off the table again.
Well, I mean, it's off the table, particularly because what has been happening in recent weeks, as I think you know very well, is that the United States has been really pushing the Afghan government of Hamid Karzai to reach an agreement with the United States, a long-term, what they call strategic partnership agreement, under which U.S. troops would continue to be stationed there long after 2014.
And, you know, I mean, the line that's being taken is that this will be special operations forces.
It won't be conventional forces.
But, of course, there will be air power there continuing to have U.S. planes available for close air support, for special operations forces.
And the whole point about that is that it's simply not conceivable that the Taliban are going to agree to sit down and negotiate with the United States under that premise, that the United States has already decided that it's going to maintain troops beyond 2014.
That's simply not on.
And that is what really gives the lie to this new narrative that's been put out.
And I have to say that I think it's probably for very short-term sort of political purposes to sort of take advantage again, to reap advantage from the bump up in the polls for Obama as a result of the killing of bin Laden.
They're going to try to use that to get, you know, as much support as possible for his Afghanistan policy to reduce the opposition to the war and to, at the same time, give him maximum flexibility on his decision-making on the withdrawal this year.
All right.
You know, part of what's come out of the killing of Osama bin Laden is that, hey, he wasn't in the tribal territories like everybody said he was.
He was right there in the outskirts of a major city and right there near the local police or military academy.
And so, therefore, the ISI must have known he was there.
They were hiding him all along and there are enemies.
And so now maybe, as Jus Ramondo suggests, Pakistan is the new Osama bin Laden and is in the target, in the sights of the war party now.
Yeah, I mean, I think that this development certainly increases the serious risk that the United States is headed in the direction of much greater military engagement in Pakistan and that we are indeed moving in the direction of a serious confrontation between the two governments.
You know, I have a friend, Fred Brownsman, who was my co-director at the Indochina Resource Center in the 1970s, and he's been saying for months now that this is the greatest threat to world peace.
And I've agreed with him.
I think that he's right.
This is where the real danger lies, that the U.S. military in particular has been calling, as I think many people recall, for years has been calling for more cross-border raids, more freedom of action to move into Pakistan in various ways, but particularly, you know, to use special operations forces more freely.
And I think that's clearly going to be, you know, there's going to be more pressure on the Obama administration in the coming months to do more of that.
There's going to be more pressure within Pakistan to respond.
I mean, one of the things they can do, of course, is to cut off U.S. access to the, logistically, to Afghanistan.
I mean, that is their ace in the hole, should they decide to play it.
And this is, of course, the one thing that I think causes the U.S. military to have second thoughts about their proposals for becoming more militarily involved in Pakistan.
Pakistan is by no means, you know, a passive victim without any options on its side to put pressure on the United States.
But it's a very, very complicated set of relationships here of dependence and at the same time opposition between Pakistan and the United States.
One of the things that I would say is changing the complexion of this very complicated set of relations between the U.S. and Pakistan is that the Pakistanis understand that they have the option of moving closer to China, that China can, in fact, take up much of the slack in terms of the United States threatening to cut off economic and military assistance to Pakistan.
So that's one of the reasons that I think the Pakistanis are, in fact, likely to take a much stronger, firmer position against the United States in the coming months.
Well, so what's the reason for, especially now that Osama Bin Laden's dead and he wasn't in the tribal territories anyway, why are they so insistent on bombing the Pakistani Taliban when that's not really their enemy in Afghanistan anyway?
Well, I mean, most of their drone strikes, of course, have, in fact, been in the area of the Haqqani network in North Waziristan.
That's overwhelmingly the set of targets now, you know, by the drone strikes.
And so it really is, it's essentially now a war intimately, directly related to the U.S. war in Afghanistan.
And that's why, you know, I think the U.S. military and the CIA now are very much allied, you know, with regard to the strategy, the AFPAC strategy.
I mean, they both see a single front here, you know, with Pakistan, you know, not a single front, maybe that's not the right way to put it, but Pakistan is the rear area for the Afghan-Taliban war in Afghanistan.
And of course, you know, we now see Petraeus going to the CIA.
I mean, what's that all about?
Well, I think that this is all about the single war that we have in front of us, the AFPAC war.
Yeah, but they really believe that if they, I don't know, just carpet bomb Waziristan, the Haqqani network, that somehow then that would lead to a victory in Afghanistan?
Like the Haqqani network is the only thing standing between Karzai peace and the situation we have now?
I mean, obviously that is a lot of foolishness to believe that it's going to make a big difference to continue drone strikes.
I mean, I think that to some extent, people in Washington who are making those decisions are in a bubble where, again, I mean, you've heard this so many times, I'm sure you're tired of it, so am I, it's the only game in town, the only thing they have going for them until and unless, unless and until I should say, you know, the special operations forces are given wider freedom to go in and hit targets, which, you know, they've obviously pushed for, and I think Petraeus has supported that.
And I think that's really what we're, you know, we're looking toward in the coming months as the real big danger.
And I've written that I don't take it for granted that the Obama administration is going to, is going to oppose that.
I think that it's probably still a matter that's being discussed day to day.
So that's really, I think, the biggest danger that we that we have in front of us.
Well, you know, in the bubble I live in, the headline says, America and NATO still don't control Kandahar after 10 years.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, this is I mean, I heard Felix Kuhn, the the German scholar who's who's been living independently in Kandahar City for the last few years, speak yesterday and the day before as well.
And the point that he makes is that the deterioration of security in the city of Kandahar is so extreme that he can no longer walk the streets.
He has to be very careful about going outside.
The situation has changed dramatically over the past year.
And one of the things that's happened is that the the Qatar people, the Taliban leadership in Pakistan, as well as the commander in Kandahar City, who he who he knows and talks with, can no longer guarantee his safety because the people who've taken over the Taliban commanders in the surrounding region in Argandab, in Panjshirai, are young people who don't even know the the senior more senior people who have been the commander in in Kandahar City and back in in in the Kedeshura.
These are new people who don't know who Felix Kuhn is, and they're carrying out operations apparently within Kandahar City.
So I mean, it's a very confused situation.
But the main the main trend here is that the security situation in Kandahar City has deteriorated to a point which would have been unimaginable two or three years ago.
Well, and that's the real reason that Petraeus is going over to be the head of the CIA so he can task his analysts with writing up a report about what a great job he's doing implementing that counterinsurgency doctrine over there.
Look, I graded my own test and I got an A+.
That's certainly one of the dangers of having this general who has a personal stake in how the war in Afghanistan is regarded by the world, the rest of the world, and by the American people as the head of the CIA, no question about it.
But another seems to me an even greater danger is that he also has a stake in the whole idea of the CIA moving into more parts of the world to carry out drone strikes.
In other words, I think that an equal or greater danger is that you'll have somebody now as head of the CIA, who even more than Leon Panetta, who I think was bad enough in this regard, has become the representative of the operations directorate.
In other words, he's the spokesperson for the people who want to expand the war on terror and have more to do and have more power and more prestige.
At least hopefully making him the head of the CIA makes him a little bit less politically tenable as president.
I mean, that was why Rumsfeld pushed George Bush Sr. out there to Langley was to hurt him politically back then.
It didn't really work after eight years of Reagan and whatever.
But anyway, I like to think that there's one silver lining in here is once you're the head of the CIA, people might not like you quite as much.
I think that's true.
I think it adds to David Petraeus' political problems, which I think are considerable at this point, primarily because of it.
Well, I think this will be the first political problem he's had, because when it comes to holding him accountable to the facts, there's you and then there's not many other games in town as far as people willing to challenge him on any of these narratives.
Well, I mean, he can be challenged.
The problem, of course, is that if he's running against the president of the United States right now, that is Barack Obama, Obama is not going to challenge him because he's bought into the policy.
That's the real problem, isn't it?
Yeah, well, yeah, it's his policy.
In other words, he's perfectly, he's very vulnerable politically to somebody who is willing to raise the issue.
The question is whether Obama would do it.
But nevertheless, I think that there's sufficient popular dissatisfaction with anybody who's associated with Afghanistan that that's going to be a political problem.
Well, I sure hope so anyway, because if there's anybody who'd be a worse president than Barack Obama, it would be General David Petraeus.
I think he'd qualify.
All right.
Well, anyway, thanks very much for your time.
I'm going to have to let you go.
Always learn a lot.
Appreciate it very much.
Thanks as always, Scott.
Everybody, that's the great Gareth Porter, ipsnews.net, antiwar.com/Porter for his many great articles, and we'll be back after this.
