Alright, take two, Chaos Radio, 95.9 Austin, Texas, Anti-War Radio, I'm Scott Horton, thanks everybody for tuning in, and now here's the first, I'm not sure why I ain't thought of this before, but I got my two favorite guys on the AFPAC thing going on here at the same time to talk about it, and I hope to just let you guys interview each other and sit back and learn all kinds of things and hope the audience can too.
It's Gareth Porter from IPS, you can find all he writes at original.antiwar.com slash Porter, and Eric Margulies from Sun National Media in Canada, his website is ericmargulies.com, Gareth is the author of Perils of Dominance, Eric is the author of American Raj, both of them have been doing great coverage of the escalation of the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and Eric, author of War at the Top of the World as well, covered the war back when the bad guys were the good guys and the Russians were the bad guys in the 1980s, and knows a lot of these warlords personally and all kinds of stuff.
So both of you, welcome to the show, appreciate you joining me today.
Hi Eric.
Hi.
Hi there.
Well, so I guess I'll start with Eric, Eric Margulies, tell us about the government in the box that Stanley McChrystal and David Petraeus are delivering to the people of Afghanistan.
Seems like we've kind of restarted the war all over again, we really mean it this time over there, huh?
Well, I was just intrigued by General McChrystal's use of this term we're going to, about this big non-event offensive against a little piddling village of Marja, which has been portrayed as a second D-Day by the U.S. military, moving 15,000 troops in there, and General McChrystal said, we're going to deliver an Afghan government in a box.
Well, you know, with all respect to the general, you can't deliver a viable, legitimate government like a pizza pie.
But that's what the U.S. military is doing, as they've gotten all these Afghan stooges who are on the U.S. payroll, Tajiks and Uzbeks from the north, people who are just bought, sold, and drug-running governors, and they've shipped them down to Marja, and they're going to make believe in this sort of political Potemkin village that they're actually running a new future for Afghanistan, and then they're going to roll this operation to Kandahar, which is the center of the Taliban heartland.
Well, now, Gareth, you have this article, two articles ago at Antiwar.com, Marja Offensive Aimed to Shape U.S. Opinion on War.
Apparently this isn't a secret, you didn't do any, you know, real head-scratching analysis, you just read the post, and they said this whole thing is a PR stunt for the American people.
Yeah, I mean, I think this is really sort of a meta-story that sort of towers over the details of this current offensive, because what is clearly happening here is sort of a continuation, if you will, in Afghanistan of what General Petraeus started in Iraq.
That is to say, essentially, that the war is increasingly primarily for the purpose of influencing U.S. opinion, to sway opinion in favor of continuing the war, to support a U.S. military presence in Afghanistan for the long term, rather than to support what appears to be the White House alternative, which is to try to at least shorten this period of occupation of Afghanistan very considerably, if not really make short work of it by negotiating a settlement.
So I think that is a very significant development here, it's really sort of giving us a glimpse of the new American way of war, which is a war for the American people primarily, and a war against adversaries within the country, I think only secondarily.
Well, in this Times Online interview of Stanley McChrystal, he says, so 2011, which as Obama said, July 2011 is the beginning of the end of this war, we'll surge in and then we'll surge back out again, he claimed in his speech in November.
But McChrystal says, so 2011, if you put them between those two realities, you know, matters on the ground, he just said he was going to start to reduce American forces, but then it would happen at a pace based on conditions.
So I think that that day gets overemphasized militarily.
This is, are you telling me that Obama and the Pentagon actually have different policies about the war in Afghanistan, Gareth, or just they don't have their talking points quite straight like in their first month?
It does look to me like increasingly that there is a distinct difference in view from what I'm picking up a little bit, bits and pieces of information.
I'm more and more convinced that yes, as there was in Iraq, the same thing is true in Afghanistan, but the military wants to stay, and the White House is looking for a way out.
But of course, the way things really operate is that the White House tends to give way to the military, and therefore, those differences tend to narrow over time.
Yeah.
Well, now, Eric Margulies, part of this whole long war thing just smacks of the old Mackinder thesis of the world island, and the most powerful country has to rule the steps of Central Asia forever, and that's just, they're just kind of following on the same old tradition.
Is that part of this, or is it really just, I don't know, weapons sales?
I'm glad you mentioned Mackinder and geopolitics.
I was one of the last students of classical geopolitics, Georgetown University, way back when.
I don't think that America's driven so much by classical geopolitics as the oil politics, which certainly plays a role there.
And Afghanistan is very strategic.
It may be filled with minerals, it may even have oil.
It certainly dominates the oil resources of Central Asia.
And look, American foreign policy is driven by oil.
It has been ever since before World War II, and it's continuing.
There's an imperial strain, too.
You know, it's a shame.
I just finished reading a wonderful book published in the early 50s on the history of British imperialism, and it is amazing when you study this to see the parallels between modern America and the British Empire, which once ruled a quarter of the entire world's surface.
And it's too bad that we don't call the people in Washington who are urging full-spectrum dominance of the world by the U.S., we don't call them imperialists.
I hate using the word because I sound like an East German radio, but in fact, they are imperialists, and that strain is very strong in Washington.
I just add to what Gareth said, that you have a weak president who doesn't have the gumption to stand up to the Pentagon and to the entire national security complex in Washington.
And you know, when General McChrystal said last year, when he demanded that 40,000 troops be sent to Afghanistan or we're going to lose the war, if Obama, Obama should have fired him on the spot for the crassest insubordination, just the way Truman fired MacArthur.
But Obama didn't, and in fact, he caved in, and that was really a sign that it's the Pentagon, the CIA, the war establishment in Washington that's making policy, and not the president.
All right, now, so Gareth, address oil here, because, I mean, even Eric says it's oil politics, it's not quite the same thing as oil money, but I'd like to hear you two discuss what role all the pipelines and all the Pepe Escobar kind of point of view has on all of this.
Yes, this is a great opportunity to have a dialogue on this question, which of course, you know, goes really to the heart of trying to piece together a meta-narrative, a paradigm, if you will, for understanding U.S. imperialism in this era.
And as much as I sympathize with the whole view of sort of a traditional left economic interpretation of U.S. imperialism, I do think that in the end, that pales in comparison with the more elemental drives, if you will, coming from the military and from the national security complex, which are, A, you know, to justify their existence in the case of the military, and B, to make sure that they look good in terms of any war that they stumble into.
You know, just to focus on the first of those, I mean, it seems to me, as I have looked into particularly the origins of the Iraq War, that there is a deep history here of the military establishment and its political allies, and by that I mean people like Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz, who were in the Pentagon and whose careers were really tied in with the fortunes of the U.S. military and its role in the world and in the U.S. political system and society.
Those forces were churning around in the 1990s to come up with a way of justifying not just their existence, but the kind of federal budget resources that they had been getting in the past during the Cold War era, and they were desperately trying to find a new, of course, new set of enemies and a new military set of roles and missions that would stand them in good stead over a period of many years.
And what they came up with, of course, was the military mission of being able to defeat the rather decrepit military forces of the Iranians and Iraqi regimes, and that really became central to the ability to justify the big budgets that they had to have in order to maintain the health of the military, if not of the state.
And so I find that there was here an internal dynamic within the Pentagon that has a great deal to do with the fact that you have Cheney and Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld coming in with the Bush administration demanding a war in Iraq.
And then the second point I want to make, and then I'll turn it over to Eric, is that if you really look at the position of the oil companies at this critical moment between 2001 and 2003, what they wanted was to make a deal with Saddam to put more oil on the market.
They were not interested in a war in Iraq, which I think they felt quite rightly would set them back rather than would really be to their advantage.
So that's in a very broad nutshell, if you will.
Well, add one more thing before we turn it over to Eric Margulies here.
Add one more thing about the oil pipelines in Afghanistan.
And there's Iran and China and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and all these things.
Is the Pentagon's strategy not to at least try to keep this oil out of the hands of others or something?
My point about Afghanistan, Scott, would be that the military really did not want to have anything to do with Afghanistan.
Of course, they're not the ones who made the ultimate policy decisions, but certainly the military itself was very averse to war in Afghanistan, and for obvious reasons.
That was a rational response to the reality, the geographical, physical reality of Afghanistan, as well as the history of Afghanistan.
They wanted to have nothing to do with it.
They were really pushed into it only after 9-11.
All right.
Now, Eric, what do you think about all this?
What role do you think that the oil companies play, or even just the Pentagon's opinion about who controls oil resources in Central Asia there?
Let me start with the Pentagon.
Having been an occasional consultant on South Asia, Muslim affairs to the Pentagon, I was able to see that there is a considerable diversity of view in the Pentagon.
It's always portrayed by critics as sort of capitalist, fascist, warmonger, the usual sort of Radio Moscow type thing.
But, in fact, there was great opposition in the Pentagon to the war, against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, primarily from an institutional point, not for morality, but the feeling that it would run down the U.S. military would never be properly funded.
And we see that happening because, and now there's intense opposition to a war against Iran.
The chief of the staff of the Air Force once said to me, he said, you know, the average age of U.S. Air Force aircraft is something like 28 years old.
The equipment's very old, it's run down, and now the Gates and the Pentagon is forcing the Pentagon to reconfigure the U.S. military for colonial expeditionary warfare, bringing in all different kinds of equipment to fight guerrillas.
What happens if there's a real war against North Korea or down the road against China or possibly against India, one day against Russia?
The U.S. is going to find itself like the British Army was on the eve of World War I, trained to fight dervishes and Zulus and Afghans in these little colonial wars, but not trained to fight a modern army and a modern warfare.
So that's one major issue.
The other is the oil companies, they wanted to build their pipelines through Afghanistan, no doubt about it.
And as long as Taliban was talking to the U.S. oil consortiums, Washington gave the Taliban government money up until four months before 9-11.
But when Taliban gave the deal to an Argentine consortium, suddenly they went on U.S. black books.
This whole area, I call it pipeline-istan, is crisscrossed with plans for oil pipelines and gas.
One thing is for sure, the U.S. is damned to determine that Iran will not be able to export its oil anywhere, and particularly not to India, across Pakistan to India.
And while the U.S. has been doing its best to block their export of Iranian oil there, the Chinese have run a major pipeline down into northern Iran and are now hoovering up Iranian oil in spite of U.S. efforts.
So it's been an awkward situation.
What's happening is that these pipeline politics are bringing the U.S. and Russia increasingly into sort of a mid-level confrontation, which is dangerous because, as I've often said, the most important American foreign policy issue is not the Middle East or Israel or Iran or anything else.
It's maintaining good relations with Russia, which has thousands of nuclear weapons.
Here, here.
Yeah, and sharing a frontier with them.
I mean, we have the whole Alaska-Bering Strait thing and whatever, but, I mean, we saw in August of 2008 a border conflict with Russia when our proxy, Georgia, invaded the breakaway South Ossetia there and killed Russian troops, and the Russians responded.
And we now know that Dick Cheney was advocating missile strikes against Russian troops in Georgia and was talked out of it by the wisdom of Stephen Hadley.
And boy, oh, boy, talk about, you know, picking a fight where you don't belong.
I mean, most Americans can't even find Georgia.
But so now let's get back to Pakistan and Afghanistan here because, Gareth, you got this great article called Define U.S.
Pakistan Keeps Custody of Baradar.
And this is a major Taliban leader who was arrested by the Pakistanis, and they're not even sharing him with the CIA.
And so there's this whole story here, but then there's a story about, you know, what this means, how we're to interpret this action or lack of it by the Pakistanis here.
Right.
You know, just to be clear now, precisely what has happened is that the Pakistanis kept the CIA completely away from Baradar for two weeks, roughly two weeks, after he was put in jail or brought into custody.
And in those vital two weeks, obviously, a lot can happen, a lot obviously did happen in terms of understandings reached between the Pakistanis and Baradar.
You know, and I think it seemed pretty clear that part of those understandings had to do with the fact that what they were really doing was protecting him from the Americans and giving him an opportunity to function both in terms of peace diplomacy and carry out other functions from his cell, despite the fact that the Pakistanis will continue to act as though he is in custody and, you know, is in detention.
It looks more and more like this is safe haven rather than normal detention.
And, of course, the CIA, you know, has been allowed to question him, but only in the presence of ISI, you know, people who are hovering around and making sure that nothing untoward happens.
And the Americans have made it very clear that they've been unable to get anything out of him that's worth anything in terms of strategic or tactical intelligence.
So, I mean, all of this really adds up to a pretty clear defiance of U.S. policy in Afghanistan by the Pakistanis and a sign that they're going to continue fundamentally to pursue the kind of strategy that they have for many, many years, which is to regard the Taliban as their primary asset of influence, their primary source of influence in the future of Afghanistan.
And what they want now is a fast, an early and rapid negotiation of a settlement which would leave the Taliban with at least, you know, consolidation of control over much of the south, if not the entire zone of the south and east, and assure them that they are going to have a buffer there.
They're going to have an in-depth defense against what they regard as Indian influence within Afghanistan.
Eric?
This is all very mysterious and murky business.
To understand it, we have to realize that Pakistan has two governments.
One is the civilian government, which is really just puppets for U.S. policy, and then there's the military, which is the real government of Afghanistan and the intelligence service, ISI.
Pakistan has been forced to follow policies or either forced or bribed to follow policies regarding the war in Afghanistan, Taliban, the tribes, the Pashtun tribes on Pakistan's northwest frontier that are totally inimical to Pakistan's national interests, illogical for Pakistan, and opposed by over 90% of Pakistanis.
So what we see is a lot of shadow boxing, play acting here.
The Taliban leaders who were arrested were not field commanders.
So you don't run the war in Afghanistan against the Western occupation forces from a madrasa outside of Karachi when there are no decent communications available.
These were people who were potentially a peace party within, being cultivated by the Pakistani intelligence.
They were the so-called moderates who were going to be trotted out.
And what happened, as I surmise, and my sources tell me, is that the U.S. put so much pressure on the civilian government and they spread around so much bribed money with the military.
Remember, we're giving billions to Pakistan where the average income is about $1.40 a day, that Pakistan was forced to round up the usual suspects and to show Washington is doing something, but to still maintain its influence with the Taliban and with the Pashtun tribes of the northwest frontier who are Taliban's first cousins.
And Pakistan will continue this policy.
There is a rising fury in Pakistan over U.S. CIA drone attacks that have killed thousands of Pakistani civilians and are enraging the whole country, and which the government, by the way, is not even informed about until after they happen.
So the situation is getting worse there, and I hope Washington is pretending it's setting up these pieces to declare victory in Afghanistan and then get the hell out, but I don't think even Washington knows what its policy is yet.
Okay, so let me make sure I understand this.
We're supporting a government in Afghanistan that is fighting against the Taliban there, while the Pakistani government is backing the Taliban in Pakistan, and I'm not sure, I guess, if that includes also backing the Afghan Taliban as well, and they have to do so because of their interest in maintaining a place to retreat in case of a nuclear war with India and America's friends with all sides.
And so is this supposed to be resolved by July 11th or is it set up to just go forever here?
Throw in the mountains so that the Marines can't invade.
You know, that July 11th thing was purely a political figure that was thrown out, and what Obama will probably do is what they are going to do in Iraq and that is leave combat troops there after the final get-out-of-Iraq date and just relabel them as peacekeepers or training troops or that type of thing.
You've got Obama going one way as we were saying earlier and the military going the other, but what is happening?
Pakistan has to play this double game.
It's got to appear to kowtow to the United States to keep the cash flowing and remember, America's been threatening to unleash India against Pakistan and other great fear that they have.
At the same time, it has to try and placate the Pashtuns, because after all, they're Pakistanis inside of Pakistan and they're going to have to live with them and everybody knows that one day the Americans and their allies are going to be gone, so Pakistan has to plan ahead for that day.
You know, Eric has just referred to one of my favorite subjects which is this Pakistani double game on relations with the United States on one hand and ostensible support on the other hand, continuing their traditional support to the Taliban.
My favorite incident or my favorite episode of this double game is a couple of things actually.
It's a dual incident, if you will, a dual episode right after 9-11 when the Bush administration basically gave an ultimatum to Musharraf and agreed to a whole list of demands by the United States including giving up the ties between the Pakistani intelligence and the Taliban.
A few days later, he gave a televised speech in Urdu in which he said to the Pakistani people he said, I am doing my best, have done my best and continue to do my best to limit the damage to the Taliban because they are so important to our national interest and assured the people that he would continue to do that.
And then just a few days later in early October, he got rid of the head of ISI who was known to be a very strong Islamist and told the Americans that this was going to be a turning point now that ISI would hitherto which had hitherto been pro-Taliban would now be on the right side and of course nothing of the sort ever happened, in fact it was quite the opposite.
Well, but it seems like America is playing the same double game and it seems like at least as far as the positions all these different sides are in right now none of them have any choice but to do what they are doing because America at least well maybe we got the choice but the American policy has been to prop up the Karzai government which is allies with the Indians, right?
...to surround the Pakistanis our other friend.
No wonder they're backing the Taliban, Gareth.
I was told in Delhi that the Indians have now a thousand agents from RAW, the Indian intelligence service active and they've sent a billion dollars in aid.
This is a poor country to Afghanistan.
So the Indians are digging their influence in there as fast as they can.
I just want to make one other quick point from what Gareth was saying playing double games, you know I really want to understand what's going on there go back to these wonderful 1930s Hollywood epics Four Feathers and Drums and Kim Lives of a Bengal Lancer In Charge of the Light Brigade which starts in India they all show these deceitful Afghan chiefs Surat Khan who are smiling at the British you are my brothers and then preparing to machine gun them at night and stab them in the back it's all vintage Afghan stuff still going on Go ahead Gareth Sorry, you were just talking about the Indians and their relationship to Karzai I think a very important point that somewhat modifies that picture doesn't deny it but I think does modify it Karzai certainly entertains very good relations with the Indians but at the same time he's playing his own double game and he's rather open about it and that is because he is Pashtun himself as I've said I think in the past he has a overwhelmingly Pashtun constituency politically that he has to continue to listen to and that constituency is insisting that he has to make peace with the Taliban and so that's a very strong influence on Karzai's policy and I do not at all dismiss the story that has been circulating by way of rumors that Karzai has had indirect contact with Taliban leaders including Baradar Alright now can the two of you help parse the Afghan Taliban here and the Pakistani there and the Haqqanis who are these different people and Mullah Omar who's tied to who and is it the case at all I guess as the common narrative would have it and we'll start with you Eric because I know you really know these people is it really the case that the only insurgency is among the Pashtuns and that the other ethnic factions are basically working as the quizlings with the Americans right now or is that just the oversimplified western media kind of version of events here well in my understanding it's largely true during the 1980s the primary opposition to the Soviets were the Pashtun tribes and particularly the Hizb-e-Islami party led by Gulbadin Hitmachar I was there I saw it happen he was doing probably 80-90% against the Soviets Gulbadin is right now on America's hit list we've tried to kill him at least twice already whereas the Tajiks and the Uzbeks from the north who are the enemies of the Pashtuns they allied themselves completely with the Soviets and they worked hand and glove with the Soviets what's happened today is that the Tajiks and Uzbeks have again allied themselves with the latest invaders against the Pashtuns what is very interesting is that the US keeps saying it's got to build up the Afghan National Army well it's the old British native troops under white officers build up a puppet army immediately but they can't because most of the troops now are Tajiks and Uzbeks and nearly all the officers served in the Afghan Communist Army during the 1980s so you really have a back to the past scenario that's gone on there are people who are opposing the government who are not Pashtun but the majority are but the Pashtun are not united they are very fragmented traditionally there are at least 5 different factions of Taliban and there's shifting alliances constantly there's no real central command what's going on Mullah Omar is probably in Pakistan nobody can find him now but these are people who are farmers mainly they fight for a while they go out and fight they don't need a lot of instruction on how to do it and they have only one purpose to drive the western invaders out of Afghanistan so it's a very difficult group of people and it's very hard to make simplifications it's Anti-War Radio I'm talking with Eric Margulies from Sun National Media in Canada and Gareth Porter from Interpress Service guys, who's running the drugs in Afghanistan?the Marine Corps?the CIA?
Semper Hi, Scott we got body bags coming home full of heroin or what's the deal?who's running the dope in Afghanistan?oh, the government primarily the warlords, who became America's allies to overthrow the Taliban control a large portion of the drug business the biggest drug dealers of all are the Northern Alliance the Tajik Mafia that became the first American ally when we invaded our special forces went with them and CIA guys went with them and marched on Kabul and overthrew the government the real power is the Tajik Northern Alliance and this group is the rump of Ahmed Shah Massoud's Tajik Panjshiri group he was a Soviet agent and also the biggest dope dealers in Afghanistan and the rump of the old Afghan Communist Party combined they are running the drugs oh, Taliban is running the drugs well, when Taliban was in power they completely eliminated the poppy trade but more important than that there may be some small farmers who support Taliban who are growing poppy but most of the drug goes out in the form of morphine base which is then converted into heroin and it goes out by trucks to Pakistan and across the border Afghanistan and Tajikistan and these big truck shipments don't get out without the complicity and the permission of the central government our government so really we are running the biggest heroin operation in the history of the world these are our boys who are doing it the UN says this and it's shocking that we're so we're up to our ears in Afghanistan but lock up all these drug lords because they are the mainstay of the Karzai regime and the main enemy of Taliban are they just looking the other way or is the CIA running this thing like George Bush back in the days well I would say before Gareth goes on that I hope the CIA is not involved I have not seen any direct evidence that the CIA is and if history is a guide first French intelligence in Indochina and then the CIA in Laos and then the CIA in Central America got up to their ears in the drug trade not because they are pushing drugs but because drugs were the local currency to fund guerilla armies in these different places and I'm afraid that one of these days we're going to find out that the CIA has also been deeply involved nope not Gareth you want to address the drug trade there just very quickly I think the answer to that is that yes inevitably US counterinsurgency agencies particularly the CIA are always involved in the drug trade wherever that pops up not again as Eric said because they that they're selling the stuff particularly themselves or taking it out and using themselves to make money but rather because their allies are doing it and they use transportation provided by the CIA which then inevitably starts to be used as a tool to get drugs out so it's an indirect connection that is inevitable which as we know from Laos and Vietnam was present in those wars speaking of Vietnam we've talked for a long time on this show I have with both of y'all about the parallels between the war in Afghanistan and the war in Vietnam and of course there are plenty of them starting with Brzezinski cheering in a memo to Carter now we'll give them their own Vietnam through Rambo 3 and on from there but part of the consequences of the Vietnam War of course Pakistan's illegal secret bombing of Cambodia destroyed the puppet government there and led to the rise to power of the Khmer Rouge and it seems like more and more we have headlines even in the Washington Post of course it's inexplicable to them but Eric stated quite clearly the reason for it's the robots killing people from the sky all day are driving the people of Pakistan to hate the United States and I wonder whether y'all think there's a real threat that the government either or of both of the two governments of Pakistan could actually fall and you would have some one-eyed lunatic like Mullah Omar take over them nuclear bombs and start throwing them at people or what?
Seems to be like the path we're on just you know second time is farce or also tragedy I guess yeah I would just say that there is a very rough parallel here obviously there are big differences between Pakistan and Cambodia but similarity being as I think you well put it that US military intrusions into the country have the effect of strengthening radicalism and weakening the forces, the political forces that would be the logical natural defense against them and the problem here is though that we have to understand that this is a dynamic that's been going on in a larger sense, in a more general sense for decades now and it has to do not just with US military intrusions into Pakistan but also the intrusion through the CIA's arming of the radicals the jihadi forces within Pakistan and you know the sort of the complete destruction of traditional society in Afghanistan and the sort of pushing of this destructive force then across the border into Pakistan through the movement of the enormous movement of population from Afghanistan into Pakistan during the 1980s and 1990s and so this is a very destructive force in Pakistan that we've only begun or hardly begun to comprehend in this country well I'd like to add that you know the craziest part of the whole thing is that we are turning Pakistan which is 170 million people into bitter enemies of the United States I used to write for the main newspaper in Pakistan and I've never seen people so anti-American so filled with rage that we've corrupted their governments that we are treating them like dirt like slaves spitting in their faces they're furious at the US and we're waging this foolish war in Afghanistan supposedly to fight terrorism when in fact there's no Al Qaeda left there and we're turning 170 million Pakistanis into potential anti-American terrorists for the sake of pursuing the war in Afghanistan and the problem we keep repeating over and over again we have no subtlety in our foreign policy we want obedience we don't want cooperation we don't want to deal with legitimate respected groups we want puppets who will click their heels and say yes buanna when we give them instruction and you can look at this in Afghanistan or even Pakistan the civilian government reminds one very much of Vietnam when we cultivated the worst elements in Vietnam the drug dealers, the smugglers the weird Christian sects and a small coterie of military people we've done that all over the third world and we're going to get the same results in Pakistan and Afghanistan but we're just a hollow shell that's going to collapse so we have learned nothing from Afghanistan in fact one of my recent calls I got a great quote from the New York Times in 1967 editorial lauding the wonderful election they were holding in Vietnam as this was going to be a triumph of democracy and put Vietnam on the road to freedom and democracy thank you New York Times that's great Gary go on talk about the war on terrorism Gareth ask Eric Margulies a question he was in Vietnam and he was there for the Mujahideen war of the 1980s well I mean this is a great opportunity indeed to draw on your vast experience and knowledge I'd like to focus a little bit more on Pakistan and ask you what you see as the most likely developments as things are now in train if you continue to follow the trends the trend lines if you will over the next couple of years what do you see happening in Pakistan well Gareth I'm very concerned for Pakistan I see the place like a kettle about to blow its lid or blow its top off the country is extremely fragile the government is in a state of contempt in the view of most people the civilian government I think Zardari is going to be ousted soon I think if Nawaz Sharif comes in they'll have a more respectable and popular government but Washington is against them because he's been tarred with a brush soft on Islamists the wrecking the civilian governments through unbelievable corruption yesterday and I saw an item I don't know if it's correct or not but that the US plans to spend 50 million dollars on a new program to influence Pakistani journalists I was very surprised I was shocked because I thought we bought them all already but apparently they're going to spend 50 million dollars more well they just rehired Karen Hughes to go over and explain to them that we're using drones to murder their little babies because we love them and by the way don't think that we're just a bunch of materialist atheists we know that's why you attack us we actually really really really believe in Christianity and that's why we're using robots to kill you and that'll clear everything up and General McChrystal is actually a Christian crusader who's trying to bring light to the heathens if only they understood that they would appreciate it obviously from that name what else could he be McChrystal after all anyway just to finish my point I'm afraid that Pakistan is going to have another military coup it seems almost inevitable as the government becomes totally discredited Pakistan has abased itself they've sold the whole country the army's rented itself out the ISI intelligence people have civilians have everybody's working for the Yankee dollar somewhere deep down in Pakistan is some national pride and I think there's a very good chance there could be a coup in the army where younger nationalist officers throw out or shoot the generals who have been suborned by Washington and reassert Pakistan's national dignity and its national interests Eric you're suggesting that these younger more nationalist radical if you will officers would not necessarily be or would not be particularly the most Islamist elements of the military is that right?not necessarily but some of them would be but I don't think being an Islamist is the overriding question I think it's nationalist and as I said they were doing so much everything, Pakistan is doing so much against its own interests that behind the scenes people are really very angry and one other question that I have for you about Pakistan is the degree to which there is as well a development in the heartland if you will of Pakistan the Punjab region where real social revolution is tending, this is a question whether this is the case, whether there is social revolution that is tending to coalesce with Islam in some fashion is that a trend that really needs to be looked at as a serious possibility?well that's a good question we do see signs of an Islamic poor people's movement who are moving against these very rich landlords because 1% of the population Pakistan owns everything and the rest of the people are just plunged in misery and ignorance and there is a big movement in Punjab as there is in the northwest frontier sort of a popular revolution against wealth it's not Islamist so much as it's driven by economic things, it's close you know there's a similar movement going on in India in central eastern India called the Naxalites and they're Maoists but again they're peasants armed with small arms and things and they're fighting the government trying to seize land Pakistan remains a feudal country run by feudalists including the Bhutto family so this is inevitable but I don't think this is going to be a major factor anytime soon this is one of the ways I know that I'm a really great radio host because when I have a chance to ask or to let Gareth Porter ask Eric Margulies a question it's the same ones I was going to ask I'm passing my own test here my Gareth Porter standard for what's a good question well so I guess we got a few, well very few minutes here but can we address at least the question of how serious the war party is about threatening Iran all the damn time, I'm so sick of this let's ask Gareth to answer this well this is the question of the next several months as far as I'm concerned, it is the primary threat to world peace and really needs to be analyzed very very carefully and the answer I think Eric gave a big part of the answer already which is that the US military and the Pentagon are absolutely unalterably opposed to this and that this does impose I think a pretty strong discipline on the Obama administration there's only one possibility that I can see that would seriously increase the likelihood of a strike not by the United States but by Israel and that is that the Obama administration, the White House is continuing to come under stronger and stronger pressure from the Israeli lobby and from Israel itself and its friends in the United States to soften up on its position that the United States doesn't want Israel attacking Iran's nuclear program you know you're seeing this almost every day in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, somebody of those three papers almost always has something advocating that the White House start adjusting its policy to what is the inevitability that Israel is going to attack Iran now there is no inevitability about it but I do think that it is a very serious possibility and that the Israelis want very much to get the Obama administration on board they want Obama to privately pass them the secret code that they have to have in order to pass through U.S. controlled airspace that's really the problem that Israel has I really don't think they have much of a chance of doing anything unless they can pass through the U.S. controlled airspace in Iraq so that's really the one thing that gives me the greatest pause at this point I'm looking at antiwar.com news.antiwar.com today Jason Ditz, U.S. visits to Israel, seen trying to prevent attack on Iran, top U.S. officials continue to press for sanctions Joe Biden, they sent Joe Biden, or no, they're sending him next week, and I guess all the leaks are that that's what this is about is trying to talk Netanyahu out of this and you know I just read something the other day God, we only got a couple of minutes here but there was just something the other day about a war game at, what, Brookings?
Is that right Gareth?
That's right, yeah, there was one at Brookings yes.
Yeah, and the whole thing was a giant disaster right?
Well, I mean what I got out of it was once again that the scenario that everyone is obsessed with is that, you know, the White House is being importuned by the Israelis to let them attack and this seems to be the critical question mark that everybody is looking at, I mean, the question of whether Obama is going to break down and go along with this and I don't rule that out, I mean, I think that Obama is politically weak enough, you know, personally weak enough, I guess I should say, that it's not out of the question but I would say this, that if he were to give the order to pass the secret code to the Israelis you would have a quite legal and appropriate sort of set of refusals by the military leadership.
I think Mullen would resign I think other members of the Joint Chiefs would resign, perhaps not the Air Force because the Air Force is, I'm afraid, too tight with Israel but there would be a very public resistance by the military leadership perhaps even by the civilian leadership Well, you know, the last word, there is another school of thought that says that this is a charade being put on by the U.S. and Israel and Israel is playing the attack dog and Obama says, you don't give in, I'm going to release those crazy Israelis on you and they're going to blow you to kingdom come so that's a possibility too and you get conflicting messages coming out of Israel, I think the former Air Force commander just said that Israel couldn't take or destroy Iran's nuclear infrastructure on the other hand we learned that the wild and crazy Iranians have just moved all of their 20% enriched or slightly enriched uranium out of doors to a big shed making it a fantastic target for anybody who wants to attack, so it's very hard to understand what's really going on behind the scenes The problem is just playing games can be really dangerous, when you're talking about playing games with aggressive warfare and at least two nuclear armed states against a helpless one in this case Just to be clear though, Iran clearly has only done that very temporarily in order to be able to do the 20%, roughly 20% enrichment and then it goes back down to underground That's a whole other topic for a whole other show now, we're all out of time, thank you both very much for your time today Cheers Scott Thank you Eric Eric Margulies and Gareth Porter Two of the very best for you on Anti-War Radio and we'll see you all here tomorrow 1-3 Texas time Hey everybody Scott Horton here for LibertyStickers.com Admit it, our public debate has been reduced to reading each other's bumper stickers So stop by LibertyStickers.com We've got more than a thousand anti-government, anti-war stickers for you to choose from including The Right is Wrong, The Left is Stupid Iraq, America's West Bank Detain Eric Holder Only Liars and Cowards Want War with Iran Empire, Welfare for the Rich War for the Poor I wish I could go back in time to murder Woodrow Wilson Old Right, New Left Unite against Empire And steroids are good when cops take them Fight back while you still can LibertyStickers.com Everyone else's stickers suck
