Hey, welcome back to the show, this is Anti-War Radio, I'm Scott Horton.
Our next guest is John Glazer, he's assistant editor at Antiwar.com.
Welcome back to the show, John, how are you doing?
Pretty good, Scott, good to talk to you.
Good to have you here.
Everybody you can find with John writes at Antiwar.com/blog and also at news.antiwar.com.
And at least I want to start with Syria, but really in New York at the UN Security Council.
I guess the United States, what, and Britain were trying to push this thing and then what happened?
Nothing?
Yeah, pretty much nothing.
They reportedly debated on it for about three hours.
And at the end, you know, diplomat said things like, oh, we're closer to an understanding of what we need to do to pass something and stuff like this.
But it's still pretty much clear that Russia is going to veto any UN Security Council resolution on Syria out of a fear, which is legitimate, that the United States or the West, led by the United States, will use the vague language in the possible Security Council resolution to implement regime change in Syria.
Now there's interest on both sides, obviously.
The U.S. would certainly love to get rid of the Assad regime, especially if it could be replaced with a more Sunni-oriented, pro-Western dictatorship, instead of a Shiite tyranny with close ties to Iran.
Back in the summer, actually, King Abdullah, and this is why some of the Gulf states are supporting this as well, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, said that nothing would weaken Iran more than losing Syria.
So this is certainly on the minds of people who want to shape the region in terms of their interests.
But Syria also happens to be the only country that Russia has a base in from the former Soviet Union.
And they also, they give more weapons to Syria than the United States gives to Israel on a yearly basis.
Really?
Yeah, it's a huge, huge ally.
And so that's all very, very important to Syria.
And they want to be able to have a stake in the region.
The fact that they're close allies with Syria means they have a stake in, like, you know, peace talks between Israel and Palestine.
And plus, they want to assert themselves in the region and sort of push back against U.S. imperialism.
So that's their interest in doing it.
They're obviously not concerned about the Syrian people because they're, you know, paying and supporting with weapons the Assad regime, who's been committing serious atrocities.
But at the same time, you know, the U.S. is not concerned with humanitarian concerns either because, as we saw in Libya, they supported a rough-and-tumble gang of thugs who's still committing crimes and, you know, potentially leading to civil war in Libya.
And Syria will be much, much worse, especially because of where it is.
It could spill over into Lebanon and into Iraq, which is already violent now that security is deteriorated.
And it could be much, much worse.
So thankfully, what we see is pretty much a stalemate, and that's good for no intervention, but it's bad for no progress being made inside Syria.
Yeah, well, a lot to break down there.
I guess, first of all, I want to get back to why they even really bothered with pushing this thing in the Security Council, knowing that Russia's not going to go along, especially when they have not just Iraq, but they have Libya as their perfect example of, yeah, we gave you no-fly zone and you sacked Tripoli kind of thing just from last year.
Right.
Well, to tell you the truth, I'm reminded of something you said back about the Libya situation, which is that one of the big reasons that the Obama administration presumably went into Libya and eventually decided to do regime change was for the benefit of perception.
He realized that throughout this whole Arab Spring, he's been on the side of the dictators, and then when the Libya stuff came around, he realized that Gaddafi as an ally was unimportant enough that he could spare him, and so he dropped support and then actually got international support to go in there and support the rebels.
And this might be about perception as well.
I mean, they might know full well that Russia won't allow any intervention or any serious Security Council resolution, and so they might be doing it for perception.
They might be saying, look, our hands are tied, but look how much we tried to be on the side of the people as opposed to the dictators.
Well, and I guess they can still accomplish a lot with covert means, even if they don't get a UN resolution.
I mean, that never stopped them before.
A UN resolution is just one layer of window dressing.
Of course, NATO is another.
That's right.
It's hard to actually substantiate, but it is quite possible that the U.S. has already been supporting defectors and armed groups on the ground fighting against the Syrian troops.
Again, it's hard to substantiate, but it wasn't so long ago that the Obama administration let leak into the press their considerations for possibly intervening some way in Syria, and that was one of those ways.
Of course, there's also interventions from coming out of Lebanon and in Turkey.
In Turkey, the defectors have sort of a safe haven that can go there and sort of regroup and get medical treatment and so forth, and there's evidence that there's weapons as well as medical treatment as well as other sorts of support coming from Lebanon.
So there are interventions on the ground.
It's just that probably none of them are extensive enough to tip the boat one way or the other just yet.
Well, you know, the thing is, too, and as you pointed out to RT, and people can look at this at antiwar.com/blog, your interview with Russian TV about it.
You point out that when the Americans do intervene, all they ever do is create some kind of catastrophe or another.
And certainly it's full of unintended consequences, never really what they were planning on.
And you just look at Iraq and Libya for perfect examples there.
How confident could anyone in the State Department be that if they get rid of Assad and whatever group can take hold with the, I guess, assent of the Sunni majority there, what guarantee do they have that this new group would be friendly to them or do what they want or be any less tied to Iran rather than more or whatever their problem is?
Yeah, I agree.
It would be so uncontrollable of a situation that it's almost amazing to believe that anyone at the State Department can think that it would be a good idea.
There probably is some...
There are people who learned and have a nasty taste in their mouth from the past decade in Iraq and how poorly that went.
And so probably a full-on intervention is unlikely.
The only thing that I can see that's possible that the United States might do if it gets the chance is a no-fly zone like in Libya.
No boots on the ground.
This kind of thing is very politically palatable because it goes back to George H.W. Bush and the whole, you know, getting rid of Vietnam syndrome and no U.S. troops will be hurt and so we can just bomb these brown people far away, nobody will know the better, and we'll look good because we got rid of the murderer Assad.
But again, that would be just terrible.
There's no fully organized opposition.
It's just going to be much more bloodletting if such a scenario does take place.
All we can really do is cross our fingers and hope that Russia continues to block any such move.
Yeah, that's the real shame of this whole thing, a staunch American patriot like myself.
I gotta thank goodness that there's, at least there's Russian China out there have a veto and can sometimes obstruct the will of my American warlords.
What a great thing to have to be thankful for.
All right, hold it right there.
We'll be right back with John Glaser after this, y'all.
All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's Anti-War Radio.
Scott Horton.
I'm talking with John Glaser from Antiwar.com, assistant editor there, news.antiwar.com, antiwar.com/blog.
And you know, one thing that I think is worthy of note here, and you know, basically my bottom line of course, Antiwar.com's bottom line is that America ought to stay out.
And I think we would probably all agree that a case like Syria is a perfect example of why to stay out, because there are no good outcomes from American intervention this way or that.
We shouldn't be exporting people to Assad to torture for us, and you know, as an ally, and nor should we be backing a regime change, because we don't know what's going to happen.
But we know that the state itself is ruthlessly held together, that really minority rights of all the different, there are no individuals apparently in Syria.
Everybody's a group, and the very small ethnic and religious groups, you know, minority factions there are only protected by the bothist, socialist, fascist dictatorship of the Alawites there, the very small minority.
They kind of had agreement this whole time that they keep the peace, sort of, through ruthless police state repression, you know?
How is undoing that going to create anything but chaos?
That then, you know, the only question will be how responsible for it we've got to be.
I mean, does that sound basically about where you're coming from?
Yeah, that's precisely my view.
Because I hate to sound like I'm taking a side of Assad or something, I just don't want to be backing his enemies or him or anyone.
That's precisely right.
There is some ideological intransigence when it comes to issues like this, and people say, well, if you argue against intervention, then you're on the side of Assad, and then the other side says, well, you know, if you argue for intervention, then you're on the side of the imperialists.
The point really is that the humanitarian situation, if history is any guide, which it is, is bound to get much, much worse if we intervene.
And in terms of a legal and moral sense, it is not the business of the United States to go around implementing regime change.
We don't have that ability, we don't have that right, and the notion that these jerk-offs in Washington have a better idea of how to organize Syrian society than Syrians themselves is patently ridiculous.
So even if we take away the fact that there will be rivers of blood even more if some intervention actually is set up, we just have no right to do it.
What's better is, you know, I'm not opposed to using diplomatic influence to urge an end to violence or urge, you know, dialogue between various groups within Syria.
That'd be all right, considering the status quo in the situation here and there, but in terms of the military situation or harsh sanctions that won't work or anything like this, it's the wrong way to go.
Well, and I think you said at the beginning, it's about trying to separate a partner, an ally from the Iranians.
But then you have to wonder why.
I have, you know, pretended and put myself in the shoes of right-wing nationalists in Tel Aviv.
I would be betting on Assad right now, not the Arab Spring in his place.
Why would they want this?
It seems like stability would be preferable, especially, like, at this moment, you know?
Maybe not.
Yeah.
We have to keep in mind that there are very big influential forces pushing for military intervention in Syria.
And part of it is because, you know, there's lots of neocon policy think tanks, like the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and, you know, all these other crackpot neocon want an intervention in Syria because, as I said, they want to cut off any allies in the region from Iran, which Syria is the number one.
And you know, they'd like to have a regime in Syria that more closely conforms to United States interests.
That's obvious.
And there's even more pressure to intervene, because, like I said, the Gulf states, like Saudi Arabia and Qatar and, you know, Bahrain and United Arab Emirates and all these governments, would side with Saudi Arabia, who very much dislikes Iran, and would like to do that as well.
You know, the Saudi king not so long ago, I think it was in the summer, said that nothing would weaken Iran more than losing Syria.
This is certainly in their purview.
They want this to happen.
And that should, you know, that's an even greater argument against intervention.
How much do you know about Turkish intervention?
They say the Free Syrian Army is there in Turkey, protected by NATO.
Yes.
As I said before, there are elements of the defectors in the Free Syrian Army that have a bit of a safe haven in Turkey.
Now, what's interesting is that Turkey was on good relations with the Assad government for quite a while, and those have deteriorated recently because of the ongoing violence.
But I've read recently Turkish statements which say that, you know, we're going to consider some sort of intervention, even if it's at a minimum allowing safe passage for civilians to come over the border until the fighting ends and stuff like this.
So that's at a minimum.
But probably it could go even more into arming the Free Syrian Army or, you know, sending in weapons or helping them out with intelligence or reconnaissance and stuff like this.
So we'll have to wait and see.
Nothing can really be easily substantiated at this point.
That's why journalism on Syria right now is so difficult.
Body counts are difficult.
Who's actually involved from the outside is difficult.
What the Assad government is actually doing and saying is difficult to find out.
Journalists aren't allowed in there, and this information is just not readily available.
Yeah, well, all right.
Now let me switch gears.
I agree with that, and it's unfortunate that there's so little original reporting coming out of there.
I'm so sick and tired of seeing some, you know, front group for MI6 obviously claiming this, that, and the other thing about numbers of casualties, things like that, without having any kind of real independent verification.
But you can start a war based on that if you want, you know.
Just see, for example, the last 10 or whatever.
All right.
Anyway, but I want to change gears to this other example of the same kind of thing.
Your blog here at antiwar.com/blog, Clapper's Clap Trap.
Now, he came out and said the right thing about Iran ain't making nukes, but then he came up with this thing about how Iran is more, meaning the supreme leader, Khamenei over there, is now more willing to conduct an attack inside the United States.
And if I'm reading between the lines of your writing correctly here, you were sort of surprised as I was to see that he would bring up this bogus, widely ridiculed so-called plot against the Saudi ambassador a few months back, and then base this entire, you know, headline generating assertion of Iranian terrorist attacks headed this way on top of such a bogus plot.
Yeah, it was interesting that he chose that plot.
And I also think it's interesting that this is, I think, as best as I can tell, the very first mention of that so-called Iranian plot since the dust settled in the days following its initial publicity.
They haven't said anything about it.
Not the Obama administration, not the State Department, not any of the intelligence community.
Nobody said a word.
And I can only guess that it's because they have found out that it was, you know, less than true, their initial assessment of it.
If they found more evidence that Iran actually was involved, it would be all over the headlines and we'd be hearing all about it.
But we haven't heard anything.
And now Clapper comes along and says, this is evidence that Iran is more apt to attack us.
He actually said, attack our interests abroad.
And that's a very important phrase, because what he's talking about there is our military bases in the region, our missile defense systems in the region, our, you know, the fact that we flood the Persian Gulf with fleets of Navy warships all the time.
He's talking about that's code for our ability to attack Iran.
The U.S. has been garrisoning Iran's surroundings with the most provocative militarism in the world.
And what he's saying is that if the tensions keep up, by the way, we're creating all the tension, then Iran could attack us.
First of all, probably not.
And second of all, what do you expect?
We've been pressuring them toward militarism for years now.
All right, well, I'm sorry we've got to leave it there, but I beg everybody to check out John Glaser.
He's been tearing it up for months and months now at antiwar.com/blog and also news.antiwar.com.
Appreciate it.
