07/18/11 – John Glaser – The Scott Horton Show

Alright, y'all welcome back to the show.
It's anti-war radio I'm Scott Horton and our next guest on the show today is John Glazer He is our new assistant editor at anti-war.com formerly with the American conservative and Cato and Did an economic plan for Israeli and Palestinian reconciliation at the Institute for Humane Studies now I ain't read it, but something tells me I ought to ask you about that first John welcome the show Thanks for having me.
Well, I'm happy to have you here.
Tell us a little bit about that.
I was involved in a Summer long conference with the Institute for Humane Studies this past summer and We did a little project me and some of some like five of my colleagues And basically saying that economic integration Would be central to any sort of long-term Reconciliation between Israel and Palestine sort of the old Saying that if if goods are crossing borders, then then troops won't it was sort of simple, but Yeah, it was it was it was a fun time All right.
Now I've been telling people on the show lately to get back to the anti-war.com blog this thing used to burn white hot back and say 2004 2005 and it's kind of had its own little Great Depression over there But you and this new intern Brian Byer who I have not met yet Have just completely brought the anti-war blog back to life It's anti-war.com/blog and I just want to thank you for that.
It's so great to have it I just kind of ran out.
I did a hundred blog entries before but that's about it Yeah, I understand I'm excited at the notion of having having a more active blog because I Think of the big reason people, you know Keep coming back to the website and if they don't come to the website finish have it on a reader You know, they get those updates.
So yeah, I'm excited and committed to the blog.
Cool, man.
Well, that's great It's great to have y'all both tearing it up over there And now so I want to talk about the top blog entry today, which is yours the politics of staying and I guess staying everywhere else goes without saying so you must be talking about Iraq here That's right.
That's right.
It was only like a few days ago that the New York Times Published the story that started by saying that the Prime Minister Nouriel Maliki is privately telling American officials that he wants The army to stay there after the deadline to pull out which is next year but At the same time it said that the Americans are privately secretly telling the Iraqi counterparts that they want to stay now there's a lot of sort of political and popular resistance to this Many of the much of the Parliament many of the politicians and the vast majority of the people Don't want an extension of u.s.
Troop presence and so that has led to Prime Minister Maliki vying for some sort of 3,000 member security force to train the Iraqi military and security forces But in order to do that in order to actually have it become law and have it become official.
He's got to ignore Parliament Reports are coming out that he is trying to bypass Parliament and just have it, you know This this agreement sort of status abortions agreement signed by his ministries and also that two to three thousand mark of trainers really means that it's going to be many more thousands because those trainers need security themselves and So on and so forth well in the state is building up their army of about 5,000 mercenaries Right, right.
I mean and really the Embassy that we built there is one of the biggest Embassies in the world biggest and most expensive.
It only opened in 2009 That was after the status of forces agreement that Bush signed with Maliki.
So these are not good signs that we're actually planning on leaving And it's a pity to having to have to keep reiterating this to the American people because they do forget But but it does need to be said over and over again and that the Iraq war was waged under false Pretenses, which is a nice way of saying lies in distortion And it was against a non-threatening state one that did not present any sort of clear and present danger to us by any fantastic mark of the imagination That makes it a war of aggression Which is when you wage a war without the justification of self-defense.
That's a that's a war crime under international law So it was fought at really Unimaginable human and financial costs and none of this obviously makes our current presence there any more legitimate Our current presence there as I said in the blog has about as much legitimacy as Obama's military intervention in Libya Which was agreed upon by no one that's to say it has no legitimacy zero.
None at all And if Obama and his minions in the national security state had anything other than the furtherance of the US Empire on their mind They would withdraw every last soldier out of Iraq today Yeah, I mean it really is amazing that really all they have to go on now is we stole it fair and square because pretty Much everybody has to admit the reality that so few of us were calling out back in 2002 and 3 that Iraq is the same piddly little third world country we've been bombing for a decade straight that doesn't even control the north and barely the south and How in the world could anyone believe they're a threat now that the illusion has worn off all they have is But we want to stay and that's it.
They don't even have an argument.
Oh, there's some al-qaeda guys or Iranians running around.
Come on Right.
That's another important thing.
Well, first of all, I'd like to say that Just that the fact that Iraq was Largely helpless in the face of the US military was one of the primary reasons we did decide to intervene There's lots of places the Bush administration would have liked to intervene and then overthrow but Iraq was virtually defenseless Well, that's what Wolfowitz said we could make an example out of them.
That's precisely right.
But then you also mentioned the Iranian Issue in Iraq, which is you know this past two weeks all sorts of high-level US officials have been crying about Iranian interference in Iraq arming Shiites and sort of Revolution I guards are crossing over the border and it was talked about in the press as if you know, these were Interferences within the American homeland and that's a very good reason for that.
That's because this Nationalism that justifies virtually every American intervention Translates to us owning the world That's how they perceive it.
We own the world and therefore our interference in Iraq, which is still ongoing Of course is not an interference because our army is always indigenous wherever we go And it was amazing that people were actually talking about the Iranian interference in Iraq as if Iraq was our own territory But it seems, you know, unfortunately, they might have accomplished that goal.
Well, you know, the thing is too is you go back to 2002 and you can find just Armando writing in fact go back to 1999 you find just Armando writing about the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, which are the only Iraqi dissidents who refuse to take American money so far They're just bankrolled by the Iranians and these are the people most likely to inherit this state there is the Iraqis who fled to Iran at the outbreak of the Iran-Iraq war and we're the Iraqi traitors and so and in 2002 and 2003 you can just google search anti-war calm for Scary the the initials there for Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq and read all about how this war will benefit Iran.
They're gonna run off with the south That was written about not just by Justin but many others Going back to before the war in the very beginning of the war and then all that came true they tried to install the Iraqi traders as best they could but they still installed the Shiite majority and They turn mctawd all solder from a hundred percent Arab Iraqi nationalist Shia leader into one who's lived in Iran for years because we chased him there and So now anything he does is said to be because the Iranians want him to we're supposed to just never mind We fought this whole war for Iran's friends that the Iraqi National Congress had their headquarters in Tehran for crying out loud I'm sorry.
I'm talking all over your interview.
We'll be right back.
Everybody's John Glazer assistant editor at anti-war.com/blog All right, y'all it's anti-war radio I'm Scott Horton.
I'm talking with John Glazer assistant editor at anti-war comm and He's been writing a lot of great stuff on the blog there anti-war comm/blog and We're talking about the Obama administration's push to stay in Iraq and The politics of that inside Iraq now Did you see John Gareth Porter's piece about mctawd all solder and how he had told Maliki that he will not Try to destroy him in the parliament or go to war In the event that the Americans stayed which I don't know if that amounts to yes votes and you know concerning his block inside the parliament or not, but Seems like he's backing down from a lot of his old stonewall position.
He's been holding this whole time Right, and I was a bit sort of skeptical as to why that was going on He was pretty stern in about a week before that news came out that if u.s.
Forces stayed beyond the withdrawal date.
He would unleash a campaign terrorism And he would fight back now It could have been politics.
It could have been sort of You know Having having to sort of deal with with the with the different political Alliances that are in Parliament and so on and so forth and curry favor with people Yeah, okay.
Maybe that he just figures he has the case so locked up in Parliament that he won't need those threats right now You know Right.
I mean Gary pretty much wrote the same that it's not entirely clear and he certainly Has a bunch of constituents who?
Would be very disappointed to find out that he didn't really mean it this whole time So he's going to have to do something Suffice it to say that The whatever sort of contingent forces remain in Iraq when they're about there surely will be some amount They're going to be there in a combatant Capacity despite the denials of u.s.
Officials that are saying right now would be non-combat so on and so forth They will have to continue the fight against an insurgency Whose main aim is to get them out of their country and there's no there's really no indication that The national security state in America will treat Iraq any differently than they've treated the various other Countries which they continue to occupy Why would they treat it any differently than South Korea where we still have 50 some odd thousand troops?
Why would you do any differently than Germany?
There's just no indication that they would and so we need to either come to grips with the fact That they they will be there and they will continue fighting or You know, I'm not sure what the alternative is Yeah, well, I'm already making bumper stickers that say in the Iraq war Ron Paul 2012 Because Obama's right doing it.
No, absolutely not.
Absolutely not I'm glad that Ron Paul is running again.
I think he sort of invigorated a distinct classic of anti-war people in 2008 when he reigned and I think He'll build on some of that momentum this time around and we'll get some more some more Colleagues in that in that endeavor.
Yeah Well, you know I'm not to get too personal or anything But I was really sick over the weekend and I had a fever like 103 or something I had this terrible nightmare that somehow the Empire had blundered into Libya of all places And I then when I woke up this morning I was feeling a little better and came to my senses and I remembered that No, we're friends with Muammar Qaddafi now ever since he turned over his garage sale junk that he never even tried to put together That maybe one day he could have built a couple of centrifuges out of back in 2003 So that's all good, right?
Everything is all set for that front.
That was just a dream.
Don't you worry about a thing?
Yeah, actually it's hard to even keep track like I remember back in the Bush administration I felt like okay this can't get much worse He's launching a global war on terrorism so on and so forth But now especially with Jeremy Scahill's excellent reporting at the nation Exposing the CIA secret prisons Which confine uncharged individuals and terribly inhumane conditions without access to legal counsel in Somalia?
Not to mention the fact that we're training and supporting There in Somali intelligence agency, which is basically just a round of thugs And JSOC has done on-the-ground operations there.
I mean, this is Obama's like sixth theater of war.
It's unbelievable Yeah, I mean I was telling people very recently that Well, it's five and a half depending on how you count Somalia and then scale comes out with this thing making it clear that no That's six.
That's a full six right there and by the way, I interviewed him last Thursday and hopefully the archive will be up on the website tonight anti-war comm/radio because you know a good 20 minutes to Make his case and it's a it's a hell of a great report If anybody missed it, you can find the link actually from anti-war comm/blog John's piece on it is called the war in Somalia and has a link right there to to scale's article in the nation and as well as excerpts of the most important parts and particularly, you know, my favorite part of the whole narrative is the microcosm of the whole war on terrorism in Somalia as Recounted in this block quote that you that you took from the nation piece here about how America supported the warlords for no good reason provoked the creation of the Islamic Courts Union support of the warlords some more helped the Islamic Courts Union solidify their power and kick them out of the country then made the Ethiopians invade the place which only created al-shabaab, which is now the excuse for American intervention in Somalia circle circa You know halfway through 2011 here as though all it started yesterday It's very circular and it you're right It is a little microcosm of the whole war on terror because it's bad the war in Somalia is really troubling on two levels one Obviously the lawlessness of the rendition program in Somalia and the and the you know Caging people and horrible conditions without charge or trial so and so forth all of this Contributes obviously to a you know, very ugly humanitarian crisis there But on the other hand, that's the first thing The second thing is that it merely perpetuates the problem that the national security state is ostensibly trying to fight against That is creating more enemies and and furthering this sort of blowback potential Which we'll have to continue dealing with if our government continues to intervene in every corner of the world Particularly Muslim based countries that that have a history of distaste for American military intervention It's amazing how much we can engage in exactly the types of activities that We are ostensibly trying to counter which is you know, anti-american Islamist terrorism.
It's amazing.
What what goes on?
Well, and now I wanted to get back to this on that same note this piece about Libya apathy enables war Will help in Libya occupation at anti-war comm/blog and you talk about Stephen Waltz piece over foreign policy Whatever happened in the war in Libya and he says in there, you know watching how this story is just completely fallen off of the television That proves how unnecessary it all is that ought to be the number one Talking point of those opposed to Libya war is Americans don't even care at all about what's going on in Libya We got no reason to bomb Libya at all We're not even paying attention to it at all And but the other side of that is there are some people who probably would like to know a bit more about what's going on In Libya, but who because that very reason they don't have the opportunity because it doesn't matter to the people on TV So they just you know, they don't get to see it on the news in any real Explained way, you know, maybe a couple of quotes out of context or whatever from some military officials You know Eventually be the necessary and What will help in that endeavor of the American Empire is for Americans to be completely apathetic about it For Americans to not pay attention to get bored or to let their Their anger over over this travesty sort of fizzle out and dissolve and it's precisely the type of thing That the national security state relies upon because otherwise they couldn't do what they do If people actually stood up and were were vigilant against this sort of stuff It wouldn't happen.
It reminded me of a of a piece that was released by WikiLeaks a CIA report Regarding public opinion abroad not and not domestically in America, but abroad on the war in Afghanistan It was it was titled public apathy enables leaders to ignore voters.
That's exactly what they want Yeah, and here we are and you know ten years on hell, they're teenagers now.
They've known nothing but war their whole life We're all just so used to it.
It's just another one, right?
It's just number six now number seven, you know Pretty soon they start adding up to real numbers here.
I don't know.
All right.
Well, thanks very much Everybody go look at John Glazer's work at anti-war comm/blog