For Antiwar.com and Chaos Radio 95.9 in Austin, Texas, I'm Scott Horton and this is Antiwar Radio.
And our next guest on the show today is Robert Dreyfuss.
He writes for TheNation.com, well, and the magazine, but his great blog, The Dreyfuss Report, is there at TheNation.com slash blogs slash Dreyfuss.
Welcome back to the show, Bob.
How are you?
I'm good.
Thanks.
Glad to be here.
I'm happy to have you here.
Lots of important stuff to talk about.
First of all, your confrontation, that's what I'll characterize it as, with General Petraeus, the commander of CENTCOM, which is, I guess, all the land between Morocco and India or something like that.
The guy in charge of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Pakistan, etc.
And I'll just let you tell the story.
This is extremely important to me.
Well, I wouldn't necessarily describe it as a confrontation, but he was giving a speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington and was taking questions afterwards.
It was kind of a conversation with one of their hosts.
And I got to ask him a question.
And I started to ask him about President Obama's announcement at West Point that he was going to start ordering the withdrawal of U.S. forces in Afghanistan in July of 2011.
And it seemed like Petraeus was confused even about the date because he interrupted me and he said, well, wait a minute, August 2011.
And I said, August?
And he said, yeah, you know, don't push me, you know, to the left on this.
By left, he meant, you know, sooner.
And I was kind of surprised that the general in charge of this stuff doesn't even know that the president said it's July and not August.
But more importantly, he really tried to fuzz up this deadline.
And that's been happening with some administration officials since Obama's speech.
Of course, Obama said he's going to send more troops there, 30,000 more, which are going to be arriving all year, it seems.
And then they're supposed to accomplish enough in 18 months that we can start transitioning to, you know, Afghan forces and withdrawing.
And Petraeus emphasized in his answer to me that this is conditions based.
In other words, he implied that, well, we don't really need to withdraw if things aren't going so well.
Although, you know, kind of like Iraq, I'm always confused about what that conditions means.
Because with Iraq, you remember, the Bush administration argued that if things are going badly, we can't withdraw because, you know, they're going badly.
But if things are going well, they argued we can't withdraw because things are going so well, we can't afford to mess it up.
Right.
So I'm not sure what even conditions based means.
But in any case, well, both of those things, I'm sure.
Yeah, well, in any case, it's clear that and Obama himself has said this, that there's a division in the administration about setting deadlines.
And, and so my point about the July thing is that, you know, it may or may not be conditions based, and it may be a little bit fuzzy.
But the reality is that the President has least said, you know, this is some kind of marker, this is some kind of deadline.
And it seems to me it's worthwhile holding him to account.
That is, you know, making him follow up on what he said, and just start asking what kind of exit strategy they have, and how are they working toward that goal?
And what plans are they making?
And well, Bob, I mean, it seems to me that this comes down to the confusion about even the basis of the policy.
I mean, there's the counterinsurgency doctrine set, right, that we've heard so much about.
And they believe we have to stay there for decades and decades and build a modern nation state out of the place, change entire societies, as john nagel says.
And then there's the policy that as you point out, Obama announced at his West Point speech, which is we're going to surge in there.
And then we're going to start pulling them out in July 2011.
Because I have no intention of an open ended occupation of Afghanistan, which is the actual policy.
Is it one policy is the Pentagon's and the other is the President's?
Or is Obama just shining a song when he says stuff like that, and he actually has accepted the coin doctrine?
You know, I, it's hard to tell.
I don't think when Obama came into office, he really understood that the counterinsurgency doctrine, which has seized the military's imagination, was as comprehensive as its proponents believe it to be, in other words, that it isn't just, you know, counterinsurgency in the traditional sense of we're going to go fight the insurgents.
But it's a comprehensive effort to rebuild a nation and its economic and social infrastructure from the ground up, to clear and hold and build and transform the nation through, you know, valley by valley, village by village in Afghanistan to create something that isn't there now.
And I think when Obama appointed McChrystal, General Stan McChrystal, as head of our forces over there, he probably didn't know quite what he was getting into.
So they had this big review in the fall of our policy.
And it seems to me that the White House tried to split the difference, you know, to say, we'll buy your counterinsurgency strategy.
But we're going to give you 18 months to prove that it can work.
And if you believe that it can, you know, turn things around quickly, then everybody will be happy.
If you believe that it's not going to turn things around quickly, then I think they're going to have some very, very hard decisions to make at the end of this year.
Because by then, it'll be clear, I think, you know, whether it has a prayer of working or not.
And, and if it's not, then I think it's going to, you know, be a real showdown for Obama.
And I guess I think about Obama is that he'd like to be the president who ended the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in his first term.
So I think when he runs for reelection, you know, basically two years from now, will be 2012.
I think he'd like to go to Americans and say, when I came in, I inherited these two messy wars.
And I turned them around.
And now our troops have come home from Iraq.
And they're going to be coming home this year from Afghanistan or something like that.
And, you know, he may be living in a naive world where he thinks the military can deliver this neat package turnaround by July of next year.
But you know, I'm pretty skeptical.
Well, you know, me too.
I'll tell you this.
And because you brought up Iraq a couple of times there.
And this is an important segue into that same topic as well.
And this is something that you bring up in your most recent blog entry there at the Dreyfus Report, a manifesto ending the war.
And it's basically about what you just said, holding the president to account.
At least he said he was going to start drawing them out in 2011.
If he's, you know, decided without telling us that he's going to go along with the Korea plan of permanent occupation or something, we have to at least hold him to what he said.
And you point out in there something along the lines of what's my sort of little pet project, not that I'm really accomplishing anything with it, but what I call the next political realignment in this country, where you really have, it probably wouldn't work out, you know, as far as the two party system goes, we got to kind of try to win over both of them.
But basically, it's rather than having all these divisions between, you know, cultural liberals and conservatives on the left and the right this way or that, what we really need to have is a split between us and them.
And we'll have the party of permanent war and empire and national debt and civil liberties violations versus the rest of us who want peace and who want our Bill of Rights and who are willing to put aside, hopefully, some cultural issues and realign around kind of a first things first mentality of ending this empire, first and foremost, Bob.
Well, I don't think that project is going very far, but I wish you luck.
I mean, look, Americans don't organize their politics around foreign policy.
This election this year, for instance, is not going to revolve around anything to do with empire, it's going to revolve around the faltering economy, the deficit jobs, all of the things, you know, the health care fight and so on.
And those are going to be issues one through 14.
And then maybe we'll get to, you know, other issues involving foreign policy after that.
So and on those issues on these domestic issues, you're just not going to get the left and right to unite, it's not going to happen.
I mean, the right wing wants to abolish Social Security and Medicare.
And, you know, you have nuts like Ron Paul talking about abolishing the tax system, and then the left wants to enhance these programs and, and even move toward a single payer system for health care and expand Social Security.
So look, let's, let's be real here.
Yet on foreign policy, I do think there's a basis for agreement, not only among the left and anti war left and liberals, but also centrists, and, you know, Republican realists, and various conservatives, who think that foreign policy is distracting from, you know, their anti tax crusades, and so forth.
So you'll find even people on the right, you know, the governor quiz types and others who were unhappy about the adventure in Iraq, because they thought it was an improved, in fact, to be undermining the Bush administration on things that they cared about.
Well, you know, I'm really sorry to hear you call Ron Paul and not I think you must not know enough about him, because he said over and over and over again, what he thinks needs to happen is that we need to abolish the empire.
And then he doesn't even want to fight with the left over welfare state type, you know, Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid and all those things.
He says the number one best way to protect those things is to end the war.
And on the tax thing, all he said was, rather than creating trillions of dollars out of nothing to bail out bankers, we should have just cut the income tax for a period of three years, it would have cost less, and it would have put the money in the pockets of the people who are hurting rather than the people who are already rich.
So it seems to me like you ought to be able to find a lot of common ground with that, Bob, I know you're not going to agree with Ron on a lot of things.
But he seems to say, I don't want to fight with you about, you know, domestic, social program type stuff.
I want to agree with you about ending the wars.
Now we can afford to protect those things.
I agree with him on the stuff that I agree with him on.
And I disagree with him on stuff that I don't.
So that's perfectly fair.
But you call them a nut, like, he's a nut, which he's clearly not.
Well, I think you and I disagree about that.
I think he's a fringe character who's, you know, theories are kind of half cocked.
And so I don't have a lot of respect for him.
You know, and what can I say?
I mean, but he's the leader of nothing anyway.
I mean, he's not a significant force in Congress, and he doesn't really have a great deal of influence where the muscle is in this country.
Well, that's certainly true.
Where the muscle is in this country is elsewhere.
And I think you can put together on an issue like Afghanistan, you know, a very powerful coalition of people who have given up on the notion that we can fight a counterinsurgency war, and who don't think that a crusade against Al Qaeda is, you know, should be the motivating center of our foreign policy.
Now, on the latter thing, I think Obama has, by and large, you know, recognized that war on terror is not a useful concept.
But he is, unfortunately, trying to, you know, cover his behind in case we're attacked, you know, in case the some lone bomber or Al Qaeda spinoff or somebody, you know, does blow up an airplane or, you know, something less spectacular.
He doesn't want to be paying a political price for that.
So he's certainly trying to portray himself as a warrior against Al Qaeda.
But on the foreign policy more broadly, I think Obama is trying to turn the ship around just way, way slower than I would do.
I mean, he's certainly not, you know, a Bush.
He doesn't, I don't think he and his administration are motivated by the notions of unilateral use of American power.
And, you know, the role of the military is the main instrument of foreign policy and the need to plant America's flag.
Well, I mean, if that's really the case, then Petraeus is almost, you know, at least bordering on insubordinate, if he's saying that now, you know, the smart policy is to stay forever and these kinds of things.
I mean, is it that Obama hasn't made himself clear to Petraeus that no, really, I want to end these wars?
Well, I think the military is pretty much okay with the way Iraq is going.
As far as Afghanistan, I don't think Obama has been particularly clear.
There is a great deal of insubordination, I believe, from Petraeus and McChrystal.
And that was really evident over the summer when McChrystal was on a kind of a one-man campaign to force Obama's hand, leaking documents and giving interviews and speeches in which he said that Biden's plan wouldn't work for Afghanistan and everything else.
And I think both Obama and Gates, you know, read the riot act to McChrystal.
Obama did it privately on that airplane in Copenhagen, and Gates did it quite publicly a day or two later, where he said, you know, these kinds of comments should be made in private as recommendations to the commander in chief and not in public.
So they kind of slapped McChrystal down.
And even Petraeus has referred to that kind of sheepishly saying, you know, we can't have this kind of open insubordination.
Yet, it does seem to me clear that the military is lobbying still, you know, somewhat to some degree in public for what it wants.
And perhaps because Obama doesn't feel like he's, you know, got his feet planted firmly on the ground when it comes to dealing with the military, he hasn't really stood up to them, I think, as aggressively as he could be.
And don't forget that, you know, they're in alliance through the military, by and large, with the bulk of the Republican Party, which has, you know, seen its mission to destroy Obama's presidency and on foreign policy to blame him for being, you know, too accommodating.
And he's talking to our enemies, and he's dealing with Iran, and he's, you know, so they're trying to portray Obama as surrendering America to terrorism and its enemies.
And in that sense, I think they would make political common cause with the military if Obama challenged them.
In fact, there was even talk that Petraeus, as you know, you've probably discussed on your show, could be a Republican candidate for president in 2012.
I think, in fact, if he ran, he'd be a strong candidate.
And I doubt he's, you know, given up that option.
Now you're scaring the living daylights out of me.
And I know you're right.
I mean, there's been leaks like that for years and years now that he wants to run for president.
The first quote about it was, well, 2008 is too soon.
So, you know, but I need help interpreting this news story I'm looking at here.
It's from Aswad Al-Iraq.
And it says, Sauder says Hakeem wants occupation forces to stay.
So this goes back to your old Badr-Sauder split from way back then.
But I'll tell you, well, it might become apparent why I'm confused.
So Sauder is denouncing Badr, the Hakeems, for wanting to let some of the Ba'athists stay in the government and is supporting the purge of the Sunnis from the election rolls.
And I guess why I'm confused, I know this is overly simplified, so I'm sure you can straighten me out with some context here.
But I thought that Sauder had a much closer relationship with Sunni nationalists who were and what they had in common was they were the Iraqi nationalists who wanted America out more than anything.
That's the old that's the old news about Sauder that goes back three or four years.
And so and then hang on, there's one more part of this, which is Sauder is saying that for the Hakeems to want the Ba'athists and Sunni parties to be in the government is a way to help get the Americans to stay longer.
So I'm confused, please help.
Well, first of all, the idea that Sauder is a nationalist is kind of passé.
I mean, in January of 2007, at the beginning of the surge, Sauder disappeared, went to Iran, he's basically been living in Iran for the past three years.
He's, he seems to have emerged, thrown his lot in pretty much entirely with the pro-Iran parties.
And he has formed an electoral coalition with the entire spectrum of the Shiite religious parties, including the Supreme Council, including the Hakeem party.
The Sadrists and the Hakeems are the two main anchors of this electoral coalition for the elections in on March 7, in Iraq.
And they've joined with Ahmed Chalabi, who is one of the characters who has also been very close to Tehran for the last several years, and who helped orchestrate the development of this electoral coalition.
Prime Minister Maliki, who is also a religious Shiite, has opted not to join this alliance.
He was part of it last time around.
He's tried to portray himself in the last couple of years as a a nationalist, more open to secular politics, but his roots and his party and his heart are still with the religious parties.
And he himself, Maliki, is also pretty close to Iran.
What happened this month is an electoral commission, heir to the old debasification commission in Iraq, is headed up by a guy named Ali Alami, who is part of Ahmed Chalabi's party, the old Iraqi National Congress.
And he and his commission announced a purge of more than 500 candidates, mostly Sunnis, it seems, and also some Shiites, but on the grounds that they were too pro-Ba'athist or pro-Arab nationalist, or were propagandists for the Ba'ath party, or members of the old security services of the Saddam era.
So on this basis, these hundreds and hundreds of candidates were barred from running in the election, which really calls into question the whole legitimacy, in fact, of this coming election.
If there's a disagreement within the Shiite coalition, it's probably a secondary one.
I mean, I haven't seen the article that you're referring to, but they may be, you know, jockeying for advantage.
But I think they're collectively worried about the fact that the Shiite religious movement in Iraq may not do that well in the elections, despite support and backing from Iran, maybe even because of it, because a lot of Iraqis are not pro-Iran.
They don't like Iran.
There was a war between those countries 20-25 years ago that lasted for eight years that the Iraqis and the Iranians are not exactly friends.
And so there's a lot of sentiment against Iran inside Iraq.
And in the provincial elections a year ago, a lot of the religious parties suffered big defeats, the Shiite religious parties in particular.
So maybe they're afraid that they're not going to do so well in this election, they hope to get Maliki to join them, and he, you know, is running independently.
So they might find themselves really big losers in six weeks when the elections are held.
So that's why they resorted, I think, to this purging effort.
As far as getting the Americans to stay, I mean, that's always been a political football.
I think most of the Iraqi political establishment, for one reason or another, would like the US to stick around for a while.
As long as they think that the US, you know, helps create a certain amount of stability in which they can thrive.
And the minute they think that they can run the show on their own, then, you know, they're definitely going to want the US out.
I think the only person who thinks that he might be able to run the show on his own right now is Maliki.
And that's in part because Maliki has spent the last several years as prime minister building up a relationship to the Iraqi military, putting his own generals in place, and crossing his fingers and hoping that the Iraqi army can, you know, emerge as his own kind of private militia.
Maliki never really had a party with a militia, whereas the Sadrists and the Badr people and many of the Sunnis, and of course, the Kurds, they all have their own paramilitary groups.
So I don't know, I think it's, you know, it's a very fast changing situation.
A lot of people are making alliances and breaking them all in advance of these elections coming up.
And, and it, it's hard to simplify it, because it's a very complex situation.
I think people who watch Iraq very closely are still kind of scratching their heads trying to, you know, figure out where all this is going.
Well, you know, my major concern, I think that of most of the audience is that the Pentagon and the Obama administration are going to stick by the deal that George Bush signed at the end of his presidency that, I guess it shouldn't go without saying that Maliki stuck by his guns and refused to let any permanent bases in that status of forces agreement, when Bush wanted 58 of them.
Maliki said no, throughout 2008, Bush signed on to the thing said New Year's end of 2011, we will have all of our soldiers out.
Do you think that that's possible?
You know, I talked to Michael Hastings on the show the other day, and he just, he was in Turkey, just left Baghdad a couple days before.
And he was saying he thinks the military is determined to stay forever, at least in Kurdistan or something that, that the Korean model, they figure they lost more than 4,000 guys, they've earned it.
Well, I don't know, I don't, I don't see any evidence for that.
I mean, I think, you know, in a way, the mainstream of the US military feels like the war in Iraq was a great burden and stretch them to the near breaking point.
And they had to keep recycling troops in and out of there so fast, they didn't have rest time at home, the way they're supposed to have, they, they, they suffered a lot.
And now they're being asked to escalate in Afghanistan, and, you know, ramp up to nearly, I guess, over 100,000 forces there by, by this year, so they need to get out of Iraq.
In order to do that, they just simply can't do both.
Now, that's a separate question from whether there might be an effort to maintain, you know, a military base or two in Kurdistan, and things like that.
I don't think that's likely because I think Iraq is too nationalist to, to agree to it.
And I don't quite see the value in it.
You know, I don't see that this is a critical strategic point for the United States anymore.
What's clear is, we ain't going to get Iraq's oil.
I mean, the new Iraqi government has made a series of deals now with international oil companies.
And if you look at the list of companies that have gotten Iraqi contracts in the last year or so, you find companies like Russia's Luke Oil, you'll find a couple of Chinese companies on the list.
You find companies from Norway, from Spain and Italy, from Angola, Gazprom from Russia is on the list, Shell, of course.
And, you know, very little in the way of American oil companies getting in on the, the bonanza that Iraq could be because Iraq probably has as much oil as Saudi Arabia does.
And, and they're talking about increasing production from 2 million barrels now per day to something like 8 or 10 million over the next decade.
So, I mean, the idea that the United States was going to get its hands on Iraq oil is really passe at this point.
So you think if you had to flip a coin, you'd call it heads and think that the war really is going to end by the end of 2011, the occupation will be over?
Well, close to it.
As I say, I mean, you know, I'm sure we'll try to keep forces there for training purposes and, and, you know, keep our hand in Iraqi affairs.
It, but, you know, maybe no more than we do in, you know, several dozen other countries around the world.
I mean, the United States is not exactly shy about sending military missions abroad for all kinds of purposes.
And so I guess we'll, we'd like to have Iraq be kind of in that column, as opposed to Iraq be in the column of, you know, Iran, where we don't have a military presence or, or, you know, China, or, you know, you can name other countries where the US isn't involved.
So, but I don't think, I mean, I think we'd like to get our troops out of there now if this election blows up.
And if Iraq turns into a, a, you know, as starts to descend into violence, and even, you know, reach Civil War levels this year, which is, well, I guess a, you know, growing possibility may be small now, but certainly a lot more likely than it was a few months ago, then I don't know that could change the calculation.
And you might see the Obama administration calculating, well, we know now we need to stick around there a little bit, because we can't afford to pull out and have the Republicans blame us for having messed this up.
All right.
Well, I really appreciate your time on the show today, Bob.
I know you got to go, but I've learned a lot.
Thanks.
Thanks.
Thank you.
All right, everybody.
That's the great Bob Dreyfuss.
The book is called Devil's Game, How the United States Helped to Unleash Fundamentalist Islam.
And the blog is thenation.com slash blogs slash Dreyfuss.
And we'll be right back after this.
