All right y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's anti-war radio.
I'm Scott Horton and our next guest on the show is Roy Gutmann from McClatchy Newspapers on the line from Constantinople.
Believe that or not.
Welcome to the show.
How's it going?
Uh, pretty good.
Actually, it stopped being Constantinople quite some time ago, but I'm happy to call it that.
Or the alternative is Byzantium.
Oh yeah, Byzantium.
There you go.
Cool.
Lots of very interesting history there.
Asia Minor, right?
That's what they call it.
Uh, yes.
In fact, it's where Asia and Europe meet.
And it's got something of everything.
Yeah.
Well, I don't mean to insult anyone who calls it Istanbul.
That's fine.
I just really was only remarking on how fascinating it still is to me that I can actually talk to you on the phone from Austin, Texas, uh, from there.
And I know this technology has existed for like 70 years or whatever, 90 or something, but still, it's incredible.
Yep.
And it gets better every year, except I think that on the whole cell phones have made a decline in the quality of telephone conversations, but still we live with them and even they're getting a little bit better.
Yep.
And you know what?
Nobody writes a good letter anymore, but oh well.
All right.
So, uh, here's the deal.
Uh, Roy is a reporter for McClatchy Newspapers and he's been spending a lot of time in Iraq lately and covering a lot of different parts of, uh, the current situation there.
And, uh, now this issue that I want to start with here, Roy, is, uh, it's kind of narrow maybe in most people's minds if they don't know that much about it, but I think it's really important.
And that is the status of the Mujahedini cult members at Camp Ashraf and whether in fact they are being allowed to leave and, uh, provided safe passage out of the country and they're not facing a Waco-style massacre by Nouri al-Maliki Clinton up there.
Uh, you know, it's, the situation's really in flux.
Uh, they, uh, the, uh, UN, uh, special representative reached an agreement with the Iraqi government on Christmas Day, I think it was, and that was, uh, to provide, uh, for, uh, safe passage for, uh, the Camp Ashraf, uh, residents to, uh, what was known as Camp Liberty, the American base at Baghdad airport.
Uh, and starting as early as possible.
Now the, uh, Ashraf people signed on, uh, actually the day I left Baghdad, which was, uh, Wednesday, last Wednesday.
And, um, they agreed to move 400 of their numbers, uh, uh, to, uh, Liberty, uh, as quickly as possible.
The problem was they did state that everybody was going to move with all of their movable assets, including automobiles.
Uh, and that was not actually part of the UN agreement with the, uh, Iraqi government.
Uh, and I think because of that, it turned out none of those cars have license plates.
Uh, apparently the Iraqi government wouldn't give them license plates, uh, over the last several years.
Uh, so it's a very complicated, bureaucratic, ridiculous, uh, thing, uh, which now seems to be holding up their removal.
Now, you have to understand, Scott, that they're not actually being permitted to leave or prevented from leaving, uh, you know, by the Iraqi government because, um, some of them have papers, as many as 900 of them have papers of the 3,400 people.
And we may, we might want to explain to your listeners also who these people really are.
Uh, the problem is, uh, besides those 900, almost nobody else does have papers.
They have to be, uh, they have to be inspected by the UN to see whether they deserve refugee status.
And then they have to find a country that will accept them.
So there's many steps, but anyway, if you want to, we can, we can also discuss this, who these guys are.
Sure.
Um, yeah, I mean, uh, my concern, um, well, I have two concerns about the MEK, I guess.
First of all, uh, their use, uh, against Iran by the, uh, American and Israeli intelligence agencies.
And then secondly, though, I don't want to see their rank and file who are basically, you know, stranded behind enemy lines in Iraq, formerly protected by America.
I don't want to see, you know, all these women and children, regular people, uh, get massacred as America leaves.
That would be a horrible Bay of Pigs type story there to happen.
We don't want that.
So, you know, I'm interested in, in, yeah, if you want to talk about who they are as well, whatever angle on it.
Sure.
Well, it's just, it's just that, uh, you know, they're, they're a, a group of people who, uh, who have gotten stranded.
They are Iranians.
They are anti, uh, regime Iranians.
And, uh, during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, they, uh, they joined Saddam Hussein and fought as an, as a military unit, uh, against the Iranians.
Now they were located in a town or they like to call it Camp Ashraf, um, where they've really been since the 1980s, almost, you know, the numbers have gone up and down.
Um, and, uh, when, uh, the Americans came in, uh, there was a claim that, that some of them had fought against the Americans for a time during the American invasion.
I'm not quite sure.
I've never quite sorted that one out, but in any case, um, they, the Iranian government, you know, which does have influence in Iraq, it is the neighbor and a bigger, the, the big neighbor, uh, and it, uh, and it is demanded that these people be removed from Camp Ashraf near the border where they were, uh, putting out at times anti-Iranian, uh, propaganda.
Now, uh, they, so they're, they're an anomaly.
They're, they're really in a, in a unusual location.
And for the longest time they insisted that if they were to be removed from, from anywhere in Iraq, they would have to be to another country and as a group.
But there's no way that nobody wants them, uh, you know, as a militant, uh, armed formation or the fact that they have to give up their arms to the Americans, uh, no other country wants them in that form.
So in August, uh, the members of the group, I think, uh, led by, uh, Mrs. Rajavi, who is there, uh, the political leader in Paris, uh, agreed to, uh, to individual, uh, refugee to, to seek refugee status as individuals, which means that the group itself can no longer be because once, once you, they get refugee status in various countries, they'll probably be enjoined by those governments, uh, not to take part in some kind of a militant operation against Iran, uh, as part of, as a condition for, uh, asylum.
So, uh, that's the process that's, that should have begun by now.
It should have begun about three days ago that they should have gone to Camp Liberty, uh, near the, near the airport and they should have moved there and the, and the processing should have begun.
Uh, but from everything I can tell, it hasn't.
All right.
Well, I mean, I guess we'll just have to wait and see there, but so Rajavi, I mean, obviously she's got a real problem there.
If, um, if the group is basically going to be de facto abolished, uh, just by the, the members of it being allowed to leave the country.
Individually.
Exactly.
Yeah.
Okay.
There's a real, uh, I have to tell you how worried I was personally as a, as a reporter in, in Baghdad, that something more was going to happen to them.
I think it was in April or so that, uh, that the Iraqi army operate, mounted an operation at Camp Ashraf, um, and, uh, they basically were slicing back the size of the camp by one third, uh, roughly.
And they took that territory, uh, from, uh, the people who lived there, um, and in the process killed, uh, 35, uh, uh, people who, as far as I know, were not armed and, and were not threatening them.
How many people are there in Camp Ashraf now?
Do you know?
Well, um, the number is not, I don't have the precise number, but it's on the order of 3,200 to 3,400.
So when you talk about four, there was an agreement that 400 would be allowed to start this move that, and that hadn't even started yet.
That's still only as a small fraction.
Yeah.
So the fear, everybody's fear was that if there was no agreement by the end of the year, that the Iraqi army under, uh, and most of these people are civilians, correct?
This is not just an army.
Uh, you know, I, it's hard to say, uh, you know, it's kind of a gray zone.
They were an armed, uh, formation.
Uh, they were a, uh, armored unit.
In fact, they had, I think, armored vehicles, uh, at one point.
Uh, they, um, they are no longer armed, but I think they are still organized as if they were a military unit.
And that was one of the problems.
And that includes the women.
And then our guests are all the kids just shipped off to Europe somewhere already, or what, how many children are there?
Do you know?
I don't know.
Uh, it's not a huge number, but it's, uh, it must be at least a hundred.
Um, I don't know.
Uh, you know, and also there's, they have a code of, of, uh, operation there.
Some people call them a cult.
I mean, the American government and certainly, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, Roy, we got to hold it right there and take this break.
Uh, but we can talk more about the MBK and Maliki and other things on the other side of this.
It's a Roy Gutman from McClatchy Newspapers, y'all.
All right, y'all welcome back to the show.
It's anti-war radio.
I'm Scott Horton.
I'm talking with Roy Gutman from McClatchy Newspapers.
He's been spending a lot of time in Iraq lately.
I guess he's got New Year's off in Istanbul, uh, on the phone from there today.
And now, uh, if you want, there's anything about the MBK you really want to get to, uh, here, uh, please feel free.
Otherwise I'm going to change the subject, Roy.
Sure.
Oh, okay, good.
Then, uh, I'm interested in, uh, Maliki's attempted consolidation of power, uh, to what degree, uh, that is happening and to what degree you think it'll be successful.
Could you please explain your, uh, as best you know about it?
Well, uh, it's, it's a complex, uh, it's a simple sounding question and it has a complex answer.
Uh, it's just like Iraqi politics.
You've got, uh, different, uh, sects in Islam, uh, Shia and Sunni.
You've got Kurds and different ethnic, uh, group altogether.
Um, and you've got all sorts of divisions, uh, within each of the groups.
Um, and they have sort of an all party government right now.
The American, uh, ambassador in the American embassy, uh, at the end of 2010 was very strongly in favor of, uh, which, uh, groups, both Maliki's, uh, Shia, uh, parties, uh, the state of law party, uh, they, or, uh, block, they call it.
And, uh, one of his chief rivals, Ayat Alawi's, uh, um, Iraqia party.
Alawi is a, is a Shia, but a secular Shia.
And he's, uh, linked up with all of the, uh, Sunni, uh, parties pretty much.
And this is a, you know, a very cumbersome, very top heavy, uh, uh, kind of government with like as many as 50 cabinet posts because they handle distribute them to nearly everybody.
Uh, and you know, no cabinet can work with, with that many people.
And frankly, they've been having a very hard time making decisions.
Uh, Alawi actually won the election in terms of numbers of seats in parliament, uh, narrowly, uh, over, over, uh, over Maliki's, uh, state of law.
But, um, because, uh, you know, the numbers of voters was a different story.
And so anyway, to find a good compromise, the Americans felt that there should be well, sort of a single, uh, government in incorporating Alawi and Maliki.
This is, um, this is like, uh, you know, political engineering, uh, that, uh, uh, you know, sounds good on paper or reads well, but it's very, very impractical.
So I, I have, I think we have to have a certain sympathy for Maliki in trying to simplify the system and basically, uh, to, to kick out Alawi, uh, and, uh, you know, reduces role completely.
And, and which means, however, uh, that of, of Sunni, uh, Sunni politicians.
And there you have a problem because once you kick, um, you know, one big, big, uh, ethnic or sectarian group out of your government, um, you know, Iraq relies, it requires everybody's agreement and for everything, anything to function there.
And, uh, so there, there's great risk in what he's trying to do.
Um, he's actually, so the, and the means by which he's doing it are, you know, add a huge dimension of problems.
Um, he, uh, I don't think that this was totally intended, uh, in time to, to, to the, uh, ending of the American military presence, but it certainly coincided with it that Maliki, uh, publicly raised charges against his own, uh, you know, or the vice president of the country.
Who seemed to anticipate it, right, Roy?
I mean, he came out, uh, just a couple of days before that happened saying Maliki's making himself a dictator.
Well, it's true.
That was another one.
Uh, that was another Sunni named, uh, Mutlaq who, uh, was, was doing it just as, as Maliki was visiting Washington.
In fact, uh, it's really the height of improper behavior.
Oh, I'm sorry.
I thought it was the same guy, the vice president.
No, no, it wasn't.
And so, uh, Mutlaq declared that he was a dictator.
And then later about a week or so later, he said, I erred.
I didn't state, I didn't state myself clearly enough.
I said that he was a dictator like Saddam Hussein, except the Saddam Hussein accomplished things while a dictator.
Maliki can't.
And so he added insult to injury.
But no, the Mutlaq cases is, uh, is parallel to, but slight, but separated from the main case against Hashemi.
And the case against Hashemi is that, uh, here is the man who's the vice president of the country.
He's got, you know, a big security detail, like all these people, like, you know, you have 300, uh, police, uh, or military guys in his, uh, detail.
And the claim by Maliki is that, um, that Hashemi's detail was involved.
Members of them were involved in assassination squads, uh, directed mostly against Shia politicians.
Now, uh, I don't know, you know, I haven't seen the actual evidence that, which is based largely on confessions by, um, members of the, uh, security detail.
Uh, but I think there's some, there's not just smoke there.
I think there may be some fire, uh, you know, in, in, in the whole thing, but Maliki, what he did, and this really came to a head, as I said, just about the time that Maliki came to the U.S., uh, what Maliki did was something that was really, uh, bad form politically.
Uh, he took the confessions of, uh, several of these guards and, and, and his, I don't know if he did it directly or through some of his subordinates, cause he, he is the acting interior minister.
The interior ministry had these confessions and they put them on the air, but they put them selectively on the air.
They not only, the, the individual three guards, not only said that they were taking part in assassination squadron, they described several of the, uh, occasions, but then they turned and they said, the person totally responsible for this is Tariq al-Hashemi, the, uh, vice president.
Now, you know, they may have even intended what they said, but to have them do this, you know, as an excerpt from an interrogation that might've gone on for eight hours, or to have a, a three minute excerpt that just happens to, uh, implicate the vice president, I think was, uh, extremely selective and, and really highly dangerous, uh, kind of, uh, uh, it's like a trial by television, if you want.
And that's, so he's basically gotten everybody's backs up around the country.
All of the other groups feel that, um, you know, what Maliki was doing was exposing something that a lot of top politicians even knew about, that many of these, you know, we've had a situation certainly like in the last year that I've been there actively, uh, where people, uh, get assassinated, you know, police officials, uh, government officials, uh, military officials, uh, it was like two or three a week.
And they, you know, they'd be, they'd be the death by silencer.
And it was a, uh, you know, something that nobody could really explain what was going on.
But then I heard from some senior politicians that what really was going on was a members of the security details of some senior politicians, uh, were, were, were carrying out this assassination.
So it was not a total surprise that Maliki explained this, but the truth is that, you know, while, while we're dealing with one leading Sunni Sunni politician, who's been accused and where there may be some, something there, uh, we also know, we also suspect that other leading politicians were also using hit squads against each other or against each other's, uh, people.
So it's a very, it's a real can of worms.
And once you open up one can, you know, then people are going to want to open up the other cans and, uh, and you're going to have a gun, a government and a country that's totally for, I mean, frankly, the truth should come out.
Let's face it.
Justice should be done.
The killer should be arrested.
But, uh, you know, actually Iraq has some other things on the agenda right now.
And so what Maliki has done is, uh, and he's probably, uh, in good part, just taking advantage of things that are out there.
Uh, you know, he is trying to consolidate power.
He is trying to, uh, uh, do in the people who want to do him in.
And so it's, it's a, it's a fight to the finish.
Hmm.
Well, now I saw some reports where they said that he's risking civil war with this.
And I thought that at least, you know, there could very well, I guess, be a war by his government on the, you know, Sunni triangle or whatever, the Anbar province where more Sunnis live, that kind of thing.
But they don't really have the capability to try to wage war back.
I mean, the story of the last decade is the story of them losing the civil war to America and the Shiites.
Right.
So that that's not really, if there's going to be a civil war, it's not going to break out between them.
And it'd be more likely over Kirkuk in the North with the Kurds.
Right.
I just don't want to see like the worst days happen here again.
Obviously that's the country's going to be run by one strong man or another before too long, uh, Maliki or Sauder himself or somebody else.
But it, you know, I just, uh, was trying to find this silver lining where it's not going to be like 2007 again or 2006.
Look, there's, there's, there's one reason for hope that it won't recur.
One major reason.
And that is that everybody's been through it once and nobody, I think in their right minds wants to let that happen again.
You know, you don't want to, that's an experiment that people did to see whether they could solve things in the streets.
And, you know, with, with terror and with threats and with, uh, attacking civilians and a huge number of civilians was killed.
I think that, uh, that, you know, there's a, there's a great desire to try to avoid that.
Uh, and secondly, uh, my impression is that, uh, and I, you know, we are not on the inside of the discussions we've had in the media.
Um, and, but we do get glimmers of it.
And, uh, you basically have the barons of, uh, Iraqi politics, you know, and these are members, uh, these are high officials in each of the different blocks, um, uh, really eager to avoid that very thing.
Now, how are they going to do it?
I don't know.
There's one move is to, is to get rid of Maliki.
Another move is that Maliki might get rid of them, but, uh, these are political moves as opposed to, uh, uses of, uh, violence.
Um, and you know, the, the only hope is that this is going to, is going to be, uh, you know, containable.
The, the problem is, uh, that the Iraqis are now, I mean, the problem, but also maybe the opportunity is that the Iraqis are now on their own.
Um, they have to sort it out.
They don't have a big brother to come in and, uh, tell them what to do.
Uh, the Iranians are going to try, but I think the Iranians, uh, also are, you know, I think the Iranians, uh, probably want stability there as well as, uh, everybody else does.
So, uh, they can't really, uh, they, they can't adjudicate between the, uh, claims of the different political groups, but the Poles have to do their job.
So this is a moment, it's a huge test for Iraq.
Uh, if, if, if, and how it comes out, you know, we will see that in the future of that country.
Uh, you know, Scott, for the longest time, I believe that Iraq is a, is an absolutely pivotal place in the Middle East.
Um, I mean, Iraq after Saddam Hussein, after the American invasion, because if Iraq, uh, comes apart, uh, then it affects every one of its neighbors and its neighbors are the major oil producers, as is in Iraq will be one day, uh, on which the entire Western world relies.
If it, if it can, can, uh, be held together.
And if it could become a successful democracy, Iraq could have an enormous, a positive impact on the Middle East.
Uh, but it's, uh, it's, it's one or the other or something in between, but in other words, the, the outcome of Iraq is not a, is not just simply an academic issue.
Uh, now that the American forces have left, it is a matter of really vital, um, it's really vital for, as I say, the, basically the safety of the West, uh, and the economies of the West.
Well, now, you know, you've done a lot of coverage of, uh, Bahrain and the relations of the different states in the Gulf, of course, including Iran, uh, in the past.
And, you know, there's at least, um, one point of view that would have it that really that whole civil war that we saw in Iraq was really to a great degree, anyway, a proxy war between the Saudis and the Iranians inside Iraq.
And that now that the Americans are gone, it makes no difference whatsoever.
The very same war is going to continue, albeit perhaps on a lower scale.
But that's the thing is it's whether it's the Americans or somebody else, it's never up to just the Iraqis to figure out and sort out their own destiny.
There's always some, uh, larger and, or, you know, equal powered neighbors intervening.
It's not, I made a trip to Saudi, uh, in October, and I spent a lot of time discussing with people there.
Uh, what is the Saudi attitude on Iraq?
You know, they don't even have a full diplomatic relations.
The Saudis don't have an embassy, in Baghdad, and they won't put one in there.
They treat Iraqi officials when they come as private individuals.
There's a, they're building a big fence along the border.
There's no direct flights.
Uh, the Saudis are very hostile to, to, uh, Maliki and maybe even to the Iraqi state as it is now constituted.
They don't like the fact that Kurds, there's a Kurdish president and a Kurdish foreign minister.
So there's that problem.
Uh, the Iranians have, uh, their own claims on, on Iraq.
You know, uh, that, that devastating war of the 1980s, uh, really fed Iraq, Iran back totally.
And that was Saddam Hussein.
And, you know, this is a new government and new regime, but, uh, but I think the Iranians are still smarting, and they have a good reason to want to have peace in, in their region, you know, so that they can do whatever they want to do.
Um, the other, so I think, first of all, your, your basic premise is completely correct.
That, uh, that the, the civil war in Iraq was certainly fed by both Iran on the one side and by Saudi on the other.
And the Americans were really in many ways caught in the middle.
Uh, but the story is even more complex.
I don't, I hate to keep on saying that, but that's, that's the way life is here.
Uh, the third party, uh, in this equation of outsiders that, that want to, and does have a major impact on Iraq is, uh, is Turkey.
Um, and, you know, one way to look at this region right now is to say that, uh, Turkey, Iran, and Saudi Arabia are all vying for, uh, influence and for, uh, maybe not control, but certainly predominant influence in the two places that now seem to be up for grabs.
One of which is Iraq and the other, which is Syria.
And you've got, you know, uh, you know, different, different ethnic balances in, in fact, opposite ethnic balances in each of those places, because, uh, uh, you know, in Syria, you have a Sunni majority who are suppressed by an Alawite, uh, uh, minority and the Alawites are somewhat related to the Shias.
In Iraq, you have a Shia majority, uh, and you have a, uh, Sunni minority.
I don't think you can say they're being suppressed, but they're certainly, the Sunnis do not have the power they once had under Saddam Hussein.
And so in Syria right now, there's this major battle, uh, uh, you know, between Iran, uh, on the one side and Saudi Arabia and Turkey on the other, uh, over who's going to control, uh, the future of Syria.
Um, and, uh, and as I say, interconnected with that is the, is the issue of who's going to come out on top in, in Iraq.
And then, um, you know, the Iraq relationship with Syria is important that, you know, this becomes a, a multidimensional chess game.
Yeah.
Well, another piece is America's hijacking of the Arab spring, which started out as a massive revolt against America's sock puppet dictators, which Hillary Clinton figured out really quick.
They could expend, uh, old Gaddafi, who nobody ever really cared about that much in order to take the side of the little guy and pretend that we're on the side of the revolutionaries in the Arab spring, which was a damn double lie and the whole world laughed, but still they're going with it.
And they're using that same premise for the revolution in Syria.
Right.
And saying that, uh, here America has to do something to, uh, make sure that Assad falls.
Well, I mean, Assad is not a nice guy and, uh, the Assad family seems to think that they have the direct divine right of Kings.
And, uh, you know, uh, the truth is, it's just a family that came to power through a coup and, uh, which makes him exactly the same as the King of Bahrain.
Right.
Uh, you could, well, you could say that, you know, there's a case of a divine right of Kings and, uh, and so, I mean, you look what's going on in Syria right now.
This is the government that's taken, that sent its army in to fight its own people, you know, using tanks and artillery and, uh, and brutal means and at least 5,000 people have been killed.
This is an incredible thing going on right before our eyes.
Are you sure that all that isn't, uh, overblown actually?
Well, the figure of 5,000 is, is a UN figure.
I think they've compiled it carefully, whether it's precise or not, we don't know because the Syrian government has not allowed the media free access to the country.
You know, we, we are, we are reliant on, uh, on secondary sources and it's, and it's not the way we, any of us likes to work.
Uh, but, uh, but Assad has done this.
I mean, even, uh, even the Iranians at one point, uh, who are his allies, uh, criticized him, uh, over that.
Uh, and, uh, you know, and I think the Iraqis, uh, Maliki has at times, you know, he's been, he's been vacillating.
He's been, uh, at times highly critical of Assad.
And at times he's been saying, you know, we need to have a peaceful outcome, but the, the Iraqis are very worried that, that, that the war, that there's going to be a civil war in Syria and it's going to spill over into Iraq.
So, um, you know, the American, uh, policy on Syria is, uh, I don't think it's really, uh, look, it's a very complicated thing.
What do you, what do you do if, uh, the Sunnis come to power in Syria through, you know, legitimate means through elections and you have a, a religious, uh, uh, you know, uh, pogrom against, uh, against the, the Alawite minority?
Um, you know, it'd be a, well, who knows?
I mean, there's, there's, that's four steps down the road, but even just the immediate one, how do you get, uh, Assad who got, who claims he doesn't even control the military there?
Um, you know, in the Barbara Walters interview a few weeks ago, uh, you know, to, to pull the military out of the cities and to, and to, uh, you know, develop some kind of a peaceful mechanism for a transfer of power.
He, he and his, the guys around him believe that he should be in power forever.
I mean, you have that most, that fundamental, uh, claim that is totally specious, you know, except in his own constitution and in his own, in his own mind.
Well, but it's the same sort of thing all over the place, isn't it?
That the real story here is America's inability to really control any of these things.
Well, I mean, the U S influence in Syria has been fairly limited for a fairly long period of time.
Uh, and you know, at times it's been greater than other times.
And now it's obviously at a low to all, uh, all time low.
Uh, but anybody's influence in Syria has been limited.
The Syrians have had a very close relationship with Iran.
Uh, Iran has used Syria in order to funnel weapons and support to Hezbollah in Lebanon, which is, you know, sort of one of, if not the dominant political forces in Lebanon, uh, and then in turn to Hamas in Gaza.
Um, so, you know, Syria has not been a close friend of the United States.
Now, under the Bush administration, I personally think they made a big mistake.
They actually withdrew the U S ambassador, uh, because the Syrians had been involved in the assassination attempt of, uh, the assassination of Rafi Kariri in Lebanon.
Um, but the Bush administration didn't want to talk to them at all.
I mean, that was really, uh, uh, hopeless and a useless policy.
They wanted to overthrow Assad, but, but they, but they didn't, you know, but they didn't have the means to do that.
And so instead they didn't talk to him.
I think the Obama administration very rightly sent their, uh, their envoy back, Mr. Ford, and he's done a pretty creditable job, you know, standing up to the Assad people and the thugs there.
But the fact is, it's a problem.
When I, when I contradict some of these things about, uh, you know, the, the American government's narrative about what's going on in Syria and that kind of thing, my interest really is just in keeping America out of it.
It's not a matter of taking the side of Assad.
It's just a matter of pointing out that, uh, Obama, just like Bush has a policy of exporting democracy to countries where we don't already control the dictatorship there, or like in the case of Iraq, not anymore.
And so, oh, now we got to go give them a democracy.
We got to give a democracy to Syria and Iran, but not to Bahrain where the king is our loyal sock puppet, same as every other emir and gangster and so-called president from Morocco to Pakistan.
Well, um, I think in principle, uh, you know, we should let other people determine their own future, their political future.
But, uh, in actual fact, uh, you know, you look at the U.S. relationship with every one of those countries in the Middle East, and you realize that, uh, in some cases, we've been propping them up.
Uh, in some cases, we've been arming them.
In some cases, we've been protecting them.
You know, Bahrain is one case and certainly Saudi Arabia.
Um, and, uh, and, and the fact, and we did it in Egypt with Mubarak, uh, and we did it with other regimes there.
And I, I think though, the American instinct is that, you know, when you have a popular uprising, uh, that, that's, that preaches a democratic outcome, uh, and it calls for one, uh, that it's, it's rather hard for the U.S., I think, to just stand on the sidelines and say nothing and do nothing when our, the guys we've been propping up are the ones who are, who, who could be overthrown.
So you can't really, uh, you can't avoid taking a stand.
And then once you take a stand, you know, God knows what happens next with Libya.
Uh, you know, a stand led to, uh, intervention with the U.S. was not the only party, but we were, you know, a leading party.
Now, would you prefer, uh, the outcome that Muammar Gaddafi was still in power and that he had executed or killed 15, 20, maybe 50,000 of his, uh, of his, uh, population, uh, in a kind of a bloodbath because he had all the weapons and they had none.
Or, uh, you know, and this is the kind of choice that governments face.
They've got to make a decision based on the reality right in front of them and the choices right in front of them.
And so I, I think that the administration has been feeling its way, you know, to their credit.
One of the things that they did was Hillary Clinton just about a year ago, uh, when she was in, I think it was Qatar, but it may have been, uh, I think it was Qatar.
She made a speech just about the fact that these fossilized governments, which claimed the divine right of power, you know, and the passing it on from generation to generation just have to adjust to the modern world.
Their populations are too smart and they're too independent minded.
And they, and they want, they want to have their human rights and they want to have their political rights.
Man, I hope Jeb Bush is listening.
Well, I mean, but this is just simply what people, what's happening out there.
And you know, it's one of those transformations that happens very rarely in history.
Uh, it happened in 1989 in Europe and it's happening more or less now, you know, it was awakening in the Arab world.
And so it's, it's, but it's each one of these cases, I mean, 1989 was simple compared to this.
I covered, I reported 1989.
I can tell you everything was relatively easily organized, incredibly peaceful on the whole.
And, um, uh, you know, and almost a smooth transition to democratic, uh, or elected governments.
The Arab world is a wholly different, much more difficult situation because, uh, they, they have first of all, almost no history of democracy in most of these countries.
They've had these strong men or they've had empires like the Ottoman empire that once ruled them until the early 1920s.
Uh, they've had, or the British times or the French.
And, uh, you know, they, in, in, in Egypt, I mean, when is the last time they had a democracy?
You know, you go back to the Pharaohs.
So we're talking about something really new under the sun here.
And I think the administration is coping, you know, reasonably, uh, making some mistakes along the way, getting some things right.
Uh, but, but they're feeling the way.
Well, I'm optimistic about the whole thing.
I happen to think that the less America has to do with anything over there, other than just withdrawing and letting these people figure it out, things for themselves is, you know, the best way to do it.
But regardless, I think, you know, I, I like your comparison to the end of the cold war, uh, that, that was relatively much simpler, uh, a situation going on there with Russian troops, just pulling back behind the Ural mountains and all these governments falling almost entirely peacefully and all that.
This is much more complicated, but at the same time, in a sense, you know, it's on, they can't undo it.
Everybody's got satellite TV over there.
And the images of people going outside and taking their destiny into their own hands have already been transmitted and will be remembered.
And so even, you know, like the struggle goes on in Bahrain on a day-to-day basis, if you look, you know, which you do of course, uh, you know, uh, so it's not over yet.
And I'm optimistic that in the end, there will be much more independence and self-government there as the result of this Arab spring, although it may be a while still.
Sure.
But let me, let me disagree with you on one point, uh, Scott, you say basically the Americans should not be involved there.
I think it's impossible not to be involved.
There is a security vacuum in the Gulf and it is the result of the fact that, that the Arab side of the Gulf basically is a fairly, uh, you know, limited population countries with immense wealth, like Saudi Arabia, um, which cannot really even defend themselves because they don't even have armies big enough or well-trained enough or, or motivated enough sometimes.
Um, and, uh, you know, they, uh, imagine if they got overrun.
All right.
Now I don't think Iran is actually a country on the make that's out, out to, uh, to do that.
But remember Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait.
Uh, you know, a strong man can evade a, invade a weak place or can, uh, draw influence over it.
And then what happens to, uh, and you know, this is dollars and cents.
This is the American economy to what happens to our supply of fossil fuels of oil.
And so, uh, what the U S is doing there now is it's trying to keep a balance, uh, which is to prevent Iran from over, you know, overreaching, uh, and, uh, and, and, and being there as a kind of a constant counter threat.
Um, it is, uh, to reassure the, the, uh, shaketoms of the Gulf that, uh, you know, all will be stable in the U S is going to assure stability.
And it's just to make sure that, that we get our, our, our gas and oil.
Um, uh, it's not a desirable thing, but you simply have a vacuum there.
And don't forget the British filled it for the longest time until they withdrew, uh, in the 1960s, I think it was.
And then the United States went in and filled that vacuum.
So there's some places where we go on earth, not because we really want to, but because there's no alternative.
All right.
Well, I definitely hear you, but I have a response if you'd like it.
Yeah, sure.
I'd love to hear it.
Yeah.
Okay.
Well, so it's hard to say, you know, history begins on this day or the other one, but, uh, you know, there's a pretty big argument for it began when Iran gained their independence after the end of world war II and then American Britain took it from them.
And then 26 years later, they, uh, well, the whole thing blew back in our face, basically, when our puppet dictator got old and couldn't run his dictatorship anymore.
And they had this revolution.
So then we had to support Saddam Hussein, who of course the CIA had helped, uh, Saddam Hussein's, uh, party seize power back in 1958, when he was the number two guy in charge.
And then in the eighties, they bankrolled him to invade, uh, Iran, as you just said, in order to contain the Iranian revolution.
That was just blow back from the coup d'etat in the first place.
Then by, uh, when Saddam Hussein got too big for his britches after all our help in the 1980s, and I'll be generous, misinterpreted April Glaspie's lack of protest as permission to invade Kuwait.
Uh, then they occupied Saudi Arabia in order to contain the menace of Saddam Hussein, in fact, dual containment of him and Iran, but to force that blockade through the nineties, which angered our friends, the Mujahideen, which we'd been using against the Russians in Afghanistan, who came and knocked holes in our towers and knocked them down and killed 3000 people.
So then now that became the excuse to come in and not just overthrow the government in Afghanistan and stay, but somehow became the excuse to go ahead and go all the way to Baghdad and do the Ayatollah's bidding.
He sent Ahmed Chalabi, the DIA and the CIA believed that he was an Iranian spy all along, sent to lie the neocons into war with Iraq, which he knew they wanted anyway, to supply all those lies, to get rid of the Ayatollah's number one nemesis, Saddam Hussein, 2 million something refugees flee to Syria.
Now their country's destabilized.
And all of this is just a matter of really the consequences of Woodrow Wilson intervening back in world war one and destroying the Ottoman empire and expanding the British by 1 million square miles.
And on and on and on this goes, every time they intervene, they kill a bunch of people.
They create a terrible imbalance of power that leads to some kind of counter reaction, which becomes the excuse for the next intervention.
And there's millions of people dead here and nobody ever accomplished anything.
And the oil's for sale anyway.
We spend trillions and trillions and trillions more on securing oil than we ever spend on oil.
So what is the purpose of empire at this point when trade makes both sides richer?
It's just, it makes sense when it's the age of the British and they are just there to kill everybody and steal like in India or in the Middle East, right?
But we don't do it like that.
We just go in there and screw everything up is all.
Look, uh, there's no disputing what you're saying about Iran and, uh, the overthrow of Mossadegh and the, uh, the CIA's role in that.
And for the longest time, I think a good 20 some years, uh, you know, it was celebrated as an enormous victory or 30 years.
It was celebrated as an enormous achievement of the CIA, just like, uh, the agencies, uh, you know, very solid work in Afghanistan during the period, uh, that the Russians were occupying, uh, you know, supplying the Mujahideen there and, and helping them overthrow the, uh, or rather force the Russians to depart.
Uh, you know, the agency, uh, had a, a famous victory there.
The problem is that the, the CIA victories, uh, too often are detached from the, from foreign policy and from a longterm, you know, thoughtful policy.
Uh, Iraq, Iran, just like Guatemala and some other places, really, really deserve to go their own way and to find their, their root, uh, to, uh, democratic development.
And what the agency did certainly in Iran was to interrupt that whole process.
And a lot of terrible things flowed from it.
I'm not sure that one can draw a direct, uh, you know, line from there to today because there's, and, and say exactly what the, you know, what the alternatives would have, uh, been, uh, if, if they hadn't intervened.
Um, the, the one place I, I think, uh, I'm in disagreement with you is at least, I don't have the facts to back it up, is, uh, to say that, that the agency, uh, brought in Hassan Hussein.
I think that that was an internal coup within the, uh, Iraqi, uh, uh, government.
And I think he was a very brutal man.
I don't know that he was ever the American, um, uh, you know, that he was ever on the, on the payroll or even was supported by the Americans.
Now in the Iran-Iraq war, uh, it's true.
The United States, uh, had a hands-off attitude.
And I recall, uh, Kissinger's very cynical remarks that it was sort of a war where, where the U.S. didn't mind if the two sides destroyed each other.
Uh, this went on for eight or nine years.
And it caused him, you know, it was a very cynical, very, very detached, uh, uh, position that, that war is good almost, and we will benefit from it.
Uh, the people who were supporting the Iraqis most, the most though, the people to whom the Iraqis still owe money, by the way, uh, were the Saudis, you know, uh, billions and billions of dollars of aid went from Saudi Arabia, because the Saudis saw that as a proxy war where they didn't have to actually, you know, use forces, but, uh, they could benefit if Iran was tied down.
And the truth is you don't want to have that kind of war going on.
And that's where Kissinger was so, I think, completely wrong that, uh, these wars don't, you know, that whatever the benefit that somebody is drawing from them, uh, that the bitterness and the pain and the suffering and the damage that it is, is costing, uh, will take decades, maybe a half a century to overcome.
And so, uh, you know, the Iranians became a lot more radical as a result of that war.
It was a huge error.
And then Saddam Hussein got entrenched.
And then at the end of the war, you know, he went after the Kurds and started gassing them and killing them, you know, in a near genocide.
So it was a, it was a, an enormous mistake by, uh, the, uh, administration at the time.
I think it was, uh, Ford, uh, Nixon and Ford.
Um, but, uh, but, you know, those are, those are, uh, things that, that might be, um, you know, that should, should not have happened.
There were, there were big mistakes.
Uh, well, you know, I admit that, uh, and everybody, it's Roy Gutman from McClatchy newspapers, uh, who covers all these wars, you know, in depth in person and, and you certainly get all the credit.
Uh, and of course there's no such thing as counterfactual history and really being able to go back and tell, um, you know, I w I would like to think that I made a pretty good case for, at some point it's, we got to realize our interventions, they may be in the name of stopping some immediate harm, but they end up doing an even greater harm or setting us up for worse harm where at some point we got to just call it off where there doesn't seem to be a technocrat in DC, brilliant enough Kissinger or anyone else to wind our intervention down in a way where nobody gets slaughtered when we leave.
Sometimes it happens, but at some point I think we just need to call it off.
I'm sorry that I failed to convince you, but I just wanted to mention real quick, uh, it was United Press International did a piece where they claim at least a dozens of sources about Saddam Hussein and the CIA going back to the late 1950s when he was the number two or number three guy in his group that, uh, assassinated the prime minister.
And then of course the CIA supposedly at least, uh, came up with the list of all the intellectuals and communists and sort of did a little pull pot, uh, purge of people with glasses and things like that.
And, you know, in order to, uh, stamp out the opposition going way, way back, which I'm not certain if that particular one is true, but I think, you know, the narrative of the, um, the cause and effect, like for example, this war in Iraq that we're covering here, you're talking about how powerful Iran is in Iraq now, but we know why that is.
It's because America invaded in 2003 on behalf of the Ayatollah, whether they knew it or not.
So, I mean, these are the same people basically we're going to trust to get us out of there in the right way.
Well, you see the, the problem with the invasion and, you know, I've talked to so many people about it in Iraq is that, you know, in many ways it was welcomed by people in Iraq to have, to get rid of Saddam Hussein, uh, because he was a dictator who, you know, ran a, you know, a real tight, almost a socialist, uh, country's economy.
And, um, and you know, there was conscription, uh, there was just endless wars.
There was endless poverty, uh, with him building palaces all around the country.
It was a, it was a monster, a monster of a, of a leader.
Now, uh, getting rid of him, I mean, but basically, you know, in print, the principle should be that people should get rid of their own leaders and we shouldn't do it for them, uh, because we're just not that good at the, at running the aftermath.
And we could be, we certainly were in Germany and Japan after World War II, but only if you really put an enormous effort into it.
And, and the Bush administration, uh, was looking for the headlines and for the excitement and the, you know, the sensation of, uh, overthrowing a dictator.
And they didn't do any of the hard work of preparing for the after, for, for what happens after you, uh, overthrow him.
And they didn't have enough forces.
Of course, they had no planning whatsoever.
They, they, they had bickering instead.
They had people like, you know, gigantic egos, like, uh, Rumsfeld, uh, strutting about, uh, and, uh, you know, announcing, uh, triumph, uh, in our time and mission accomplished.
So, uh, and that was, and that's where Iraqis are just so pissed off now.
So disappointed by, by the Americans, because we came with, you know, such fanfare and we left sort of with a pair between our legs.
I mean, that was a, uh, but I, I do have to tell you, as I think I've mentioned once before, I think the American military had made enormous mistakes in the early stages and really, uh, you know, mishandled so much of the, of the war, uh, not, not the fighting, but the aftermath of it.
Uh, like Abu Ghraib, that they, they redeemed themselves in many ways in the last two years.
They, they really and truly became, uh, mentors to the Iraqi government and to the Iraqi army rather.
And, uh, you know, so, but nevertheless, uh, they, they, uh, the Iraqis are so ambivalent about the American involvement there that they just couldn't agree to any kind of extension, uh, and they, and, and now, uh, Maliki, the same guy who wanted the American forces to be extended now is trying to celebrate the departure as his, his big victory.
There's a kind of a phoniness, uh, to that.
And there's a phoniness also to what the American officials are saying where, uh, you know, they're, they're announcing, they've announced the end of the war.
They did about five times this past year and it really happened two years ago.
Right.
When it happened really, when Bush signed the status of forces agreement, that was when he said, all right, everybody back to their bases.
And then from there, back to fewer bases.
And from there, back to fewer bases until we draw this thing down.
That was the agreement Bush made before he left.
Exactly, exactly.
I mean, it was Bush who ended the war.
It wasn't Obama, you know, and it's as if he's trying to get, uh, votes, uh, out of this thing.
I don't know.
I don't understand, uh, you know, the facts.
Well, and I like his victory speech too.
In his victory speech, Obama claimed that it had anything to do with getting revenge for 9-11 in the speech.
I couldn't believe it.
Well, it didn't have anything to do with that.
I mean, it was, it was only revenge in the minds of those who did it, but you know, there was no fact to back them up.
It was, but I was going to go back to, you know, going back to Afghanistan, which was mentioned earlier as well.
You know, there's a case where the CIA, as I said, I think did something brilliant in the 1980s in supporting the Mujahideen.
And I, and I think you have to credit the Carter administration and the Reagan administration for what they did because they did help liberate a country and it did help end the cold war.
And it led to some, you know, very positive things in a way.
But what happened was that they all celebrated, uh, the defeat of the Russians there or the ouster of the Russians as an American victory.
And nobody ever bothered to think about what about the people of Afghanistan?
You know, and we walked away the first, the senior George Bush senior walked away.
And then Bill Clinton, his two administration walked away from Afghanistan.
We abandoned the place.
And so it created a vacuum.
And, uh, all we really, is that really true?
Because Roy, I was under the impression from reporters like Eric Margulies, et cetera, that the U S and the British and the French tried for years and years to control who was going to be the ruler of Kabul, at least up until finally they gave up in 1995 and went ahead and agreed with the Pakistanis to go ahead and install the Taliban, which then America bankrolled from the time they took power.
Well, I don't know.
I don't, that's not quite the same as abandoning them.
I, I, I, uh, I have a pretty profound disagreement with that.
I wrote a book called how we missed the story.
And it is about the wars of Afghanistan in the 1990s, which we, the media did not cover and which we, the U S government did not pay attention to.
And I think what you really find there is a, because, because, uh, there was a record of utter neglect and, uh, letting the Pakistanis, uh, romp in there in what they consider to be their backyard.
But it happens to be the Afghan front yard.
Uh, the Taliban are not a Pakistani creation.
The Pat, the Taliban are an indigenous group that had Pakistani support, but you know, it's like the American, like, uh, other groups.
So they, you know, they bought into something that was already there.
Uh, the fact is the U S uh, did not, uh, engage, uh, in, uh, Afghanistan after 1992.
Uh, they basically made occasional visits to the senior state department level, the CIA and under the Clinton administration had no budget to even monitor Afghanistan, no less manipulate, uh, the place.
Uh, and you know, you can look at Gary Schrone's record, who was the, he was the CIA station chief in Islamabad.
And I've, I've carefully recorded this whole thing in the, in that book.
Uh, you know, exactly what, what the U S was doing at every level that I could track down.
Pardon me.
What's the title of the book again?
Uh, the title is called is how we missed the story.
Okay.
And it's about, uh, how the Taliban came to power, how bin Laden got in there and how the U S basically closed his eyes to all things going on.
Uh, and if he, this is also, I think a case where your own, you know, your thesis of anti-war has to be called into question.
Uh, it was under the Taliban when bin Laden launched attacks on American embassies in East Africa.
Uh, and he was doing this, uh, having sanctuary in Afghanistan that bill Clinton's response was to do next to nothing.
You know, he sent some cruise missiles in, whereas he really and truly should have found some way to intervene much more vigorously, even using proxies.
But he did almost nothing.
He closed his eyes and that is how we got to nine 11.
And that's why I did the book because my contention is that it was, it was walking away from that vacuum and letting it get worse and letting rogues like bin Laden come in and take over part of the government of the Taliban, that that's how, how we got to nine 11.
So we as a superpower don't have much choice, I believe.
Well, I think that just proves my point though, right?
Is that bin Laden was had any authority whatsoever because he was a veteran of our jihad.
We've been messing around over there and it's all just consequence.
And you say, bill Clinton did next to nothing about bin Laden.
I completely agree with that.
But what bin Laden said was what he was doing was revenge for what bill Clinton was doing in Iraq for the women and the children of Iraq.
He said, how come our blood is water, but your blood is blood.
That doesn't seem fair.
He said that to CNN and ABC news in 1996, he said, you're using bases next to Mecca and Medina to strangle Iraq.
And so we're going to try to bring you to war here and we'll defeat you the same way we did the Soviets.
So how does that do anything but prove my point that at some point you just have to call off these interventions because every time you do intervene, you end up creating more circumstances that just lead to the next excuse for the next intervention.
Well, I don't want to be counterfactual here either, but, but I, I do think that, uh, that nine 11 grew out of the, uh, of, of the neglect that the U S uh, had made its policy.
And it really was a policy, uh, in the 1990s.
I think that, uh, most people, if they really thought about it, if they had to do it again, they would have said we should have had some dog in that fight in the internal fight.
And that's, that's the subject of the book.
It's sort of the, it's about, uh, the Taliban versus Ahmed Shama suit, you know, the, the, the, the KGB agent, uh, you know, he was the guy who helped defeat the Russians.
No, no, no.
He was the guy that pretended to beat the Russians who was actually KGB.
Yeah.
Eric Margulies wrote all about that long ago.
Yeah.
Well, that may be the case, but I'll tell you.
And again, I can only recommend that you read the book because I think it's a pretty careful account of everything that happened in that period.
And he was definitely in 1990s.
He was not a KGB agent.
Uh, and he was, uh, in fact, uh, you know, he was at the end of his rope.
He was basically near extinction when, uh, when the bin Laden people sent in the suicide bombers and, and actually assassinated him, uh, just before nine 11.
But so, uh, anyway, I, I have a lot of facts in there and Scott, and I like to read the book very much.
And, you know, you're certainly the expert that I'm not, I guarantee that, you know, no argument on that point.
So I spent three or four years doing it.
And I, and I, I was really careful to try to compile a thorough account of that.
That didn't, uh, you know, show fear or favor to, you know, to any side, but anyway, the best I have going for me is, you know, thirdhand sifting of information, the best I can do and ask him follow up questions when I can, I don't travel the world doing the actual reporting like you or Eric or any of these other guys do.
So I, I got a definite, your, your, uh, your thirdhand citations are sometimes right on the mark.
So I'm not going to, I'm not going to diss them, believe me, but I'm just saying that, that, uh, I, I spent a lot of time trying to get my arms around the subject of what, what went wrong in that country as opposed to what went, you know, how did Bin Laden develop his terror, terror cells and so on.
I was interested in the place in which it took root and, and really thrived.
And that, that was that country.
And I feel that there was a huge mistake by the United States because, because we were disengaged when we should have been engaged.
And, uh, look, it's also the problem of the superpower in the period after the end of the cold war.
There's just a, there's just too many places which are, uh, some of which look, uh, quiet, but turn out to be cauldrons, you know, just before below the boiling point.
And, uh, there are other places where you put your emphasis and, uh, and you may, uh, and it may not have been necessary.
I think these guys in, in government, uh, you know, with all respect to them have to make educated guesses and, uh, they, they often get it wrong.
Uh, they don't always get it wrong.
And of course we don't really know, but what we can say is when things go very wrong, you know, you can try to analyze those things and see where, you know, hope in hopes that they'll might get it right the next time around.
Sure.
Well, I'd like to partially agree with you too, on the part about, you know, Clinton not doing anything.
I would just say, you know, it's sort of like if I poke somebody in the chest long enough that they finally haul off and knock my block off where you could criticize me for not trying to block their swing, but don't ignore the fact that I was the one poking them in the chest and provoking it.
So Bill Clinton, what he did was he did a lot.
I mean, he really waged the, the invisible war, as Joy Gordon called it against Iraq from Saudi Arabia, which made enemies for us.
And starting in 1996, they were blowing up our stuff, the Kobar towers, which they tried to blame on Iran, which I'm convinced was Al Qaeda's first strike on American forces on the Saudi peninsula.
And then carrying all the way through the coal attack, Clinton did virtually nothing against an enemy that was a real enemy that, you know, tenants hair on fire, et cetera, et cetera, that he had created with his policy against Iraq.
I don't mean deliberately created conspiracy style.
I just mean, that was a result of what he was doing.
He was making us enemies and then tying our arms on our back and going ahead and letting us get in the face.
Again, I don't mean deliberately in a conspiracy sense.
I just mean, I'm agreeing with you that yes, they had a hands off policy on stopping a real enemy that they had made for us.
Yeah.
And one of the biggest problems, I think in American political life today is that the party that was in power at that point, namely the Democrats have really never reflected on what they did wrong.
And, you know, the same Nancy Pelosi was, you know, first of all, the problem was, was partly Pakistan then.
And it's certainly partly Pakistan today.
Pakistan at that point was playing with, you know, developing nuclear weapons.
And that was a very regrettable thing, but they were in a sense matching India.
So Nancy Pelosi and John Glenn and other people, you know, who, who were respectable and are respectable politicians at that point, were arguing so hard for punishing Pakistan because of the proliferation that they cut off our relations with Pakistan and our, and our influence over Pakistan.
And so throughout the 1990s, we basically turned over control over Afghanistan to Pakistan, and we lost all the instruments of leverage that the United States ordinarily would have.
And the Pakistanis, it turns out, you know, when they think that they're a great and brilliantly run country, but everybody knows they're, you know, it's a disaster internally.
They can't really run a country successfully.
And their foreign policy is even worse.
And so to turn over, you know, talk about, you know, putting the fox in charge of the hen house, that is what U.S. policy was under Bill Clinton.
And he did it, you know, while appeasing his own constituencies, like, and this is what I have in the book, in fact, like Pelosi and Glenn, you know, the liberals who basically felt that nonproliferation was the biggest issue of the day.
And so he, he, he, he would, was continually caving to one constituency or another and not looking at the world in terms of what are the real threats out there?
What are the real dangers for the United States?
What are the real interests of the United States?
And what do we do to defend those interests?
And, you know, the broader American interest is not just purely narrowly American, but it is basically bringing stability to regions that have had war.
And so Afghanistan was the perfect case in point.
There was a case where they, they not only had a war, but a devastating war that killed a million people, not a single American, by the way, helped force the Russians out, embarrass and humiliate the Russians to the point that they, that they, they, they did, they gave up the ghost in Eastern Europe and you had all the revolutions that followed.
And what does the United States do?
We walk away from that place.
And, and, but what does Bill Clinton do when a, when a real threat develops there?
He did next to nothing.
He was listening to constituencies.
And I'm not saying this is a matter of blame, you know, or saying that, that one person or another is responsible for what happened thereafter, because, because, you know, life is much too complex, but you can, you can point to patterns of, of, you know, of mistaken judgment.
And they, they tend to fall into the category, I think, of failing to study the strategic big picture and, and determine American interests and then pursue those interests, even if they're not popular at the time, even if, if, if you're going to be controversial, but pursue those interests in order to basically protect the American public and, and, you know, the, the global security that we have.
That didn't happen.
I thought George Bush had got almost more ridiculous because they went to war in Iraq when there was no clear need to do it and no clear relationship with, with 9-11.
And I, I thought, and I still think the Obama administration is closer to defining foreign policy in terms of national interests, but I, but I have my doubts there as well.
I think that the elections, you know, are now forcing them to go back to more of a, more of a political agenda abroad.
But on the whole, foreign policy has got to be determined on the basis of the facts that you're dealing with and the reality out there, and not on the basis of, you know, what some constituency wants or other.
Right.
All right.
Well, that's a good place to leave it.
And we're way over time, but I want to thank you very much, especially for staying over time and talking with me this afternoon, Roy.
Thanks for listening.
Glad to talk to you.
Take care, Scott.
All right, everybody.
That is Roy Gutman from McClatchy Newspapers.
He covers the entire Middle East over there and is on the phone from Istanbul today.
Happy New Year, everybody.
We'll see you tomorrow.
