Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 9/24/21 Barbara Slavin on the True Winner of Iraq War 2

Episode Date: September 26, 2021

Scott interviews Barbara Slavin from the Atlantic Council. Slavin recently co-authored an article with Abbas Kadhim about how Iran’s influence in the middle east has grown substantially since the U.S. overthrew Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq. Slavin explains that the U.S. was more supportive of Iraq while they were engaged in a brutal war with Iran in the 80s, because the foreign policy establishment saw Iran as a bigger threat. Of course this changed in the 90s when George Bush Sr. launched a war against Iraq. And then there was the invasion in 2003 that disposed of Saddam. Scott and Slavin reflect on the ridiculous claims from that time arguing that regime change in Iraq would not hand Iran more influence, with some claiming it would weaken Iran by giving the U.S. leverage over the entire region.  Discussed on the show: “Iran ‘won’ the war with Iraq but at a heavy price” (Atlantic Council) Bruce Riedel overheard Bush’s phone call days after 9/11 “After Sistani and Khamenei: looming successions will shape the Middle East” (Atlantic Council) A Clean Break  Cheney 1994 interview Barbara Slavin is director of the Future of Iran Initiative at the Atlantic Council. Follow her on Twitter: @BarbaraSlavin1. This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: The War State and Why The Vietnam War?, by Mike Swanson; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott; EasyShip; Thc Hemp Spot; Green Mill Supercritical; Bug-A-Salt; Lorenzotti Coffee and Listen and Think Audio. Shop Libertarian Institute merch or donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal or Bitcoin: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRjYu5tZiG. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For Pacifica Radio, September 26th, 2021, I'm Scott Horton. This is Anti-War Radio. All right, you guys, welcome the show. It is Anti-War Radio. I'm your host, Scott Horton. I'm editorial director of Anti-War.com. and author of Enough Already, Time to End the War on Terrorism. Find my full interview archive, more than 5,600 of them now,

going back to 2003 at Scott Horton.org, and follow me on Twitter at Scott Horton Show. Introducing Barbara Slavin. She is director of the Future of Iran Initiative at the Atlantic Council, and I know what you're saying, but no, she's cool. It's all right. Welcome back to show, Barbara. How are you? I'm fine, thank you.

Interesting introduction. Yes. I should have said, and I meant to say just 10 seconds ago, I thought to myself, make sure I mentioned that for many years you were a journalist for UPI, correct? I started with UPI. Very few people know that, but I've worked at a bunch of other places since then. Okay. All right. So the Atlantic Council, they don't have the best reputation around here, but I've always liked your work, and especially on Iran, unlike everyone in Washington, D.C., who talks about Iran, you actually know a thing or two about it. which is interesting and gives you a real leg up compared to your competition there. So you have this really important piece with a guy named Abbas Khadim at the Atlantic Council called Iran won the war with Iraq, but at a heavy price. And you make so many interesting and important points in this thing. Can you please just tell us first and foremost, in what way did Iran win the Iraq war?

Well, we actually won it for them. You know, a lot of people don't know that during the 1980s, there was a terrible conventional war between Iran and Iraq. Iraq attacked Iran in 1980. War went on for eight years. It killed or wounded a million people, caused immense economic devastation. But during that period, the United States actually tilted toward Iraq. was considered the bigger threat.

And, of course, at the beginning of the war, Iran was holding Americans hostage. Some of your listeners may remember that. So that was how the U.S. felt in the 1980s. But then, of course, Saddam Hussein, in his infinite stupidity, turned around and invaded Kuwait shortly after the end of the Iran-Iraq war. And so we turned against Iraq. We turned against Saddam. It took us a while.

but eventually in 2003, George W. Bush decided that invading Iraq would be a great way to respond to 9-11. It wasn't enough that we invaded Afghanistan. And so the U.S., in a matter of weeks, went in to Iraq and got rid of the regime of Saddam Hussein. And then so... And then, guess he walked in. The people next door, the Iranians who had been trying to get rid of Saddam for eight years and who wanted to see the Shia majority in that country empowered. But then weren't there a bunch of brilliant egghead geniuses who had gamed all this out, who knew that this was, it wasn't just going to be great, like, okay, flowers and chocolates

and cliches, but that this is going to give us preeminence, dominance over Iran. So we won't have to attack Iran. We'll just use our new dominance in Iraq. and friendship with the Shiites to make the Iranians want to have a pro-American regime themselves and overthrow their own government for us and all this kind of stuff, right? I think you're attributing much too much logic. I mean, I heard him claim that, you know, in various ways, right? Yeah, but, you know, the Paul Wolfowitz's of this world wanted to get rid of Saddam

because they had wanted to do that back in 1991 during the war to. kick Iraq out of Kuwait. And to them it was unfinished business. They felt that the United States could plant a democratic pro-American government in Iraq and that this would be a great use of massive American military might and also, frankly, the anti-Muslim hysteria that swept this country after 9-11. And so, you know, there's fascinating new information that's come out, an old friend of mine, Bruce Riddell, who used to work for many administrations on the Middle East, revealed recently that he was on the NSC and listening to a call between George W. Bush and Tony Blair, this was two days after September 11, 2001. So September 13th. And George W. Bush told

Tony Blair, you know we're going to invade Iraq, too, don't you? Or words to that effect. I mean, stunning, two days after 9-11. And, of course, you remember the famous Axis of Evil speech, the State of the Union address in 2002, where Bush listed Iran, Iraq, and North Korea, as the most dangerous countries, the axis of evil, of course, none of these three had had anything to do with 9-11. The way in which we reacted to 9-11 was madness. It was overreach. It squandered all the goodwill that the international community showed toward the United States after 9-11. It led us down the rattle of Iraq, helped ruin the nuclear agreement with North Korea, and it put us on a path of even more hostility with Iran that was only briefly interrupted, I'm afraid, by the Obama administration.

So it's just, you know, the mistakes, the miscalculations. didn't the Bush administration know that Iran had been cultivating Shia militias in Iraq or outside Iraq since the Iran-Iraq war? There were a number of Shia who fled the country, went to Iran, were given sanctuary. One of them is called the Bader Corps, Bader organization, given sanctuary in Iran. And then as soon as it was safe for them to come back, i.e. the U.S. military invaded, they were back in Iraq organized. And then there were many other groups as well. There are a whole, you know, panoply of Shia militias now. And even the assassination of Qasem Soleimani,

that very well-known Iranian general back in 2020, all it's done is kind of incentivize the creation of more militias and there's less coherence. But the bottom line is that Iran calls the shots in Iraq, not the United States. We are on our way out of that country. And, you know, for that to be the legacy of the U.S. invasion, it's just, it's, it's so sad because, yes, some Iraqi Shia may have some more rights, but Iraq is not exactly a thriving country, and it's full of violence and it's full of corruption. Yeah.

Well, and when you say, didn't they know and things like that, I mean, I remember reading at anti-war.com in the year 2000, I'm pretty sure that, hey, beware of Skiri. You know, Justin Romando, there's this group Skiri. And the CIA tried to give them a bunch of money. In Iraq. Yeah, I mean, all these groups were found favor in Washington. I remember how bizarre it was in the late 90s, early 2000s, to be going and meeting all these Shia clerics in Washington who were members of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution and Iraq,

which was also supported by Iran. And, you know, even the name, Islamic Republic. revolution in Iraq. I mean, Ayatollah Khomeini was trying to export his system to Iraq. Now, you know, the Iranians haven't succeeded in doing that. They do have a quasi-democratic system, but these militias are so powerful. And the clergy actually, I mean, the clergy are not in control in Iraq. Iranian clergy are much more in control because of their support for these militia groups. All right. Well, so, I mean, you still got the Ayatoll Sistani. Do you know what his relationship is with Khamini? Ayatollah Sistani does not believe in the system of Valiata Faki, the rule by the jurisprudent, the rule by a Shia cleric.

He is opposed to that, but he is very elderly. And there's a lot of concern that when he dies, Iran will try to engineer the succession to him. And if you're interested, Abbas Qadim and I, Abbas Headsar Iraq initiative, and he is a brilliant, brilliant man, a brilliant scholar who knows Shiism and Iraqi Shiism very, very well. He and I wrote a paper together a few years back on the succession to Sistani and Hamané and pointing out that it was very important which one died first. Hamidae is still in power in Iran and when Sistani dies and Haminae is a little bit younger the chances and if the political situation

in Iraq is the way it is now the chances are good that Iran will try to engineer the succession to Sistani and that would just further increase their power I mean we do have to acknowledge on the other side that there is a lot of Iraqi nationalism

and a lot of resistance to this Iranian takeover. But so far, to little effect, I mean, when people protest, they get crushed. And there have been a number of prominent Iraqis who opposed Iranian influence in the country who've been assassinated by these militias in recent years. So it's very dangerous to take a stand against Iran. Also, the two economies have become increasingly intertwined. And so it is certainly, you know, I don't, I mean, I don't know that Paul Wolfowitz or Dick Cheney would be honest enough to acknowledge. But what they pushed for so hard in 2001, 2002, 2003 has led to this result. I'm interested in this. You know, you're so familiar with all these topics. Had you read a clean break back in the 1990s and the David Worms her? You know, because this is where.

All of these guys, yeah. I've left out Peirle, I've left out, you know, all of these people. So if you go back and look at that, Wormser, wrote them all, he brings up the name Ahmed Chalabi. It's Ahmed Chalabi. He assures us that if we overthrow Saddam that the Jordanians will be dominant in Iraq.

And they'll tell the Shiite clergy in Najaf to tell Hezbollah to stop being friends with Iran. And Chalabi assures us that this is going to work great and then of course well you know chalbby has has passed away i will say this in his favor that he he went back to iraq he stayed there i mean he wanted to run the country that was his original goal but he did go back there he didn't run away and he actually did die in iraq a few years back uh that's about the only good thing i can say about him the guy uh was a double crosser the iranians didn't trust him i remember iranian officials telling me that he was he was uh

a con artist. He con the United States. He gave information to Iran. He was the principal individual behind a lot of the fake intelligence that pointed to WMD still being in Iraq, which was, of course, the excuse, the pretext that was used for going in there. He was the one who presented this guy called Curveball, you may remember, this source. And, you know, people ate ate it up, ate it up. I remember going to these so-called black coffee briefings at the American Enterprise Institute, another great champion of this invasion, where Chalabi would be presented like royalty. You know, with people like Richard Pearl hanging on his every word, a guy named Harold Road was another one.

There were all these neocons, Doug Fife, who all thought that getting rid of Saddam would, be just the ticket. And of course, Israel supported this as well at the time. Let's not forget. And these neocons were all big supporters of Israel and thought they were doing the Israelis a favor by getting rid of Saddam. Of course, the implication was, yes, that Assad in Syria and then the Iranians would be next, that regime change, you know, would sweep the region and all of these members of the resistance front, all these anti-Israel groups would be destroyed and democratic pro-American pro-Israel groups

would be put in their place. It's just astonishing. I mean, we all knew this was crap. Some of us knew this was crap. But, of course, who listens to a bunch of journalists who've actually lived in the Middle East or visited some of these countries. I wrote a piece for the, for USA Today in, I think it was November of 2002, that basically said that Iraq was the last place in the Middle East where you could put a democracy because, you know, a country had no tradition of democracy.

The strongest opposition party to Saddam Hussein was the Communist Party of Iraq. Look here, you and I both know that what you need is some Libertarian Institute things like shirts and sweatshirt. and mugs and stickers to put on the back of your truck and to give to your friends too that say Libertarian Institute on them so that everyone will know the origins of your oppositional, defiant disorder and where they can listen to all the best podcasts. So here's what you do. Go to Libertasbella.com and look at all the great Libertarian Institute stuff they've got going there.

Find the ad in the right-hand margin at Libertarian Institute.org. Libertasbella.com. You guys check it out. This is so cool. The great Mike Swanson's new book is finally. out. He's been working on this thing for years. And I admit, I haven't ready yet. I'm going to get to it as soon as I can, but I know you guys are going to want to beat me

to it. It's called, Why, the Vietnam War, nuclear bombs and nation building in Southeast Asia, 1945 through 61. And as he explains on the back here, all of our popular culture and our retellings

and our history and our movies are all about the height of the American war there in, say, 1964 through 1974 but how do we get there why is this all harry truman's fault find out in why the vietnam war by the great mike swanson available now you know as long as we're going down memory lane here with all this iraq war two stuff barbara let me ask you about two important reports i think as far as i know uh one by rising in the new york times and another by hersh in the new yorker about two different Iraqi middlemen.

I think one was a Lebanese businessman and the other was a Saudi businessman or an Emirates businessman or something who were acting as middlemen for Saddam Hussein, both of whom tried to surrender to Richard Pearl. Both of whom made these... I don't know why they picked him

to be the guy to bring the message to. One of them met with Pearl in London was the Risen story and the other, I forgot the her story. But in both cases, it was Saddam Hussein essentially offering unconditional surrender before the war and saying any concession you want, I'll make it. Oil, Israel, weapons, inspections, and whatever you got, even promised to hold elections under international supervision if we would just promise to please not invade

and was told to go to hell. And I think the quote in the rise in pieces, tell them we'll see them in Baghdad. But then so my question, no, I'm not, I'm not familiar with those stories say. I mean, look, let's remember where we were in late 2000. to, you know, there were UN inspectors back in the country. Right. They had found no evidence of WMD whatsoever. But the Bush administration, you know, was determined to go forward because if they waited beyond March, it would be too hot.

And then they would have to scrap it for another, you know, until the fall or something like that. And they were just so gung-ho to go to war in another country. It's, it's, I think, you know, all of this really. accounts for the enormous change that we've seen in American public sentiment about Middle East wars, I think, over the last few years. Because people just feel, you know, it is, it's not much of a silver lining if you're Iraqi. No.

But it, but it, I think people do finally understand that these wars are, are, don't solve anything that they create more problems than they solve, you know, Al-Qaeda in Iraq. ISIS. All of this came out of our invasion, not to mention the perversion of our own civil liberties, torture, Guantanamo Bay, renditions, Abu Ghraib, all of that could have been avoided if we had not gone down that path. Yeah. And you know, it's interesting, too, because there's that famous footage, or it was famous for a time anyway, of Dick Cheney at the American Enterprise Institute in 1994 being interviewed on C-SPAN, where they ask him, Why didn't we go all the way to Baghdad in 91?

He seems to be honestly stating his own point of view, not just defending Bush Sr.'s decision there. When he says, well, look, the problem was, one, we'd be bogged down in urban warfare trying to hunt the guy down and catch him and all that, which would be a real problem. Two, you'd have pieces of Iraq fly off, he said. And he'd have, you know, the south or the east would go to Iran and the west would go to Syria, which that's not really right, that the Bathas would want to seize. the West, but he was right ultimately that you could get a Sunni Islamist state there. And then he says, you know, the Kurds could, that could end up getting into a fight with Turkey, which, you know, hasn't played out in the worst way there. But, you know, that was his argument. That was the argument that the Bush government, one of the arguments for not going all the way to Baghdad

in 1991 during Iraq War I was that this would be the consequence. And then so he had been convinced somehow otherwise that no pieces won't go flying off. U.S. Army will have no problem taking care of this, right? Yeah. I mean, I doubt he can be honest now. You know, I think he will still say there was a chance he had WMD. He was too dangerous in this environment after 9-11, and, you know, we couldn't count in it. But there were people. Maybe if we just drown him a few times, like almost to death and then brought him back to life and then asked him?

Yeah, I mean, I don't know, but there were, you know, people sent, there was Woolsey, the former CIA director, who was sent to try to prove that there was some connection between Al-Qaeda and Iraq when there was none. You know, they tried to prove that Muhammad Atta, one of the hijackers, had been in Baghdad, that he, you know, I remember Woolsey went to Prague on the trail of Muhammad Atta. supposedly he had been in Prague. It was, they were trying so hard to prove this connection. So I, you know, I think they just convinced themselves that, that, that, A, it was a good idea, and B, it would be easy. And, you know, it would be nice to see some humility from some of these people, but we haven't seen it.

And I think it's, it's really a great shame. Yeah. I think that's really a big part of the key there, right? is they thought it would be easy. They thought, yeah, look, I mean, the Iraqi people, whoever they are, they're just kind of extras in our movie, and they'll just stay in the background. Well, they, you know, we'd be greeted as liberators, don't you remember? Yeah.

There was an anecdote. I forgot where I learned this now. It was years ago, but it was Paul Bremer, the viceroy, says to his aide, who's some daughter of a Republican donor or something right, has no expertise whatsoever. She just got a political appointment there. and he says to her, who's this Mukta al-Sauder guy? And she says, oh, he's just some minor cleric. Don't worry about it.

Oh, my God, the sign of a famous clerical family. I mean, on the day of the invasion, they renamed Saddam City, Sauter City, in his family's honor. That might have been a clue. Oh, we're assassinated by Saddam. I mean, they were, you know, even to this day, I mean, he's not very bright compared to some other members of his family, but, you know, he's still got an important position just because of his family name. Yeah, I remember going to Baghdad with Colin Powell, you know,

shortly after Saddam fell and going to, you know, Saddam's palace and seeing all these wet behind the ears, Republican, you know, coffee goers. I mean, you know, they were, they were children. They were literally kids who had worked. on the campaign or something like that, who knew nothing about where they were, what they were doing. And they're lounging around the pool in bikinis and drinking and, you know, making a great impression, I'm sure, on the Iraqis. And they're there to reorganize the finances and the political system and the security system of this country, you know, the hubris. And again, you know, something like Bremer. I mean, where's his humility?

You know, where is he admitting that maybe dissolving the Iraqi army was not the most brilliant decision? Saddam was an SOB, but he hated Sunni fundamentalists and he hated Iranians. So, you know, we got rid of him. And there went the buffer against Iranian influence and there opened the Shia crescent, you know, from Iraq to Syria and to Lebanon. And we just sort of handed it to them. I mean, they knew how to profit from the opportunity. Let's, you know, give the Iranians that. But if Saddam had remained, if the army, Iraqi army had remained, Iran would not have been the influence that it became in Iraq.

And probably would have had less influence in both Syria and Lebanon. Well, and then, isn't this the key to the war in Syria? was they were trying to make up for the fact they'd given Baghdad to Iran so now they wanted to take Damascus away from them. That's what Obama told Jeffrey Goldberg. That's why we're doing this is to weaken Iran.

Yeah, that was one of the goals. Absolutely because, you know, the Assad family had been allied with Iran since the Iran-Iraq War, the original Iran-Iraq War because Syria, of course, was ruled by a rival

branch of the bath part, And so Hafez al-Assad hated Saddam Hussein and vice versa. And, you know, the Assads are from a kind of an obscure offshoot of the Shia faith called the Alawites. And so when the quote-unquote revolution began in Syria in 2011, yeah, there were a lot of people who thought this is our revenge, absolutely our revenge for Iraq. You know, the U.S. handed Iraq to the Iranians, so we're going to take Syria back. After all, it is a majority of Sunni country, which Iraq is not. And so logically, it should want to come back to the Sunni Arab fold. But we've seen what's happened.

And, you know, Assad, Bashar al-Assad, is being rehabilitated in the Arab world now. And because he's still there. He's not going anywhere. And I think many Arab countries feel they have no choice but to restore a relationship with him if they're going to have any influence in Damascus and compete with the Iranians and, you know, the Russians in any way. So it's very sad 10 years later that, you know, that after all the killing and all the grotesque human rights abuses, he's still there and Iran is still there and more powerful Syria than before. Yeah. And when you say, and we saw what happened, I mean, that means we saw the rise to the Islamic State and their conquering of Western Iraq and the launching of Iraq War III to destroy the al-Qaeda state that the U.S. and its allies had created with their war in Syria, right? Well, the idea was not to create an al-Qaeda state, but needless to say- No, no, that was just the result of it. The U.S. was never in control of the, quote-unquote, Syrian opposition and realized that. I think Obama realized.

that pretty soon. He was clearly afraid to carpet bomb him and really force a regime change in Damascus the way he'd done in Tripoli, but he still did support the revolution for five years. Even after the rise of the Islamic State, he kept supporting him through. It was Trump that canceled the program in 2017, July 17. Yeah, we still have some, you know, we still have a couple thousand troops, right, between Iraq and. But I mean, just the CIA program supporting the al-Qaeda. guys there? No, the, I mean, we're now supporting the Kurds against ISIS. Yeah, yeah. It's the Turks who are supporting the OK, the guys. It's complicated. It's the Middle East. I think, I think what all of this shows is that, particularly in a part of the world like that, which we don't understand, most

people in America don't understand very well, you have to be very careful with what you do. You have to be particularly careful when you send in tens of thousands of troops and try. to rearrange the chess board because the consequences are often not what you wanted can often be much, much worse than the status quo. And we can't take it back. We are where we are. Yeah. All right.

Now listen, I'm sorry because we're almost out of time, but I quote you all the time, including in my book, this most important story. There's one in the Wall Street Journal just like it to, from January 2015, Lloyd Austin and CENTCOM is passing intelligence to the Houthis to use to kill Al-Qaeda guys just two months before Obama stabs them in the back and takes Al-Qaeda's side against them. Can you please tell us about that? Michael Vickers came in the Atlantic Council and told you all about this. Oh, yeah.

Well, look, the Saudis were freaking out because the Houthis were taking over more and more territory in Yemen. And so it was really, this was a decision of Muhammad bin Salman, you know, the boy crown prince of Saudi Arabia, that he was going to. to show how macho he was by bombing Yemen and defeating the Houthis. And because the U.S. had just, was about to reach the JCPOA with Iran, it felt that it had to give a green light to it and give support to this Yemen campaign. Yeah, but before that. To placate the Saudis. Yeah, but before that. No, absolutely, the CIA and, you know, I wormed this out of,

out of vickers. They tried to deny it afterwards, but I had my quote. You know, that the Houthis had been giving us intelligence because, of course, the Houthis were opposed to al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. So, you know, we had been working with them when it was in our interest. And we lost that when we supported the Saudis in attacking Yemen. So, again, you know, sometimes the status quo, as imperfect as it is, is preferable to taking military action.

And I think we've certainly learned that in Yemen. Well, in the late great Mark Perry had written at the time that the generals at Central Command, meaning Lloyd Austin and his men, were absolutely beside themselves, being made by Obama to change sides in the war and help al-Qaeda and Saudi attack the Houthis when their enemy is a-QAP.

Well, right, they allege, they, you know, apparently, I mean, we still do go after Alphi, al-Qaeda in Yemen. So, I mean, the idea was to support al-Qaeda. The idea was to prevent the Houthis from taking over the whole country. No, I mean, it wasn't. Was that Al-Qaeda benefited? Yeah, I'm not saying like they were directly fighting the war for Al-Qaeda, but yeah, they took over like six towns and they've now been integrated into the UAE's militia and they're essentially a protected ally in this war. Even the New York Times said, geez, this kind of ironically puts us

on the side of a QAP. Yeah, it does. And in fact, that was what Michael Horton, no relation, the Yemen expert from Jamestown Foundation told Mark Perry then March of 15. He said, John McCain complains that we're Iran's Air Force in Iraq. Yeah, whose fault is that? But anyway, well, we're Al-Qaeda's Air Force now in Yemen. Oh, my. And that was then. I mean, that was right at the start of it.

And that was six and a half years ago. Yeah. Mark Perry was a wonderful journalist. Yeah, wouldn't he great. One of the best. One of the best. Yeah. All right.

I'm so sorry that we're out of time here, but thank you so much. It's great to talk to you again, Barbara. It's always fun. All right, you all. And again, that article is Iran won the war with Iraq, but at a heavy price. And that's at the Atlantic Council. And that has been Anti-War Radio for this morning. I'm your host, Scott Horton, editorial director at anti-war.com,

and author of Enough Already, Time to End the War on Terrorism. Find my full interview archive at Scotthorton.org and at YouTube.com slash Scott Horton's show. And I'm here every Sunday morning from 830 to 9 on KPF. 90.7 FM in L.A. See you next week.