The Pete Quiñones Show - 34 Years Ago - Operation Desert Storm w/ Thomas777 - Complete

Episode Date: January 16, 2025

109 MinutesPG-13This is the complete audio of Thomas' talk on the first Gulf War.Thomas' SubstackRadio Free Chicago - T777 and J BurdenThomas777 MerchandiseThomas' Book "Steelstorm Pt. 1"Thomas' Book "Steelstorm Pt. 2"Thomas on TwitterThomas' CashApp - $7homas777Pete and Thomas777 'At the Movies'Support Pete on His WebsitePete's PatreonPete's SubstackPete's SubscribestarPete's GUMROADPete's VenmoPete's Buy Me a CoffeePete on FacebookPete on TwitterBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-pete-quinones-show--6071361/support.

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from Volkswagen Financial Services, Ireland Limited, Subject to lending criteria. Terms and conditions apply. Volkswagen Financial Services Ireland Limited. Trading as Cooper Financial Services is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. Great to see you back at Spex Savers. Okay. Could you read out the letters on the wall for me?

Yep. D-E-A-L-S? Yeah, D-E-A-L-S. Deals. Oh, right. Yes, our Black Friday deals are I catching. But the letter chart's over here. Oh, sorry.

At Speck Savers, we've got all sorts of unmissable Black Friday. I did deals, like up to 70 euro off one pair of designer glasses. Offer ends on 7th of December 2025. Conditions apply. Ask in store for details. I want to welcome everyone back to the Pekanjana show. We got a good one today, Thomas. Let's talk about, well, finishing up the Cold War series, you know, they jump right into

conflict in the Gulf. So you wanted to talk about the Gulf War, what some people call Gulf War one. number one. And yeah, so why is this such a compelling topic to you? There's a few things I want to cover too that are related out of the gate.

One of the guys on my timeline, he posed a question. He asked me, because I mentioned that there's this essay that's very hard to find for some reason. It was it was Yaki's in the year 2000 essay where I made I advise people to take note that, you know,

Yaki was suggesting that the Soviet Union would not exist at the turn of the millennium, like, as constituted in 1950. And this dude who follows us abidly, he's like, did Yaki have a, that he render like a similar diagnosis to the United States, like, you know, appropriately speaking? And I told him no, because generally that kind of thing's a fool's errand. You know, he's like, no, I understand that. That's not like a dumb question at all.

Like, it's in short form, I don't like it. It's impossible to convey tone. I wasn't being flipping about that at all. It's a good question. But the reason why, I mean, Yaki definitely, in absolute terms, would not have viewed and did not view the American system as long for this earth.

But there was something peculiar about communism. I mean, there's all kinds of peculiar things about it, but it was more contrivance than, other ideological experiments like obviously arguably it was the only true sort of top-down um is sociopolitical experiment at scale um that uh there really is i think not um not uh pressing for it the soviet union um not just because the peculiarities of you know the epoch you know the the 19th century into the 20th century. But also just the process,

the process of dialectic itself, conceptually and philosophically, as well as in concrete material developmental terms, there's processes that must be left to develop spontaneously in order for any, in order for any political structure at scale to sustain itself, okay? Like, what do I mean by that? What really killed the Soviet Union in terms of its internal constitution

was the information age, okay? If you abolish the price mechanism as sort of the signaling variable, as it were, for, you know, for innovation and development, you're essentially always reverse engineering whatever your whatever your adversaries are able to construct and innovate and develop. You know, like, why is that? Well, I mean, think about it like this. If I, if we corralled, if we created some think tank of say like, you know, Elon Musk

and a, you know, a handful of, you know, like top finance, some players, you know, like Goldman Sachs types, you know, and then, and then you threw some, uh, you know, you threw some, like applying engineering, uh, prodigies or applied engineering prodigies into that, in our hypothetical group from like MIT, you know, um, would, uh, and you just told them, okay, like, think of dynamic ideas, you know, would they eventually, will they eventually innovate, kind of like the next big, like, telecom breakthrough or like the next, or the next, um, kind of generation, you know like electric car i mean i that's not the way things work um some variant of that was done vis-a-vis the apollo program and in military matters that is the way things are done because

you're the data set you're operating from is the capabilities of the other side the probable exigencies you know things relating to the theater that you're likely to fight in and you know, what capability is going to lend themselves to, you know, waging war in that theater. But, I mean, basically, your, you know, your, your, your data set is actual combat, which generally in some capacity is underway in low intensity, you know, kind of on every continent, you know, perpetually. But in terms like major wars, you know, basically once you're at war, I mean, that's kind of your laboratory, okay, as it were. Ready for huge savings?

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Yep. D-E-A-L-S? Yeah, D-E-A-L-S. Deals. Oh, right. Yes, our Black Friday deals are I catching. But the letter chart's over here. Oh, sorry.

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They didn't know how, they didn't know what function it was best suited to do. You know, they had some sense in basic terms that this is fundamental to command and control. But, you know, you can't just, you can't just predict like some kind of auger, you know, what role, like, new revolutionary, new technology is going to be best applied to in, in absolute terms. you know um for whatever purpose you know it uh now extrapolate that kind of stagnant tendency that literally stagnant tendency you know kind of every conceptual endeavor and you have marxist leninism you know and related to that but not you know solely approximately caused by that is that the whole concept of, you know, this, this, this, this, this, uh, this intrinsically hostile labor and, and, and capital paradigm, you know, and the kind of, the, the, the strange sociology

of cities literally being, you know, barracks for, you know, hundreds of thousands of, of, of, of, of factory workers, you know, that sustain, you know, that this kind of terrestrial, like, national manufacturing economy of value-added exports like that. that belongs to a discrete moment in time and building a kind of entire sociocultural structure around that you're dooming yourself to being kind of frozen in that

moment you know um that's that's the reason why and I mean there's also in my opinion like spiritual matters I mean that quite literally you know that make it not sustainable number one, but also I identify glaring frailties within the system as it existed, even to people who are basically secular. This was apparent.

That's why even people who were not Catholic and not even religious, you know, were very much behind John Paul II and, you know, his efforts to, you know, weaken the grip of the party state, specifically on Holland, but in all the captive nations, as they were called, you know, that had, with a Communist Party, had a sole claim to power. But that's why even thinkers far more kind of orthodox and they're thinking than Yaqui understood this. George Kennan, who I have a whole lot of respect for, as I think people know, he made that point again and again. And he was criticized for it roundly by, you know, what was then the equivalent of deep state types.

And, you know, Zionist types who just hated the Soviet Union for their own kind of ethno-sectarian reasons, you know, same people who've got this kind of sanguinary hatred of Russia today. But also just guys who, you know, their whole kind of raison d'etro and the way they made a living was by discussing the Soviet Union as this, you know, perennial. and immutable and and just insurmountable feature the strategic landscape. You know, if you're a second-rate academic, but you've, you know, but you've found a very profitable niche for yourself as this kind of public intellectual who's, you know, protecting the country from his insidious threat. I mean, think of it as kind of like the geostrategic equivalent of like a Dr. Fauci. You know, that's what Sovietologists were.

Okay. Like, are they going to, I mean, I think a lot of these people didn't have any, meaningful understanding of the situation or of communism but even those that did they had no interest in you know raising the possibility that um this system has an expiration date you know not to be flippant about it but um the book cybernetics by um by uh whiner uh It was published in 1948, and that term is something that centered people's vocabulary from, you know, science fiction and stuff. But it's an actual, it's a meaningful term in, in neuroscience and applied logic and, you know, AI and all kinds of interdisciplinary fields that relate to decision making. particularly that, which involves the interface of a human decision maker in a machine in various capacities, okay?

I raised that, I raise that text because, again, the first edition was published in 1948 from a really, really the die was cast in terms of the Soviet Union's fate. immediately after the cessation of hostilities in World War II. It's not to say it was inevitable the Soviet Union was going to lose the Cold War, not at all. I made the point, and the first one, I make the point again and again, that the Soviets were very well situated in strategic terms to win the Cold War. And arguably, the raison d'etre for that was in part, you know, that fact. And it was the Washington establishment. coming to terms with the reality that, you know, Warsaw Pact was winning on the battlefield.

So I'm not suggesting the contrary. But my point is, again, to kind of bring it back, that there were basic frailties and peculiarities in the Soviet system. And you will not find another example of a literally, like, planned society in that way. this is the point from where Yaqui was speaking. Moving ahead, in large measure, with some exceptions that I think are kind of obvious to everybody and that don't really need to be fleshed out discreetly. Every state, every modern state, you know, that, that

that emerged as at least a nominally independent sovereignty after the Second World War was created by the dialectic of the Cold War. Okay, even though states that adopted a third positionist orientation, they were doing so in dialogue with the Cold War contra, the ideological paradigm, they're in, which they viewed as they're existentially menacing due to them being forced to pick

aside and what could very easily become a general nuclear war or owing the fear of a kind of cultural contamination that pretty much everybody formally aligned with either the

you know, the NATO or the socialist camp ran the risk of as they availed themselves to you know the kind of openness to the one superpower or the other. Iraq was no exception. To understand why America went to war with Saddam's Iraq, it's what I just described needs to be accounted for in basic terms,

beyond the superficial. And to understand why America was sort of so focused on Iraq owes to this too. The Iran-Iraic War was the progenitor of what became the Gulf War of 1991. If I could bring it up on my screen, I'd bring up the notes from Saddam's meeting with his war cabinet on the eve of war in 1980, before giving the order to go to war with the Islamic Republic of Iran. Basically, everybody from, you know, these Arabists like Saddam was, these pan-Arab, you know, nationalists, to, you know, to these radically pious, you know, Salafi types, you know, like bin Laden, you know, to, you know, to Zionists in Israel, to these American Cold War on functionaries like Romancephel and Nick Cheney.

The thing they all agreed on in geostrategic terms was that the sort of natural power arrangement in the Near East. You catch them in the corner of your eye. Distinctive. By design. They move you. Even before you drive. The new Cooper plugin hybrid range for Mentor, Leon, and Teramar.

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Great to see you back at Spegg Savers. Okay, could you read out the letters on the wall for me? Yep. D-E-A-L-L-S? Yeah, D-E-A-L-L-S. Deals. Oh, right. Yes.

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That's what's preceded, you know, for a millennia going back to when, you know, It was the Ottomans who defeated the Mongols in the Near East and in Persian for all time. You know, thus the caliphate being a Turkish caliphate, not an Arab one. Iran, despite being a basically kind of like inward-looking civilization, and it is in some ways a civilization and to itself. It is a huge country with a very powerful heritage, and culture doesn't matter. who's kind of tuned into our, you know, partisan community. I shouldn't need to elaborately make that case. But just in raw strategic terms, at least, you know, accounting for limitations of power

rejection capability, there's this great potential in Iran, okay? and Saddam, again, being very much a creature of the Cold War conceptually, he was trying to accomplish what Nasser had failed to do and created genuinely Arabist block, you know, with the bath party as the catalyst. But he had to tread very carefully with, you know, adopting any appearance of sectarian prejudice or motivation. The Iraqi Bath Party, it had Christians in key places.

Tarika Zee is one of them. It had Shia in high roles, particularly some in the military. But at base, it was a Sunni party. It was a party of the Sunni minority, okay? Saddam's grievances with Iran went way back. the Alger's agreement that had been signed with the shop was considered this kind of victory deployment of C of types interestingly

and it had allowed both Iran and Baghdad to save face with these kinds of territorial swaps that seemed to be the kind of remaining conflict dyads potentially between the two countries the Iranian Revolution changed everything. We talked before

about how nobody really foresaw Islam becoming this power political force this animating principle particularly the late Cold War was still very much the Cold War arguably there was a more kind of earnest ideological bent in, you know, 79, 80, then there had been at any time prior to, you know,

the Eisenhower era, you know, and, um, but this was not something anybody was really thinking about. And, um, the seizure of the Grand Mosque, um, also in 1979, um, were in these radical Salafis, you know, um, occupied, uh, the Grand Mosque of Mecca for weeks, you know, demanded the abdication of the House Assad for you know being at odds with being at odds with

Allah and a false Muslim the they went as far the grand mosque occupiers they went as far as the claim that their leader I can't remember his name all the top of my head I'd have written down they went as far as the claim that he was the

Mahdi you know the messianic historical figure who would emerge you know, as prophesized by Muhammad. I mean, this was this was profound stuff underway, okay? People who have a kind of cynical view,

as well as others, I think of kind of an incomplete understanding going to their own probable conceptual biases as regards religious belief, just generally. They either look at this as no big deal, or they look at it as Saddam just being terrified of some kind of general uprising in Iraq, not even so much

against the Ba'ath Party, but just this kind of radicalized Islamic consciousness, you know, sweeping him and his comrades aside. I don't really think that was it. I think there was great fear, the kind of the fear that, you know, sectarian minorities have of the program, wherever they're situated where that's a realistic possibility. I think Sama had a more nuanced view of it than simply this is something that needs to be quashed, less, you know, it kind of become the defining ideological currency of the Arab-speaking world. On some level, I believe, like all Sunnis and some,

was a Sunni Muslim, they felt even more gravely affronted the concept of an Iranian Shia caliphate than, you know, they had been centuries prior at the inception of a Turkish caliphate. So all these things conspired to kind of Korean, Iran, Iraq, towards war. The United States and NATO, particularly the Bundes Republic, were very much behind this. I made the point again and again, you know, and again, I can't cite precise numbers because I can't call up my notes. But there's around 50,000 people who died owing to Iraqi chemical weapons assaults on Iran. man. Most of them were soldiers, despite what, um, despite the impression people have going to, you know, this, you know, the kind of endlessly repeated narratives about the Kurds. And those people did die. I mean, they, they, there was plenty of civilian attrition, but it was primarily military attrition. About 20,000 of that number died outright in the field. You know, these were Iranian troops who were hit with chemical munitions. A lot of nerve agent and then modern nerve agent, nobody was really sure what it would do. A fair amount of this nerve agent was procured from NATO countries.

Iranians soldiers were treated in Europe in Scandinavia, some in Germany, some of the Benelux countries. I mean, part of that was genuine doctors without borders, like doing their thing. Part of it was a hot war in Europe definitely chemical weapons, they're not obsolescent. They're actually quite util, depending on the battle space. And a general war between NATO and Warsaw Pact in 1980, it's almost, I mean, it's a wrong conclusion that chemical weapons would have been used. So the world was watching the Iran-Iraq war, okay?

For all kinds of reasons, some of which some of which owned a very concrete for a kind of purely military matters. Others

relating to the political ones. And this idea that Saddam was this deranged maniac and he only enjoyed the large guests of the United States and the Bundes Republic and in London because the Iranians were even worse deranged maniacs. I mean, that's that's garbage for all kinds of reasons and only literates think that way. But also, Saddam's Iraq. It was a brutal state. It was a gangsterish

regime. But I mean, a lot of regimes were like that. A lot of regimes are like that. That America backed the ultimate megacidal gangster regime in World War II in Stalin's Soviet Union. so it's not really Saddam's Iraq was remarkable in the sense of where and when it was historically situated and you know they kind of

the global power plays that became involved in in a very direct and catastrophic capacity but there's not something like weird or extreme excuse me in any sense that Zan Hussein enjoyed the backing of

of the U.S. and certain key in NATO players. And it's the minutes from the meeting between Saddam and the Bath War Council, what amounts to the Bath

War Council, he's talking about restraints, like not in a Ronald Reagan kind of way or something, but he's saying like we don't want a wider war than what we need in order to, you know, situate ourselves

in the position we want to be contra Iran. You know, we don't want this to turn into a prolonged war. We don't want it to become a wider war where, among other things, God forbid Iran could potentially shore up sympathy of other Muslim states. You know, like, there's not like the ramblings of some idiot or... Ready for huge savings? Well, mark your calendars from November 28 to 30th

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You know, and that's key. You know, and it's also, Iran fought a lot better than anybody thought. And obviously they hung on for almost a decade, you know, getting pounded by the Iraqi army that was throwing everything ahead at them quite literally. America was saying in the epoch, you know, State Department and CIA and I think defense intelligence probably had a more realistic grasp on things, but it's the same, it's the same nonsense they always say about states and regimes they don't like that this regime is about to fall apart.

Everybody is starving there. You know, it had the, the revolutionary government has no popular support. You know, the moment, you know, the moment. you know the moment hostilities commence you know they're all going to surrender and the regime's going to collapse i mean this was you know this this this is always the alibi um but it's incredibly it's it's remarkably foolish and the case if i ran you know like i this is probably the only time you'll hear me cite foucault in a praising capacity but he um he wrote this dispatch one of the few kind of purely

like journalistic at least in structure dispatches he ever released or at least for wide publication it was about the arena revolution and it was frankly insightful and he said this is a genuine third way this is a genuine popular

revolution but it's not something that's just going to burn itself out so to speak once the immediate cab list revolution fervor is gone you know he's like for better or worse these people have these people have a very highly developed

vision for what they were trying to do. It is in fact precedent it's, uh, you know, it appeals to a wide swath of people, you know, demographically. Um, this is something that needs to be taken seriously. You know, and he was speaking, obviously,

in the context of, um, you know, as the time was ending, okay, but, um, he was kind of a lone voice in the wilderness. and it's weird. I mean, aside from the fact that, you know, he was kind of a latter date to sod and a lot of we produced in addition to

just being, you know, kind of grossly morally offensive and obtuse, it was just plain like not insightful and it was wrong, particularly on matters of, you know, power politics and kind of human affairs and of a political nature. But for whatever reason, he was

absolutely right about that, okay? That perhaps weren't some speculation in some point the dedicated capacity, but he was absolutely right. So the Iraq war became just like a disaster. You know, neither Iran or Iraq ever recovered from it, because you know, you don't

recover from eight years of total war, okay? And if you do, eventually, you're not the same, particularly, I mean, when you're talking about the when you're talking about when I ran on Iraq on the late 20th century, like at scale, like, though it's, it's

it's, it's like what I just stated is a constant pretty much regardless, you know, but particularly, particularly for states of that size. Iran was a lot bigger than Iraq. My point is neither was a superpower or anything. Yeah, I'll see what can be done. Yeah, I'm sorry about that. I was like, I'm trying to think of exactly where I was when I left off. Yeah, the last thing you said was, you were talking about Iran and Iraq and I wrote down your last words that I heard. It said neither was a superpower. Right.

Nevertheless, there were, the decisions they made stood to be impactful on the global scale. Okay. And I don't know if it were, I don't know if the recording picked up or not. I made the point that Saddam, although he was very careful not to characterize the conflict in sectarian terms only to the reality that you know his party was a Sunni majority

party and a sea of Shia Muslims but also that would have compromised you know his entire raison deptych and political life you know which was

that created genuine Arabism writ large as a mobilized catalyst and um whether people whether the you know and and the Iraqi bath tried to care whether whether whether or Saddam himself whether was the Ministry of Information or whether it was the warp cabinet they tried to characterize it as a as a racial conflict especially as things went bad after 1983 you know where the Arab people like fighting like the Persian other or like the Azeri you know uh alien whether like Iraqi people like bought into that

any way or not. I don't think they did. It didn't matter. They definitely were afraid of Iranians. They definitely viewed a revolutionary Iran. Again, you know, the history of the Near East is domination by the Turks, by the Iranians, Persians, or both. And even people who would have been basically had no issue in ethno or racial terms with Iranians. And, you know, this emergent Islamic tendency as a catalyst for political action and as a truly, you know, significant power political catalyst on the world stage, any Arab would have felt affronted by that. Like this, you know, the Persian should not be leading this, this, this charge. you know, or that no, you know, the first true Islamic state, you know, should, you know, should, um, it should be the, it should be the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, you know, like, it can't, it can't be this like this Shia, you know, this Persian Shia state, you know, of Ayatollahs and, and, um, you know, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, it was very much that, too.

and neither Iraq nor Iran ever recovered because you don't recover from a conflict like that. And, you know, that's why I set the stage for this because it's so important going into August 2nd, 1990, people pretend like Saddam Hussein was like this idiot or like some deranged madman. He was neither of those things. And because I think I finally got my notes back so I can check a. this document i want to do um the minutes of saddam uh talking to his uh to the bath war cabinet on um on uh the eve of war you know just before uh 22nd september 1980 he's uh talking about how the lgiers um the treaty of algiers you know that basically allowed iraq to preserve their honor

and, you know, the Shah was a man we could work with, you know, but all bets are off as revolutionary regime. However, Saddam continued to, he kept emphasizing over and over again, this has to be a limited war. We've got to limit our objectives, military and political. This cannot be allowed to turn into a quagmire, and nor we've got to make it clear that this is, you know, an effort to create, you know, a livable, a livable strategic balance

for Arab people. There's not some open-ended war of conquest against Iran. You know, and again, he had the full support of, in military terms, you know, of the United States, the Bundes Republic, and basically the key players in NATO for a reason, you know, I don't know if it recorded me or not. I don't know if it was recording me when I talked about that seizure of the Grand Mosque. Did it record that?

No. Okay. Saddam, like everybody else in the world, his eyes were on Saudi Arabia, on Mecca in 1979, as well as the Islamic Republic of Iran. The seizure the Grand Mosque, by the besieging militia, they called themselves the Equine. Al-Iqwan, which is a reference to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the base of the bedouins under their arms who had to played a part of establishing Saudi Arabia. Um, they seized the grand mosque from November 20th to December 4th. they declared that their leader, Al-Katani, was the Mahdi, literally the Mahdi.

You know, like the messianic figure in Islamic theology who, you know, who ushers in Islamic victory. You know, they, this was something nobody saw coming. I mean, not, if you looked at, it's like, okay, if you could look at, if people were disposed to look at the Iranian Revolution as this kind of outlawed. phenomenon and look at Shia Islam as kind of a strange thing or look at the Shah's regime as this kind of brutal police state that you know people were looking for something to grasp onto as a catalyst to bring it down ready for huge savings will mark your calendars from November 28 to 30th because the Liddle Newbridge warehouse sale is back we're talking thousands of your favorite Liddle items all reduced to clear from home

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This kind of burgeoning Islamic consciousness that was translating to, you know, real direct action and war in peace terms. This changed everything, you know. And this also, this is, again, why Saddam, he was cautious and not characterizing the conflict with Iran as a sectarian conflict. You know, and basically, I mean, that was pragmatic. I mean, obviously, because the Iraqi bath was a minority party. And although they had Shia, they had Christians, Louis-Tarika Ziz was a Christian in their ranks, they couldn't well afford to be viewed as a sectarian biggest.

But, you know, there's those who welcome that kind of thing, even against odds that would appear insurmountable owing to blood loss or whatever else. So again, I mean, this idea that Saddam was just this like maniac or this buffoon does not, the historical record does not bear that out. And it's what I got into, I think right before I cut out a couple things. You know, about the only time, the only, this is probably the only time I'll ever say anything praising about Foucault. But Foucault, he wrote this dispatch on the Iranian Revolution because he was in Iranian.

when it was underway. And it was incredibly insightful. And again, I know it's hard to believe that if it will co-penned anything, particularly something that was like, you know, then contemporaneous to the kind of strategic situation and the burgeoning kind of, you know, political culture of radical Islam. But, you know, he said, look, this isn't a flat. and the pan sort of phenomenon, you know, it's not, it's not just a typical, you know, revolutionary tendency dressed up in the language of Shia Islam for cosmetic reasons or because

they, you know, they want to keep the Soviet Union out as much as they do, you know, as much as they want to evict the Americans, you know, from pulling the strings in Tehran. You know, it was very authentic. It was authentically felt and it represented something different that um you know there to four was not part of the um part of people's conceptual horizon as detont came to an end you know there's profound things underway and all of this coupled again with the fact that every arab with uh you know a political consciousness and with a concern and you know historical terms, the fortune of his own people. A revolutionary Iran, or just like an iridentist and militarized Turkey,

these are very ominous things. You know, the Turkey and Iran are sort of the natural hegemonies regionally. That's one of the reasons why people are obsessed about heri in Iran, you know, whether it's these kind of cynical Cold War fossils who stuck around like Rumsfeld and Cheney, whether it's, you know, Zionist types,

these kind of like rabid Zionist bigots like Metanyahu. Or, I mean, like the, like the Arabist, you know, bath, revolutionary types, like Saddam was. You know, there's a reason why, the Israeli

fixation in Iran, like, it, it, it, it, it deteriorates on certain points, um, of policy vision and into just like, naked irrationality, okay, but, um, generally it's not, um, it's, uh, it's, it's not without precedent to view, again, the, uh, the real, like, power players in the region as, uh, as Turkey and Iran, but, um, going into August 2nd, the, uh, as things started to go really poorly on the battlefield for Iraq. August 1983

is not Iraq deployed chemical weapons for the first time in a battlefield capacity. All told throughout the war, in 1991, CIA released its documents and so did defense

intelligence on the Iran-Iraq war. It's pretty much agreed by all parties about About 50,000, Iran took about 50,000 casualties only to chemical weapons. About 20,000 of those casualties where Iranian soldiers killed outright, you know, just like when they were hit or like minutes afterwards. The Iraqis made liberal use of nerve gas, nerve agent, mostly taboon and sarin. And make no mistake, despite what people say, chemical weapons remain very utile,

depending on the nature of the engagement and the battle space and you better believe that it was clear to everybody on both sides of the wall you know NATO and Warsaw had warplaters alike that if and when war came to Europe there would be liberal use of poison gas okay so strong attention was paid in both you know

in both the eastern block and in NATO was the what the impact was of chemical weapons on on modern infantry um it um I mean again I guess I dropped that because it uh and much and much

if not all of these chemical munitions were supplied by NATO countries okay it uh this was not some like rogue state um action or something on that sort but

it um this is a this this this was where saddam was uh this was the mindset okay this was the conceptual situatedness of saddam the iraqi bath um kind of like the arab streets generally and the several arab speaking moslem majority countries going into august second 1990 um also what had to have been on saddam's mind the soviet union still exists in August 1990, but the Berlin Wall was no more. The Cold War was over. There was still a huge potential for crisis.

Arguably, the world was, you know, there was tremendous danger of foot owing to instability. And the fact that not any kind of meaningful disarmament had been accomplished, particularly as regards nuclear forces, unless you count the intermediate forces treaty itself. but um the Carter doctrine you know which uh the Carter doctrine which you know stated in no uncertain terms that any Soviet attack on any state in the Middle East basically any hostile deployment the United States would would treat that as an attack on its vital interests you know and it would meet the attack with proportionate force. Okay.

But the Carter doctrine absent the Soviet Union doesn't really make any sense. You know, and it's not like there was some precedent for America just intervening in the Middle East, just on basic terms, you know, or on its own terms. So from the perspective of Saddam, there was that too, you know. And finally, you know, America only ended the military draft in 1973. The last time America deployed forces into an open-ended combat situation was Vietnam. The Democratic Party, their platform consistently, was hostile to military industrial interests. doesn't matter of course. The revolution in military affairs, first of all people, like the common man or woman

are kind of ignorant in military affairs anyway. But they had no concept of Rima. They had no concept of what was different about, you know, waging a counterinsurgency war with conventional elements like in Southeast Asia in a Cold War context, which axiomatically limited the operational environment. They had no concept of why that is. radically different than waging a conventional war in the desert against a country like Iraq. But Americans were basically not enthusiastic about military deployments.

And this idea of just Congress signing off on some open-ended deployment to wage a general war with Iraq, to liberate a country that was this kind of oil sheik kingdom like that. it was not for our conclusion that America would be willing to go to war. In fact, most people viewed it as unlikely that America would deploy, you know, at scale to accomplish as that. And finally, what was essential, even if the political will was there in America, even if, you know, public opinion was 100% behind it, even if there was a consensus on the beltway, even before a shot was fire and anger,

Um, you still want, whoever that, you know, was in the Oval Office would literally have to finesse a coalition that quite literally, um, had, uh, you know, the Arab world, 100% behind America. As well as also them in the Soviet Union agree to stand down. Okay. Now, I'm not going to sit here and pretend like Bush 41 was a good guy. or that we should like him or that, you know, he was a man worthy of your high esteem or anything like that. Okay, but Bush was an incredible political operator and he was an incredible chief executive within the bound of rationality of command. Okay. What he accomplished, I can see Nixon pulling it off, okay, within a different context. But that's nothing sort of remarkable.

And that is something that I believe will very much guarantee Bush 41's legacy as at least the students, like serious students of a political theory and of government as well as war in peace. And that's why I speak of Bush. and what I know people attack me sometimes that sometimes is just good nature to ribbing for what appears to be some kind of like praise of like Bush and I mean understandably like why would anyone seem nice thing about the Bush family

but you know I it doesn't matter what his politics were in this context we're talking about the essence of executive decisionism and all of that let's let's take up the Gulf War proper

in another episode. If you're okay with that. I'm sorry if it's on my end. I'm sorry on my end, like the Zoom got Fubour. I'll hop on my dad's machine. It's been fine since you shut it down and restart it. Okay, yeah.

I'll, we can even convene this weekend. I don't feel pressured. We'll record for the next series. We'll commence that anytime you want. It's like Monday. But I want to do a part two to conclude Gulf War one. And yeah, that's that's dope.

And I'll make sure that I'll do whatever I can to make sure it's not an issue with like Zoom freezing my stuff or whatever. No problem. Okay, yeah. Thank you, Pete. All right, man. I'm going to cut it now and we'll talk about recording a second one over the next couple of days. Definitely. All right.

Thanks, man. Yeah. I want to welcome everyone back to the Pekignana show. Thomas is here to finish up this quick two episode. Um, the Gulf War of, uh, was it 90 to 91? I was alive for it. Yeah. It was, um, the Iraqi assault in Kuwait was August 2nd, 1990.

Um, Desert Shield became Desert Storm on January 17th, 1991. Um, cessation of hostilities was, uh, in March of 1991. But, um, an incredibly impactful event for all kinds of reasons. and it acquits President Bush in the historical record. Again, people misconstrue what I mean by that. I'm not endorsing Bush's character or saying that I share what was his policy vision for the world, which in a lot of ways was a more restrained iteration of what the new dealers saw

as kind of the ideal configuration of world order. I think Bush 41 has something in common with Harry Truman, frankly. He was a better warlord, and they just like a more capable guy, you know, but he, that's kind of the way to understand his policy vision in very basic terms. Okay. His view for complex interdependence and globalism was different. I mean, part of that owed to the different epochs in which they, you know, were ascendant in terms of their own role. but part of it was just you know

Bush had a unique concept of what globalism would look like that again I want to qualify this because you catch them in the corner of your eye distinctive by design they move you

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Search Trump Ireland gift vouchers. Trump on Dunebiog, Kush Farage. People misunderstand. You know, I'm talking about the bound of rationality. I'm judging these things about the rationality of the goals of these actors themselves, okay? and I'm juxtaposing that with the total kind of insanity and nonsensical, like, non-policy that is, you know, characteristic today of the regime. You know, it's not even, it's not even so much today that, you know, I'm at the point of Clinton onward, like, there was no foreign policy. You know, there was just this bizarre, destructive kind of scattershot, you know, a collection of,

of, of, of, a constellation of like military adventurism, you know, against the enemies of Israel and against other, just kind of random states that, you know, only to some discreet, um, interest group and their ability to bring pressure or to, you know, um, localized, uh, economic interests, you know, was targeted for destruction. But beyond that, there literally is no, like, meaningful foreign policy. I mean, the point again and again to people that people like Mike Pompey, or like Nikki Haley, like these people really are fucking morons. Like, they're not acting, you know, they're not dumbing down their language conceptually to try and appeal to like the common man or woman. Like they really are like fucking idiots.

Like they have no, they have no concept at all of the world and power political affairs or anything like that. So Bush, Baker, Skowcroft, even Cheney. And Cheney's a terrible person. But again, you know, we're not talking about the character of these people. you know, they, they stand out, and kind of like the contrast emerges in high relief, verbally speaking, but it's also, too, the Gulf War, other than Korea, other than Korean War, it's really the only case of the United Nations functioning as it was in 10th function. Okay. I'm so remarkable for that reason, too. And, of course, like in the Korean War,

the Soviet Union was boycotting the United Nations. So, I mean, that's why the Security Council was able to bypass what would have been, you know, an inevitable Soviet veto or the resolution to defend the Republic of Korea. The fact that Bush was able to get, I mean, you got to look at it like this, okay, from 1970, de facto from 1973, onward. The Middle East became a conflict dyad, the traversing of which by hostile deployment by the United States or Warsaw

Pact, it led to World War III. It was declared de facto a vital U.S. fear of interest in 1973 when it appeared as if the Soviet Union was going to deploy to relieve the Egyptian army and prevent their destruction. You know, the United States then elevated to DefCon 3. The Soviet Union in turn deployed nuclear warheads to the port of Alexandria. They weren't married to their launch vehicles.

They never came ashore. And Grameko and Ustinov undoubtedly, but Grimiko for certain. advised um advised uh brezhnev you know to the to to prepare for war basically you know to deploy what was Warsaw Pax version of the rapid reaction

force um which which technically was like a parachute for elemental though nobody was like using parachutes by then you know but it uh they were they they did the the Soviet Union did have an equivalent of a rapid reaction force that deployed basically like uh you know the 80 second airborne

And that element attached to it did for the bright star exercise biannually. But I digress. But the point is, Middle East policy as regards war and peace became formalized by the Carter doctrine. And Carter declared a no uncertain terms, you know, when the Red Army assaulted Afghanistan, that, you know, any Soviet ingress to the Middle East would be treated an act of war against the United States and its allies. And so the fact that Bush was able to, the fact that he was able to get the Soviets to sign on to a massive U.S. deployment to the Arabian Peninsula. And the fact that he was able to do so, able not just to facilitate that, but to get the Soviets to agree to that deployment. for the purpose of engaging what had been a Soviet client state.

That's incredible. Okay. And it's a, this is a very delicate minuet. And something we covered earlier in the series is that, you know, Gorbachev, whatever people can say about him. And I know a lot of patriotic Russian guys, like, hate him. And I'm sure if I was Russian, I'd have strong feelings about him, too. Like, I'm not saying that's misguided.

It's not for me to say that. It's their country. And it's their culture. But what I will say is this. And what I do think I'm entirely qualified to say, Gorchoff wasn't just as kind of, he wasn't just a cipher. He wasn't a stooge. He wasn't just some myriadette just kind of, you know, stumbling into poor policy decision after poor policy decision and being led around by the Bush. White House. That's not true at all. And that's one of the reasons why he was, you know, basically sandbagged and removed from office, you know, by, in part by Washington. So there's no, it was not, what I'm getting is, there was not

some guarantee that Gorichov would have acquiesced to this. But also, even if Gorosov had been, you know, a cipher in the order of what I described, there was still there was still the remainder of the party apparatus. There was, you know, a hard line element that, you know, had to be placated.

You know, there was the people who became, you know, the Yeltsin faction that, you know, which is complicated. Because Yeltsin, in a lot of ways, was that. He was that. He was a cipher. but he too was accountable to people within the Soviet apparatus, particularly, you know, decision makers within the national security apparatus, which as we've established in concrete policy terms, had outsized clout and power. You know, even more so than in the United States at kind of the peak of, it kind of the peak of called. were hostilities. You know, so it's that's got to be

acknowledged. Both, you know, it's an indicator of Gorish off effectiveness. Again, within the bounds of, you know, the policy decision, the policy challenges on the table and the hospital decisions rendered they're in, but also

of Bush 41's ability to finesse this stuff. And I know, I know, again, I can't, I apologize really sincerely with the fact that it was my machine that, you know, had a screwed up connection or whatever last time. So forgive me again if I'm repeating this myself. But another thing that I think has to be acknowledged is that I'm saying was a more complicated figure than is often acknowledged too. He really was.

And some of the things he did that at the time spun as being, you know, just fools, or, you know, him being cast as simply nothing more than a tin pot dictator who is more who is less risk averse than most of them. That's really not the case either. There's a reason why the Soviet relationship with Iraq was always troubled. for a time the the Iraqi

the Iraqi diplomatic mission was was was banned from East Berlin because they taken it upon themselves to one opportunity presented itself to murder people that they wanted dead like other Iraqis I mean like there's this one Iraqi Communist Party

functionary and Iraqi intelligence under light diplomatic cover, literally threw him off a roof in East Berlin. There was some student dissident type who was cozy with the communist

but who was an anti-Saddam zealot. And some Iraqis pulled up next to him when he was on foot around Karl Marx Ali pulled him into a car he disappeared and then he washed up

on a riverbank with evidence of extreme torture and all kinds of horrible mutilation you know having having been dead for weeks and you know stored somewhere so finally like finally you know finally you're not doing this anymore

you know you're gone and just the fact that the bathists were you know actively um actively at war with the communism, basically. I mean, I'm talking about within Iraq, because they were consolidating their monopoly on power.

I mean, that axiatically caused tension. But nevertheless, Iraq was a, the Soviet Union never had a true Arab client state. The only communist Arab state was South Yemen, the short-lived South Yemenese state and it was short-lived not because it didn't have legitimacy

something that's fascinating to me now in the Yemen war there is a faction down there that is a is a identifies as like the South they identify as like the legacy

of the South Yemen armed forces you know and they're very much like kind of like post-Marxist, but radically left-wing militia. You know, and I find that fascinating. But my point is that the Soviets could not pick and choose. You know, the Middle East was not Africa. The Middle East was not Asia.

They certainly wasn't Latin America. You know, they couldn't pick and choose, you know, like what Arabs state. They want to do them, you know, they want to give privilege a position in terms of material support and informal clientage. You know, they, like, communism just was not taking root in the Near East.

You know, it just wasn't. Even when it had real currency in other theaters at comparable stages of development and everything else. So, you know, Saddam also, we talked about the situation,

of Iraq going into the Iran-Iraq war of 1980. The Iraqis had signed the Algiers Agreement with the Shah in 1975. This had to do with territorial disputes and other things. The typical kinds of things that provoke interstate rivalry or more as kind of acts as like a catalyst or like a superficial and immediate rationalization where within paradigms that, you know, there's already like a mutable hostility between state actors. Iran and Iraq have always kind of been desperately at odds, okay, in political terms. You know, Iran is rarely at war, like open war, but, I mean, they're constantly at war in,

in, you know, a subtle and sort of hidden capacity, you know, unconventional capacity. But nevertheless, you know, they've always been at odds with Iraq in the modern era, post-Od Ottoman era after World War I. But the, the, and as, you know, there's not entirely without objective rationale. Like we talked about the reason why the Israelis, like the American State Department, you know, Zionists all in sundry, as well as, you know, formerly Arab nationalist types, like the bathists, you know, like Arabist types, and what remains that element today. But also, you know, radical, you know, Salafi types. the two kind of poles of of of of hard power

in the near east has always been Turkey and Iran you know and the Arabs kind of find themselves between these these these alien elements you know and when the as Islam

became this kind of animating catalyst. Most remarkably, one, you know, for Sunnis, obviously, was you know, the effort, the jihad against the Soviet Union and communism in the midst of the

assault in Afghanistan. But the first true Islamic state was Iran. And the fact that it was a non-Arab, non-Suni culture ready for huge savings will mark your calendars from

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That produced the first truly Islamic revolution. That was remarkable, but it was also, it was also alarming. You know, it meant that, it meant that power bases within Islam, within the faith itself, and particularly like, you know, revolutionary press. axis they're in, you know, it had shifted. You know, there was a seizure of the Grand Mosque in 1979 in, in Saudi Arabia. And that was impactful, too. But again, much as that might have animated the kinds of guys who, you know,

want to join the Holy War against the Soviet Union, you know, that wasn't, the House of Saud wasn't about to collapse, you know, like it wasn't, it didn't, it didn't spark this kind of this like kind of wildfire tendency um you know that to provoke sunnis under arms to duplicate what happened in iran you know like nothing like that it um and not without um not without cause you know i Iraq is a is a majority Shia state and um you know the Shia minority globally within Islam, but they're an extraordinarily potent minority. And that's, that, that's their, the Shia heartland is, is really Iraq in the Arab world, you know. I mean, or in terms of raw population, okay, you know, the, the, the Iraqi Bath Party, they were, they were ecumenical in a real sense.

You know, Tarika Ziz himself was a Christian. The Bath Party was a Christian. The core of Arabathism in Iraq. And Syria is a totally different thing. You know, it was a Sunni political culture. All of these things, there was an internal logic, strategically, I mean, to Iraq

preemptively assaulting Iran. And Saddam, if you read the notes from Saddam speaking to his war council, or what would have been like the Bath National Security Council,

it's equivalent. You can tell that it's not a decision that's being made flippantly. and the immediate catalyst, you know, as we said, like the Alger's agreement was signed with the Shah. Tehran immediately declared after the revolution that, you know, we're not bound by any treaties that, you know, were signed by the imperialist government. You know, that's over with. So it was, it's not as if a conciliatory posture.

was being struck with, you know, with Baghdad. And really the tenor of Saddam's appeal to the War Council is, you know, if we let this go now, we're essentially allowing ourselves to be extorted. And if we're going to set, if the president being set, you know, at first impression with the revolutionary regime in Tehran, is that, you know, we are available to be extorted. You know, he's like, how would that look and how would that look to the Arab people?

You know, not just in Iraq, but theater-wide. You know, and it's also, well, how would that look to the Soviet Union, too? Who, frankly, again, despite the, despite the, they're kind of troubled friendship, it was a genuine concord of necessity. And, you know, Iraq needed Soviet material support

to remain a viable military power. And if confidence was lost, in Moscow's confidence was lost, they simply would have looked elsewhere. Admittedly it was a shallow pool of potential clients. But nevertheless, there was precedent for, the Soviets didn't just desperately continue to sustain

regimes that weren't viable or that would not be able when critical circumstances emerged be able to mobilize and be able to be able to wage war in at least

a nominally effective capacity. So this had you know, I raised that because again, like it's the people claim because they kind of selectively choose to cite like late Iran-Iraq war

propaganda of you know out of Baghdad where you know they're they're emphasizing that you know the the Iranians are a different race you know they're they're they're they're Persians or they're Azeris and they're not like us and saying like see Saddam was just like this madman

who just invaded Iran for no reason or he did so out of you know out of uh you know kind of quasi racialist like you know tendencies of bigotry or uh or because of like tech fury hostility to the Shia. I mean, I, that's really not true.

And I mean, whatever, everybody's an armchair general, you know, so it, and nobody, nobody chooses to treat these things, you know, as they, as decisions would have been rendered like in the epic and at the critical moment of decision where, you know, the the awareness of the situation you know would have been restricted to what was then apparent and emergent um and i'm not saying that son i was like a good executive or something but um i'm saying that he was um he was he was more competent than is acknowledged and um he was in a very unenviable unenviable position um i think at some point it was inevitable iraq would find itself at war but that's more kind of a more complicated and wider um topic it um getting back to the um getting back to the um

getting back to our topic i raised the iraneric war a lot because it's it's important for for all kinds of reasons of context um relating to the rebel not not just to the politics than near east but relating to the cold war relating to uh um you know, the sectarian hatred, Dara Islam, you know, relating to the revolution in military affairs, the reemergence of chemical weapons being utilized and applied, you know, like, tactical capacity on the battlefield. It's really, it's really fascinating. But getting back to Mr. Bush 41, what Bush did immediately, after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in August 1990. On August 20th, he issued U.S. National Security Directive number 45.

Okay. The relevant parts stated, and I'm quoting here, unless indicated otherwise, U.S. interests in the Persian Gulf are vital to national security. These interests include access to oil and security and stability of key-friendly states in the region. The United States will defend its vital interests in the area throughout, through the use of U.S. military force of necessary and appropriate against any power with interest endemicled to our own. Going off the record, this is important to me at least because you don't know how like the Michael Moritzis. They're constantly talking about how our policy in the Middle East is driven exclusively, quote, by oil, which doesn't make any sense. but it's also like they act like it's something

or something that you know American executives that pretended like you know energy policy and domination of of key oil reserves in the Near East by hostile powers it's always been really above board that you know these things play into strategic decision making

you know so I've always like wondered about that like why I've surrounded me like idiots and it's not like I had nothing nice to say about Bush 43 you're about the Iraq war you know it's not like sitting here like cheerleading meddling in the middle east but like they'd actually with some trump card like it's about oil man it's like what does that even mean like if you wanted to if the United States was going to act like some like 19th century uh like empire and just go around grabbing um you know rubber plantations and petroleum fields you know why not invade

venezuela you know like why why you don't need to go the way to Iraq to like steal oil or whatever but i digress um the uh but what's significant again about national security drug to 45 is that even as the as the cold war was ending um it was based bush was reiterating the the carter doctrine you know like you saying the carter doctrine is still operative he was signaling to the soviet union too because obviously it wasn't clear like what like how they were going to how mosca was going to respond ready for huge savings will mark your calendars from november 28th to 30th because the little newbridge warehouse sale is back we're Talking thousands of your favourite Lidl items all reduced to clear.

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Trading as Cooper Financial Services is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. Great to see you back at Spegg Savers. Okay. Could you read out the letters on the wall for me? Yep. D-E-A-L-S? Yeah, D-E-A-L-S. Deals. Oh, right. Yes. Our Black Friday deals are I catching, but the letter charts over here. Oh, sorry. At Spec Savers, we've got all sorts of unmissable Black Friday deals.

Like up to 70 euro off one pair of designer glasses. Offer ends on 7th of December 2025. Conditions apply. Ask in store for details. you know, moving forward. It wasn't clear at all. You know, it, um, and in a roundabout way, um, had, uh, you know, had the Supreme Soviet or had the, uh, or had, uh, you know, kind of the inner party specifically that, which was tethered to the ministry of defense, um, had they kind of gone into revolt against, uh, peristrike, or they could have utilized, you know, with, um, America's, uh, looming, um,

mass intervention in the Middle East as their catalyst to kind of bring down the Gorbachev regime and circle the wagons as a word. And that that's a fascinating counterfactual. The fact that it didn't happen again is a credit to Bush 41's ability to finesse in a bona fide way. And again, the fact that the fact that Gorbachev was able to pull that off on the other side in Concord, Bush. I mean, it's a testament to the Gorbachev's, frankly, like, genius is a politician. You know, if the man was a fool or a cipher, that he would never have been able to accomplish that.

The, I, I'm not going to quote verbatim because that's, it's redundant and that boring, not what he's fascinating is like, to the remainder of, of, of, the declaration. Bush cites United Nations Security Council Resolution 660 and 662 as as authority for intervention, you know, which was, like, it's according to the letter of the law, like, such that it can even be said that, you know, war and peace decisions are bound by the law in the way that, you know, could be stated to be, you know, within the borders of a sovereign dominion. But, you know, Bush had all the authority he needed from Article 2, you know, from the president of the Carter Doctrine. And so long as Congress was willing to, you know, was willing to float the bill and not otherwise, you know, revoke his ability to see the policy through. I mean, that's the only authority Bush needed.

But he was very much proceeding as a diplomat in prosecuting. this war. And I say that in the most positive terms, there are. You know, it's just, it's noteworthy, because most executives would not have done that. Even ones who were really kind of, even some of Bush's successors like Clinton liberal types, they wouldn't have characterized it that way. You know, even if they wanted to, even if they wanted to kind of finesse what they were doing as in the interest of this burgundy global community or whatever. So this is very interesting. Within

for the time and the moment within that epoch and for what Bush aimed to accomplish, that was absolutely the correct strategy. I just find it really interesting. I mean, this may be like bore some people to death, but it's fundamentally important to the topic.

And it's also, it's important just in more global terms, like figuratively and literally. again what the Bush 41 people wanted to see through they wanted to do

you got to look at the Cold War as among other things you know in structural terms not just power political ones you know the there never was a there never was a formal peace treaty signed with Germany

you know that's one of the reasons why you know like the two Germans were able to exist in perpetuity, an apparent perpetuity after the war. What Bush was aiming to do, he was aiming to create, configure this truly globalized polity as envisioned by

the new dealers and to a lesser degree people like Truman, and see that through to fruition, like actual fruition, wherein, you know, military action would essentially other than, you know, things that truly are, you know, kind of like posse comitatis manners of like civil unrest within the, you know, at the local and, and downscale level, you know, other than those obvious exceptions on, you know, any military action would be carried out through the United Nations Security Council, you know, where the permanent UN Security Council, you know, would be kind of like the higher house, you know, or the or the cabinet of a world government you know the general assembly

would be kind of like you know the world Congress, the world house of representatives or world house of commons, you know, and you have a rotating executive, you know, who's more sort of like a global prime minister

than a president because real power lies in the security council. But this is what Bush was aiming to do. You know, and however we feel about that, the degree to which this was just like utterly pissed on and sabotaged, you know, from the Clinton administration onwards in favor of just like anarchy is insane. It's completely insane. And what's more insane is that nobody talks about it.

It's as if this never happened. That the current situations, the current strategic situation is just some kind of accident of fate or like it's some there's like some immutable development because other states that aren't reasonable or something it's just incredible that um that people um that people feel this way um i do want to cite a couple more points of the memo um those are and i quote bush stated incident you know to explicating why um intervention uh to eject that react from kauaqq of vital interest. Quote, much of the world is even more dependent on

Iraqi oil. Much of the world is dependent on Iraqi oil and is highly vulnerable to Iraqi threats. To minimize any impact that oil flow reductions from Iraq and Kuwait will have on the world's economy is it will be our policy that's law producing nations do what they can to increase

production to offset these losses. And that's important too, because again, the the OPEC embargo of 73, like America coming to terms, America in the UK coming to terms of the House of Saad, that, that, that, that created a reliable kind of configuration, wherein like all the major petroleum producers, you know, they had a vested interest in, in, in proceeding peaceably. and they were afforded, you know, limited ability to, you know, to carry out a price-fixing regime, which they do to this day. But the fact wasn't that, you know, Iraqi oil is so important or that, you know, anyone, or that Iraqi oil funds any one critical, you know, state actor or, you know, constellation of things. It's that it would

where Iraq able to you know, attack another export another OPEC state and dictate regionally you know what political concessions would be required for continued access

to Iraqi petroleum even if America could maintain good offices with Iraq, no problem. The other Arab states would not have been able to. And that would, would have been profoundly destabilizing just on just

structurally I mean Saddam would have recognized that I don't think Saddam was some Marlville and rubbing his hands together and saying you know now I can extort money for oil but he recognized exactly what the structural implications of this were and I believe from like where the Iraqis

was sitting like their idea was like well this needs to be reconfigured anyway you know why and especially without the Soviet Union you know it's like what are we just going to let is OPEC just going to become kind of this kind of like coolly, this kind of like coolly, um, enterprise like, beholden to the United States? You know, I don't think of speculating too much here.

You know, I'm like, I can I, this, this becomes apparent, like as you, as you deep dive into, you know, what the, what the incentives were and the motives were, um, and the viewpoints were of the respective, uh, actors, you know, like Arab and, and western um in the um you know the occidental perspective versus the era perspective is like writ large here in a lot of ways okay like corneous that might sound to people but uh moving on um the um bush was very uh he was very emphatic and not just for appearance sake but in a real kind of concrete capacity of uh declaring that you know, U.S. forces and assorted

other elements, you know, whether they're whether they're, you know, whether they're British, whether they're French, whether they're Italian, whether they were talking about, you know, Syrian forces. And the Syrian Hafez Assad came heavy to support Bush. And I mean, that's another thing too.

Like after like America, like basically America's best ally in the Middle East should be Syria. It's like what's America been doing for 20 years, like trying to annihilate Syria. but Bush made it clear that the coalition military element are guests in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia

first and foremost he included Saudi general officers in the decision-making process even if it was just kind of like nominal and for a pure and sake because these guys frankly didn't have the experience to really bring command

presence to bear but there were Salafi elements including Osama bin Laden himself who approached the royal family and said like look like let me or let us you know like raise an army of the righteous as we did to fight the communists and like will and will like eject you know the Iraqi army ourselves We don't need, you know, we don't need, we don't need, we don't need, we don't need infills on our, on our soil. You know, and not just on our soil, but on the soil, we're like a profit tread, you know, and we don't need, you know, this is basically like a Jewish war in there, you know, it's become that way because it's not to, it's not to liberate, you know, Muslims from, from Bathist tyranny.

It's about, you know, it's about, it's about monetary intrigues and, and power political ambitions of, of, of non-Muslims. And that could have gotten traction, not with the House of Assad, but you better believe with the Arab street, you know, so the, a lot of the ridiculous kind of propaganda

that, you know, the, like, literally these like mansambic firms that were retained, like, you know, draft these, like atrocity stories and things. A lot of that, that wasn't just,

you know, for the sake of, you know, kind of stirring of war fever in America. Like that was really already kind of burgeoning. I believe that was for, that was for the core of world opinion, and particularly for,

for, you know, the Arab street, you know, and encouraging them to identify, you know, America and the coalition as this kind of savior element, you know, that was best suited to combat at this grave evil lit. you know, had befallen the kingdom potentially, and that, you know, was, was already, um, you know, was already engaged in gross, um, gross acts of, of, of a terrifying nature in Kuwait.

Um, so, I mean, there's a lot here, you know, it wasn't just a matter of, um, that this wasn't, aside in the fact, there's the first open ended military deployment since the Vietnam War. It was the first real operational test of the post-R-A-MALTherryma, you know, R-A-Military Affairs Army. It's all those things. It was the first major, it was the first major conflict of the post-Cold War. era. I mean, the cold war was in the process of ending at that

point. I mean, yeah, the wall had come down. What, you know, the Soviet Union still existed. Like, this was, this kind of arrived at like the worst possible time, you know, but that's, you know, war arrives like the seasons. Doesn't it's, um, but that, um, but a lot of what was going on,

you know, on the, on the propaganda side and the cult, the cultivation in narratives and things like that. Um, a lot of that was, was, um, Bush, Baker, you know, the American White House and American State Department like speaking to the Arab street

or signaling to them, you know, in ways that I don't think, even if the foreign policy establishment, even if they weren't conceptually literate these days, I don't think they have the ability to do that just like creatively or, you know, in terms of their, like,

psychological aptitude or anything like that. I just couldn't, I can't see it happening. if there weren't abject abject morons at the helm. How long we've been going? Like, forgive me. About 40.

Okay, yeah, I'll speed it up a little bit. I realize I realize that we got to move on so we can get into the go ahead. Well, hit me up with this because I think you already mentioned it, but one of the big and I remember this when it was happening,

One of the big contentions, one of the big things that they made a big deal out of, and it was, was Saddam launching the Scuds just into the Israeli population. Yeah, I'm glad you raised that. Saddam was craftier. I'll tell you, too. I had a Jewish girlfriend at the time. And she had spent a lot of time in Israel and knew a lot of friends there. So, yeah, that was a fun night. That was a fun night when that started. Oh, yeah. Well, Saddam was craftier than people think. And something very strange happened at the onset of hostilities after, you know, January 17th onward.

The, you know, the onset of Desert Storm was in. massive air campaign, which the some, there's some military types who say that it should have just been a full on combined arms assault and that it was, you know, the weeks long, you know, air campaign was was wasteful in lives. You know,

civilian attrition they're talking about and and a waste of time, frankly. I'm not going to get into that. And I'm not super qualified to discuss that. But as um as uh by the last week in january the coalition had had uh had flown something crazy like 23 000 sordy's over iraq and i go ahead Kuwait um they'd uh they've been dropping these two thousand pound bombs um on iraqi airfields that um were more accurate than their destructive power was greater than

people had anticipated. So the Iraqi air element was like taking a serious of beating. And I think they lost 22 planes in tactical aerial combat. You know, the, and these were, these, these were French, Italian and Soviet aircraft. And they even had some Meg 29s, like the Meg 29th, Fulcrum that was, that was packaged for export. it was it was not the same as the as the the soviet air forces model it was an inferior model or stripped down in some way but the point is it was a mig 29 like this wasn't i i raised that for clarity you know the iraqis they weren't they weren't flying around a bunch of 1950s planes or

something okay um it uh so as this uh on january 26th something very strange happened suddenly Iraqi planes, they started appearing in Iranian airspace. At first it was just like a few of them. But then it became clear that they were going to Iran and dedicated flight patterns. This wasn't like a handful of defectors or something. You know, at first it was about 20, then it was about 60, and there was over 100. And the entire remainder of the Iraqi Air Force literally flew to Iran. and this one U.S. Pentagon official at the time

who asked not to be named, and you can still find the article online at Google it right before we went live. He said to a kind of frightened New York Times journal, he said, I really hope that this is not Saddam Hussein's like Molotov-Ribbentra pact moments, because we could have a real problem. And the Iranians had no intention to collaborate with Saddam.

I don't even think they had any diplomatic context yet at that point. But I think Saddam absolutely wanted America to think that. And I think he absolutely wanted America to launch some like mass assault in Iran incident to thinking that. you know at the time i remember some of these guys were saying that well sonam's an idiot he should have thrown his whole air force at a carrier battle group and tried to sink what he could you know the people are talking about as if it was like the argentine air force uh you know like knocking out british cruisers um in the falklands it's like not at all comparable and like if saddam had thrown those airplanes at a at a carrier battle

group they just would have gotten like slaughtered it would just would have been like a fireworks show and like that would be the end of it like um and he knew that um so that coupled with um you know yeah the the ability of bush and baker to to stand down um the uh Israeli government but also those are the days like yesokra bean man and stuff like you didn't it's like this like demento zionist element it's not like the Israeli government was ever any great shakes but it was a lot more rational then, you know, and there's far more of a concord in the occupied territories. You know, it was kind of a rare moment of relative calm, you know, so it was a constellation of all those things. But, yeah, I understanding either of those things in isolation, either the, the,

the launching of Scuds at at Tel Aviv or, you know, the appearance of the Iraqi Air Force or remained of it in Iran. I think those things have to be understood

together. And it's also, you know, once I made the point of people too, I mean, especially about the Second World War, but about all conflicts, you know, once you're in a war, once you're in a war, once you're in conditions approaching war,

you can't just say, like, you know what, I'm going to put the brakes on this and, like, stop everything. Like Saddam was saying, after he rolled the dice in Kuwait, I don't think, I don't think Saddam thought that the America would do anything. I think he thought that British would, but I think he recognized it's like, okay, it wasn't 1982 anymore, even if it were. And don't get me wrong.

Like the fact that British could fight, the Falklands War was incredible. Like I take my head off to him. They could not have period out that campaign or similar campaign on the ground against the Iraqi army. You know, and logistically, it would have been impossible. So the Sunab's notion was that, you know, this is basically a low-risk enterprise and it was a wider war. But it's been being clear that was not the case at all. It's like, well, it was too late. So now I'm going to go on all-in, assaulted Saudi Arabia.

and continued until he, you know, hit the gulf. And, like, seen if he could hold it. Or he could just, like, held fast and, you know, hope that the coalition would fall apart before the onset of hostilities. Or if it did not, hoping that, you know, some kind of situation, a theater-wide anarchy, you know, and a wider war. you know, would have forced America to kind of come to terms. You know, but this idea that, you know, this idea that you can just like,

sit on everybody else can just kind of like pull the plug on hostilities and just be like, hey, I give up now. We're like, no, it's not only things work. But yeah, I, you're your lady friend, I'm sure, I'm sure that was an insane freaking experience she had or friends had or whatever, you know. Yeah, that was pretty much the end of that. over at that point. Another question, I guess, which may be something that you wrap this up on,

is why didn't they take out Saddam then? The Baker view, and Baker really was kind of on the political side, Baker was kind of in the driver's seat. It wasn't clear, and Baker made this point in the years before, before 9-11, in the years, during the Clinton administration, you know, after the Gulf War and before 9-11, like, it's not clear what people think that would have accomplished. You know, like, it's like you kill, you kill Saddam Hussein. I mean, that, I mean, first of all, like, you lose the appearance of lawfulness because it's going around like whacking people, number one. Number two, it's like, okay, so then you got some, you got some Salafi government in the Sunni triangle, like fighting.

like an Iranian and Hezbollah back to like, you know, sheif element. I basically had like the Iraqi civil war, but like 10 years earlier. You know, and it's like the, I don't, I think it's ironic when people are like, well, Saddam's, like, Arabs need like, you know, of some brutal dictator to keep him in line.

Like, that's just like fucked hard thinking. And they don't even know what they're talking about when they say that. But it's also, um, I, uh, nor do I think, Norda think Saddam was like a great manner, but he, he wasn't any worse than,

you know, a lot of other, a lot of other kind of, kind of dictator, strongman types who, you know, who America has found it perfectly okay to live with. The,

the, I mean, he, Saddam Hussein thought that, but it's all the two, like again, Saddam was, he, Saddam's like, recklessness. I mean, during, when the Cold War was ending, like everybody arguably was being reckless,

you know, in some way or another, in terms of like second rate power, in terms of lesser powers like that, I mean. But it's not, like, what, why Saddam Hussein kind of became this, like, this, like, this, like, bad guy stand in for everybody. It was kind of weird,

because, like, he just wasn't that important. You know, and he wasn't, um, somebody, uh, If America, too, like if they'd want to do, if America hadn't totally of its head up its ass in the Middle East, even during the Cold War, which is like, you know, again, Iran is going to be the dominant, your strategic power in the reef, okay, just he is,

saying like, our policy to Iran since the Shah was deposed is, we're going to shriek over and over again that you're evil in bed. Like, it's not, that's not policy. you know what I mean like like an intelligent US regime would have done whatever it had to do you know to kind of finesse the

Iranians and doing what we wanted you know at the same time you know building up Iraq as a meaningful bulwark but also one that you know people

live within the region and that you know wasn't too what wasn't too easily discredited in terms of of its optics and things. And that very easily could have been not very easily in terms, but in political terms, that definitely could have been

accomplished. But even, aside from the politics of it, you know, killing Saddam Hussein would not really have accomplished anything. And the Ba'ath Party, despite what people say, it's very different in Syria. I mean, they're literally like at odds with one

another, you know, and I mean, at the Assad family, they're a great people. They really are. And Bashar Sad's a hero and his father was a hero. Okay, but that aside, the bathism is a real thing. It's not just like contrivance or something that would just fall apart if you removed, you know, kind of the lynchpin dictator, you know, who's kind of ideological clothing is the aforementioned contrivance. If Saddam was just kind of like summarily killed.

I mean, I think the U.S. lost a lot of credibility when they finally did, like, available in this kangaroo court proceeding, frankly. And then ISIS executed the judge who had him hanged. And I, and they made a tape of it. It was in one of their, like, I used music videos. You know, there's like an arrow. I said, this is the judge. And then, like, you know, you see a guy, like, blowing his head off.

And that didn't make me happy. I'm not happy when anybody dies. But I didn't feel. feel sad that I mean I think judges are kind of piece of the shit anyway but I uh that that that guy didn't like feel bad for okay but point being um I don't uh I don't understand why people think like like okay like if they I think it's like some old movie or something like Saddam Hussein is is like he's like some hive mind and if like you shoot Saddam Hussein like all the Arab automaton just like drop dead or fall over like Disneyland

land automaton's when you kill the power or something. I don't know. But that's why. The whole way that Operation Iraqi Freedom went about was very weird. Just like the planning, when it finally did come to fruition, the planning was just very bad. And it didn't really make a lot of sense. We could cover that another time.

Thanks for accommodating me. I thought it was important to do a deep dive into this. into the subject of the Gulf War before we moved on. So I hope I hope everybody got something out of it worthwhile. And we can always come back to come back to this for a one-off and discuss a little more. So last time I didn't have you plug anything. So what do you got going on? I've actually been really, really busy like recording content, Far and Wide

or all kinds of people who wanted me to record with them, which is dope. I'm going to try and corral all that. like out of the website, you know, which is pretty, the website's pretty much done and you can access it. I'll, uh, if you wouldn't mind, I'll have you add it to the comments.

Sure. Um, at some point. But, uh, other than that, I'm working on getting the channel launched. I'm sure people probably think it seems like this is taking forever, but it's just me and, and my, and my crime partner,

Rake. Um, so, I mean, it does take time. And we want to do it right. But it is, on track to launch, you know, like this month.

So, other than that, I've been getting back to my long form writing. I've got some articles that are appearing in print form. You know, you can find me at, I'm still on Burb app, although I'm kind of looking to disengaged from that as summer moves on. You can find me on Substack. Substack's kind of my home. It's also where the podcast is. It's real Thomas 777.7.7.com.

You can also find me on Tgram. You know, I'm all over the place, man. But that's what I got going on. And you and I are doing our thing, and that's huge. And people are responding to that very, very well. And that gives me a huge lift, man. like I'm very honored by that. And I owe that to you, man, for providing this format.

And, you know, kind of thinking through this, like, thinking through this kind of organizational structure that we do. So yeah, thank you, man. This is very great. No problem. And then in the next couple days, we'll be getting together to drop episode one of Spanish Civil War, something I've been basically every. waking minute

I've been diving into and just getting up to speed on. No, that's great, man. People are very excited about it. It's a topic near and dear to my heart. And to any revisionist or like anybody with

fascist sympathies or like hard rights sympathies, it's a fundamentally important, you know, part of our heritage, ideological heritage. and spiritual heritage too. So yeah, I'm very stoked, man. I'm very stoked.

All right, man. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Likewise.