The Pete Quiñones Show - The Gulf War 1990–91 w/ Thomas777 - Complete

Episode Date: July 31, 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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I want to welcome everyone back to the Pekinjana 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 I, 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, I mentioned that there's this essay that's very hard to find for some reason. It was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I'm saying that, you know, yeah, he was, that he said, um, at the turn of the millennium, like, as constituted in 1950. And this, this, this dude who follows a sabidly, he's like, you know, did yaki have a, did he had a, did he render, like, a similar diagnosis for the United States, like, you know, locally speaking. And I told him no, because generally that kind of thing's a fool's errand, you know, and he's like, no, I understand that. It'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's 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 is sociopolitical experiment at scale that there really is, I think, not

not present. for it. The Soviet Union, not just because of the peculiarities of, you know, the epoch, you know, the 19th century into the, into the 20th century, but also just the process, the process of dialectic itself, you know, conceptually and philosophically, as well as in, you know, concrete material developmental terms there's processes that must be left to develop spontaneously in order 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 the its internal constitution was the information age okay um if you abolish the price mechanism as as sort of

the signaling variable, as it were, for, um, for, uh, you know, develop for, for, for, for, for, for, for, for, for, for, for, for, for, for, 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. Um, if I, if we corralled, if we created some think tank of say like, you know, Elon Musk and a handful of, you know, like top finance, some players, you know, like Goldman Sachs types, you know, and then you threw some, you know, you threw some like applying engineering prodigies or applied engineering prodigies into that, in our hypothetical group from like MIT, you know, would, and you just told them, okay, like think of dynamic ideas, you know, would they eventually, you know, would they eventually, you know, where they eventually innovate, kind of like the next big telecom breakthrough or like the next, or the next kind of generation, you know, like electric car.

I mean, that's not the way things work. Some very end of that was done vis-a-vis the Apollo program and in military matters. That is the way things are done because 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 more in that theater. But, I mean, basically, you're, you know, your, your, your, your, your, your data set is actual, 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. And that can't be overemphasized as the fundamental weakness of the planned economy. You know, and the Soviet Union did innovate a computer in the Eisenhower-K., that was advanced as anything in the UK and in America. But, you know, 30 years later, there was a grand total of less than 5,000 computers in the Soviet Union. Like, why? 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, 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, uh, this, uh, this, uh, this, this, uh, is, this intrinsically hostile labor and and capital paradigm, you know, and the kind of the strange sociology of cities literally being, you know, barracks for, you know, hundreds of thousands of

of factory workers, you know, that sustain, you know, 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 socio-cultural structure around that you're doomed yourself to being kind of frozen in that moment

you know 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, we're very much behind John Paul II and his efforts to weaken the grip of the party state, specifically on Poland, 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 in their thinking than Yaki

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 then 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 ethnocectarian 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 raised on detro 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, were 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 in 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 and a machine in various capacities, okay? I raised 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 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, you know, a general nuclear war or owing the, you know, 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 that 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, Oh, so 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 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 Zionists in Israel to to these American on Cold War,

um, functionaries like Rumsfeld and Nick Cheney. The thing they all agreed on in geostrategic terms was that the sort of natural power arrangement in the Near East. Ready for huge savings? We'll mark your calendars from November 28th to 30th because the Liddle Newbridge Warehouse sale is back. We're talking thousands of your favorite Liddle items

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It's a struggle between Turkey and Iran for regional supremacy that's what's precedented, 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 prison for all time. You know, thus the caliphate being a Turkish caliphate, not an Arab one. I ran, 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.

Anybody 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 is this great potential in Iran. 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 create a 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 prejudicial.

this 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. Saddam's grievances with Iran

went way back. The Algerian agreement that had been signed with the shop was considered this kind of a victory a diploma of the EU

of types interestingly and it allowed both Iran and Baghdad to save face with these kinds of territorial swaps that seem to be the kind of remaining conflict

diads 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. You know, 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, 7980 than there had been any time prior to, you know, the Eisenhower era. you know and 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 of sod for you know being at odds with um being at odds with with with the 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 on the top of my head I'd have written down they went as far as they claim that he was the Mahdi

you know the messianic historical figure who would emerge you know as 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 who just 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 bath. but just this 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 wherever they're situated where you know that's a realistic

possibility um I think some of a more nuanced view of it than simply there's 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 Saddam 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 you know the inception of a Turkish caliphate so all these things conspired to kind of Korean

Iran and Iraq towards war and the United States and NATO particularly the Bundes Republic were very much behind this I made the point again and again 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. Most of them were soldiers, despite the impression people have, owing to this. you know, the kind of endlessly repeated narratives about the Kurds. And those people did die. I mean, 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, like, 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 in 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 eutile, depending on the... depending on the battle space.

And a general war between a NATO and Warsaw Pact to 1980 it's almost I mean it's a foreign conclusion that chemical weapons would have been used. So the world is watching the Iran-Iraq war, okay? For all kinds of reasons

some of which you know, some which on the very concrete for 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 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 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, I mean, it's not really... Saddam's Iraq was remarkable in the sense of where and when it was historically situated. and, you know, the 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 Zanam Hussein enjoyed the backing of the U.S. and certain key 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 this to become a wider war where, among other things, God forbid, Iran could, you know, 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 because the Liddle Newbridge Warehouse sale is back.

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vogue wagon financial services arland limited subject to lending criteria terms and conditions apply voguegrapnelmobile financial services arland limited trading as cooper financial services is regulated by the central bank of arland It's not some beleaguered dictator who's suing for war in lieu of the status quo because that's its only path to survival. 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 had had at them, quite literally.

You know, 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, the revolutionary government has no popular support. You know, the moment, you know, the moment hostility is committed. you know, they're all going to surrender and the regime's going to collapse.

I mean, this was, you know, this is always the alibi. But it's incredibly, it's remarkably foolish. I think it's 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 going to purely, like, journalistic, at least in structure, you know, dispatches, he ever, released for 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 cablist, revolution's fervor is gone. You know, he's like, for better or worse, these people have a very highly developed

vision for what they are trying to do. It is in fact precedented. It's you know it appeals to a wide swath of people you know

demographically 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 later date to Assad 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 at some point in a dedicated capacity, but he was absolutely right.

So they ran 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 and Iraq in the late 20th century, like, at scale, like, though it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's a,

what I just stated is a constant, pretty much regardless, you know, but particularly for states of that 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 like 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, 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 really careful not to characterize the conflict in sectarian terms, only to the reality that, you know, his party was a Sunni majority party. in a sea of Shia Muslims. But also, that would have compromised his entire raison d'etrean political life, which was the created genuine Arabism writ large as a mobilizing catalyst. And whether people, whether the, you know, and the Iraqi Ba'Ith try to carry, whether, whether a Saddam

himself, whether it was the Ministry of Information or whether it was the War Cabinet, they tried to characterize it as a racial conflict, especially as things went bad after 1983. You know, were the Arab people, like, fighting like the Persian other, or like the Azeri, you know, uh, of alien. Ready for huge savings? We'll mark your calendars from November 28th to 30th because the Liddle Newbridge Warehouse sale is back.

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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 Iran, you know, the, 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 charge, you know, or that, you know, the first. true Islamic state, you know, should, you know, should, um, it should be the, it should be the, 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, this Shia, you know, this Persian Shia state, you know, of Ayatollahs and, and, um, you know, uh, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, it was very much that, too. And, um, 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 this document I want to do. The minutes of Saddam talking to, is a to the bath war cabinet on um on the eve of war you know just before uh 22nd september 1980 he's uh talking about how the algiers um the treaty of algiers you know that basically allowed iraq to preserve their honor and you know that the shah was a man we could work with you know but all bets are off as revolutionary regime however saddam could

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, and again, he, had the full support of, in military terms, you know, of the United States, the Bundes Republic, you know, and basically the key players in NATO for a reason, you know, it's, I don't know

if it recorded me or not. Did I, I don't know if it was recording me when I talked about that seizure 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 siege of the Grand Mosque, by the besieging militia, they called themselves the Iqwan, Al-Equan, which is a reference to the to the base of the Bedouins under their arms who played a part of establishing Saudi Arabia. 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 it. at, if people who are disposed to look at the Iranian revolution as this kind of outlier 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. You couldn't, you couldn't suggest that about the Caesar of the Grand Mosque. And the fact that, you know, this was happening in the Sunni world as well, this kind of, you know, 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 uh the iraqi bath was a

minority party of and and although they had shia they had christians going tarika ziz was a christian in their ranks um they couldn't well afford to be viewed as um as uh as a as as as a sectarian biggest but um you know there's those who welcome that kind of thing even against odds that would appear insurmountable allowing 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, 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 Iran when it was underway. And it was incredibly insightful. And again, I know it's hard to believe that if it'll co-penned anything, particularly something that was like, you know, then contemporaneous to the kind of strategic situation and the burgeoning kind of

political culture of radical Islam. But, you know, he said, look, this isn't a flash in the pan sort of phenomenon. You know, 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, you know, dare to four was not part of the, part of people's conceptual horizon as detain came to an end. You know, there's profound things underway, and all of this coupled, again, with the fact that every Arab with, you know, a political consciousness and with a, a concern in, you know, historical terms for the fortune of his own people.

A revolutionary Iran or just like an erudentist and militarized Turkey, these are very ominous things. You know, the Turkey and Iran are sort of a natural hegemonies regionally. that's one of the reasons why people are obsessed about Turkey and Iran whether it's these 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 Arabist you know bath revolutionary types like Saddam was you know there's a reason why

the Israeli fixation in Iran Iran, like, it, it, it deteriorates on certain points of policy vision and into just, like, naked irrationality, okay? But generally, it's not, it's, it's not without precedent to view, again, the, the real, like, power players in the region as Turkey and Iran. But going into August 2nd, the, as things started to go really poorly, on the battlefield for Iraq. August 1983 is when Iraq deployed chemical weapons for the first time in a battlefield capacity.

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Pretty much agreed by all parties. 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 war planners alike

that if and when war came to Europe there would be liberal use of poison gas okay so if strong attention was paid in both the eastern block and NATO was what the impact was the chemical weapons on

on modern infantry it I mean again I guess I dropped that because it and much if not all of these chemical munitions were supplied by NATO countries okay this was not some like rogue state

action or something on that sort. But it, this is a, this, this, this was where Saddam was, this was the mindset, okay, this was the conceptual situatedness of Saddam, the Iraqi bath, kind of like the Arab streets generally in the several Arab speaking, Muslim majority countries, going into August second 1990. Also what had to have been on Saddam's mind,

the Soviet Union still existed 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 a tremendous

danger of foot owing to instability. And the fact, 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 the Carter Doctrine, you know, which 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 treat that as an attack on its vital interest. 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, as a 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, you know, just Congress signing off on some open-ended deployment to wage a general war with Iraq, you know, to liberate a country that was, you know, this kind of oil sheik kingdom like that. It was not for our conclusion that 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, you still want, whoever that was in the Oval Office would literally have to finesse a coalition that quite literally had, you know, the era,

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. 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 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 um and that's one that that's why i speak of bush and what i know people attack me sometimes that's something's just good nature to ribbing for what appears to be you know some kind of like praise of like bush and i mean understandably like why why would anyone say nice thing about the bush family but um you know i

It doesn't matter what his politics were in this context. I guess we're talking about the essence of executive decisionism and all of that. 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, um, 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. You know,

it's like Monday. But I wanted, I want to do a part two to include Gulf War one. Okay. And, uh, yeah,

that's, that's dope. Um, and I'll, uh, 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, I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to cut it now.

we'll talk about recording a second one over the next couple days. Definitely. All right. Thanks, man. Yeah. I want to welcome everyone back to the Pekingana show. Thomas is here to finish up this quick two episode. The Gulf War of, was it 90 to 91?

I was alive for it. Yeah. It was the Iraqi assault in Kuwait was August 2nd, 1990. Desert Shield became Desert Storm. on January 17th, 1991. The Custation of Hostilities was in March of 1991, but 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 had something in common with Harry Truman, frankly. He was a better warlord, and they just like a more capable guy. But 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, he had a unique concept of what globalism would look like. And again, I'm not, I want to qualify this because people misunderstand

you know I'm talking about the bound of rationality I'm judging these things in the bound of rationality 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 on where like there was there was no foreign policy You know, there was this bizarre, destructive kind of scattershot, you know, a collection of, of, consolation 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 interest group and their ability to bring pressure or to, you know, localized 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 Pompeo 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 concept at all of the world. and power political 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 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, Of the Korean War, it's really the only case of the United Nations functioning as it was in 10. It's a lot of the 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 or led to World War III. It was declared de facto a vital U.S. fear of interest in 1973. You know, 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 Brezhnev to prepare for war, basically. You know, to deploy what was Warsaw Pax version of the rapid reaction force, which technically was like a parachute for element, although nobody was using parachutes by then. But they were, the Soviet Union did have an equivalent of a rapid reaction force that deployed basically like, you know,

the 80-second airborne in 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 into the Middle East would be treated an act of war, you know, against the United States and its allies. 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 debt.

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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, 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, Gorichoff wasn't just as kind of, he wasn't just a cipher. He wasn't a stooge. You know, he wasn't just, he wasn't 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 or 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 that Goroshoff would have acquiesce to this. But also, even if Gorosov had been, you know, a site. in the order of what I described. There was still the remainder of the party apparatus.

There was, you know, a hardline element that, you know, had to be placated. You know, there was the people who became, you know, the Yolson faction that, you know, which is complicated because Yelston in a lot of ways was that. He was exactly that. He was a cipher. But he, 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, um, um, it kind of the peak of, uh, of Cold War hostilities. Um, you know, um, so it's, um, that, that's got to be acknowledged. both, you know, it's an indicator of Gorbachev's effectiveness. Again, within the bounds of, you know, the policy decision, the policy challenges on the table and the hospital decisions rendered therein,

but also of Bush 41's ability to finesse this stuff. And I know, I know, again, I can't, I apologize very sincerely for, 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 Saddam Hussein 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 just fools errors or you know, him being cast is simply nothing more than a tin pot dictator who is more prone to, who's 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 Iraqi the Iraqi diplomatic

mission was banned from East Berlin because they take it upon themselves to one opportunity presented itself to murder people that they wanted dead. Like other Iraqis I mean. There's this one Iraqi Communist Party

functionary and Iraqi intelligence under a light diplomatic cover literally threw them off a roof in East Berlin. there was some there was some student dissident type who was cozy with you know

the communist but who was you know an anti-Saddam zealot and some Iraqis pulled up next to him when he was you know on foot around Karl Marx

Ali pulled him into a car he disappeared and then he washed up on a river bank you know, with evidence of extreme torture and all kinds of horrible mutilation, you know, having, having been dead for weeks and,

and, you know, stored somewhere. So finally, like, finally, you know, finally, finally, you're not, you're not doing this anymore. You know, you're, you're gone.

And, um, just the fact that, uh, the bathists were, you know, actively, um, at, at, at war with the communists in some basic way.

I mean, I'm talking about like, with anti- as they were consolidating their monopoly on power. I mean, that axiomatically 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 it's kind of like post-Marxist but but but radically left wing militia you know and um I find that fascinating but my point is that the Soviets could not pick and choose the Middle East was not Africa, the Middle East was not Asia. It certainly wasn't land in America. You know, they couldn't pick and choose, you know, like what Arabs state.

They want to do, you know, they want to give privilege a position in terms of material support and informal clientage. you know they uh like communism just was not taking root in the near east you know it just wasn't um even when uh it had real currency in in other theaters at comparable stages of development and everything else so you know um saddam also um we talked about um the situation of iraq going into um the iran iraq war of 1980. The Iraqis had signed the Alger's agreement with the Shah in 1975.

This had to do with, you know, territorial disputes and other things. You know, typical kind of, the typical kinds of things that, you know, 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 a

in a subtle and sort of hidden capacity, you know, unconventional capacity. But, nevertheless, you know, they've always been at odds with Iran. Iraq in the modern era, post-Odaman era after World War I. And as, you know, that's not entirely without objective rationale. You know, 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. They, they've, the two kind of poles 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, these alien elements, you know, and when the, as Islam became this kind of animating catalyst, most remarkably, you know, for the, 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 but non-Sunni culture 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 praxis therein, you know, it had shifted. You know, there was a seizure of the Grand Mosque in 1979 in Saudi Arabia. And that was impactful too, but again, much as that might have animated the kinds of guys who, you know,

went 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 spark this kind of, this like kind of wildfire tendency, you know, to provoke Sunnis underarms to duplicate what happened in Iran, you know, like nothing like that. It, and not without, um, not without

cause you know Iraq is a is a majority Shia state and you know the Shia minority

globally within Islam but they're an extraordinarily potent minority and that's that's their the Shia heartland is really Iraq

in the Arab world you know I mean or in terms of raw population okay you know the uh the uh the uh the the iraqi bath party they were they were ecumenical in a real sense you know tarika ziz himself um was a christian

the founder of the bath party was a christian the core of of uh arabathism in iraq and syria's a totally thing. You know, it was a, it was a Sunni, um, political culture. Um, all of these things, uh, there was an internal logic strategically, I mean to, uh, Iraq, uh, preemptively assaulting Iran. And, uh, Saddam, uh, if you read the notes from, uh, Saddam speaking to his war council, um, or what would have been like the bad. 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, how would that look to the Soviet Union, too, who frankly, again, despite the, despite their kind of troubled friendship, it was a genuine concord of necessity. And

you know, the Iraq needed Soviet material support in order to remain a viable military power. And if confidence was lost, in Moscow's confidence was lost, you know, they simply would have looked elsewhere. Admittedly, it was a shallow pool of potential clients, but nevertheless, you know, 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, when critical circumstances emerged, you know, be able to mobilize and be able to be able to wage war, you know, and at least a, and not. incredibly effective capacity. Ready for huge savings. We'll mark your calendars from November 28 to 30th because the Lidl Newbridge Warehouse Sale is back. We're talking thousands of your favorite Liddle items all reduced to clear.

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people claim because, you know, they kind of selectively choose to cite like late Iran-Iraic war like propaganda of you know, out of Baghdad where, you know, they're emphasizing that, you know, the the Iranians are a different race, you know, they're, they're Persians or their 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, you know, out of, of, you know, kind of quasi-racialist, like, you know, tendencies of bigotry or, uh, or because of, like,

take fury hostility to the Shia. I mean, I, that's really not true. And I mean, whatever, everybody's an armchair general, you know, um, so it, and nobody, nobody chooses to treat these things, you know, as the, as decisions would have been rendered like in the epoch and at the critical moment of decision where, you know, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the awareness of the situation, you know, would have been restricted to what was then apparent and emergent. Um, and then I'm not saying that son, I'm like a good executive or something, but, um, I'm saying that he was, um, he was, he was more competent than his acknowledgment. and he was in a very unenviable position.

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 topic. It's getting back to the, getting back to our topic, I raised the Iran Iraq war a lot because it's important for all kinds of reasons. of context relating not just to the politics than your east but relating to the Cold War relating to

a you know the sectarian hatred and Dara Islam you know relating to a revolution in military affairs the reemergence of chemical

weapons being utilized and applied you know like tactical capacity on the battlefield field. 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 interest in the area throughout, through the use of U.S. military force of necessary and appropriate against any power with interest inimical to our own. Going off the record, this is important to me at least because you know how like the Michael Moritz they're constantly talking about how our policy in the Middle East is driven as exclusively

quote by oil which doesn't make any sense but it's also like they act like it's something kind of secret or something that you know American executives have pretended like you know energy policy and domination of of key oil reserves in the near east by hostile powers it's always been very above board that you know these things play into strategic decision making. You know, so I've always, like, wondered about that, like, why that... 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 I was sitting here, like, churleading meddling in the Middle East, but, like, they'd act like with some Trump car, 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, 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, you know, you don't need to go the way to Iraq to, like, steal oil or whatever. But I digress. But what's significant about national security drugged of 45 is that even as the Cold War was ending, it was based, Bush was reiterating the Carter Doctrine.

You know, like you said 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 Moscow was going to respond, you know, moving forward. It wasn't clear at all, you know, and in a roundabout way, had, you know, had the Supreme Soviet or had the, or had, you know, kind of the inner party, specifically that, which was tethered to the Ministry of Defense, had they kind of gone into revolt against a peristrike,

or they could have utilized, you know, with, America's looming mass intervention in the Middle East as their catalysts to kind of bring down the Gorbachev regime and circle the wagons as it were. 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 with Bush

I mean it's a testament to the Gorbachev's frankly like genius as a politician you know if the man was a fool or a cipher that he would never have been able to accomplish that um

the uh I'm not gonna quote verbatim because that's it's redundant and that boring not boring what it's here is but what's fascinating as like to the remainder of a of uh of uh the declaration um bush cites united nation security council resolution 660 and 662 as uh as as authority for intervention um you know which uh was um

it like it's according the letter of the law like um such that it can even be said that you know war in peace decisions are bound by the law in the way that you know could be stated stated to be you know within the borders of a sovereign dominion. But, you know, Bush, 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 in in in in in prosecuting this war and i'm i say that in the most positive terms there are you know um it's just uh it's noteworthy because most executives would not have done that even ones who were really kind of uh even some of bush's successors like clinton liberal types um they wouldn't have characterized it that way um you know even if even if they wanted to, even if they wanted to kind of finesse what they were doing as, as in the interest of, you know, this burgeoning global community or whatever. So this is very interesting. Within the, for the time and the moment within the epoch and for what Bush aimed to accomplish,

that was absolutely the correct strategy. I just find it really interesting. I mean, this may, like, bore some people to death, but it's fundamentally important to the topic. and it's also it's it's important just in more global terms like figuratively and literally again um what the bush 41 people wanted to see through um they wanted to do a you got to look at the cold war as is among other things you know um in structural terms not just power political ones you know the uh there never was a there never was a formal peace treaty signed with Germany.

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,

you know, the new dealers and to a lesser degree people like Truman, you know, 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 posy comitatis manners of like civil unrest within the, you know, at the local 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 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. 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 is some, there's just like some immutable development because other states just aren't reasonable or something.

It's just incredible 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, to explicating why intervention to eject Iraq from Kuwait constitutes a 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, these will be our policy that has a law-producing nations do what they do. can to increase production to offset these losses.

And that's important, too, because, again, the OPEC embargo of 73, like America coming to terms, America in the UK coming to terms of the House of Saad, that created a reliable kind of configuration wherein, like, all the major petroleum producers, you know, they had a vested interest and in in um in proceeding peaceably and they were afforded you know limited ability to um 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 like funds anyone critical you know state actor or you know constellation of things it's that um 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, they've been able to. and that would have been profoundly destabilizing just not just structurally I mean Saddam would have recognized that I don't think Saddam was some Marlville 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 were 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

we're just going to let, is OPEC just going to become kind of the, this kind of like coolly, this kind of like coolly, um, enterprise like, be beholden in 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 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, um, Bush made it clear that, you know, 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 appearance sake because these guys, frankly, didn't have the experience, you know, 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 we don't need we don't need infills 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 liberate, you know, Muslims from, from Bathist tyranny. It's about, you know, it's about, it's about monetary intrigues

and power political ambitions 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 a lot of the ridiculous kind of propaganda that, you know, the, like, literally these like manshamming 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 court 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 this grave evil that, you know,

had befallen the kingdom potentially, and that was already engaged in gross, gross acts of a terrifying nature in Kuwait. So, I mean, there's a lot here. It wasn't just a matter of, 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-M-A, Relative Military Affairs Army.

It's all those things. It was the first major conflict of the post-Cold War 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 that's, 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 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 up. 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. The, 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, the onset of Desert Storm was at, 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 sorties over Iraq and I go ahead Kuwait. Um, they'd uh, they've been dropping these 2,000 pound bombs, um, on Iraqi airfields that, um, were more accurate than their destructive power was greater than people. anticipated. So the Iraqi air element was like taking a serious of beating. I think they lost

22 planes in tactical aerial combat. You know, the, and these were, these, these, these are French, Italian and Soviet aircraft. And they even had some Meg 29s, like the Meg 29th, fulcrum that was um that was packaged for export um it was it was not the same as the as the uh 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 collaborating 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 saddam'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 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'd 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 Yatsakhra 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 constantly of all those things. but yeah, I understanding either of those things in isolation, either the launching at Scuds

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'm I made the point of people, too, I mean, especially about Second World War, but about all conflicts. You know, 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 Hussein, 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

I think he recognized it's like 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 hat off to them

they could not have period out that campaign or similar campaign on the ground against the Iraqi army you know and logistically just would have been impossible so I said that's notion was that you know this is basically

this is basically a low-risk enterprise and it was a wider war was it being clear that was not the case at all it's like well it was too late um so i'm going all in assaulted Saudi Arabia and continued until he you know hit the actually hit the gulf um and uh like seen if he could hold it um or he could just like held fast and uh 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, 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 how things work. but yeah your lady friend I'm sure I'm sure that was an insane freaking experience she had or friends had or whatever

you know that was pretty much the end of that I was over at that point another another question I guess which may be something that you wrap this up on

is you know why didn't they take out Saddam then the bigger of you, and Baker really was kind of on the political side, Baker was kind of in the driver's seat. I, it wasn't clear, and Baker made this point in the years 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. They're just 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 backed, like, you know, Shiaf element. Basically, you have, like, the Iraqi Civil War, but, like, 10 years earlier, you know, and it's like the, I don't, um, I don't, um, I don't, um, I don't,

think it's ironic when people are like well saddam was like irbs need like you know of some brutal dictator to human wine like that's just like fucked hard thinking and they don't even know like what they're talking about they say that but it's also um i uh nor nor do i think nor do i think nor do i was like a great man or thing but he he he wasn't any any worse than you know a lot of other uh a lot of other kind of kind of kind of dictator strongman type so who you know, who America has found permanently 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 was 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 this like bad guy standing for everybody he 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 uh if america didn't totally have its head up its ass in the middle east even during the cold war which just like you know again iran is uh iran is going to be the dominant um

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 an intelligent U.S. regime would have done whatever it had to do, you know, to kind of finesse the Iranians and doing what we wanted. You know, while at the same time, you know, building up Iraq,

as a meaningful bulwark, but also one that, you know, people within the region and that, you know, wasn't too, what wasn't too easily discredited in terms of its optics and things. And that very easily could have been, not very easily in absolute 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, the Assad family, they're a great people. They really are. And Bashar Assad is 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

the lynch pin dictator who who's kind of ideological clothing is the aforementioned contrivance. If

Saddam was just kind of like summarily killed I mean I think the US lost a lot of credibility with when they finally did like available in this kangaroo court proceeding frankly and then ISIS ISIS executed the judge who had him hanged and I

I and they made a tape of it. It was in one of their like ice 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 sad that.

I mean, I think judges are kind of piece of shit anyway. But I, uh, 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, I think it's like some old movie or something. Saddam Hussein 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 automaton when you kill the power or something, I don't know. But that's, 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, you know, and it didn't really make a lot of sense. We could cover that another time.

Yeah, I, I, I, 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 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 of 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, at, 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 my crime partner, Rake.

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 uh i'm still on berb app although i'm kind of looking to disengaged from that as summer moves on um you can find me on substack subsdack's kind of my home it's also where the um podcast is it's real thomas seven seven seven seven seven that substack dot com you can also find me on tgram

you know i'm all over the place man but that's uh that's what i got going on and uh we're you and i doing our thing and that's that's huge and people are responding to that very very well and uh that's it gives me a huge lift man like very honored by that and um i um i owe that to you man for providing this format and you know kind of thinking through this um like thinking through this kind of this 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 getting up to speed on. No, that's great, man. People are very excited about it. And it's a topic

near and dear to my heart. And to any revisionist or like anybody with, you know, with, 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.