This morning I listened to the program twice. Democracy Now comes in
on KSER at 5:00 and 7:00 A.M. It comes on again at 5:00 PM. on the
same station. At 6:00 A.M. it comes on KBCS, and at 11:00 A.mM. it
is broadcast on KPTZm Port Townsend. These are small market FM
stations, but combined they cover all of Greater Seattle and the
Olympic Peninsula.
Glenn Greenwald is one of my favorite journalists, so I tune in
whenever he is on.
Carl Jarvis
On 4/9/18, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
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Glenn Greenwald on Syria: US and Israel Revving Up War Machine Won't Help
Suffering Syrian Civilians
Monday, April 09, 2018
By Amy Goodman and Juan González, Democracy Now! | Video Interview
We begin today's show in Syria, where Israeli F-15 bomber jets have
reportedly bombed a Syrian air base used by Iranian forces. There are
reports that 14 people died in the strikes, including Iranian nationals.
Israel is said to have launched the raid from Lebanon's airspace. The
Israeli bombing came a day after a suspected chemical weapons attack killed
at least 60 people and wounded more than 1,000 in the Syrian town of Douma,
the last rebel-held town in Eastern Ghouta. The Syrian opposition blamed
the
Assad government for carrying out the attacks, but Syria denied having any
role. The chemical attack came one day after Syrian forces launched an air
and ground assault on Douma. While international officials are still
investigating what happened, President Trump took to Twitter to directly
accuse Russian President Vladimir Putin of playing a role. The UN Security
Council is meeting today to discuss the crisis in Syria. Today also marks
John Bolton's first day as President Trump's national security adviser. We
get reaction from Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Glenn Greenwald, one of
the founding editors of The Intercept.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We begin today's show in Syria, where Israeli F-15 bomber
jets have reportedly bombed a Syrian air base used by Iranian forces. There
are reports 14 people died in the strikes, including Iranian nationals.
Israel is said to have launched the raid from Lebanon's airspace. The
bombing came a day after a suspected chemical weapons attack killed at
least
60 people and wounded more than a thousand in the Syrian town of Douma, the
last rebel-held town in Eastern Ghouta. The Syrian opposition blamed the
Assad government for carrying out the attacks, but Syria denied having any
role. The chemical attack came one day after Syrian forces launched an air
raid and ground assault on Douma.
AMY GOODMAN: While international officials are still investigating what
happened, President Trump took to Twitter to directly accuse Russian
President Vladimir Putin of playing a role. He wrote, quote, "President
Putin, Russia and Iran are responsible for backing Animal Assad." Trump
went
on to warn there would be a "Big price…to pay." The UN Security Council is
meeting today to discuss the crisis in Syria. The US UN ambassador, Nikki
Haley, has called for an independent investigation of the chemical weapons
attack. Meanwhile, in Washington, DC, today, today marks John Bolton's
first
day as President Trump's national security adviser.
We head now to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where we're joined by the Pulitzer
Prize-winning journalist Glenn Greenwald, one of the founding editors of
The
Intercept. Later in the broadcast, we'll talk with Glenn about the latest
in
Brazil, the jailing of Lula, the killings in Gaza. But first, to Syria.
Can you talk about the latest in Syria, Glenn, the chemical weapons attack,
President Trump blaming the attack on Assad, the, quote, "Animal Assad,"
and, I believe, naming in a tweet Putin for the first time?
GLENN GREENWALD: So, obviously, the use of chemical weapons in any instance
is horrific. It's a war crime. It's heinous. And it ought to be strongly
condemned by everybody. I think that it's -- the evidence is quite
overwhelming that the perpetrators of this chemical weapons attack, as well
as previous ones, is the Assad government, although, in war, there are
always lots of reasons to doubt, and we certainly shouldn't run off and
make
hasty decisions, until there's a real investigation, to make the evidence
available.
I think the more important question at the moment is: What is the actual
solution? Obviously, what's happening in Syria is and long has been a
horrific humanitarian crisis, filled with war crimes committed by pretty
much every actor there. The Assad government has killed more people than
any
other. But the question is: What solutions do you think are viable? Do you
think that having Israel fly fighter jets over Syria and bomb whoever they
decide is their enemy is something that's really going to help the
humanitarian crisis? As Israel slaughters innocent Gazan protesters and
uses
snipers to end the lives of journalists who are wearing press jackets, do
you really think that Netanyahu is going to help the situation in Syria? Do
you think that Donald Trump is going to be able to command a military
action
that is going to do any good for the people of Syria? Does anyone think
that
that would be the goal of Trump's military action or the role of the United
States government revving up its war machine, that would end up helping the
Syrians?
I think we ought to have learned the lesson by now that when we cheer for
military action by Western governments in the Middle East, because we've
been emotionally manipulated to be angry about some genuinely horrific act,
it doesn't end up doing anything other than making us feel good, and it
usually ends up making the situation worse. So I think it's possible and
necessary to express moral outrage at the chemical weapons attack and other
attacks on Syrian civilians, while at the same time remaining sober and
rational and careful about how we allow our emotions to be funneled and
channeled in order to try and come up with solutions. And I think we ought
to have extreme amounts of skepticism over the idea that Donald Trump and
Benjamin Netanyahu or NATO powers are going to intervene in Syria in a way
that's going to be good in any way for Syrian civilians.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, Glenn, this chemical attack, and also the Israeli
bombing, comes only a few days after an unusual summit was held in Ankara
between President Putin and the leaders of Turkey and Iran over the
situation in Syria. And obviously, the United States was conspicuously
absent from that kind of a summit. I'm wondering your sense of all of these
larger powers battling over what happens in Syria.
GLENN GREENWALD: Well, this is the problem with the debate over Syria,
which
is there are two sides that try and simplify it. And it's polarized and
divided many political factions, probably the principal one being the left,
where there's these really two competing, simplistic narratives, which is,
on one hand, Assad is the only war criminal in Syria, that he's the
singular
problem and that removing him will solve everything, and then, on the other
side, the idea being that Assad is the only thing standing in between
al-Qaeda and ISIS and other religious fanatics taking over Syria,
slaughtering minorities, like Alawites and others, when the reality is that
it has long, for many years now, been a proxy war between all kinds of
powers, including Russia, Iran, the United States, Saudi Arabia and many
others.
And so, what's happening in Syria is always incredibly complicated. And the
tendency to try and simplify it is a way to impose this moral narrative on
it that makes solutions really easy. "Hey, just let's go bomb Assad out of
existence," sort of the way we tried to do with Saddam Hussein in Iraq.
There are a lot of differences between Iraq and Syria, but there are
lessons
to be learned from every war, including the one in Iraq, or in Afghanistan
or in other places around the Middle East in which the United States and
its
allies have intervened in the name of humanitarianism, that teach pretty
clearly that the situation only gets worse, not better, the more Western
powers intervene.
And I think that's the principle that we need to start with, especially
given that any military action from the United States would be led by a
person named Donald Trump. He's the commander-in-chief of the armed forces
of the United States. And so, it's really been bizarre, over the last 48 to
72 hours, watching these two competing themes emerge, that, on one hand,
Donald Trump is this mentally unstable, morally unfit monster who has
dementia and an attention span of a 3-year-old and is completely amoral,
and
then, on the other hand, this idea that the United States ought to
essentially restart a new kind of war in Syria, led by that very same
individual, Donald Trump. Whatever you think about Syria, does anybody
believe that Benjamin Netanyahu, working with Donald Trump, is going to do
anything other than make the situation infinitely worse on all levels?
AMY GOODMAN: I want to turn to the ranking member of the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee, Democratic Senator Ben Cardin of Maryland, who called
for an international response to the Syrian regime's alleged use of
chemical
weapons on its own people Saturday. Cardin was interviewed by Face the
Nation host Margaret Brennan.
SEN. BEN CARDIN: There needs to be an international response. This is
against international norms and --
MARGARET BRENNAN: A military one?
SEN. BEN CARDIN: Well, first and foremost, President Assad needs to be held
accountable for his war crimes. Senator Rubio --
MARGARET BRENNAN: He hasn't been, in the seven years of this war.
SEN. BEN CARDIN: Well, Senator Rubio and I have introduced legislation --
it's passed our committee -- that would hold the evidence accountable. We
need to make sure that there is a proceeding started by the international
community to hold him responsible. This is not the first use of chemical
weapons. Secondly, Congress passed very strong sanctions against both
Russia
and Iran. The Syrian regime, under President Assad, cannot exist without
Russia's support and the activities of Iran. The United States, the
international community need to take action against Russia and Iran for
what
they're doing in Syria.
AMY GOODMAN: So, that's Democratic Senator Ben Cardin of Maryland, Senate
Foreign Relations Committee, Glenn. If you can respond to that, and also
then move into John Bolton today, first day as national security adviser?
Interestingly, back in, what, 2013, at the time of the sarin attack in
Syria, where I believe the US said something like 1,400 people were killed,
among them more than 400 children, Bolton was on Fox and said, "I think if
I
were a member of Congress, I would vote against an authorization to use
force here. I don't think it is in America's interest. I don't think we
should, in effect, take sides in the Syrian conflict." This was during the
Obama years. But if you could respond to both?
GLENN GREENWALD: So I think it illustrates this immense irony, and also
this
really important and often undernoticed shift in American politics. So you
have Benjamin Cardin saying "Marco Rubio and I," Marco Rubio being one of
the most pro-war, militaristic neocons in the entire United States
Congress,
wanting to go to war with everybody, having spent eight years accusing
Obama
of being weak against every US adversary because he didn't bomb enough,
even
though Obama bombed eight countries. So you have Marco Rubio and Benjamin
Cardin, who is probably the single greatest loyalist to AIPAC in the United
States Senate, maybe competing with a couple of other Republican and
Democratic senators, but very high up on the list, saying, "Marco Rubio and
I, Benjamin Cardin, the loyalist of AIPAC, demand that the United States
government and the international community do something about Assad, do
something against Russia."
On the other hand, you have Democrats who revere Barack Obama. And what did
Barack Obama do during the eight years of his presidency when it came to
what was happening in Syria, or the last five or six years since the civil
war in Syria began? Obama took exactly the opposite position. He said,
"We're not going to get involved in Syria. We're not going to devote
efforts
to regime change." The CIA, under Obama, did spend roughly a billion
dollars
a year to arm and train Syrian rebels, but nowhere near enough to actually
overthrow Assad, just enough to keep the war going, because Obama was very
afraid of confronting Russia in Syria, and also of the chaos that would
ensue if Assad were removed. That was Barack Obama's position. He allowed
for Assad to remain in power, even after he had threatened to remove him if
he crossed the red line of using chemical weapons, which Assad then
crossed.
So you have this very kind of ideologically mixed debate. It doesn't follow
along traditional right-and-left lines. You have people on the right --
Donald Trump, when he ran, repeatedly said the US has no interest in
deciding who runs Syria, that it's not the US's business, that the US can't
afford to do it, that the US isn't going to make the situation better. And
you have people on the left, as well, who are saying that the West should
stay out of Syria. And then you have these kind of like militarists in both
parties who are itching always for a new war and see this as an opportunity
to start one. Obviously, Israel wants Assad gone. The neocons in the United
States want Assad gone. And so, that's really the shift, the debate, that
has emerged.
And the question is: Do you think that the neocon, militaristic foreign
policy of the Democrats and the Republicans over the last 15 years, when it
comes to the Middle East, has produced good or bad results? If you think
it's produced good results, you should be cheering Ben Cardin and Marco
Rubio, demanding that Donald Trump bomb Assad out of existence and confront
the Russians. If you think that Obama's foreign policy was better, as I do,
in this case, which was avoiding confrontation with the Russians, not
trying
to think the US can control Syria through military action, then you ought
to
be opposing this kind of war drum that is now being beaten again that would
lead to Donald Trump getting involved in Syria.
As far as Bolton is concerned, obviously, Bolton is a sociopath. He's one
of
the most dangerous foreign policy advisers and officials of the last 15
years. People in the Bush administration who served with him and who served
with people like Dick Cheney and John Yoo and Donald Rumsfeld and Paul
Wolfowitz -- actual sociopathic maniacs, as well -- have said that John
Bolton was probably the most unstable and dangerous person in the Bush
administration. And now he's about to move into -- or he has moved into an
extremely influential position, advising Trump in the White House on
matters
of national security. But again, it is true that there is a big movement on
the right and on the left to oppose US intervention in Syria, on the
grounds
that it's not in the US interest to try and control what's happening in
Syria. We'll see where Bolton falls on that. I mean, one of Bolton's
primary
dreams in life is to go to war with Iran. And so, opposing Assad is one way
to achieve that. He's also a loyalist to Israel, and Israel seems to want
Assad gone. So it's very dangerous right now, given who's in power and this
pro-war orthodoxy that is arising almost automatically in Washington, given
how high the stakes are and how inflammatory that situation is.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, Glenn, John Bolton clearly does not need a Senate
confirmation for his post, but there is a Senate confirmation hearing this
week regarding Mike Pompeo's move from CIA director to secretary of state.
Your sense of the impact of the Pompeo nomination in terms of foreign
policy, and specifically in terms of the Middle East?
GLENN GREENWALD: Well, Mike Pompeo is pretty much, and long has been, a
standard, traditional House Republican, under the Obama -- during the Obama
years. He, like Marco Rubio and lots of other Republicans, spent years
claiming that Obama was weak on Putin, that he was insufficiently
militaristic when it came to confronting what people like Mike Pompeo call
the threat of Islamic jihadism or radicalism. He wanted to confront Assad
further. When he went to the CIA, he became, you know, a Trump loyalist,
but
also a militarist. He was out there saying things like Russia is a grave
enemy of the United States; WikiLeaks is an arm of the Russian government,
and we need to crush it.
So, there's this really bizarre reality in Washington, which is, on the one
hand, everybody keeps claiming that Trump is really weak on Russia, that
he's a puppet of the Kremlin, that he takes orders from Vladimir Putin;
and,
on the other hand, he's surrounded by people who are vehement militarists
and anti-Russian hawks, people who spent seven years accusing Obama of
being
too weak in confronting Putin, and who want to confront Russia further. And
you've seen Trump do things to confront Putin that Obama himself refused to
do: arming anti-Russian factions in Ukraine; bombing an airfield of Assad;
now denouncing Putin specifically as being responsible for the attack;
expelling dozens of Russian diplomats, more than any other; imposing
sanctions on oligarchs close to Vladimir Putin. And so this narrative that
Trump is a puppet of Putin, and that the Kremlin has infiltrated the United
States government and controls the US, is very much at odds with the
reality
of what the Trump administration is doing and the people who are actually
running foreign policy and the things that they actually believe. And Mike
Pompeo is one of the principal people who illustrates that kind of breach
between the narrative and the reality.
AMY GOODMAN: And, of course, Pompeo, in various interviews, has talked
about
-- it seems that he sees Syria as a place to confront Iran. And then, the
whole issue of Rex Tillerson being for the nuclear deal in Iran, but
President Trump -- and, it looks like, Mike Pompeo -- very much against.
GLENN GREENWALD: Yeah, I mean, I think that, you know, one of the really
dangerous aspects -- remember, when Rex Tillerson was nominated for
secretary of state, he was held up as kind of Exhibit A as proof that
Donald
Trump was an agent of the Kremlin, because Rex Tillerson, as the CEO of
Exxon, did a lot of business with Russia, as most oil companies obviously
would. He was perceived as being friendly with the Russian government,
because it was in the interest of Exxon to be friendly with the Russian
government. And yet, as it turned out, Rex Tillerson was almost kind of
like
a moderating voice in the administration, in that he did favor the
continuation of the Iran deal, which Vladimir Putin in Russia worked very
closely with Barack Obama in the United States in order to facilitate. And
the fact that he was booted out in exchange for Mike Pompeo, who is much
more kind of maniacal when it comes to seeking confrontation in the world,
including with Putin in Russia, again, I think, signifies that this
administration, under Donald Trump, has moved away from Barack Obama's
posture of trying to accommodate Putin, of avoiding confrontation with him,
and moving toward a posture of confronting Russia, in Ukraine and
especially
in Syria and when it comes to Iran.
And this is why, Amy, I think that, you know, the whole debate around
Russia
over the last 12 months has been so dangerous, because this climate has
been
created in Washington, the premise of which is that Vladimir Putin and
Russia are an existential threat to the United States, that they're our
prime enemy, much like they were during the Cold War, and that we need to
confront them further, and any failure on the part of Donald Trump to
confront Putin militaristically and directly is proof that he did collude
with the Russians or is an agent of Russia. And it's created this incentive
scheme on the part of the Trump administration to try and confront Russia
even further. And that is what they're doing. And it's a very dangerous
game
to play, given that Russia and the United States still have thousands of
missiles with nuclear tips aimed at each other's cities, with very archaic,
unreliable trigger systems from the Cold War still in place governing how
those missiles could be used.
AMY GOODMAN: Glenn, we're going to break. When we come back, we're going
south to where you are, to Brazil, to talk about this historic
confrontation
this weekend. The former president of Brazil, Lula, has gone to jail,
although he resisted for a period of time, as many people protested outside
and he holed up in the steelworkers' union hall, where he first launched,
40
years ago. We'll talk with you about the significance of this. And then
we'll talk about Gaza. Glenn Greenwald, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist.
Stay with us.
This piece was reprinted by Truthout with permission or license. It may
not
be reproduced in any form without permission or license from the source.
Juan González
Juan González co-hosts Democracy Now! with Amy Goodman. González has been a
professional journalist for more than 30 years and a staff columnist at the
New York Daily News since 1987. He is a two-time recipient of the George
Polk Award.
Amy Goodman
Amy Goodman is the host and executive producer of Democracy Now!, a
national, daily, independent, award-winning news program airing on more
than
1,100 public television and radio stations worldwide. Time Magazine named
Democracy Now! its "Pick of the Podcasts," along with NBC's "Meet the
Press."
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