I listen to the podcast which I can usually get at 9:30 a.m. I could listen to
the program on the NY Pacifica station here at 8 a.m. if I were awake and
alert. The podcast is better because I can always pause it or replay something
if I need to. But with this Syria thing, I'm wondering once again, if it's
really true that the government troops used chemical weapons or if this is
false information provided by the extremists as it has been twice in the past.
I noticed that Greenwald accepted the chemical weapons story as fact and I
haven't yet heard anything to counteract that. We'll see what I hear on Loud
and Clear.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Monday, April 09, 2018 3:28 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: lenn Greenwald on Syria: US and Israel Revving
Up War Machine Won't Help Suffering Syrian Civilians
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:
Print this page
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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