Speaker 1: I want to welcome everyone back to the pe Kenana show.
Speaker 1: We got a good one today, Thomas. Let's talk about
Speaker 1: well finishing up the Cold War series. You know, they
Speaker 1: jump right into the conflict in the Gulf. So you
Speaker 1: wanted to talk about the Gulf War what some people
Speaker 1: call Gulf War one? Uh, number one? And yeah, So
Speaker 1: why is this such a compelling topic to you?
Speaker 2: It was a few things I want to cover two
Speaker 2: that are related. Out of the gate. One of the
Speaker 2: guys on my timeline, he posed a question, he asked
Speaker 2: me because I mentioned that there's an essay that's very
Speaker 2: hard to find for some reason. It was it was
Speaker 2: it was Yaki's in the year two thousand essay. Where
Speaker 2: I mean I I I advise people to take note that,
Speaker 2: you know, Yaki was suggesting that the Soviet Union would
Speaker 2: not exist at the turn of the millennium, like as
Speaker 2: constituted in nineteen fifty. And this this dude who follows
Speaker 2: to say it lea. He's like, did yack you have
Speaker 2: a did he render like a similar diagnosis to the
Speaker 2: United States, like, you know, colloquially speaking, And I told
Speaker 2: him no, because generally the kind of thing is a
Speaker 2: fool's errand you know he's like, no, I understand that
Speaker 2: that's not like a dumb question at all, Like it's
Speaker 2: in short form, don't like it as it's impossible, can
Speaker 2: they tone, I wasn't being flipping about that at all.
Speaker 2: It's a good question. But the reason why, I mean,
Speaker 2: Yaqui definitely in absolute terms would not have viewed and
Speaker 2: did not view the American system as long for this earth.
Speaker 2: But there's something peculiar about communism. I mean, there's all
Speaker 2: kinds of peculiar things about it, but it was more
Speaker 2: contrivance than other ideological experiments, like obviously arguably it was
Speaker 2: the only true sort of top down is sociopolitical experiment
Speaker 2: at scale that uh there really is, I think not
Speaker 2: not uh pressing for it, the Soviet Union, not just
Speaker 2: because the peculiarities of you know, the epoch you know,
Speaker 2: the the nineteenth century into the into the twentieth century,
Speaker 2: it but also just the process that the process of
Speaker 2: of of of dialectic itself, you know conceptually and philosophically
Speaker 2: as well as in you know, concrete material developmental terms.
Speaker 2: There's processes that must be left to develop spontaneously in
Speaker 2: order in order for any in any in order for
Speaker 2: any political structure at scale to to stand itself. Okay,
Speaker 2: Like what do I mean by that? What really killed
Speaker 2: the Soviet Union in terms of its internal constitution was
Speaker 2: the information age. Okay. If you abolish the price mechanism
Speaker 2: as a sort of the signaling variable as it were
Speaker 2: for for uh, you know, developed for for for for
Speaker 2: innovation and development, you're you're essentially always reverse engineering whatever
Speaker 2: your whatever your adversaries are able to construct and innovate
Speaker 2: and develop. You know, Like why is that? Well? I mean,
Speaker 2: think about it like this, if I if we corralled,
Speaker 2: if we created some think tank of say like you know,
Speaker 2: Elon Musk and uh and you know a handful of
Speaker 2: uh you know, like uh like top finance, some players
Speaker 2: you know, like Goldman Sachs types, you know, and then
Speaker 2: and then you threw some uh you know, you know,
Speaker 2: you throw some like applying engineering uh prodigies or applied
Speaker 2: engineering prodigies into that you a hypothetical group from like
Speaker 2: m I T. You know, would uh and you just
Speaker 2: told them okay, like think of dynamic ideas, you know,
Speaker 2: would they eventually where they eventually innovate kind of like
Speaker 2: the next big like telecom breakthrough or like the next
Speaker 2: or the next kind of generation, uh, you know, like
Speaker 2: electric car. I mean, I that's not the way things work.
Speaker 2: Some variant of that was done vis a vis the
Speaker 2: Apollo program, and in military matters that is the way
Speaker 2: things are done, because you're the data set you're operating
Speaker 2: from is the capabilities of the other side, the probable exigencies,
Speaker 2: you know, things relating to the theater that you're likely
Speaker 2: to fight in, and you know what capability is going
Speaker 2: to lend themselves to, you know, waging. We're in that theater.
Speaker 2: But I mean basically you're you're, you're you know, your
Speaker 2: your your data set is actual is actual combat, which
Speaker 2: generally in some capacities underway and low intensity you know,
Speaker 2: kind of on every continent, you know, perpetually. But in
Speaker 2: terms of like major wars, you know, basically once you're
Speaker 2: at war, I mean, that's kind of your laboratory, okay,
Speaker 2: as it were, And that can't be over emphasized as
Speaker 2: the fundamental weakness of the planned economy. You know, in
Speaker 2: the Soviet Union, did innovate a computer in the Eisenhower
Speaker 2: Cruise I eff era that was advanced as anything in
Speaker 2: the UK and America. But you know, thirty years later
Speaker 2: there was a grand total of less than five thousand
Speaker 2: computers in the Soviet Union. Like why they didn't know how,
Speaker 2: they didn't know what function it was best suited. Do
Speaker 2: you know? They had some sense in basic terms that
Speaker 2: this is fundamental to command and control. But you know,
Speaker 2: you can't just you can't just predict like some kind
Speaker 2: of augur you know, what role like new revolutionary new
Speaker 2: technology is going to be best applied to in in
Speaker 2: in absolute terms, you know, for whatever purpose you know
Speaker 2: it uh now extrapolate that kind of stagnant tendency, that
Speaker 2: literally stagnant tendency, you know, kind of every conceptual endeavor,
Speaker 2: and you have Marxist Leninism, you know, and related to that,
Speaker 2: but not you know, solely approximately caused by that, is
Speaker 2: that the whole concept of you know, this this this
Speaker 2: uh this intrinsically hostile labor and and and capital paradigm,
Speaker 2: you know, and the kind of the strange sociology of
Speaker 2: cities literally being you know, barracks for you know, hundreds
Speaker 2: of thousands of of uh of of factory workers. You
Speaker 2: know that sustain you know that this kind of terrestrial
Speaker 2: like national manufacturing economy of of value added exports like
Speaker 2: that that belongs long at a discreete moment in time,
Speaker 2: and building a kind of entire socio cultural structure around that.
Speaker 2: You're you're doing yourself to being kind of frozen in
Speaker 2: in in that in that moment. You know, that's that's
Speaker 2: the reason why. And I mean there's also in my opinion,
Speaker 2: like spiritual matters. I mean that quite literally, you know,
Speaker 2: that make it not sustainable number one. But also I
Speaker 2: identify glaring frailties within the system as it existed, even
Speaker 2: to people who are basically secular, this was a parent
Speaker 2: That's why even people who were not Catholic and not
Speaker 2: even religious, you know, very much behind John Paul the
Speaker 2: second and you know his efforts to to you know,
Speaker 2: weaken the the the grip of the party states, specifically
Speaker 2: on Poland, but and all the captive nations as they
Speaker 2: were called. You know that had with a communist party
Speaker 2: had a soul claim the power. But that's that's why
Speaker 2: even even thinkers far more kind of orthodox and they're
Speaker 2: thinking than YACKI understood this. George Kennan, who have a
Speaker 2: whole lot of respect for as I think people know,
Speaker 2: he made that point again and again, and he was
Speaker 2: criticized for it roundly by you know what was then
Speaker 2: the equivalent of deep state types and you know, Zionus
Speaker 2: types who just hated the Soviet Union for their own
Speaker 2: kind of ethno sectarian reasons. You know, same people who
Speaker 2: who've got this kind of sanguinary hated to Russia today,
Speaker 2: but also just guys who you know, they're they're whole
Speaker 2: kind of raised on detro and the way they made
Speaker 2: a living was by discussing the Soviet Union as this
Speaker 2: you know, perennial and immutable and and just insurmountable feature,
Speaker 2: this rateging landscape. You know, if you're if you're a
Speaker 2: second rate academic, but you've uh, you know, but you've
Speaker 2: you've found every profitable niche for yourself as this kind
Speaker 2: of public intellectual who's you know, protecting the country from
Speaker 2: this insidious threat. I mean, think of it. It's kind
Speaker 2: of like this the geostrategic equivalent, like at doctor Fauci.
Speaker 2: You know that's a sovietologists were okay, like are they
Speaker 2: were they gonna? I mean, I think a lot of
Speaker 2: these people didn't have any meaningful understanding of of of
Speaker 2: the situation or of communism. But even those they did,
Speaker 2: they had no interest in in, you know, raising the
Speaker 2: possibility that this system has an expiration date. You know,
Speaker 2: not to be flippant about it, but the book Cybernetics
Speaker 2: by by Winer Uh it was published in nineteen forty eight,
Speaker 2: and that term is uh something that centered in people's
Speaker 2: vocabulary from you know, science fiction and stuff. But it's
Speaker 2: an actual it's a meaningful term in in uh, in
Speaker 2: neuroscience and and applied logic and you know, AI and
Speaker 2: and all kinds of interdisciplinary fields that relate to decision making,
Speaker 2: particularly that which you know involves the interface of a
Speaker 2: human decision maker in a machine and various capacities. Okay,
Speaker 2: I raised that. I raised that text because again it
Speaker 2: the first the first edition was published in nineteen forty
Speaker 2: eight from a really uh really really to Die was
Speaker 2: cast in terms of the Soviet Union's fate immediately after
Speaker 2: the cessation about civilies in World War Two. It's not
Speaker 2: to say it was it was inevitable the Soviet Union
Speaker 2: was going to lose the Cold War, not at all.
Speaker 2: I made the point and the first one to make
Speaker 2: the point again and again that the Soviets very were
Speaker 2: very well situated in the strategic terms to win the
Speaker 2: Cold War, and arguably they taught the raison detra for
Speaker 2: that was in part you know that fact, and it
Speaker 2: was the Washington establishment coming to terms with the reality
Speaker 2: that you know, Warsaw Pact was winning on the battlefield.
Speaker 2: So I'm not suggesting the contrary, but my point is
Speaker 2: again to kind of bring it back that that there
Speaker 2: were basic frailties and peculiarities in the Soviet system and
Speaker 2: you will not find, uh, you will not find another
Speaker 2: example of of a literally like planned society in that way.
Speaker 2: And this is this is the point from where Yaqui
Speaker 2: was speaking, moving ahead in large measure, with some exceptions
Speaker 2: that uh, I think are kind of obvious to everybody,
Speaker 2: and that don't really need to be fleshed out discreetly.
Speaker 2: Every state, every modern state, you know that that that
Speaker 2: emerged as at least a nominally independent sovereignty after the
Speaker 2: Second World War, UH was created by by the Cold
Speaker 2: by by the dialectic of the Cold War. Okay, even UH,
Speaker 2: even if even even those states that adopted a third
Speaker 2: position his orientation, they were doing so in dialogue with
Speaker 2: the Cold War contra the ideological paradigm they're in which
Speaker 2: they viewed as O they're existentially menacing due to them
Speaker 2: being forced to pick a side and what could very
Speaker 2: easily become, you know, a general nuclear war, you know,
Speaker 2: or owing to you know, fear of a kind of
Speaker 2: cultural contamination that pretty much everybody formally aligned with out
Speaker 2: of the you know, the NATO or the socialist camp
Speaker 2: ran the risk of is they availed themselves to you know,
Speaker 2: the kind of kind of openness to the you know,
Speaker 2: to to the one superpower or the other. Iraq was
Speaker 2: no exception. To understand why America went to war with
Speaker 2: Annam's Iraq, It's that what I just describe needs to
Speaker 2: be accounted for in basic terms beyond the superficial. And
Speaker 2: to understand why America was sort of so focused on Iraq. Oh,
Speaker 2: it's this too. The Iran Raic War was the progenitor
Speaker 2: of what became the Gulf War of nineteen ninety one.
Speaker 2: If I could bring it up on my screen, I
Speaker 2: bring up the notes from Saddam's meeting with his war
Speaker 2: cabinet on the eve of war in nineteen eighty before
Speaker 2: giving the order to go to war with uh The
Speaker 2: Islamic Republic of Iran. Basically, uh, everybody from uh you know,
Speaker 2: these these Arabists like Saddam was, these these Pan Arab
Speaker 2: you know, nationalists to uh you know, you know, to
Speaker 2: the to these these radically pious uh you know Salafi types,
Speaker 2: you know, like bin Laden, you know, to uh, you know,
Speaker 2: to Zionists in Israel, to uh, to these American on
Speaker 2: Cold War functionaries like Rumsfeld, Nick Cheney. The thing they
Speaker 2: all agreed on, in gewostrategic terms was that the sort
Speaker 2: of natural power arrangement in the Near East, it's a
Speaker 2: struggle between Turkey and Iran for regional supremacy. That that's
Speaker 2: what's precedented, you know for a millennia, going back to
Speaker 2: when you know it was the it was the Ottomans
Speaker 2: who who defeated the Mongols in the Near East and
Speaker 2: in person for all time. You know, Thus the the
Speaker 2: Caliphate being a Turkish caliphate, an Arab one. Iran despite
Speaker 2: being a basically kind of like inward looking civilization, and
Speaker 2: it is in some ways of civilization into itself. It
Speaker 2: is a huge country with a very powerful heritage and culture.
Speaker 2: Doesn't matter. Anybody who's gonna tuned in to our you know,
Speaker 2: partisan community. I shouldn't need to elaborately make that case,
Speaker 2: but just uh, in raw strategic terms at least, you know,
Speaker 2: accounting for limitations of power rejection capability. There's this great
Speaker 2: potential in Iran. Okay, and Saddam again being very much
Speaker 2: uh the creature of the Cold War conceptually, he was
Speaker 2: trying to accomplish what NASCAR had failed to do, and
Speaker 2: and create a genuinely Arabist block, you know, with the
Speaker 2: Bath Party as the as the catalyst. But he had
Speaker 2: to tread very carefully with you know, adopting any appearance
Speaker 2: of sectarian prejudice or motivation. The Iraqi Bath Party it
Speaker 2: had Christians and key places, Tarika z one of them.
Speaker 2: It had Shia in in high roles, particularly some in
Speaker 2: the military, but at base it was a Sunny party.
Speaker 2: It was a party of the Sunni minority. Okay, Saddam Uh.
Speaker 2: Saddam's agrievances that Iran went way back the Algiers agreement
Speaker 2: that had been signed with the shop Uh was considered
Speaker 2: this kind of a victory. M see you of of types, interestingly,
Speaker 2: and it had allowed both Iran and begged they had
Speaker 2: to save face with these territorial swaps that seemed to
Speaker 2: be the kind of remaining conflict diads potentially between the
Speaker 2: two countries. The Iranian Revolution changed everything. You know, we
Speaker 2: talked before about how nobody really foresaw Islam becoming this
Speaker 2: power plant will force this animating principle, you know, particularly, uh,
Speaker 2: the late Cold War was still very much the Cold War.
Speaker 2: Arguably there's a more kind of earnest ideological bent in
Speaker 2: you know, seventy nine eighty than there had been any
Speaker 2: time prior to you know, the Eisenhower Arab you know,
Speaker 2: and and but this was not something anybody was really
Speaker 2: thinking about. And the seizure of the Grand Mosque also
Speaker 2: in nineteen seventy nine, we're in these radical Salafis, you know,
Speaker 2: occupied uh, the Grand Mosque of Mecca for weeks, you know,
Speaker 2: demand demanded the advocation of the House Assad for you know,
Speaker 2: being at odds with being at odds with with Allah
Speaker 2: and a false Maslem the uh. They went as far
Speaker 2: the Grand Mosque occupiers, they went as far as the
Speaker 2: claim that their leader, I can't remember his name at
Speaker 2: the top of my head, I'd a written down. They
Speaker 2: went as far as the claim that he was the
Speaker 2: Madi you know, the messianic uh historical figure would emerge,
Speaker 2: you know, as as prophesied by Muhammad. I mean, so
Speaker 2: this was this was profound stuff underway. Okay, people who
Speaker 2: have a kind of cynical view as well as others
Speaker 2: who just I think I'm kind of an incomplete understanding
Speaker 2: going to their own probable conceptual biases as regards will disbelief.
Speaker 2: Just generally, Uh, they had to look at this as
Speaker 2: no big deal, or they look at it as Saddam
Speaker 2: just being terrified of some kind of general uprising, and
Speaker 2: Iraq not even so much against the Bath Party, but
Speaker 2: just this this kind of radicalized this a lot of consciousness,
Speaker 2: you know, sweeping him and his comrades aside. I don't
Speaker 2: really think that was it. I think there was great fear,
Speaker 2: the kind of the fear that you know, sectarian minorities
Speaker 2: have of the program wherever they uh where wherever they're
Speaker 2: situated where you know, that's a realistic possibility. I think, uh,
Speaker 2: some had a more nuanced view of it than simply
Speaker 2: this is something needs to be quashed less you know. Uh,
Speaker 2: it kind of become the defining ideological currency of of
Speaker 2: of the Arab speaking world on some level, I believe
Speaker 2: like all Sunnis, and Sam was a Sunni Maslim UH.
Speaker 2: There they felt even more gravely affronted UH at the
Speaker 2: concept of h An Iranian Shia caliphates than you know,
Speaker 2: they had been centuries prior to you know, the inception
Speaker 2: of the Turkish Califate, and so all these things conspired
Speaker 2: to kind of korem Iran Iraq towards war, and the
Speaker 2: United States and NATO, particularly the Buddhas Republic were very
Speaker 2: much behind this. I made the point again and again,
Speaker 2: you know, and again. I can't cite precise numbers because
Speaker 2: I can't call it my notes, but the it was
Speaker 2: around fifty thousand people who UH who died owing to
Speaker 2: uh Iraqi chemical weapons assaults on Iran. Most of them
Speaker 2: are soldiers. Despite what, despite the impression people have oing
Speaker 2: to you know this, you know, the kind of endlessly
Speaker 2: repeated narratives about the Kurds, and those people did die.
Speaker 2: I mean they there was plenty of civilian attrition, but
Speaker 2: it was primarily military attrition. About twenty thousand of that
Speaker 2: number died outright in the field. You know, these were
Speaker 2: Iranian troops who were hit with chemical munitions. A lot
Speaker 2: of nerve agent and then modern nerve agent. Nobody's really
Speaker 2: sure like what it would do. A fair amount of
Speaker 2: this nerve Asian was procured from NATO countries. Ireneians soldiers
Speaker 2: were treated in Europe, in Scandinavia, some in Germany, some
Speaker 2: of the Benelux countries. I mean, part of that was
Speaker 2: genuine doctor without borders, like doing their thing. Part of
Speaker 2: it was a hot war in Europe. Definitely, chemical weapons,
Speaker 2: they're not obsolescent. They're actually quite utile, depending on the
Speaker 2: depending on the battle space and a general a general
Speaker 2: war between uh NATO and Warsaw Pact in nineteen eighty
Speaker 2: it's almost, I mean, it's a very on conclusion that
Speaker 2: chemical weapons would have been used. So the world is
Speaker 2: watching the Iran Iraq war, okay, for all kinds of reasons,
Speaker 2: some of which, uh you know, some which owing to
Speaker 2: very concrete for kind of purely military matters, others relating
Speaker 2: to the political ones. And this idea that saidam this
Speaker 2: deranged maniac and he only enjoyed the large guests of
Speaker 2: of the United States and the bundest Republic and in
Speaker 2: London because the Iranians were even worse deranged mediacs. I
Speaker 2: mean that that's that's that's garbage for all kinds of reasons,
Speaker 2: and only literates think that way. But also, sadamza Raak,
Speaker 2: it was a brutal state, it was a gangsterish regime.
Speaker 2: But I mean a lot of regimes were like that,
Speaker 2: A lot of regimes are like that. That America backed
Speaker 2: the ultimate megaciityl gangster regime in World War two and
Speaker 2: stalin Soviet Union. So I mean it's not really sam
Speaker 2: Za rag was remarkable in the sense of how we're
Speaker 2: where and when it was historically situated, and you know,
Speaker 2: the kind of the global power plays that became involved
Speaker 2: in in a very direct and catastrophic capacity. But there's
Speaker 2: not something like weirder extreme excuse me, in any sense
Speaker 2: that Sadam Sane enjoyed the backing of them, of the
Speaker 2: US and and and certain key uh needle players. And
Speaker 2: it's uh. The minutes from the meeting between Saddam and
Speaker 2: the Bath War Council, what amounts to the Bath War Council,
Speaker 2: he's talking about restraints like not in uh not not
Speaker 2: in like a Ronald Reagan kind of way or something,
Speaker 2: but he's saying like, we don't want a wider war
Speaker 2: than what we need in order to you know, situate ourself,
Speaker 2: uh in the position we want to be contra Iran.
Speaker 2: You know, we don't want this to turn into a
Speaker 2: prolonged war. We don't want it to become a wider
Speaker 2: war where among the thanks God forbid Iran, could you know,
Speaker 2: potentially shore up sympathy of of of of other Moslim states,
Speaker 2: you know, like these are not there's not like the
Speaker 2: ramblings of some idiot or it's not it's not it's
Speaker 2: not some belieguer dictator who's suing for war in lieu
Speaker 2: of the status quo, because that's its only path of survival,
Speaker 2: you know, and that's key, you know. And it's also
Speaker 2: Iran fought a lot better than anybody thought. And obviously
Speaker 2: they hung on for almost a decade, you know, getting
Speaker 2: pounded by the Iraqi army that was throwing everything it
Speaker 2: had at them, quite literally. They you know, America was
Speaker 2: saying in the epoch, uh, you know, State Department and
Speaker 2: CIA and I think Defense Intelligence probably had a more
Speaker 2: realistic grasp on things. But it's the same, it's the
Speaker 2: same nonsense they always say about states and regimes. They
Speaker 2: don't like that this regime is about the fall aparts.
Speaker 2: Everybody is starving there. You know, it had the revolutionary
Speaker 2: government has no popular support. You know the moment, you know,
Speaker 2: the moment hostilities commenced. You know they're all going to
Speaker 2: surrender and the regime is going to collapse. I mean,
Speaker 2: this was you know this, this is always the alibi.
Speaker 2: But it's incredibly it's it's remarkably foolish because if Iran,
Speaker 2: you know, like I, this is probably the only time
Speaker 2: you'll hear me cite fu Co in appraising capacity. But
Speaker 2: he he wrote this dispatch one of if you're kinda
Speaker 2: purely like journalistic, at least in structure, you know, dispatches
Speaker 2: he ever released for at least for wide publication. It
Speaker 2: was about the Rnian Revolution and it was frankly insightful.
Speaker 2: And he said, this is a genuine third way. This
Speaker 2: is a genuine pop popular revolution. But it's not something
Speaker 2: that's just going to burn itself out, so to speak,
Speaker 2: once the immediate catalyst revolution fervor is gone. You know,
Speaker 2: he's like, for better or worse, these people have, these
Speaker 2: people have a very highly developed a vision for what
Speaker 2: they are trying to do. It is in fact precedented
Speaker 2: it's uh, you know, it appeals to a wide swath
Speaker 2: of people, you know, demographically. This is something that needs
Speaker 2: to be taken seriously, you know. And he was speaking
Speaker 2: obviously in the context of you know, the Asdyton was ending, okay,
Speaker 2: but he was kind of a lone voice in the wilderness.
Speaker 2: And it's weird. I mean, aside from the fact that
Speaker 2: you know, he was kind of a later date desad
Speaker 2: and a lot of what he produced in addition to
Speaker 2: just being you know, kind of grossly morally offensive and
Speaker 2: up to so it was just plaining, like not insightful,
Speaker 2: and it was wrong, particularly on matters of you know, power,
Speaker 2: politics and kind of human affairs and of a political nature.
Speaker 2: But whatever reason, he was absolutely right about that. Okay
Speaker 2: that perhaps wren't some speculation at some point the dedicated capacity,
Speaker 2: but he was absolutely right. So they ran Iraq war
Speaker 2: became just like a disaster. You know, neither I ran
Speaker 2: or Iraq ever recovered from it, because you know, you
Speaker 2: don't recover from eight years of total war, okay, and
Speaker 2: if you do, eventually, you're not the same. Particularly, I mean,
Speaker 2: when you're when you're talking about the when you're talking
Speaker 2: about when I ran in Iraq on the late twentieth century,
Speaker 2: I got scale, Like though it's it some it's like
Speaker 2: what I just stated as a constant pretty much regardless,
Speaker 2: you know, but particularly particularly for states of that of
Speaker 2: that size, I ran was a lot bigger than I racked.
Speaker 2: My point is, neither was a superpower or anything. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I'll see what can be done. Yeah, I'm sorry about that.
Speaker 2: I was like, I'm trying to think of, like exactly
Speaker 2: where I was when I left off.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the last thing you said, what you were talking
Speaker 1: about Iran and Iraq, and I wrote down your last
Speaker 1: words that I heard and said, neither there was a superpower.
Speaker 2: Right. Nevertheless, Uh, there were the decisions they made stood
Speaker 2: to be impactful on the global scale, Okay, it and
Speaker 2: I don't know if it were. I don't know if
Speaker 2: the recording picked up or not. I made the point
Speaker 2: that although he was very careful not to characterize the
Speaker 2: conflict in sectarian terms, owing to the reality that you know,
Speaker 2: his party was a Sunni majority party and the sea
Speaker 2: of of Shia Muslims, but also that would have compromised, uh,
Speaker 2: you know, his entire raizo and deetro and political life,
Speaker 2: you know, which was the created genuine Arabism rit large
Speaker 2: as a mobilizing catalyst. And whether people whether they you know,
Speaker 2: and and and the Iraqi bath tried to carry whether
Speaker 2: whether it was Saddam himself, whether it was the Ministry
Speaker 2: of Information, or whether it was the Warp Cabinet. They
Speaker 2: tried to characterize it as a as as a racial conflict,
Speaker 2: especially as things went bad after nineteen eighty three. You know,
Speaker 2: where the Arab people like fighting like the Persian other
Speaker 2: or like the Aziri you know uh of alien whether
Speaker 2: like Iraqi people like bought into that anyway or not.
Speaker 2: I don't really think they it didn't matter. They definitely
Speaker 2: were afraid of Iranians. They definitely they definitely viewed h
Speaker 2: revolutionary Iran. Again, you know the history of the neress
Speaker 2: domination by the Turks, by the Iranians, Persians or both.
Speaker 2: And even people who would have been basically had no
Speaker 2: issue in in ethno or racial terms with Iran. You know,
Speaker 2: the this emergent Islamic tendency as a catalyst for for
Speaker 2: political uh action and as a truly you know, significant
Speaker 2: power political catalyst on the world stage. Any Arab would
Speaker 2: have felt affronted by that, like this, you know, this
Speaker 2: should not like the Persians should not be leading this
Speaker 2: this this charge you know, and that or that. No,
Speaker 2: you know, the first true Islamic state, you know, should
Speaker 2: you know, should it should be the it should be
Speaker 2: the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, you know, like it can't
Speaker 2: it can't be this like this, this Shia, you know,
Speaker 2: this Persian Shia state. You know of of Ayatolas and
Speaker 2: and you know Uh and Malah allers and things like.
Speaker 2: You know, so there was very much that too. And
Speaker 2: neither I react nor I ran ever recovered, because you
Speaker 2: don't recover from a conflict like that. And you know
Speaker 2: that's why I set the stage for this, because it's
Speaker 2: so important going into August second, nineteen ninety. People pretend
Speaker 2: like Saddam USI was like this idiot or like some
Speaker 2: deranged madman. He was neither of those things. And because
Speaker 2: I think I finally got my notes back so I
Speaker 2: can check this document I want to do, I'm the
Speaker 2: minutes of Saddam H talking to is Uh to the
Speaker 2: bad War cabinet on on the eve of war, you know,
Speaker 2: just before twenty second September nineteen eighty. He's Uh talking
Speaker 2: about how the Algiers, the Treaty of Algiers. You know,
Speaker 2: that basically allowed Iraq to preserve their honor. And you
Speaker 2: know that the Shah was a man we could work with,
Speaker 2: you know, but all bets are off as revolutionary regime. However,
Speaker 2: Sadam continued to he could. He kept emphasizing over and
Speaker 2: over again, this has to be a limited war. We've
Speaker 2: got to We've got to limit our objectives military and political.
Speaker 2: This cannot be allowed to turn into a quagmire and
Speaker 2: nor we We've got to make it clear that this is,
Speaker 2: you know, an effort to create you know, a lib
Speaker 2: a livable strategic balance for Arab people. There's not some
Speaker 2: open ended war of conquest against Iran, you know. And
Speaker 2: and again he he had the full support of in
Speaker 2: in in military terms, you know, of uh, the United States,
Speaker 2: the Bundest Republic, you know, and basically the key players
Speaker 2: in NATO for a reason. You know, it's I don't
Speaker 2: know if it recorded me or not. I mean, I
Speaker 2: don't know if it was recording me when when I
Speaker 2: talked about that season the Grand Mosque, Did I record that? Okay? Saddam,
Speaker 2: like everybody else in the world, his eyes were on
Speaker 2: Saudi Arabia on Mecca in nineteen seventy nine, as well
Speaker 2: as uh the Islamic Republic of Iran, the season the
Speaker 2: Grand Mosque. By this, the besieging militia they called themselves
Speaker 2: the Equan I'll equan, which is a reference to the
Speaker 2: the to the basic that Bedouins under her arms, who
Speaker 2: played a part of establishing Saudi Arabia. They seized the
Speaker 2: Grand Mosque from November twentieth to December fourth. They declared
Speaker 2: that their leader, Al Katani was the Madhi literally the Madi,
Speaker 2: you know, like the Messianic figure and in Islamic theology,
Speaker 2: who you know, who ushers in Islamic victory. You know,
Speaker 2: they this was something nobody saw coming. I mean not
Speaker 2: if you looked at It's like, okay, if you could
Speaker 2: look at if people were disposed to look at the
Speaker 2: Iranian revolution as this kind of outlier phenomenon and look
Speaker 2: at Shia Islam as kind of a strange thing, or
Speaker 2: look at the Shah's regime as this kind of brutal
Speaker 2: police state that you know, people were looking for something
Speaker 2: to grasp onto as a catalyst to bring it down.
Speaker 2: You couldn't you couldn't suggest that about the season, the
Speaker 2: Grand Mass, the fact that you know, this was happening
Speaker 2: in the sunny world as well, this kind of burgaining
Speaker 2: Islamic consciousness that was translating to you know, real direct
Speaker 2: action in war in peace terms. This changed everything, you know.
Speaker 2: And this also this is again why Saddam he was
Speaker 2: cautious and uh not characterizing the conflict with Iran as
Speaker 2: as a sectarian conflict, you know, And basically, I mean
Speaker 2: that was pragmatic. I mean obviously because uh the Iraqi
Speaker 2: Bath was a minority party of and and although they
Speaker 2: had she they had Christians, Utrikasas was a Christian in
Speaker 2: their ranks. They couldn't well afford to be viewed as
Speaker 2: as uh as as as sectarian bigots. But you know
Speaker 2: there's those who wellcome that kind of thing, even against
Speaker 2: odds that would appear in surmounted belowing the blood loss
Speaker 2: or whatever else it. Uh So again, I mean, this
Speaker 2: idea that that Saunam was just this like maniac or
Speaker 2: or this buffoon does not the historical record does not
Speaker 2: bear that out. And that's what I got into, I
Speaker 2: think right before I cut out a couple of things,
Speaker 2: you know about the only time, the only This is
Speaker 2: probably the only time I'll ever say anything praising about
Speaker 2: fu Co. But fu Co he wrote this, uh dispatch
Speaker 2: on the Iranian Revolution because he was in Iran when
Speaker 2: it was underway, and it was incredibly insightful. And again
Speaker 2: I I, I know, it's hard to believe that fu
Speaker 2: copenn anything, particularly something that was like, you know, then
Speaker 2: contemporaneous to the to the kind of strategic situation and
Speaker 2: and and the burgening kind of you know, political culture
Speaker 2: of of rite Islam. But uh, you know, he said, look,
Speaker 2: this isn't a flash in the pan sort of phenomenon.
Speaker 2: You know, it's not It's not just a typical you know,
Speaker 2: revolutionary tendency dressed up in the language she is loam
Speaker 2: for cosmetic reasons or or because they you know, they
Speaker 2: want to keep the Soviet Union out as much as
Speaker 2: they do, you know, as much as they want to
Speaker 2: evict the Americans. You know from from pulling the strings
Speaker 2: in Tehran. You know, it was very authentic, It was
Speaker 2: authentically felt, and it represented something different that you know,
Speaker 2: theretofore was not part of the part of people's conceptual horizon.
Speaker 2: As Detant came to an end, you know, there's profound
Speaker 2: things underway. And all of this coupled again with the
Speaker 2: fact that every Arab with UH you know, a political
Speaker 2: consciousness and with a concern and you know, historical terms
Speaker 2: the fortune of his own people. A revolutionary Iran or
Speaker 2: just like uh an irridentist and and militarized Turkey. These
Speaker 2: are very ominous things, you know. The the UH Turkey
Speaker 2: and Iran a sort of the natural UH hedgemonds regionally.
Speaker 2: That's one of the reasons why, like people are obsessed
Speaker 2: about Turkey and Iran. You know, whether it's these whether
Speaker 2: it's these kind of cynical Cold War fossils who stuck
Speaker 2: around like Rumsfeld and Cheney, whether it's you know, Zionist types, uh,
Speaker 2: these kind of like rabid Zionist that gets like Menahu
Speaker 2: or I mean like the the like the Arabist UH
Speaker 2: you know bath Uh revolutionary types like Sadamwa's. You know,
Speaker 2: there's the reason why the Israeli fixation and Iran like it.
Speaker 2: It deteriorates on certain points of policy vision and into
Speaker 2: just like naked irrationality. Okay, but generally it's not it's uh,
Speaker 2: it's not without precedent to view again, the UH, the
Speaker 2: real like power players in the region as ah as,
Speaker 2: Turkey and Iran. But going into August second the uh AS,
Speaker 2: things started to go really poorly on the battlefield for Iraq.
Speaker 2: August ninety eighty three is not Iraq deployed chemical weapons
Speaker 2: for the first time in a battlefield capacity. All told,
Speaker 2: throughout the war. In nineteen ninety one uh the CIA
Speaker 2: released its documents and so so did Defense and Defense
Speaker 2: Intelligence on the Iran Iraq war. It's pretty much agreed
Speaker 2: we all parties of about fifty thousand I ran to
Speaker 2: talk about fifty thousand casualties only to chemical weapons. About
Speaker 2: twenty thousand of those casualties weere Iranian soldiers killed outright,
Speaker 2: you know, just like when they were hit or like
Speaker 2: mass Afterwards, the Iranqi's made liberal use in nerve gas
Speaker 2: nerve agent, mostly taboon and seren And make no mistakes
Speaker 2: by what people say, chemical weapons remain very utile depending
Speaker 2: on the nature of the engagement in the battle space.
Speaker 2: And you better believe that it was clear to everybody
Speaker 2: on both sides of the wall, you know, Natal and
Speaker 2: Morris up Peck war players alake that if and when
Speaker 2: war came to Europe there would be liberal use of
Speaker 2: poison gas. Okay, So the strong attention was paid in
Speaker 2: both you know and in both the Eastern Bloc and
Speaker 2: and made always the what the impact was a chemical
Speaker 2: weapon is on uh on on modern infantry it I
Speaker 2: mean again, I guess I dropped that because it uh
Speaker 2: and and much and much, if not all, of these
Speaker 2: chemical munitions were were supplied by NATO countries. Okay. At
Speaker 2: uh this was not some like rogue state action or
Speaker 2: something on that sort. But it this is uh this this,
Speaker 2: this was where Tandam was uh. This was the mindset. Okay.
Speaker 2: This was a conceptual situatedness of Sadam. The Iranqi bath
Speaker 2: kind of like the Arab street generally in the several
Speaker 2: Arab speaking Maslim majority countries going into August second, nineteen ninety.
Speaker 2: Also what had to have been on soams on Sadam's mind.
Speaker 2: The Soviet Union still existed in August nineteen ninety, but
Speaker 2: the Berlin Wall was no more, the Cold War was over.
Speaker 2: There was still a huge potential for crisis. Arguably the
Speaker 2: world was you know, there was tremended danger afoot owing
Speaker 2: to instability and the fact that not any kind of
Speaker 2: meaningful disarmament had been accomplished, particularly in regards to nuclear forces,
Speaker 2: unless you count the Intermediate Forces Treaty itself. But the
Speaker 2: Carter Doctrine, you know, which the Carter Doctrine, which you know,
Speaker 2: stated in no uncertain terms that any Soviet attack on
Speaker 2: any state in the Middle East, basically any hostile deployment,
Speaker 2: the United States would would treat that as an attack
Speaker 2: on his vital interests, you know. And it would, it would,
Speaker 2: and it would meet the attack with proportionate force. Okay,
Speaker 2: But the Carter doctor and absent the Soviet Union doesn't
Speaker 2: really make any sense, you know. And it's not like
Speaker 2: there was some precedent for America just intervening in the
Speaker 2: Middle East just on just on basic terms, you know,
Speaker 2: or on its own terms. So from the perspective of Saddam,
Speaker 2: there was that too, you know. And finally, you know,
Speaker 2: America only ended UH the military draft in nineteen seventy three.
Speaker 2: The last time America deployed forces into an open ended
Speaker 2: coomic situation was Vietnam. The Democratic Party, their platform consistently
Speaker 2: was hostile to UH military industrial interests. As a matter
Speaker 2: of course, the revolution and military affairs for as of
Speaker 2: all people like like the common man or woman are
Speaker 2: kind of are kind of ignorant military affairs anyway. But
Speaker 2: they had no concept of rima. They had no concept
Speaker 2: of what was different about, you know, uh, waging a
Speaker 2: counterinsurgency war with conventional elements like in South East Asia
Speaker 2: in a Cold war context, which axiomatically limited the operational environment.
Speaker 2: They had no concept of why that is radically different
Speaker 2: than waging a conventional war in the desert against the
Speaker 2: country like Iraq. But there Americans were basically not enthusiastic about,
Speaker 2: uh about about military deployments and this idea of you know,
Speaker 2: just Congress signing off on some open ended deployment to
Speaker 2: wage a general war with Iraq, you know, to liberate
Speaker 2: a to liberate a country that was you know, this
Speaker 2: kind of oil sheik kingdom like that. It was not
Speaker 2: for our include that that America was willing to go to war,
Speaker 2: and in fact, most people viewed it as unlikely that
Speaker 2: America would deploy, you know, at scale to accomplish as that.
Speaker 2: And finally, what was essential even if the political will
Speaker 2: was there in America, even if you know, public opinion
Speaker 2: was one hundred percent behind it, even if there was
Speaker 2: a consensus on the Beltway even before a shot was fired,
Speaker 2: and anger you still want whoever that you know was
Speaker 2: in the old office would literally have to finesse UH.
Speaker 2: A coalition that quite literally had UH, you know, the
Speaker 2: Arab world one hundred percent behind America as well as
Speaker 2: also them in the Soviet Union, agreed to stand down. Okay. Now,
Speaker 2: I'm not gonna sit here and pretend like Bush forty
Speaker 2: one was a good guy or that we should like him,
Speaker 2: or that you know, he was a man worthy of
Speaker 2: your my esteem or anything like that. Okay, but Bush
Speaker 2: was UH an incredible political operator, and he was an
Speaker 2: incredible and chief executive within the bound of rationality of command. Okay,
Speaker 2: what he accomplished, I I can see Nixon point off, Okay,
Speaker 2: within a different context, but that's nothing sort of remarkable,
Speaker 2: and that uh, that is something that I believe will
Speaker 2: very much guarantee Bush forty one's legacy as at least
Speaker 2: a students like serious students of a political theory and
Speaker 2: of UH and of government as well as Warren Peace.
Speaker 2: And that's one that's that's why I speak of Bush
Speaker 2: and what I know people at hag ME sometimes essentily
Speaker 2: just good natured ribbing for what appears to be, you know,
Speaker 2: some kind of like praise of like Bush, and I
Speaker 2: mean understandably, like why why would Ione say nice thing
Speaker 2: about the Bush family? But you know, I it doesn't
Speaker 2: matter what his politics were in this context. We're talking
Speaker 2: about the essence of executive decisionism and all of that.
Speaker 2: Let's let's take out the Gulf or proper in another episode.
Speaker 2: If you're okay with that, I'm sorry if it's on
Speaker 2: my end. I mean, I'm sorry on my end, Like
Speaker 2: the Zoom we got food bar, I'll hop on my
Speaker 2: dad's machine.
Speaker 1: Or been fine since it's been fine since you shut
Speaker 1: it down and restarted it.
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, I'll we even convene this weekend. I don't
Speaker 2: I feel pressured. We'll record for the next series. Will
Speaker 2: commence that anytime you want, you know, and if it's
Speaker 2: like Monday, but I wanted, I want to do a
Speaker 2: part two to conclude Golf War one and uh yeah,
Speaker 2: that's that's dope, and I'll I'll make sure that I'll
Speaker 2: do whatever I can make sure it's not an issue
Speaker 2: with like Zoom freezing my stuff or whatever problem. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 2: thank you, Pete.
Speaker 1: All right, man, I'm gonna I'm gonna cut it now
Speaker 1: and we'll talk about recording that second one over the
Speaker 1: next couple of days.
Speaker 2: Definitely, all right, thanks man.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I want to welcome everyone back to the Pekanana Show.
Speaker 1: Thomas is here to finish up this quick two episode.
Speaker 3: The Gulf War of was it ninety to ninety one?
Speaker 3: I was alive for it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was. The Iraqi assault in Kuwait was August second,
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety Desert Shield. It became desert storm on January seventeenth,
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety one. The station of hostilities was in March
Speaker 2: of nineteen ninety one, but an incredibly impactful event for
Speaker 2: all kinds of reasons, and it equits President Bush in
Speaker 2: the historical record. Again, I people misconstrue what I mean
Speaker 2: by that. I'm not endorsing Bush's character or saying that
Speaker 2: I share what was his policy vision for the world,
Speaker 2: which in a lot of ways was a more restrained
Speaker 2: iteration of of of what the New Dealers saw, as
Speaker 2: you know, kind of the ideal configuration of world order.
Speaker 2: I think Bush forty one has something in common with
Speaker 2: Harry Truman. Frankly, he was a better warlord and they
Speaker 2: just like a more capable guy, you know. But he
Speaker 2: That's kind of the way to understand his policy vision
Speaker 2: in great basic terms. Okay, his view for complex and
Speaker 2: independence and globalism was different. I mean, part of that
Speaker 2: ode to the different ep box in which they you know,
Speaker 2: were ascendant in terms of their own role. But part
Speaker 2: of it was just you know, Bush had a unique
Speaker 2: uh he he hit a unique concept that what globalism
Speaker 2: would look like that that And again I'm not I
Speaker 2: want to qualify this because people misunderstand, you know, I'm
Speaker 2: talking about the about irrationality. I'm doing these things in
Speaker 2: the bout irrationality the goals of these actors themselves, Okay,
Speaker 2: and I'm juxtaposing that with the total kind of insanity
Speaker 2: and nonsensical like non policy that is, you know, characteristic
Speaker 2: today of their regime. You know, it's not even it's
Speaker 2: not even so much today that you know, I'm out
Speaker 2: of the point in clintonon where like there was there
Speaker 2: was no foreign policy, you know, there was there was
Speaker 2: just this bizarre, uh destructive kind of scatter shot you know,
Speaker 2: collection of of of constellation of like military adventurism, you know,
Speaker 2: against the enemies of Israel and against other just kind
Speaker 2: of random states that you know, oh, owing to some
Speaker 2: discreete interest group and their ability to bring pressure or
Speaker 2: to you know, localized economic interests you know, was targeted
Speaker 2: for destruction. But beyond that, there literally is no like
Speaker 2: meaningful foreign policy. I make the point again and again
Speaker 2: to people that people like Mike Pompeio or like Nicky Haley,
Speaker 2: like these people really are fucking morons, Like they're not
Speaker 2: they're not acting, you know, they're not dumbing down their
Speaker 2: language conceptually to trying appeel to like the common man
Speaker 2: or woman. Like they really are like fucking idiots, Like
Speaker 2: they have no they have no concept at all of
Speaker 2: of of the world and power political or anything like that.
Speaker 2: So Bush, Baker, Scowcroft, even Cheney, and Cheney is a
Speaker 2: terrible person. But again, you know, we're not talking about
Speaker 2: the character of these people. You know, they they stand
Speaker 2: out and the kind of like the the the contrasting
Speaker 2: is a high relief of verbally speaking, but it's also
Speaker 2: to the Gulf War other than Korea. Other than Korean War,
Speaker 2: it's really the only case of the United Nations functioning
Speaker 2: as it was inten function. Okay, so from one, Amazon two,
Speaker 2: and of course, like in the Korean War, the Soviet
Speaker 2: Union was boycotting the United Nations. So I mean, that's
Speaker 2: why the Security Council was able to bypass what would
Speaker 2: have been, you know, an inevitable Soviet veto or the
Speaker 2: resolution to defend the Republic of Korea. The fact that
Speaker 2: Bush was able to get I mean, you gotta look
Speaker 2: at it like this, okay, from nineteen seven to facto,
Speaker 2: from nineteen seventy three onward, the Middle East became a
Speaker 2: conflict diad, the traversing of which, by hostile deployment by
Speaker 2: their you know, the United States to Warsaw Pact, led
Speaker 2: to World War three. It was, it was declared the
Speaker 2: fact though a vital us deer of interest in nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy three, you know, when when uh it appeared as if, uh,
Speaker 2: the Soviet Union was going to deploy to relieve the
Speaker 2: Egyptian Army and prevent their destruction, you know, the United
Speaker 2: States UH then elevated the Defcon three. The Soviet Union,
Speaker 2: in turn, deployed nuclear warheads to the port of Alexandria.
Speaker 2: They weren't married to their launch vehicles. They never came ashore,
Speaker 2: and UH, Gramco and USANOV undoubtedly, but Grimgo was certain advised, advised, uh,
Speaker 2: version of the you know, to to prepare for war
Speaker 2: basically you know, the deploy what with warsaw packs version
Speaker 2: of their rapid reaction for which which which technically was
Speaker 2: like a paratrooper elemental and nobody was like using parachutes
Speaker 2: by then, you know, but they were they did. The
Speaker 2: Soviet Union did have an equivalent of a rapid reaction
Speaker 2: for US that deployed basically like uh, you know, the
Speaker 2: eighty second Airborne and that element attached to it did
Speaker 2: for the the Bright Star exercise bi annually. But I digress.
Speaker 2: But the point is Middle East policy as regards warren
Speaker 2: peace became formalized by the Carter doctrine, you know, and
Speaker 2: uh Carter declared to know uncertain terms, you know, when
Speaker 2: when the Red Army assaulted Afghanistan that you know, any
Speaker 2: any Soviet ingress into the Middle East would would be
Speaker 2: treas an active war, you know, against the United States
Speaker 2: and its allies. And so the fact that Bush was
Speaker 2: able to the fact that the fact that he was
Speaker 2: able to get the Soviets to sign on to a
Speaker 2: massive US deployment to the Arabian Peninsula and the fact
Speaker 2: that he was able to do so able not just
Speaker 2: to facilitate that, but to get the Soviets to agree
Speaker 2: to that deployment for the purpose of of engaging what
Speaker 2: had been a Soviet client state. That's incredible, Okay, And
Speaker 2: it's uh, this is a very delicate minuet. And something
Speaker 2: we covered earlier in the series is that you know, Garbachew,
Speaker 2: whatever people can say about him, and I know a
Speaker 2: lot of patriotic Russian guys like like hate him, and
Speaker 2: I'm sure if I was Russian and I I had
Speaker 2: have strong feelings abound him. Two. Like, I'm not saying
Speaker 2: that's misguided. It's not for me to say that it's
Speaker 2: their country and it's their culture. But what I will
Speaker 2: say is this, and what I do think I'm entirely
Speaker 2: qualified to say, a Gorchov wasn't just this kind of
Speaker 2: He wasn't just a cipher. He wasn't a stooge. You know,
Speaker 2: he wasn't just he wasn't some myrionette just kinda you know,
Speaker 2: stumbling into poor policy decision after poor policy decision and
Speaker 2: being like a letter around by by the Bush White House.
Speaker 2: That's not true at all. And that's one of the
Speaker 2: reasons why he was you know, basically sandbag and removed
Speaker 2: from office you know, by in part by by Washington.
Speaker 2: So there's no it was not what again is there
Speaker 2: was not some guarantee that that that Grushoff would have
Speaker 2: equiesced to this. But also even if Grozov had been
Speaker 2: you know, a cipher in the order of what I described,
Speaker 2: there was still, ah, there was still the remainder of
Speaker 2: the party apparatus. There was you know, a hardline element
Speaker 2: that you know, had to be placated. You know, there's
Speaker 2: the people who became uh, you know, the the Yelts
Speaker 2: infection that you know, which is complicated because Yelson in
Speaker 2: a lot of ways was that he was he was
Speaker 2: exactly that he was a cipher, but he but he
Speaker 2: too was accountable to people within the Soviet apparatus, particularly
Speaker 2: you know, decision makers within the national security apparatus, which
Speaker 2: is which, as we've established in concrete policy terms, had
Speaker 2: outside cloud and power, you know, even even more so
Speaker 2: than than in the United States. That that kind of
Speaker 2: the peak of the kind of the peak of uh
Speaker 2: of Cold War hostilities, you know, So it's that that's
Speaker 2: got to be acknowledged both. You know, it's an indicator
Speaker 2: of Horss effectiveness again within within the bounds of you know,
Speaker 2: the policy decision, the policy challenges on the table, and
Speaker 2: the hospital decisions rendered they're in but also of Bush
Speaker 2: forty one, his ability to finesse uh this UH stuff.
Speaker 2: And I know, I know again I can't. I apologize
Speaker 2: very sincerely for with the fact that it was my
Speaker 2: machine that you know, has screwed up connection or whatever
Speaker 2: last time. And so forgive me again if I'm repeating
Speaker 2: this myself. But another thing that I think has to
Speaker 2: be acknowledged is is that I'm saying was a more
Speaker 2: complicated figure than is often acknowledged too. He really was,
Speaker 2: and some of the things he did that at the
Speaker 2: time spun as being you know, just just fool's errors,
Speaker 2: or you know, him being cast as is simply nothing
Speaker 2: more than a tinpot dictator who is more prone to
Speaker 2: who's who was less risk averse than than most of them.
Speaker 2: That's really that's really not the case either. There's a
Speaker 2: reason why Soviet relationship with Iraq was always troubled for
Speaker 2: a time. UH. The UH this the Iraqi the Iraqi
Speaker 2: diplomatic UH mission was uh was was was banned from
Speaker 2: East Berlin because uh they taken it upon themselves, uh
Speaker 2: to uh one opportunity presented itself to murder people that
Speaker 2: they they wanted dead, like other Iraqi's. I mean like
Speaker 2: there's this one Iraqi Communist party functionary and uh Iraqi
Speaker 2: intelligence under light aotgomatic cover literally threw him off a
Speaker 2: roof in East Berlin. There was some there's some student
Speaker 2: that dissident type who uh was was cozy with uh,
Speaker 2: you know, uh the communists, but who was uh, you know,
Speaker 2: an anti Saddam Zelat and uh some Iraqi's uh pulled
Speaker 2: up next to him when he was, you know, on
Speaker 2: foot around Pearl Marx's alley. He pulled him into a car.
Speaker 2: He disappeared, and then he washed up on a river bank,
Speaker 2: you know, with evidence of extreme torture and all kinds
Speaker 2: of horror mutilation, you know, having having been dead for
Speaker 2: weeks and and in your stores somewhere. So finally, like finally,
Speaker 2: you know, finally like you're not you're not doing this anymore,
Speaker 2: you know, you're you're gone. And just the fact that
Speaker 2: the bath Thats were you know, actively actively at war
Speaker 2: with the Communists in some basic way. I mean I'm
Speaker 2: talking about like within Iraq, as they were consolidating their
Speaker 2: monopoly on power. I mean, that's that that that that's
Speaker 2: that axiomatically caused tension. But nevertheless, Iraq was a The
Speaker 2: Soviet Union never had a true Arab client state. The
Speaker 2: only communist Arab state was South Yemen, the short lived
Speaker 2: South Yeman East State, and it was short lived, not
Speaker 2: because it didn't have legitimacy. Something that's fascinating to me
Speaker 2: now in in Uh, in the Yemen War, there is
Speaker 2: a faction down there that is uh Is uh I
Speaker 2: identify as it as like the South, so that they
Speaker 2: identify as like the legacy of the South Yemen Armed Forces.
Speaker 2: You know, when they're they're very much like it's kind
Speaker 2: of like post Marxists, but but but but radically left
Speaker 2: wing militia, you know. And I mean I find that fascinating.
Speaker 2: But my point is that, uh, the Soviets could not
Speaker 2: pick and choose. You know, the Middle East was not Africa,
Speaker 2: the Middle East was not Asia. They certainly wasn't Latin America.
Speaker 2: You know, they couldn't pick and choose, you know, like
Speaker 2: what Arabs Arab state they want to do them. You know,
Speaker 2: they want to do a give privilege, a position, and
Speaker 2: in terms of UH material support and and UH informal
Speaker 2: client diage. You know, they like communism just was not
Speaker 2: taking rude in the Near East, you know, just wasn't
Speaker 2: even when it had real currency in in other theaters
Speaker 2: at comparable stages and development and everything else. So you know,
Speaker 2: Saddam also we talked about the situation of Iraq going
Speaker 2: into the Iran Iraq War of nineteen eighty. The Iraqi
Speaker 2: said signed the Lgers Agreement with the Shah in nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy five. This had to do with you know, territorial
Speaker 2: disputes and other things, you know, typical kind of uh
Speaker 2: the typical kinds of things that you know, provoke interstate
Speaker 2: rivalry or more. It's kind of acted as like a
Speaker 2: catalyst or like a superficial and immediate rationalization where within
Speaker 2: paradise times that you know, there's already like a mutable
Speaker 2: hostility between state actors. I Ran in Iraq have always
Speaker 2: kind of been desperately at odds, okay, in in political terms,
Speaker 2: you know, uh, I Ran its rarely at war like
Speaker 2: open war, but I mean they're constantly at at at
Speaker 2: war and a and and you know a uh in
Speaker 2: a subtle and and and sort of hidden capacity, you know,
Speaker 2: unconventional capacity, but nonetheless uh, you know, they've always been
Speaker 2: at odds with Iraq in the modern UH era, post
Speaker 2: Ottoman era after World War One. But the the and
Speaker 2: and as you know that that's not entirely without objective
Speaker 2: uh rationale. Like we talked about the reason why uh
Speaker 2: the Israelis, like the the American States depart meant you know,
Speaker 2: Zionist all and sundry as well as uh you know,
Speaker 2: formerly Arab nationalist types like the Bathists, you know, like
Speaker 2: Arabist types and what remains that element today, but also
Speaker 2: you know, UH radical you know, Salafi types. They they
Speaker 2: the two kind of poles of of of of of
Speaker 2: hard power, and the Near East has always been Turkey
Speaker 2: and Iran, you know, and the Arabs kind of find
Speaker 2: themselves between these these uh, the the the these alien elements,
Speaker 2: you know, and when the UH as Islam became this
Speaker 2: kind of animating catalyst most remarkably, UH one you know,
Speaker 2: for for for Sunies obviously was uh, you know, the
Speaker 2: for uh the jihad against uh, the Soviet Union and
Speaker 2: communism in the midst of the assault in Afghanistan. But
Speaker 2: the truth the first true Islamic state was Iran, and
Speaker 2: the fact that the fact that it was a non
Speaker 2: Era but non Sunni culture that uh produced the first
Speaker 2: truly Islamic revolution. That was remarkable, but it was also
Speaker 2: it was it was also it was also alarming. You know,
Speaker 2: it meant that, it meant that, it meant that power
Speaker 2: bases within Islam, within the faith itself, and particularly like
Speaker 2: you know, revolutionary practice they're in. You know, it had
Speaker 2: had shifted. You know, there was a seize of the
Speaker 2: Grand Mosque in nineteen seventy nine in uh In, in
Speaker 2: Saudi Arabia, and that was impactful too. But again much
Speaker 2: of that mighty animated the kinds of guys who you know,
Speaker 2: went to join the Holy War against the Soviet Union.
Speaker 2: You know that that wasn't the House of Saud wasn't
Speaker 2: about to collapse, you know, like it wasn't. It didn't.
Speaker 2: It didn't spark this kind of this like kind of
Speaker 2: wildfire tendency, you know that to provoke. Soon he's under arms,
Speaker 2: to duplicate what happened in Iran, you know, like nothing
Speaker 2: like that. It and not without not without because you know,
Speaker 2: Iraq as a as a majority Shia state, and you
Speaker 2: know the Shia minority globally within is Lam, but they're
Speaker 2: they're extraordinarily potent minority. And that's that. That's there. The
Speaker 2: sha heartland is is really Iraq in the Arab world,
Speaker 2: you know, I mean in terms of raw population. Okay,
Speaker 2: you know the uh, the the Aqi Bath Party, they
Speaker 2: were they were ecumenical in a real sense. You know,
Speaker 2: Tarika's Ease himself was a Christian under the Bath Party
Speaker 2: was a Christian, a core of of a of Arab
Speaker 2: Bathism in Iraq and Syria. It's a totally et thing,
Speaker 2: you know. It was. Uh, it was. It was a
Speaker 2: Sunium political culture, all of these things. Uh, there was
Speaker 2: an internal logic strategically, I mean to uh Iraq UH
Speaker 2: preemptively assaulting Iran and uh Saiddam H. If you read
Speaker 2: the notes from a Saddam speaking to his war council
Speaker 2: or what would have been like the Bath uh national
Speaker 2: security Council, it's equivalent. You can tell that it's not
Speaker 2: a decision that's being made flippantly. And UH. The immediate catalyst,
Speaker 2: you know, as we said, like the the Algiers agreement
Speaker 2: was signed with the Shah. Tehran immediately declared at the
Speaker 2: revolution that you know, we're we're not we're not bound
Speaker 2: by any any treaties that you know, we're signed by
Speaker 2: the by the imperialist government. You know, that's that's over with.
Speaker 2: So it was, uh, it's not as if a conciliatory
Speaker 2: posture was being struck with, you know, with with Bagdad
Speaker 2: it and uh, really the tenor of of Saddam's appeal
Speaker 2: to the War Council is, you know, if we let
Speaker 2: this go now, we're essentially allowing ourselves to be extorted,
Speaker 2: and if we're gonna set, if the president being set
Speaker 2: you know, of of at first impression with the revolutionary
Speaker 2: regime in Tehran is that, you know, we are available
Speaker 2: to be extorted. You know, He's like, how how would
Speaker 2: that look? And how would that look to the Arab people,
Speaker 2: you know, not just in Iraq but theater wide, you know,
Speaker 2: and it's also well how would that look to the
Speaker 2: Soviet Union too? Frankly, again, despite the despite the their
Speaker 2: kind of troubled friendship, it wasn't genuine concord of necessity,
Speaker 2: and you know, the uh, the Iraq, Iraq needed Soviet
Speaker 2: material support or to remain a viable military power. And
Speaker 2: if confidence was lost, uh In Moscow's confidence was lost,
Speaker 2: you know, they simply would have looked elsewhere. Admittedly it
Speaker 2: was a shallow pool of potential clients, but nevertheless, uh,
Speaker 2: you know, there was precedent for that. The s IS
Speaker 2: didn't just desperately continue to sustain regimes that weren't viable
Speaker 2: or that or that would not be able when when
Speaker 2: when critical circumstances emerged, uh, you know, be able to
Speaker 2: mobilize and and be able to be able to wage war,
Speaker 2: you know, and in uh In at least a nominally
Speaker 2: effective capacity. So this had you know, I raised that
Speaker 2: because again, like it's the people people claim, because you know,
Speaker 2: they kind of selectively choose to cite like late Iran
Speaker 2: like war like propaganda of you know, out of Bagdad,
Speaker 2: where you know, they're they're emphasizing that, you know, the
Speaker 2: the Iranians or a different race. You know, they're they're there,
Speaker 2: they're Persians and their series and they're not like us,
Speaker 2: and saying like Saddam was just like this madman who
Speaker 2: just invaded Iran for no reason, or or he did
Speaker 2: some out of you know, out of out of uh,
Speaker 2: you know, kind of quasi racialists, like you know, tendency
Speaker 2: is a bigot tree or uh or because of like
Speaker 2: tech fury, hostility to the Shia. I mean, I that's
Speaker 2: really not true. And I mean whatever, everybody is an
Speaker 2: armchair general, you know, so it and nobody, nobody chooses
Speaker 2: to treat these things, you know, as they as as
Speaker 2: decisions would have been rendered, like in the epoch and
Speaker 2: at the critical moment of decision where uh, you know,
Speaker 2: the the the awareness of the situation, you know, would
Speaker 2: have been restricted to what was then a parent and emergent.
Speaker 2: And then I'm not saying much to I was like
Speaker 2: a good executive or something, but I'm saying that he was.
Speaker 2: He was, he was more confident than his acknowledged and
Speaker 2: he was in a very unenviable, unenviable position. I think
Speaker 2: at some point it was inevitable Iraq would find itself
Speaker 2: at or. But that's more kind of a it's kind
Speaker 2: of a more complicated and wider topic. It's like getting
Speaker 2: back to the getting back to our topic. I means
Speaker 2: it ran back were a lot because it's it's important
Speaker 2: for for all kinds of reasons of context. Really not
Speaker 2: not really not just to the politics than your East,
Speaker 2: but relating to the Cold War, relating to uh, you know,
Speaker 2: uh the sectarian hatred and darl Islam, you know, relating
Speaker 2: to uh, the revolution and revolution in military affairs, the
Speaker 2: reemergence of chemical weapons being utilized and applied, you know,
Speaker 2: like the tactical capacity on the bail field. It's really uh,
Speaker 2: it's really fascinating. But m h getting back to mister Bushford. One,
Speaker 2: what bush did immediately after after the Iraqi invasion at
Speaker 2: Kuwait in August nineteen ninety On August twentieth, he issued
Speaker 2: US National Security Directive Number forty five. Okay, the relevant
Speaker 2: parts stated and I'm quoting here unless indicated otherwise, US
Speaker 2: interests in the Persian go for a vital to national security.
Speaker 2: These interests include access to oil and the security instability
Speaker 2: a key friendly states in the region. The United States
Speaker 2: will defenditive fight interest in the area throughout through the
Speaker 2: use of the US military force, if necessary and appropriate,
Speaker 2: against any power with interests in nimical to our own.
Speaker 2: Going off the record, this is important to me at
Speaker 2: least because you know how, like the Michael moritypes, they're
Speaker 2: constantly talking about how our politicam at least is driven
Speaker 2: his exclus say, we quote bite oil, which doesn't make
Speaker 2: any sense. But it's also like they act like it's
Speaker 2: some kind of secret or something that you know, American
Speaker 2: executives have pretended, like you know, energy policy and domination
Speaker 2: of of key oil reserves in the Near East by
Speaker 2: hostile powers, they've always always been really above board that
Speaker 2: you know, these things play into strategic decision making, you know,
Speaker 2: so I've always like wondered about that, like why that
Speaker 2: I've tryed like idiots. And it's not like I had
Speaker 2: nothing nice to say about Bush forty three. You're about
Speaker 2: the Iraq War. You know. It's not like I was
Speaker 2: sitting here like cheerleading medling in the Middle East, but
Speaker 2: like they actually was in Trump card, it's about oil man.
Speaker 2: It's like, what does that even mean? Like if you
Speaker 2: wanted to, if you had to say, it's what's gonna
Speaker 2: act like some like nineteenth century uh like empire and
Speaker 2: just go around grabbing you know, rubber plantations and petroleum fields.
Speaker 2: You know, why not invade Venezuela, you know, like why
Speaker 2: why you know, you don't need to go the way
Speaker 2: to Iraq like steal oil or whatever. But I digress
Speaker 2: the UH. But what's significant about National Lecurity Drug to
Speaker 2: forty five is that even as the as the Cold
Speaker 2: War was ending, it was based Bush was reiterating that
Speaker 2: the Carter doctrine, you know, like you' saying, the Carter
Speaker 2: doctrine is still operative. He was signaling to the Soviet
Speaker 2: Union too, because obviously it wasn't clear like what like
Speaker 2: how they were gonna how Moscow was gonna respond, you know,
Speaker 2: moving forward, and it wasn't clear at all. You know.
Speaker 2: It's and in a roundabout way, had UH, you know,
Speaker 2: had the Supreme Soviet or had the UH or had
Speaker 2: UH you know, kind of the Inner Party specifically that
Speaker 2: which was tethered to the Ministry of Defense, had they
Speaker 2: kind of gone into a revolt against UH Peristroica, they
Speaker 2: they could have utilized, you know, with America's UH looming
Speaker 2: UH mass intervention in the Middle East as as their
Speaker 2: catalysts to kind of bring down the Gorbachev regime. Circle
Speaker 2: the wagons that were and that that's a fascinating counterfactual.
Speaker 2: But the fact that it didn't happen again is a
Speaker 2: is a credit to Bush what he wont his ability
Speaker 2: to finesse in in a in a bona fide way.
Speaker 2: And again the fact that like that that Gorbachev was
Speaker 2: able to pull that off on the other side, in
Speaker 2: in concord with Bush is I mean, it's a testament
Speaker 2: to the garbage shows frankly, like genius is a politician.
Speaker 2: You know, if the man was a fool or a cipher,
Speaker 2: that he would never have been able to accomplish that.
Speaker 2: The Uh, I'm not I'm not gonna quote verbatim because
Speaker 2: that's it's it's redundant that borybody to tears. But what's
Speaker 2: fascinating is like the remainder of a of the declaration
Speaker 2: Bush sites United Nations Security Council Resolute six sixty is
Speaker 2: sixty sixty two as a as an authority for intervention,
Speaker 2: you know, which UH was like at the court according
Speaker 2: the letter of the law, like such that it can
Speaker 2: even be said that, you know, war and peace decisions
Speaker 2: are bound by the law and in the way that
Speaker 2: you know could be said stated to be, you know,
Speaker 2: within the borders of of UH of a sovereign dominion.
Speaker 2: But uh, you know Bush Bush had all the authority
Speaker 2: he needed from Article two, you know, from the President
Speaker 2: of the Carter doctrine, and so long as Congress was
Speaker 2: willing to you know, was was willing to float the
Speaker 2: bill and not otherwise you know, revoke uh, his ability
Speaker 2: to see the policy through. I mean that that's that's
Speaker 2: the only authority Bush needed. But he was big. He
Speaker 2: was very much proceeding as a diplomat in in in
Speaker 2: in prosecuting this war. And I say that in the
Speaker 2: most positive terms there are you know, it's just, uh,
Speaker 2: it's it's noteworthy because most executives would not have done that,
Speaker 2: even ones who were really kind of uh, even some
Speaker 2: of Bush's successors and Clinton liberal types, they wouldn't have
Speaker 2: characterized it that way. You know, even if even if
Speaker 2: they wanted to, even if even if they wanted to
Speaker 2: kind of finess, what they were doing is as in
Speaker 2: the interest of you know, this burgening global community or whatever.
Speaker 2: So this is very interesting with within the for the
Speaker 2: time and the moment within that epoch, and for what
Speaker 2: Bush aimed to accomplish, that was absolutely correct strategy. I
Speaker 2: just find it really interesting. I mean, this this may
Speaker 2: like bore some people to death, but it's it's it's
Speaker 2: fundamentally important to the topic. And it's also it's it's
Speaker 2: important just in more global terms, I figuratively and literally
Speaker 2: again what the Bush forty one people wanted to see
Speaker 2: through they wanted to Uh, you got to look at
Speaker 2: the Cold War as as among other things, you know,
Speaker 2: in structural terms, not just parwa political ones. You know,
Speaker 2: the uh, there never was a there never was a
Speaker 2: formal peace treaty signed with Germany. You know, that's one
Speaker 2: of the reasons why you know, like the two Germanys
Speaker 2: were able to exist in perpetuity, in apparent perpetuity after
Speaker 2: the war. What Bush was aiming to do, he was
Speaker 2: aiming to create configure. Uh, this this globalized, truly globalized
Speaker 2: polity as an envisioned by you know, the New Dealers
Speaker 2: and to a lesser degree, people like Truman, you know,
Speaker 2: and see that through to fruition, like actual fruition wherein
Speaker 2: you know, military action would essentially other than you know,
Speaker 2: things that truly are you know, kind of like postichomatized
Speaker 2: manners of like civil unrest within the you know, at
Speaker 2: at at the local and and and and downscaled level,
Speaker 2: you know, other than other than those obvious exceptions, you know,
Speaker 2: any military action would would be carried out through the
Speaker 2: United Nations Security Council, you know, where the permanent uh
Speaker 2: UN Security Council you know, would be kind of like
Speaker 2: the higher House, you know, or the or the cabinet
Speaker 2: of a world government. You know, the General Assembly would
Speaker 2: be kind of like you know, the the World Congress,
Speaker 2: the World House of Representatives, the World House of Commons,
Speaker 2: you know, and you have you have a rotating executive,
Speaker 2: you know, who's more sort of like a global prime
Speaker 2: minister than a than a president, because real power lies
Speaker 2: in the Security Council. But this is what Bush was
Speaker 2: aiming to do, you know. And however, however we feel
Speaker 2: about that. The degree to which this was just like
Speaker 2: utterly pissed on and sabotaged, you know, from the Clinton
Speaker 2: administration onwards in favor of the like anarchy is insane.
Speaker 2: It's completely insane. And what's what's more insane is that
Speaker 2: nobody talks about it. It's it's as if it's never happened,
Speaker 2: but that the current situations, uh, the current strategic situation
Speaker 2: is just some kind of accident of fate or like
Speaker 2: it's something just like some immutable development because other states
Speaker 2: that aren't reasonable or something. It's this is incredible that
Speaker 2: that people that people feel this way. I do want
Speaker 2: to cite a couple more points of the memo. Those
Speaker 2: are and I quote push stated incident, you know, to
Speaker 2: explicating why intervention UH to eject Iraqi and quoit constantly
Speaker 2: to vital interest quote. Much of the world is is
Speaker 2: even more dependent on Iraqi oil. Much of the RULD
Speaker 2: is depending on Iraqi oil and is highly vulnerable to
Speaker 2: Iraqi threats. To minimize any impact that oil flow reductions
Speaker 2: from Iraq and what we'll have in the world's economy
Speaker 2: will be over policy as well. Producing nations do what
Speaker 2: they can to increased production offs at these losses. And
Speaker 2: that's important too because again, the the OPEC embargo with
Speaker 2: seventy three, like America coming to terms America in the
Speaker 2: UK coming to terms of the House of sod that UH,
Speaker 2: that that that created a a reliable kind of configuration
Speaker 2: we're in. Like all the major petroleum UH producers, you know,
Speaker 2: they had invested interests in in in in proceeding peaceably,
Speaker 2: and they were afforded you know, limited ability to to
Speaker 2: you know, to carry out a price fixing regime, which
Speaker 2: they do to the day. But the fact wasn't that know,
Speaker 2: Iraqi oil is so important, or that you know anyone
Speaker 2: or that Iraqi oil like funds anyone critical you know,
Speaker 2: state actor or you know, constellation of things. It's that
Speaker 2: it would where Iraq able to you know, attack another export, another,
Speaker 2: another OPEC state and dictate regionally. You know what political
Speaker 2: concessions would be required for continued access to Iraqi petroleum.
Speaker 2: Even if America could maintain good offices, would Iraq no problem?
Speaker 2: The other Arab states would not they've been able to
Speaker 2: and that would have been profoundly destabilizing, just not just structurally.
Speaker 2: I mean Saddam would have recognized that. I don't think
Speaker 2: Saddam with some Marvel villain rubbing his hands together and saying,
Speaker 2: you know, now I can extort money for oil. But
Speaker 2: he recognized exactly what the structural implications of this were.
Speaker 2: And I believe from like where the Iraqis were sitting,
Speaker 2: like their idea was like, well, this needs to be
Speaker 2: reconfigured anyway, you know why, and especially without the Soviet Union,
Speaker 2: you know, it's like what are we just gonna let
Speaker 2: is OPEC's gonna become kind of the this kind of
Speaker 2: like Cooley, uh, this kind of like Cooley enterprise like
Speaker 2: behold in the United States. You know, I don't think
Speaker 2: I'm speculating too much here. You know again, I this
Speaker 2: this becomes apparent like as you as you deep dive
Speaker 2: into you know what the what the incentives were, and
Speaker 2: the motives were, and the viewpoints were of the respective actors,
Speaker 2: you know, like Era Ben and Western in the you know,
Speaker 2: the occidental perspective versus the error perspective. It's like writ
Speaker 2: large here in a lot of ways. Okay, like corny
Speaker 2: as that might sound to people, but uh, moving on
Speaker 2: the Bush was very he uh, he was very emphatic,
Speaker 2: and not just for appearance sake, but in a real
Speaker 2: kind of concrete capacity of a declaring that you know,
Speaker 2: US forces and a sort of other elements. You know,
Speaker 2: whether they're whether they're uh you know, whether they're British,
Speaker 2: whether they're French, where they're Italian, whether it's whether we're
Speaker 2: whether they we're talking about you know, Syrian forces and
Speaker 2: Assyrians as Fesisad came heavy to support Bush. And I
Speaker 2: mean that's another thing too, like after like like basically
Speaker 2: America's best ally in the Middle East should be serious,
Speaker 2: Like what's America been doing for twenty years like trying
Speaker 2: to annihilate Syria. But uh Bush made it clear that,
Speaker 2: you know, the coalition military element are guests in the
Speaker 2: Kingdom of Saudi Arabia first and foremost. He included in
Speaker 2: Saudi general officers in the decision making process, even if
Speaker 2: it was just kind of like nominal in for appearance sake,
Speaker 2: because these guys frankly didn't have the experience, you know,
Speaker 2: to really to really bring command presence to bear. But
Speaker 2: there were a lot of elements, including Osamov and Lauden himself,
Speaker 2: who uh approached uh the royal family and said like
Speaker 2: look like let me or let us you know, like
Speaker 2: uh like raise an army of of the righteous as
Speaker 2: we did to fight the communists, and like will and
Speaker 2: will like eject uh, you know, the Iraqi army. Ourselves.
Speaker 2: We don't need, you know, we don't we don't need,
Speaker 2: we don't need, we don't we don't need infrails on
Speaker 2: our on our soil, you know, and not just on
Speaker 2: our soil, but on the soil we're like the profit tread,
Speaker 2: you know, and we don't need you know. You know,
Speaker 2: this is basically like a Jewish war and there you know,
Speaker 2: it's become that way because it's it's not it's not
Speaker 2: to liberate, you know, Moslims from from Bathist tyranny. It's
Speaker 2: about you know, it's about monetary intrigues and power political
Speaker 2: uh ambitions of of of Nonmuslims, and that could have
Speaker 2: gotten traction. Not not with that, not with the House Asad,
Speaker 2: but you better believe with the Arab street, you know.
Speaker 2: So the a lot of the ridiculous kind of propaganda
Speaker 2: that you know, the the like literally these like man
Speaker 2: saanditing firms that were retained like you know, draft these
Speaker 2: like atrocity stories and things. A lot of that that
Speaker 2: wasn't just you know, for the sake of UH, you know,
Speaker 2: kind of a stirring up war fever in America like
Speaker 2: that was really already kind of bourboning that I believe
Speaker 2: that was for that was that was for the court
Speaker 2: of world opinion and particularly for UH form you know,
Speaker 2: the UH the Arab streets, you know, and and and
Speaker 2: encouraging them to identify uh, you know, America and the
Speaker 2: Coalition as as this of savior element. You know, that
Speaker 2: that was best suited to combat at this grave evil
Speaker 2: lid you know, had befallen the Kingdom potentially, and that
Speaker 2: you know, was it was already you know, it was
Speaker 2: already engaged in gross, gross acts of of of of
Speaker 2: of a terrifying nature in Kuwait. So I mean there
Speaker 2: was a lot here. You know, it wasn't just a
Speaker 2: matter of that. This wasn't beside the fact it was
Speaker 2: the first open, open ended military deployment since the Vietnam War.
Speaker 2: It was the first, uh, it was the first real
Speaker 2: operational test of of of the of the post RIMA
Speaker 2: you know, r A M A relative military affairs army,
Speaker 2: it uh, all those things. It was. It was the
Speaker 2: first major uh, it was the first major con inflict
Speaker 2: of the you know, it's of the post Cold War era.
Speaker 2: I mean, the color was in the process of ending
Speaker 2: at that point. I mean, yeah, the wall would come down,
Speaker 2: what you know, the Soviet Union still existed. Like this
Speaker 2: was this kind of arrived at like the worst possible time,
Speaker 2: you know, But that's you know, war arrives like the seasons,
Speaker 2: doesn't it. But that but a lot of what was
Speaker 2: going on, you know, on the on the propaganda side
Speaker 2: and the cultivation and narratives and things like that, A
Speaker 2: lot of that was was Bush Baker. You know, in
Speaker 2: the American White House, in American State Department, like speaking
Speaker 2: to the Arab street or signaling to them, you know,
Speaker 2: and uh and and in ways that I I don't
Speaker 2: think even if even if the foreign policy establishment, even
Speaker 2: if they weren't conceptually illiterate these days, I don't I
Speaker 2: don't think they have the ability to do that, just
Speaker 2: like creatively or you know, in terms of their like
Speaker 2: psychologically app situte or anything like that. I just I
Speaker 2: just couldn't. I can't see it happening even if there
Speaker 2: weren't abject the object morons at at the helm. How
Speaker 2: long we've been going, like, forgive me about forty Okay, yeah,
Speaker 2: I'll speed it up a little bit.
Speaker 3: The really.
Speaker 2: I realized that, uh, we gotta, we gotta move on
Speaker 2: so we can get into the go ahead.
Speaker 1: Well, well, hit me up with this because I think
Speaker 1: you already mentioned it. But one of the big and
Speaker 1: I remember this when it was happening, one of the
Speaker 1: big contentions, one of the big things that they made
Speaker 1: a big deal out of, and it was was Saddam
Speaker 1: launching the scuds just into the Israeli population.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm glad you raised the Saddam was craftier.
Speaker 1: I'll tell you I had I had a Jewish girlfriend
Speaker 1: at the time, and she had spent a lot of
Speaker 1: time time in Israel and knew a lot of friends there.
Speaker 3: So yeah, that was a fun night. That was That
Speaker 3: was a fun night when that started.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, the well I Saddam was craftier than people think.
Speaker 2: And something very strange happened UH at the onset of
Speaker 2: hostilities after you know, January seventeenth onward, the uh you know,
Speaker 2: the the the onset of Desert store was a massive
Speaker 2: air campaign, which the UH some there's some military types
Speaker 2: who say that it should have just been a fall
Speaker 2: on combined arms assault and that it was you know,
Speaker 2: the the weeks long you know air campaign was uh
Speaker 2: was was wasteful and lives, you know, civilian nutrition they're
Speaker 2: talking about, and and in a waste of time. Frankly,
Speaker 2: I I'm not going to get into that, and I'm
Speaker 2: not super qualified to discuss that. But as as UH,
Speaker 2: by the last week in January, the coalition had had
Speaker 2: had UH had flown something crazy like twenty three thousand
Speaker 2: sorties over Iraq, and I like Kuwait, they'd uh they've
Speaker 2: been dropping these two thousand pound bombs on Iraqi airfields
Speaker 2: that were more accurate than their destructive power was greater
Speaker 2: than people had anticipated. So the Iraqi error element was
Speaker 2: like taking a serious beating. And I think they they
Speaker 2: they lost twenty two planes and in tactical aerial combat
Speaker 2: you know, the UH and these were these these these
Speaker 2: were French, Italian then and Soviet aircraft. And they even
Speaker 2: had some make twenty nines like the Mad twenty nine
Speaker 2: folk from that was that was packaged for export. It
Speaker 2: was it was not the same as the as the
Speaker 2: Soviet Air Forces model. It was an inferior model or
Speaker 2: stripped out in some way. But the point is it
Speaker 2: was in mid twenty nine, like this wasn't I raised
Speaker 2: that for clarity, you know, the iraqis they weren't. They
Speaker 2: weren't flying around. I went in nineteen fifties planes or something. Okay.
Speaker 2: It so as this on January twenty sixth, something very
Speaker 2: strange happened. Suddenly Iraqi planes they started appearing in Iranian airspace.
Speaker 2: Like at first it was just like a few of them,
Speaker 2: but then it became clear that they were going to
Speaker 2: Iran and in dedicated flight patterns. This wasn't like a
Speaker 2: handful of defectors or something. You know. At first it
Speaker 2: was about twenty, then it was about sixty, and it
Speaker 2: was over one hundred, and the entire remainder of the
Speaker 2: Iraqi Air Force literally flew to Iran. And this one
Speaker 2: US Pentagon official at the time who asked not to
Speaker 2: be named, and you can still find the You can
Speaker 2: still find the the article online. Google it. Right before
Speaker 2: we went live, he said, to what kind of frightened
Speaker 2: uh New York Times Journal, He said, I really hope
Speaker 2: that this is not Saddam Hussein's like Molotov ribbons trot
Speaker 2: packed moments, because we could have a real problem, and
Speaker 2: the Iranians had no intention of collaborating with Saddam. I
Speaker 2: don't even think they had any definite way of context
Speaker 2: yet at that point. But I think Saddam absolutely wanted
Speaker 2: America to think that, and I think he absolutely wanted
Speaker 2: America to launch some like mass assault in Iran incident
Speaker 2: to thinking that. You know, I at the time, I
Speaker 2: remember some of these guys like we're saying that, well,
Speaker 2: Sadam's an idiot. He should have ruin his whole air force,
Speaker 2: a carrier battle group and tried to sink what he
Speaker 2: could you know, the people talking about as if it
Speaker 2: was like the Argentine Air Force. Uh, you know, like
Speaker 2: like like knocking out British cruisers in the Falklands. It's
Speaker 2: like not at all comparable. And like it' said, I'm
Speaker 2: thrown those airplanes at UH at a carrier battle group,
Speaker 2: they just would have gotten like slaughtered. It just would
Speaker 2: have been like a fireworks show, and like that would
Speaker 2: be the end of it, like and he knew that.
Speaker 2: So that coupled with you know, yeah, the the ability
Speaker 2: of Bush and Baker to to stand down the uh
Speaker 2: Israeli government. But also those are the days of like
Speaker 2: yees Socra being man and stuff like you didn't just
Speaker 2: like just like demento Zionist element. And it's not like
Speaker 2: the israel government was ever any great shakes, but it
Speaker 2: was a lot more rational than you know, and uh,
Speaker 2: there's far more of a concord in the occupied territories,
Speaker 2: you know, the uh it was it was kind of
Speaker 2: it was kind of a rare moment of relative calm,
Speaker 2: you know. So it was a constantly of all those things.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I understanding either of those things in isolation,
Speaker 2: either the uh the launching that scuds at at Tel
Speaker 2: Aviv or UH, you know, the UH, the appearance of UH,
Speaker 2: the Iraqi Air Force or remain of it, and Iran.
Speaker 2: I think those things have to be understood together. And
Speaker 2: it's also you know, once some I I mean the
Speaker 2: point of people too, I mean especially about the Second
Speaker 2: World War, but about all conflicts. You know what, once,
Speaker 2: once you're in a war, once you're in conditions approaching war,
Speaker 2: you can't just say, like, you know what, I'm gonna
Speaker 2: put the brakes on this and and like stop everything.
Speaker 2: Like so I was saying after he wrote the Dice
Speaker 2: in Kuwait, I don't think I don't think it's not
Speaker 2: thought that the America would do anything. I think he
Speaker 2: thought the British would. But I think I think he
Speaker 2: recognized it's like it wasn't nineteen eighty two anymore, even
Speaker 2: if it were. UH. And don't get me wrong, like
Speaker 2: the fact that British could fight the Falklands War was incredible,
Speaker 2: Like I take my hat off to him. They could
Speaker 2: not have figured out that that campaign or similar campaign
Speaker 2: on the ground against the Iraqi army, you know, and
Speaker 2: logistically this would have been impossible. So Sonnam's notion was that,
Speaker 2: you know, this is basically this is basically a low
Speaker 2: risk Guenter prize and there was a wider war. Wasn't
Speaker 2: big game clear that was not the case at all.
Speaker 2: It's like, well it was too late. Sonam could have
Speaker 2: gone all in assaulted Saudi Arabia and continued until he
Speaker 2: you know, hit the actually hit the gulf, and uh
Speaker 2: like seeing if he could hold it or he could
Speaker 2: have just I held fast and uh, you know, I
Speaker 2: hope that the coalition would fall apart before the onset
Speaker 2: of hostilities, or if it did not, hoping that you know,
Speaker 2: some kind of situation at theater y anarchy, you know,
Speaker 2: and and and a wider war, you know, uh what
Speaker 2: a forced uh America to kind of come to terms,
Speaker 2: you know. But this idea that you know, this idea
Speaker 2: that you can just like Cinnam everybody else can just
Speaker 2: kind of like pull the plug on hostilities and just
Speaker 2: be like, hey, I give up now, or like no,
Speaker 2: it's not a thing's work. But yeah, I your your
Speaker 2: your lady friend. Uh, I'm sure, I'm sure that was
Speaker 2: an insane freaking experience she had or or friend's head
Speaker 2: or whatever. You know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that was pretty much the end of that.
Speaker 2: I was.
Speaker 1: At that point, Well, another another question, I guess it would,
Speaker 1: which may be something that you wrap this up on.
Speaker 3: You know, why didn't they take out Saddam?
Speaker 2: Then the Baker view, and Baker really was kind of
Speaker 2: on the political side. Baker was kind of in the
Speaker 2: driver's seat. I it wasn't clear. And Baker made this
Speaker 2: point in the in the years before uh to that
Speaker 2: before nine to eleven, in the in the years during
Speaker 2: the Clit administration, you know, after the Gulf War and
Speaker 2: before nine to eleven, like it's not clear what people
Speaker 2: think that would have accomplished, you know, like it's like
Speaker 2: you kill, you kill Sadam Hussein. I mean that. I mean,
Speaker 2: first of all, like you lose the appearance of lawfulness
Speaker 2: because just going around like whacking people number one, number two,
Speaker 2: it's like, okay, so then you got some you got
Speaker 2: some Salafi government in the Sunni triangle, like fighting like
Speaker 2: an ir a Iranian and his blood back to like
Speaker 2: you know, shift element and basically had like the Iraqi
Speaker 2: Civil War, but like ten years earlier, you know, And
Speaker 2: it's like the I I don't I think it's moronic
Speaker 2: when people are like, well, Sadam was like Arabs need
Speaker 2: like you know, some brutal dictator to hum in a
Speaker 2: line like that's just like fucked hard thinking and they
Speaker 2: don't even know like what they're talking about and they
Speaker 2: say that. But it's also I uh nor do I
Speaker 2: think not? I think Saam is like was was like
Speaker 2: a great man, but he he wasn't any any worse
Speaker 2: than you know, a lot of other uh a lot
Speaker 2: of other kind of kind of kind of dictator strong
Speaker 2: man types who you know, who who America has founded
Speaker 2: perfectly okay to live with the the uh, I mean
Speaker 2: he Saddam Hussein thought that, but it's all too like again,
Speaker 2: Sadam was uh he Sadam's like recklessness the I mean
Speaker 2: during when the when the Cold War was ending, like everybody,
Speaker 2: arguably he was being reckless, you know, in some way
Speaker 2: or another in terms of like second rate power and
Speaker 2: in terms of lesser powers like that. I mean, but
Speaker 2: it's not like what why Saddam Hussein kind of became
Speaker 2: this like this like there's this like bad guy stand
Speaker 2: in for everybody. He was kind of weird because like
Speaker 2: he just wasn't that important, you know, and he wasn't
Speaker 2: somebody uh if America too, like if they'd want to do.
Speaker 2: Uh if America hadn't didn't totally of its head of
Speaker 2: its aass in the Middle East, even during the Cold War,
Speaker 2: where it's just like, you know, again I ran as
Speaker 2: uh I ran as going to be the dominant uh
Speaker 2: GEO strategic power in the region. Okay, just he is saying,
Speaker 2: like our policy do I ran since the Shah was deposed,
Speaker 2: as we're gonna shriek over and over again that you're
Speaker 2: evil in bead Like it's not it's not policy, you
Speaker 2: know what I mean. Like it's something like an intelligent
Speaker 2: US regime would have done whatever it had to do,
Speaker 2: you know, to kind of uh finanse the Iranians into
Speaker 2: doing what we wanted, you know. Well at the same time, uh,
Speaker 2: you know, building up Iraq is a meaningful bulwark, but
Speaker 2: also one that you know, people within the region and
Speaker 2: that you know wasn't too what wasn't too easily discredited
Speaker 2: in terms of its its optics and things, and that
Speaker 2: very easily could have been acco not very easily any terms,
Speaker 2: but in political terms, that definitely could have been accomplished.
Speaker 2: But even aside from the politics of it, you know,
Speaker 2: killing killing snam Musan would not really have accomplished anything.
Speaker 2: And the Bath Party, despite what people say, it's very
Speaker 2: different in Syria. It's I mean they're literally like at
Speaker 2: odds with one another, you know. And uh and I
Speaker 2: mean at the Assad family, they're they're they're they're great people,
Speaker 2: they really are. And mashasas a hero and his father
Speaker 2: was a hero. Okay, I my dad. Aside, the uh
Speaker 2: baphism is a real thing. It's not just like contrivance
Speaker 2: or something that would just fall apart if you removed
Speaker 2: uh you know kind of the the lynchpin dictator, you
Speaker 2: know who who's uh kind of ideological clothing is is
Speaker 2: the af mentioned contrivance. If uh Asnam was just kind
Speaker 2: of like simarily killed, I mean, I think there was.
Speaker 2: The US lost a lot of credibility with when they
Speaker 2: finally did like availament of his cane report for seeding frankly,
Speaker 2: and then uh isis isis executed the judge who had
Speaker 2: him hanged and uh I and they they they made
Speaker 2: a tape of it. It was in one of their
Speaker 2: like ice music videos. You know, it's like an arrow
Speaker 2: and said, this is the judge and then like you know,
Speaker 2: you see a guy like blowing his head off, and
Speaker 2: that didn't make me happy and not happen anybody dies,
Speaker 2: but I didn't feel sad that. I I mean, I
Speaker 2: think judges are kind of piece of shit anyway, but
Speaker 2: I uh that that guy didn't like feel bad for Okay,
Speaker 2: what point being, I don't uh, I don't understand why
Speaker 2: people think like, okay, like if they that's the thing.
Speaker 2: It's like it's like some old movie or something like
Speaker 2: Sam Musin is is like he's like some hive mind
Speaker 2: and if like you shoot Saam Mussin, like all the
Speaker 2: Arab automatons just like drop dead or fall over like
Speaker 2: like Disneyland ortomatons, and you kill the power or something.
Speaker 2: I don't know, but that's uh. But that's why the
Speaker 2: the whole way that Operation I Rag You Freedom went
Speaker 2: about was very weird, just like the planning when it
Speaker 2: finally did come to fruition. The planning was just very bad,
Speaker 2: you know, and it didn't really make a lot of sense.
Speaker 2: We could cover that, uh another time, yeah, I I
Speaker 2: I uh, thanks for accommoding me. I thought it was
Speaker 2: important to do a deep dive into some into this
Speaker 2: into the subject of the Gulf War before we moved on,
Speaker 2: So I hope, I hope everybody got something out of
Speaker 2: it worth well.
Speaker 1: And we can always come back to come back to
Speaker 1: this for a one off and uh discuss the discuss
Speaker 1: a little more so last time I didn't have you
Speaker 1: plug anything.
Speaker 3: So what do you got going on?
Speaker 2: I've actually been really really busy, like recording content far
Speaker 2: and wide, all kinds of people who wanted me to
Speaker 2: record with them, which is dope. I'm going to try
Speaker 2: and corral all of that like out of the website,
Speaker 2: you know, which is pretty The website's pretty much done
Speaker 2: and you can access it. I'll if you wouldn't mind
Speaker 2: if you added to the comments at some point. But
Speaker 2: other than that, I'm working on getting the channel launched.
Speaker 2: I'm sure people probably think it seems like this is
Speaker 2: taking forever, but it's just me and and my and
Speaker 2: my crime partner Rake, So I mean, it does take
Speaker 2: time and we want to do it right, but it
Speaker 2: is on It is on track to launch, you know,
Speaker 2: like this month. So other than that, I've been getting
Speaker 2: back to my long form writing. I've got some articles
Speaker 2: that are appearing, uh in print form. You know, you
Speaker 2: can find me at UH. I'm still on Burber app Alough,
Speaker 2: I'm kind of looking at disengagement that the summer moves on.
Speaker 2: You can find me on substack subsects kind of my home.
Speaker 2: It's also where the podcast is. It's real Thomas seven
Speaker 2: seven seven dot substack dot com. You can also find
Speaker 2: me on t gram. You know, I'm all over the place, man,
Speaker 2: But that's uh, that's what I got going on. And uh,
Speaker 2: we're you and I are doing our thing, and that's
Speaker 2: that's huge, and people are responding to that very very well.
Speaker 2: And uh, that's gives me a huge lift, man, Like
Speaker 2: I'm very honored by that, and I I owe that
Speaker 2: to you man for providing this format and you know,
Speaker 2: kind of thinking through this, like thinking through this kind
Speaker 2: of this, this kind of organizational structure that we do.
Speaker 2: So yeah, thank you man. This is very great, no problem.
Speaker 1: And then uh, in the next couple of days, we'll
Speaker 1: be getting together to drop episode one of uh Spanish
Speaker 1: Civil War, something I've been basically every yea waking minute
Speaker 1: I've been diving into and just getting and getting up
Speaker 1: to speed on h.
Speaker 2: No. That's great, man. People are very excited about it
Speaker 2: and it's a topic near and dear to my heart,
Speaker 2: and to any revisionists or like anybody with uh you know,
Speaker 2: with with with fascist sympathies or or like hard right sympathies,
Speaker 2: it's a fundamentally important, you know, part of our heritage,
Speaker 2: ideological heritage, and spiritual heritage too. So yeah, I'm very stoked, man,
Speaker 2: very stoked.
Speaker 3: All right, Gonna thank you very much, appreciate it.
Speaker 2: Likewise,