The Collapse of Syria w/ Jake Tucker - Ep 165

[00:00:05] This is Fortress On A Hill with Henry, Danny, Kagan, Giovanni, Shiloh, Anisha, and Mike.

[00:00:11] Welcome everyone to Fortress On A Hill, a podcast about U.S. foreign policy, anti-imperialism, skepticism, and the American way of war.

[00:00:21] I'm Henry. Thank you for being with us this evening. With me is my amazing co-host, Giovanni. Giovanni, how you doing, brother?

[00:00:29] I'm still trying to wrap things up in my head, still sorting things out and still analyzing and just trying to make sense of things.

[00:00:36] Absolutely. This whole situation is a huge paradigm change and there's so many moving pieces. And we have with this-

[00:00:43] We're talking about a way about, and just a day to day, we're at 12 December 2020. A few days ago, the city and state collapsed in front of everyone's eyes.

[00:00:55] Um, and Jake Tucker, a friend of the podcast is back to talk to us about the situation. Jake, how are you this evening?

[00:01:03] Doing well. Much like Giovanni just put some of this into understanding and all that sort of stuff, but now almost a week removed.

[00:01:11] I think we have a little bit better picture of what's going on and what happened and we'll see where it goes from here.

[00:01:17] I really appreciate y'all having me on.

[00:01:19] Yeah, absolutely, man. Love, love talking to you.

[00:01:22] Giovanni, it's yours, man. Do your thing.

[00:01:25] Yeah, man. I just want to start, like I said today, we're still trying to wrap things up and there's a lot of mixed emotions, particularly people we associate with, we organize with.

[00:01:35] And you see a lot of chatter online, a lot of movie pieces going around. And I don't think people appreciate the historic event that just happened.

[00:01:43] Just happened a few days ago.

[00:01:45] Well, as I said, I'm a six. In my lifetime, I've seen probably four or five states collapse, starting with the Soviet Union.

[00:01:54] It was happening in 1991, 92, broke into 15 separate smaller countries, Russia, 15 other countries.

[00:02:02] But I appreciate the time because I didn't really know what was going on. I was young.

[00:02:05] But I saw the TV, I saw the commotion and everything was going on. I did see the also in my lifetime was the collapse of Somali state.

[00:02:13] Somali state collapsed in 1992 with the overthrow of its president, Barreira. I believe his name was. And Somalia hasn't recovered since.

[00:02:23] And then in the 90s, we saw a collapse of the Rwanda state also in the nineties. And what happened after the assassination of the killing of their president, Rwanda went into a genocide.

[00:02:35] The Rwanda genocide in 94, I believe that was right. But I was still too young to appreciate all that and see what's going on. What led to it, why and whatnot. So I didn't really know.

[00:02:44] Just years later, I just read about it years later, but the time I was seeing it on TV, in real time at the time, we didn't have social media back then and nothing like that.

[00:02:52] So we just depended what CNN showed and whatnot, nightly news and stuff like that. I also saw a witness the collapse in my lifetime.

[00:03:01] It was the collapse of the state of Yugoslavia. Now, when I was a kid living in Puerto Rico, we had the Yugo car, Yugo.

[00:03:08] If you guys remember that, you guys are younger than me. And I remember that when they brought it to Puerto Rico, they used to have all this commercial.

[00:03:13] And I never knew that the car belonged. It was called Yugo because it was a Yugoslav car. All right. It came from Yugoslavia.

[00:03:19] So that's how I associate Yugoslavia with that car, Yugo. But the Yugoslav state collapsed also from 95 to 99.

[00:03:30] It's in a series of wars and whatnot. And I deployed actually two Yugoslavians, Bosnia and Croatia, during that initial part of its collapsing.

[00:03:39] But at the same time, like what I'm saying, I didn't really appreciate at the time what was happening because I didn't know any better.

[00:03:46] You were just a soldier and we just went there, we deployed for a year.

[00:03:49] And so it wasn't just until years later, I was able to get books and read about it. Like a good book about Yugoslavia is First Through No Harm, for example.

[00:03:57] And it tells you the history and the politics and what led up to the collapse of Yugoslavia.

[00:04:03] But this is different because this I've been following. This I'm more politically mature. This I can see from a distance where this was leading to.

[00:04:10] And so, yeah, so it's chilling. It's it's undistraught by it, by the collapse of a state. No one should cheer and no one should celebrate the collapse of a state.

[00:04:18] A couple of years ago, Trump, for example, when Trump was in office the first time, he attempted the collapse of the Venezuelan state.

[00:04:25] And that was nasty. And the Venezuelan state was able to withstand.

[00:04:28] But this collapse of the Syrian state started with Obama. It's been ongoing in three presidencies.

[00:04:35] Yeah, I must pause right here. Oh, give the floor to Jake or you, Henry. You guys can add. Go ahead.

[00:04:42] Go ahead, Jake. You can jump in.

[00:04:45] Yeah, Libya as well, right?

[00:04:46] Yeah, Libya.

[00:04:47] I think you were saying about the other examples. Yeah, that was before I was. I was basically a kid back then.

[00:04:57] Libya is like the first one that I saw and tracked a little bit. And I was confused about it.

[00:05:03] And seeing the aftermath of the NATO no-fly zone, the bombing, the chaos that followed after and the fact that it still hasn't recovered into being a functional state, a functional society.

[00:05:19] It's absolutely devastating. And so I think that watching that happen helped me understand that I needed to get up to speed a little better on how things work geopolitically, quite frankly, because these things can happen.

[00:05:36] Our country can cause these things to happen without really anybody even talking about it, anyone even really barely taking notice.

[00:05:44] And the way that we all talk about the way it gets discussed on the news or whatever is completely the opposite of what it looks like on the ground.

[00:05:53] I feel like it, you know, outside of Hillary Cackley, the whole we came, we saw he died, whatever it freaking was like, it really didn't get much coverage all that much at all.

[00:06:06] Until the Benghazi situation happened and got overrun by ISIS, right?

[00:06:11] But anyways, I'm afraid. I'm afraid right now for the Syrian people.

[00:06:15] I'm afraid for the axis of resistance, which I'm sure we're going to get into.

[00:06:19] But I think I was absolutely devastated in a real bad spot there for a good few couple days, whatever.

[00:06:29] But getting a little bit of space between having some things to be a little bit optimistic about.

[00:06:39] And hopefully maybe we can get into that a little bit.

[00:06:41] But certainly the overall tenor of all this is just absolutely devastating for the region, for stability in the region, for the Palestinian resistance.

[00:06:53] Yeah.

[00:06:54] Anyway, so.

[00:06:56] I'll just keep my phone now.

[00:06:58] No, go ahead, man.

[00:07:00] Yes.

[00:07:01] You guys were getting the collapse of the Iraqi state.

[00:07:04] That was devastating.

[00:07:05] Actually, I could speak on that a little bit.

[00:07:07] It was in my brain and then you asked.

[00:07:09] I just totally spaced it.

[00:07:11] I think a lot about geopolitical no points of return, point of no return.

[00:07:18] That when the United States invaded Iraq in March of 2003, that fundamental change that happened to the Iraqi state, its collapse, the sectarian violence that followed, what eventually morphed into ISIS and the power of Jihadi groups.

[00:07:39] And trying to push back on that.

[00:07:42] That there are some places that you can see it so easily.

[00:07:46] What if you're going to do that?

[00:07:46] That's basically the road map of Iraq Iraq-Iran war.

[00:07:50] That everybody forgets about the United States part in that.

[00:07:54] That the Gulf War, despite the fact that America only lost, what, 150 soldiers in that.

[00:08:01] Thousands and thousands of Iraqis died in that invasion.

[00:08:04] And then the sanctions that followed, sanctions that by the United States own measurements killed 500,000 people, 500,000 children, starved them.

[00:08:15] And the Iraq has clawed back and has gotten to a more controlled place than a lot of other places in the region.

[00:08:23] And a lot better than they were, you know, 10 years ago trying to deal with everything post invasion.

[00:08:30] But I think that as any war activists that I feel like sometimes we're just marking time, but it's not time.

[00:08:37] It's the times of these changes, these huge paradigm shifts.

[00:08:42] And of course, the people there on the ground are feeling it.

[00:08:45] All of the groups in Syria right now are in different places.

[00:08:49] Left, I'm not trying to be picky about that.

[00:08:51] But everybody's trying to decide how are they going to survive?

[00:08:54] There's a new normal and they have to get with the normal.

[00:08:58] Even for me.

[00:08:59] I care very much for Iraq and what happens to the Iraqi people.

[00:09:02] What happens to Iraq now in the face of this collapse of Syria?

[00:09:07] Are the militia forces going to be able to continue working with the axis of resistance and try to fight for those folks that they can fight for?

[00:09:16] Anyway, I'll stop then.

[00:09:20] Just one thing I mentioned here to see that as a theme because in a lot of the situations we're talking about Iraq, Libya, Syria,

[00:09:31] and then I think, if I'm not mistaken, it's about a third of the world is covered by U.S.-led sanction regimes.

[00:09:40] The sanctions, the U.S. likes to talk about them as if they're to punish this or that leader or businessman or whatever in the world.

[00:09:47] But I'm not sure.

[00:09:48] No, anyone that covers it, they know.

[00:09:50] These sanctions, they punish the people.

[00:09:52] If you look at the diplomatic cables with regard to Cuba, the economic blockade on Cuba, it basically literally says Castro has support.

[00:09:59] The only way to bring him down is to basically starve the people until they demand a new government.

[00:10:04] The Syrian state had been hollowed out by a decade of civil war and by sanctions, just as you're saying, with Iraq, Henry.

[00:10:12] And bottom line, I think that's what happened.

[00:10:15] I think it was too much pressure for too long.

[00:10:19] But I think the sanctions are going to be a theme that we talk about here.

[00:10:24] CIA involvement is a theme that we got to talk about here.

[00:10:27] And yeah, anyways, I know you wanted to say something here.

[00:10:31] No, it's just very, it's important to, it's important to know how fragile the states are.

[00:10:36] Particularly weaker states that have been weakened.

[00:10:38] Post-colonial states, post-colonial states doesn't have strong institutions.

[00:10:43] For example, United States survived the assassination of Kennedy and it didn't collapse, right?

[00:10:48] Under all the pressure that was going on at the time, Kennedy was assassinated.

[00:10:52] The state didn't collapse because they had strong institutions.

[00:10:55] Because you have 150 years of development.

[00:10:58] But a lot of these countries that are targeted by imperialism are new countries.

[00:11:03] They're just a couple of decades away from colonialism.

[00:11:05] You look at the 19th century, right?

[00:11:07] Most of the countries in the world today have colonial possessions.

[00:11:11] Either by France, by the United Kingdom, by the Belgians, by the Spaniards, by the Portuguese, by the Dutch, whoever, right?

[00:11:19] What have you, right?

[00:11:20] And one of the things that happened under colonialism and imperialism is that you weaken the territory.

[00:11:27] You impoverish the people.

[00:11:28] You make the people dependent on you.

[00:11:30] And that's what happened now after the Second World War.

[00:11:33] A lot of these territories that have been under colonialism for so long, and the people have been subjugated by these European powers.

[00:11:41] All of a sudden, they've been independent.

[00:11:42] They're independent countries.

[00:11:43] And now they're trying to develop their own style of government.

[00:11:47] And now you have the United States that came more empowered after the Second World War, telling these countries.

[00:11:53] But one thing, after the Second World War, the Cold War started.

[00:11:56] These new countries that are starting to develop.

[00:11:58] Now they have to decide who they're going to stand with.

[00:12:00] They're going to stand with this block, with that block.

[00:12:02] If I stand with this block, I run the risk of being toppled here.

[00:12:05] If I stand with that block, I run the risk of being...

[00:12:13] It's stolen by the same colonial powers.

[00:12:15] And now they're trying to develop political institutions at the same time, under this pressure of the Cold War.

[00:12:20] So these states are fragile.

[00:12:22] And that's one of the things that I would like my fellow activists to know before they start throwing words like democracy and liberations and stuff around.

[00:12:29] To see a reality of how these states are operating and the conditions that these states are operating under.

[00:12:35] I know we have the same circle.

[00:12:36] We have the same friends, right?

[00:12:37] We're involved in an activist community, right?

[00:12:39] But it's important that when we look at these geopolitical things, we got to look at geopolitical things from the context of real world politics.

[00:12:46] I know that there is a tendency for activists to look at things from an activist perspective, from idealist perspective.

[00:12:54] Mostly influenced by Western liberalism, right?

[00:12:57] And it's thought that Western liberalism is universal, right?

[00:13:00] But there's dynamics that happens around the world.

[00:13:03] People develop differently.

[00:13:05] People have different histories.

[00:13:06] People have different contexts, right?

[00:13:08] And it's important to when assessing geopolitical events, right?

[00:13:12] You need to operate from the point of view of what the Germans call realpolitik.

[00:13:16] And if things are happening on the ground and decisions that these states are having, the dynamics, the power dynamics, the economic factors, historical context, and the decisions that states and leaders are making in order for that nation to survive.

[00:13:30] Because the number one interest of any state is the self-interest, survival.

[00:13:34] That's the number one interest of every state survivor.

[00:13:36] So how are these small states that are going to survive in an environment where there's more powerful states are playing power politics with each other?

[00:13:43] So hopefully, I'm ranty.

[00:13:45] Hopefully that makes sense, though.

[00:13:46] Yeah.

[00:13:47] And just to add on one thing, you mentioned the states, but also the economies, right?

[00:13:51] Basically, as they gain their independence, how does the state survive?

[00:13:56] The state's got to have a functioning economy as well.

[00:14:00] And these have been hollowed out by colonialism, right?

[00:14:04] And then pretty much exactly as you're saying in the post-World War II era, as a lot of these former colonies gain their independence one way and or another.

[00:14:14] They're starting economies from scratch.

[00:14:17] And you've got socialism, communism on the upswing a little bit.

[00:14:21] And you've got the United States, which is the capitalist hegemon of the world at that point.

[00:14:26] And so they're immediately thrust into the Cold War environment as well.

[00:14:31] And all that plays into it as well.

[00:14:33] And basically, as you're saying, are you in this camp?

[00:14:35] Are you in that camp?

[00:14:36] Are you not aligned?

[00:14:37] Are you aligned regionally?

[00:14:38] Are you aligned in any other sort of ways?

[00:14:40] And so that's going to play into that instability, that fragility, whatever.

[00:14:44] And I actually think this is a pretty good place to get into some of the history of Syria as it did where Bashar al-Assad comes from, where his dad comes from, what's the Ba'ath movement?

[00:14:59] What's that all mean with regard to this geopolitical environment in which this Syrian state, which held its stability for a number of years?

[00:15:08] But, you know, what was it keeping it together in that time?

[00:15:11] Yeah.

[00:15:11] The Syrian state, as we know it today as a state, it's a young state.

[00:15:18] It's a young state.

[00:15:19] As a modern state, it gained independence in 1946.

[00:15:23] Before that was a French possession, French colony.

[00:15:26] The French made their army from 1945 to 1946.

[00:15:29] They're the one who organized their army.

[00:15:31] Then after they, the French withdrew, they passed on that responsibilities to the Americans and the British, right?

[00:15:38] So they were the one who organized in the army.

[00:15:41] And then as a young country, in the first 25 years, there was turmoil because Syria became a country in 1946 independence.

[00:15:48] And in 1948, what happened in 1948?

[00:15:51] That's when you have the creation of the Israeli state.

[00:15:54] Now, all of a sudden, Syria found themselves flooded with Palestinians refugees from the Nakba and stuff like that, right?

[00:16:00] And that ignited what is called the Arab-Israeli War in 1948.

[00:16:04] And Syria participated in that in 1940.

[00:16:06] And they were defeated along with every other state, Jordan and Egypt and every other state who participated in that war.

[00:16:13] Soon after that defeat, that prime minister or that president got couped.

[00:16:17] Like the first 20 of Syria existence as a state, right, as an independent state, they had 18 presidents, 18 prime ministers, right?

[00:16:25] Imagine that in 25 years, they had 18 prime ministers, right?

[00:16:28] They were couped.

[00:16:29] Imagine, in fact, the first coup that Syria suffered was a CIA coup.

[00:16:35] In 1949, the CIA couped their first president, by the way, and made the way for these generals to come in.

[00:16:41] And it wasn't until Hafez al-Assad, which is Bashir al-Assad's dad, right?

[00:16:45] He also participated in a coup in 1970.

[00:16:49] That's when he became president, in 1971, after a coup.

[00:16:52] And then from 1971 to 2000, he was president of Syria.

[00:16:56] But that's, people say, that's a long time.

[00:16:57] That's the longest time of stability that Syria has had in its history as an independent state.

[00:17:02] From 1971 to 2000.

[00:17:04] Hafez al-Assad died in 2000.

[00:17:07] And the government was passed on to his elder son, actually, was going to go pass on to his elder son, who was grown to be president.

[00:17:13] And he was a military man.

[00:17:15] But he died.

[00:17:16] He died.

[00:17:17] So then it was passed on to Bashir al-Assad, who was living in London, by the way, at the time.

[00:17:21] His wife grew up in London.

[00:17:23] She's Syrian, but she grew up in London.

[00:17:24] He's a doctor.

[00:17:25] He's an optometrist.

[00:17:26] His wife, I forgot what she was or what she is.

[00:17:29] The burden of government was passed on to him.

[00:17:31] So he came from London to Syria.

[00:17:34] I remember that transition of power happened.

[00:17:36] He was being celebrated in the West.

[00:17:38] He was being celebrated.

[00:17:39] He was this reformer.

[00:17:40] Do you remember that, Jake?

[00:17:41] He was the, do you remember that?

[00:17:43] Yeah.

[00:17:43] I wasn't tracking it all that well, but I do remember that, oh, it's a bright new day in Syria because they've got like a Western-oriented leader.

[00:17:51] Following his dad's foot, that sort of thing.

[00:17:53] And I remember something of overtures being made toward, like from Washington and towards.

[00:17:59] To liberize the economy.

[00:18:01] They're trying to make it liberalized because the, and his wife, they're making his wife be in the next Jackie on Nassas.

[00:18:06] Remember that?

[00:18:07] They're painting her like she was Jackie on Nassas at the time, right?

[00:18:10] The media.

[00:18:10] But, but yeah, because the orientation that, that Al-Assad took was Arab nationalism, Arab nationalism and Arab socialism, right?

[00:18:19] Under the Baptist party.

[00:18:20] And they were inspired by Egypt under Gamal Nassar, who was promoting pan-Arabism and Arab nationalism.

[00:18:26] And that's the orientation that they took.

[00:18:28] A secular state, an Arab state, a nationalist socialist state.

[00:18:32] That's the orientation that they took.

[00:18:33] And they gravitated towards the other socialist countries.

[00:18:36] Matter of fact, I just learned that today, that when the Israelis invaded the Golan Heights, which is part of territory in the 1970s, when they were trying to take it back from them, the Cubans were there.

[00:18:47] I just learned that today, the Cubans were there as well, trying to take back the Heights.

[00:18:51] But yeah, so that was their political orientation, was Arab nationalism, Arab socialism.

[00:18:56] So that's how the country got stability.

[00:18:57] That's how the country developed from being a post-colonial state into a modern-state state.

[00:19:02] Under Assad's, the father's government, several things happened in Syria.

[00:19:06] I already mentioned the 1948 war.

[00:19:09] That happened before his government, actually.

[00:19:10] But he participated in the 1973 war.

[00:19:13] And the 1967 war, he was a soldier of the 1967 war.

[00:19:17] The 1973 war, when they attempted to take back the Golan Heights, which they lost in 1967 war.

[00:19:23] And also intervened in the civil war, which started in 1903, I believe.

[00:19:29] And the Assyrians intervened in 1976.

[00:19:33] And in the civil war, you got to recall, Israel invaded Lebanon several times during that time.

[00:19:38] They invaded it in 1978.

[00:19:40] And then they invaded it again in 1980.

[00:19:42] And during that time, Lebanon and Syria was also occupying the northern part of Lebanon.

[00:19:49] And they created like a buffer zone between them and Israel in Lebanon.

[00:19:54] And also by their presence there, it kept Israel from advancing forward.

[00:19:58] So they froze the conflict there in Lebanon.

[00:20:00] Obviously, the Lebanese civil war came to a halt in 1990, I believe it was.

[00:20:05] And the Israelis withdrew from Lebanon in 2000.

[00:20:09] And the Syrians withdrew from Lebanon in 2005 under Bashar al-Islam.

[00:20:15] Another thing that happened, Assad the father, was the insurgency.

[00:20:18] There was an insurgency.

[00:20:18] It was an internal campaign, a terror campaign launched by the Muslim Brotherhood.

[00:20:23] It started in the 19th, I believe it was 19-something to 1980-something, right?

[00:20:32] It was a campaign of terror by the Muslim Brotherhood.

[00:20:35] And if you guys recall, who was the Muslim Brotherhood?

[00:20:38] The origin of the Muslim Brotherhood is in Egypt in the 1920s, when Egypt was still under

[00:20:43] the control of the British.

[00:20:45] The Muslim Brotherhood, right?

[00:20:47] Their ideology is the Muslim community.

[00:20:50] So they festered in Egypt.

[00:20:52] The British used them as a bulwark, a counterbalance against Arab nationalism,

[00:20:57] the Arab socialism.

[00:20:58] So they were allowed to grow.

[00:21:00] Today, one of the exponents of the Brotherhood right now is Qatar.

[00:21:05] Qatar is one of the largest purported Muslim Brotherhood.

[00:21:07] Now, Qatar has the largest U.S. military base in the region as well,

[00:21:12] as the U.S. Air Force base is there.

[00:21:14] Qatar is also the financier of the news network called Al Jazeera.

[00:21:19] You guys recall Al Jazeera?

[00:21:20] So yeah, all this is all connected.

[00:21:22] But yeah, this is a history in a nutshell of Syria from the time of its independence,

[00:21:29] 1946 to yesterday, what it would have gone through.

[00:21:34] I'm going to pause right there.

[00:21:36] I keep thinking about, and I'm not sure how passionate this is about my brain,

[00:21:40] about the war on terror folks that took folks to Syria for to be tortured.

[00:21:48] How Syria was a partner of some sort for a huge portion.

[00:21:51] Right.

[00:21:52] The beginning of the Iraq war.

[00:21:54] Lots of folks ended up there, among many other places.

[00:21:58] It was a black site.

[00:21:59] It was a black site.

[00:22:01] It was a black site.

[00:22:01] Along with Poland and Thailand.

[00:22:03] It was a huge network that the, what did Bush call it?

[00:22:07] They called it the, what was it, rendition?

[00:22:09] Oh, you're talking about that.

[00:22:11] Extraordinary rendition.

[00:22:14] What did they call it?

[00:22:15] Extraordinary rendition.

[00:22:17] They just actually kidnapped people.

[00:22:18] Like when I, or, and then end up in black sites in different parts of the world.

[00:22:23] Uh, and places like Germany was a, was a transit, was a transit place for these black sites.

[00:22:29] So yeah, it was a huge network.

[00:22:31] Singling out Syria for these dungeons and stuff like that.

[00:22:34] You had to put that into context that it was a huge network.

[00:22:36] And it's funny because.

[00:22:38] Syria also participated in the first Gulf War, the American side.

[00:22:41] And in 1991, and like most countries were doing when the Soviet Union pretty much just collapsed or the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

[00:22:50] A lot of these countries that had relations with the Soviet Union, part of that block, were trying to find their way.

[00:22:55] Eastern European countries were having color revolutions left and right.

[00:22:58] Governments were being overthrown left and right.

[00:23:00] Places like Cuba, for example, that's when Hong Kong was imposed on Cuba to increase the sanctions to try and make the state collapse.

[00:23:07] Same thing with North Korea.

[00:23:08] North Korea was also a partner with the Soviet Union.

[00:23:11] That's when the sanctions against North Korea also increased.

[00:23:14] And that's when they had also the famine around that time.

[00:23:17] Yeah.

[00:23:17] So a lot of these states were trying to reorient themselves and including Syria.

[00:23:21] So you extend towards the West.

[00:23:23] And that's one of the reasons they, I believe they participated in the first Gulf War against Iraq.

[00:23:27] That's one of the reasons I believe also they participated in the second war against Iraq with the whole redemption thing, with Bush and everything like that.

[00:23:34] Assad was trying to liberize the economy as well during that time and that drought.

[00:23:38] And that's one of the things that first ignited the protests.

[00:23:41] It was a result of this drought that happened around that time.

[00:23:44] And that was around the time that they were trying to liberize the economy at the same time.

[00:23:47] So, yeah, it's a lot of changing events that led to where we are today.

[00:23:51] I kind of want to pull on one of those threads a little bit.

[00:23:55] I previewed it before, but the kind of CIA stuff.

[00:23:58] Like mainly that.

[00:24:00] And for whatever it's worth, I just view the CIA as basically a completely fascist organization.

[00:24:06] This is an organization which basically sets, that does the dirty work that you can't do out in the quote unquote democratic open.

[00:24:15] Right.

[00:24:16] And we saw that from the birth of the CIA, basically setting up Operation Gladio as basically fascist stay behind forces to counter any sort of socialist or communist uprisings in Europe following World War II.

[00:24:29] Right.

[00:24:30] But we saw the CIA kind of organizing, arming, supporting, helping to get funding for various different militias and organizations in Syria.

[00:24:45] And it really recalls to me, especially with what happened and I think what we're going to, like what we're looking at moving forward, perhaps.

[00:24:54] It reminds me a lot of Operation Cyclone, which was the dirty war, which was intended to basically draw the USSR into Afghanistan, which was ultimately successful.

[00:25:05] And basically, so that's where basically the broad taking of the Mujahideen was funded, organized, supported and so on through CIA and other mechanisms.

[00:25:15] But basically the CIA was the key organizational force here.

[00:25:19] And in the 80s, you have the Osama bin Laden as the freedom fighter, right?

[00:25:25] The freedom fighter against the Soviet-aligned Afghanistan government and so on.

[00:25:30] But the Mujahideen in the 80s, as far as I can tell, was treated as a broad, relatively homogenous group just fighting for freedom or something like that.

[00:25:40] But what it was a mixture of foreign fighters, foreign jihadists, local tribal warlords, all sorts of different consulagration of people.

[00:25:53] Basically, basically was one common goal to tear down the Afghan government at the time, which was a socialist government aligned with the USR.

[00:26:03] So a decade of dirty war, just brutal war with the fall of the Soviet Union, basically.

[00:26:10] I think the Soviet Union had already pulled out by then, but the Afghan government continues to stand for a bit.

[00:26:17] And then basically, as soon as the Soviet Union falls, then again, just like you were saying with Korea, Cuba, and so on.

[00:26:23] At that point, any sort of funding and arms and whatever coming from the Soviet Union dries up.

[00:26:29] Government hangs out until another year, a couple years or something like that.

[00:26:32] And then ultimately it collapses.

[00:26:34] And it collapses into full-on chaos.

[00:26:37] Collapses in the chaos that needs to end.

[00:26:39] But the civil war continues on between different factions.

[00:26:44] And we broadly understand now that the ones who ultimately had the most control of the state emerged to be the Taliban.

[00:26:53] But they didn't have complete control of all the areas, all the territories, all that sort of stuff.

[00:26:59] And so then when the US invades, who do they align with?

[00:27:02] They align with their old buddies, the warlords and the Northern Alliance.

[00:27:06] Yeah, the Northern Alliance, exactly.

[00:27:08] And anyways, they bring all this up.

[00:27:11] And we mentioned it with regards to Libya.

[00:27:14] But it's the US has been supporting, funding, arming.

[00:27:19] And obviously not just the US.

[00:27:20] You mentioned Qatar.

[00:27:21] Obviously the forces that took Damascus now are largely Turkish-led and so on.

[00:27:26] But these are still all working a little bit in coordination and a real bit in coherent.

[00:27:31] But you've got the Kurdish forces in the Northeast.

[00:27:33] You've got literal US troops sitting on the Eastern portion.

[00:27:37] And so on.

[00:27:38] And this is what the Civil War largely was.

[00:27:42] As soon as the fall of the Libyan government, you saw there was a flooding of fighters in Libya basically coming into Syria, coordinated by...

[00:27:53] It could be CIA, could be Turkey, just whoever.

[00:27:56] And they flooded into Syria.

[00:27:58] And this kind of became the basis of the Civil War.

[00:28:01] It's not to say there weren't some legitimate grievances.

[00:28:05] But show me any states, show me any country, show me any society where there's not people that have legitimate grievances.

[00:28:11] But really, if you look at the Arab Spring, it didn't pop off in Syria the same way that it did in Egypt and Tunisia and other places.

[00:28:19] It had a bit of stability to it.

[00:28:23] I think there were some protests or something like that.

[00:28:25] But it adds a degree of stability to it.

[00:28:27] Remember Bahrain was one that was really struggling to...

[00:28:32] Bahrain's squashing.

[00:28:33] Exactly.

[00:28:34] They were given permission to squash the US, right?

[00:28:37] Anyways, I just bring this all up because it's not to say people, everything was fine and dandy in Syria and everyone was as happy as could possibly be.

[00:28:46] But I never saw that as an indigenous uprising whatsoever.

[00:28:50] No one.

[00:28:51] This was absolutely a CIA and then other geopolitical actors at the time basically flooding in with weapons, with foreign...

[00:29:01] Trues, yeah.

[00:29:02] ...fighters and stuff like that, right?

[00:29:04] Especially after the collapse of Libya and after that, that was completed.

[00:29:08] I wanted to draw those through lines both for...

[00:29:12] Because we need...

[00:29:14] If we aren't understanding...

[00:29:16] We're not familiar with Operation Cyclone by now.

[00:29:19] As people who live in the United States and has a country that acts in these ways, we need to learn the patterns of our society, right?

[00:29:27] Even Hillary Clinton, I think, when the Russian special military operation was kicking up, she was referencing Operation Cyclone as something that maybe could be a solution...

[00:29:41] In the air?

[00:29:41] ...for Ukraine.

[00:29:43] Exactly.

[00:29:43] After a model, precisely.

[00:29:45] And my whole point here is that there is no love for freedom, love for democracy, love for this, that, the other thing.

[00:29:52] Like, these CIA operations, they're just so chaos.

[00:29:58] They're not to build anything.

[00:30:00] They're not to liberate anything.

[00:30:03] They're just so abject chaos in a place that basically has become something of a problem for the U.S.

[00:30:12] Not even something of a problem, just something they prefer to look differently.

[00:30:16] And so you look at it with Afghanistan through Operation Cyclone.

[00:30:19] Was this one the Timber Sycamore, right?

[00:30:22] Timber Sycamore.

[00:30:23] Yeah, so this was Operation Timber Sycamore.

[00:30:26] It's basically the same label that we saw in Operation Cyclone.

[00:30:30] It was a CIA operation to basically get these disparate forces aligned upon a common goal, which is basically to topple the Assad government.

[00:30:39] And so you have these disparate forces.

[00:30:43] Like, Hayat al-Hurir Shamm takes Damascus.

[00:30:47] But what's next?

[00:30:49] Is Hayat al-Hurir Shamm going to build the state of Syria back up?

[00:30:52] Hell no.

[00:30:54] I just saw something from the Emir in Qatarim saying that advising the people who are controlling Damascus right now not to worry about fighting Israel.

[00:31:03] It's just focused on legitimizing the rule to the U.N.

[00:31:06] Look, I don't know what to expect, but I think they're going to be more focused on combating and eliminating forces that aren't out of the line with them because they do not have a plurality of support.

[00:31:16] They were able to storm through a civil war and sanctions so economically hollowed out state.

[00:31:24] If they strayed from that path, they would have met resistance.

[00:31:29] They're filling a power vacuum of sorts.

[00:31:32] But what literally is next, I think it is going to basically be what I'm saying here.

[00:31:38] This isn't the end of a civil war.

[00:31:40] This is the fall of the Afghan government moment in which the civil war actually got even worse.

[00:31:47] Because now you just had warlords, different versions of jihadis.

[00:31:52] The Taliban comes out of the Mujahideen, but they come out of the Mujahideen as a reaction to the raping, to the brutality.

[00:32:02] Exactly.

[00:32:03] The breaking of the Afghan state.

[00:32:05] Exactly.

[00:32:05] And so they provide stability for people.

[00:32:08] And it's not like I'm not sitting here trying to claim I want to live in that stability myself.

[00:32:13] But I'm just saying they gained legitimacy because they confronted the lawlessness that was taking place.

[00:32:22] And from all accounts, it is lawless right now.

[00:32:26] There is lawlessness now in...

[00:32:30] The states are being balkanized right now.

[00:32:32] You saw what happened.

[00:32:33] Civil war attacks.

[00:32:34] HTS took over Damascus, right?

[00:32:36] Israel went quick to work.

[00:32:38] Did the military...

[00:32:39] Absolutely.

[00:32:39] They did 300 bombing sorties in a period of 48 hours.

[00:32:44] They bombed the airports.

[00:32:45] They bombed the planes.

[00:32:46] And like I said, the Syrian army was outfitted by Soviet weapons.

[00:32:50] Like their whole Lake fleet was bombed.

[00:32:51] The Biggs 29s were bombed.

[00:32:53] The Navy was sunk.

[00:32:54] In a period of 48 hours, the whole Navy was sunk.

[00:32:57] The radar systems, the intelligence headquarters, the command and staff builders.

[00:33:00] They pretty much were demilitarized.

[00:33:02] All the heavy pieces, the heavy military equipment, like artillery pieces, air defense pieces, right?

[00:33:07] So now the Syrian state is naked right now.

[00:33:10] It doesn't have no defense.

[00:33:11] And not only that, land largest than Gaza.

[00:33:13] And now they're approaching the ethnic minorities.

[00:33:15] The ethnic minorities in Syria.

[00:33:16] Now Syria is a multicultural, multi-confessional, multi-religious, multi-ethnic society.

[00:33:23] And minority ethnic groups, they tended to support the government because the government protected them from the majority.

[00:33:28] Syria and Israel is doing overtures towards them.

[00:33:31] I don't know if you caught that yesterday, offered a hand of friendship to the minority groups, told them not to fear that Israel is there to protect them.

[00:33:38] What does it tell you that Israel intends to annex territory, to take land, particularly like the Golan Heights, its majority Druze community, right?

[00:33:46] So they expanded more, right?

[00:33:47] So when the collapse of the Syrian state happened on the 6th or 7th of December, a lot of these minority groups, they started moving.

[00:33:54] A lot of them stayed home.

[00:33:55] Some of them went towards congregating around the Russian bases, hoping that the Russians would protect them, etc., right?

[00:34:01] Russian troops started moving from their position.

[00:34:03] I don't know if you noticed that either.

[00:34:04] They started pulling back from their battle position where they were.

[00:34:06] And then going back to the bases.

[00:34:08] Iran withdrew totally.

[00:34:09] Iran just withdrew from Syria, so they're not there.

[00:34:12] Hezbollah, I don't know where Hezbollah is, but did you catch that?

[00:34:15] That a lot of the heavy missiles, like the majority, like a huge amount of Hezbollah arsenal missiles were in Syria, were stationed in Syria.

[00:34:22] If you go to BT News, Breakthrough News, a Ryan colleague, she interviews what was named Elijah Manjir.

[00:34:29] Have you heard of him?

[00:34:30] Elijah Manjir, I bet your worst correspondent.

[00:34:31] And he talks about that.

[00:34:33] He talks about how after the 2006 war between Hezbollah and Israel, Hezbollah moved a lot of the big heavy pieces that moved back so that Israel won't attack them, won't destroy them.

[00:34:44] And also to spare the civilian population from the area for being attacked, assuming that because they were near a civilian population, Israel used that as a pretext to destroy them.

[00:34:52] So they did, they moved them back to Syria.

[00:34:54] And Syria being a state was there to protect those Hezbollah assets from being targeted by Israel.

[00:35:00] Now Syria doesn't exist now, as we've been doing before.

[00:35:02] So now all those assets are still there.

[00:35:05] They're for grabs.

[00:35:06] Yeah.

[00:35:08] Yeah.

[00:35:09] And my whole point for bringing all this up, it's just to point out how damn evil it is.

[00:35:17] Like the U.S. has done this already.

[00:35:20] We'll just say minimum.

[00:35:23] I don't even know.

[00:35:24] Like we'll say on this exact model, they've done this in Afghanistan, Libya and now Syria.

[00:35:33] Yeah, right.

[00:35:34] The case.

[00:35:35] This has made minimum of a decade of chaos and terror and basically just anarchy, as you said.

[00:35:46] And listening to Biden be proud of him and his team and his country's work on this thing is just nauseating.

[00:35:57] It's freaking nauseating.

[00:35:58] And I hate it so much.

[00:36:00] I got massively politicized from the Iraq war and that's not all that different at all.

[00:36:09] But this model of just hollowing out a country through sanctions and economic blockade and then unleashing various warmonger groups, many of them foreign fighters, into a society is just pure evil.

[00:36:28] It's pure evil.

[00:36:30] And I just want to say that very clearly.

[00:36:31] And the U.S. has done that numerous times now.

[00:36:35] Yeah.

[00:36:35] And what gets me, you mentioned something about earlier about this is not being an indigenous or uprising, right?

[00:36:47] That's something I was arguing since 2012, right?

[00:36:50] Jake Sullivan in 2012.

[00:36:51] Pretty much I made so much in an email to Hillary Clinton saying that in Syria, Al Qaeda is our side, right?

[00:36:57] We're working on Al Qaeda.

[00:36:58] John Kerry also in a talk, he said that the United States was using ISIS to put pressure on the government at that time.

[00:37:04] That doesn't sound like a popular uprising to me.

[00:37:07] Al Qaeda is on our side on this one.

[00:37:10] Yeah, something like that.

[00:37:11] I don't remember me being saccable.

[00:37:12] Yes.

[00:37:13] And you mentioned Timber Sycamore.

[00:37:15] Timber Sycamore, right?

[00:37:17] Timber Sycamore is the largest.

[00:37:19] Apparently, it went throughout Obama's government and Trump stopped it, right?

[00:37:23] Apparently, supposedly.

[00:37:24] But when Trump stopped Timber Sycamore under Trump, that's when yesterday imposed the Caesar Act sanctioned the economy to pretty much crush the economy of Syria and prevent them from rebuilding after the war.

[00:37:35] Not only that, Trump stationed troops in the northeast parts of Syria, which is their oil reach area and the area where they have the farmlands, right, where most of their agriculture, their wheat is great.

[00:37:46] So they were denied.

[00:37:47] They were denied their resources.

[00:37:48] They were denied their wheat.

[00:37:50] And then not only they were denied their resources, Trump was Trump, Turkey and all of them and the YPG people, right?

[00:37:55] They were stealing their resources.

[00:37:56] They were stealing their oil and they were selling the market.

[00:37:59] And certain people were getting nothing from it.

[00:38:01] So they were being denied their right to recover from that war that they just went through.

[00:38:08] But Timber Sycamore, right?

[00:38:10] Obama was spending about a billion dollar a year on that.

[00:38:13] It's considered the most costly operation, right?

[00:38:16] Operation cycle.

[00:38:17] So that, like you said, that is not a popular uprising.

[00:38:21] And what gets me is that when I was trying to explain that back in 2012, 2013, 2014, I was called apologist by my fellow activists.

[00:38:29] I was told that I was bankrupt.

[00:38:31] My ideology was bankrupt.

[00:38:33] I was just attacked left and right by people that I've organized with, the people that I work with, the people that I was.

[00:38:37] That's what was so infuriating for me, right?

[00:38:39] Because the people were cheering this.

[00:38:42] I'm seeing these people cheering people that were Al Qaeda yesterday, that were ISIS yesterday.

[00:38:47] Now they're being treated as if there are some revolutionaries, some Cuban revolutionary coming to liberate the country one night.

[00:38:53] And they were cheering this, right?

[00:38:54] And I'm here seeing this and I'm just baffled and angry and confused.

[00:38:58] And these people, these are people that I was with last year protesting genocide in Palestine.

[00:39:05] Yeah, so let's talk about that.

[00:39:07] I know you and I have talked offline a little bit, but I've mentioned to you that I've been frustrated at times with some of the protests, some of the education, stuff like that in the past year.

[00:39:18] As the pro-Palestinian movement has really accelerated and grown in ways that I really didn't see coming.

[00:39:26] The focus was almost entirely on the genocide.

[00:39:31] And it's not to say not to focus on the atrocities of the genocide, but it also, I think, a lot of times intentionally left out exactly what the resistance was and how the resistance was organized.

[00:39:47] How the resistance was this axis of resistance, which was the regional set of organizations, groups, governments, and militias across the region committed to fight against imperialist and Zionist domination over their region.

[00:40:09] And because we weren't talking about that, we weren't seeing the tie-in between different conflicts that all these axes of resistance were engaged in, not just over the past year, but for 20 plus years.

[00:40:26] I mentioned to you, I don't even know when to start the clock on this.

[00:40:29] We can at least, to a degree, start the clock with the Islamic revolution.

[00:40:33] Do you start the clock?

[00:40:35] Again, I don't know, PFLP and all this, right?

[00:40:38] But anyways, it definitely coheses, I think, a lot as everyone starts to see.

[00:40:46] Okay.

[00:40:47] Iraq war, dirty war in Syria, sanctions on Iran, the various conflicts that Hezbollah always is needing to defend itself from with regard to Israel.

[00:41:00] Obviously, Hamas and the Palestinian liberation cause.

[00:41:05] But it all kind of congeals as you basically see that nobody...

[00:41:11] What am I trying to say here?

[00:41:13] Basically that, oh, basically the decade-long war in Yemen as well, right?

[00:41:19] It's basically, separately, nobody could hold their own at all.

[00:41:24] But it was as Iran starts to...

[00:41:27] I think Iran, I really don't know how it all originates.

[00:41:31] But as Iran starts to lend support to various different groupings and organizations,

[00:41:38] then they start to see that they can aid each other in basically resisting the Zionist and imperialist influence in the region.

[00:41:47] And I think part of people used to be considered progressive except for Palestine.

[00:41:54] Yeah.

[00:41:54] Pat, yeah.

[00:41:56] In the past decade, the solidarity for Palestine has risen all the time.

[00:42:03] But what you can't be, exactly what you're saying, is you can't be pro-Palestinian liberation and supportive of the forces in the region who are anti-imperialist, anti-Zionist.

[00:42:20] So the path has morphed its way into you couldn't support Syrian sovereignty.

[00:42:27] You cannot support Iranian sovereignty.

[00:42:29] You cannot applaud Ansar Allah.

[00:42:32] You cannot applaud Hezbollah for the fights they take to Zionism, to the comprador state of Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf monarchies and so on.

[00:42:42] So it's the one thing you can be, at least in progressive spaces, pro-Palestinian.

[00:42:49] But you cannot be supportive or even acknowledge the importance of these other axes of resistance in the liberation struggle for Palestine.

[00:42:59] Because basically what I'm trying to say here is that if you separated Palestine from the other parts of the axis of resistance,

[00:43:06] you do not have a Palestinian liberation struggle.

[00:43:09] That is what this decapitation of Syria is all about.

[00:43:14] It is all about weakening the axis of resistance, improving the geopolitical position of imperialism and Zionism in the region.

[00:43:23] And just as we were having some rapprochement with regard to Saudi Arabia and Iran and whatever,

[00:43:30] now people are sitting back and have to take different stock of the different forces and the geopolitical situation and all that.

[00:43:38] And I'll hold out there and let you pull the media that you want to respond to.

[00:43:42] Yeah, you recall the heavy propaganda, probably Sycamore, probably what we do a lot of classes.

[00:43:47] We do a lot of teachings about hybrid warfare.

[00:43:50] And this was a mega hybrid warfare.

[00:43:52] And this war, and I think it was Brian Berletic.

[00:43:56] Brian Berletic was saying that this is just a battle, the collapse of Syria, of a larger war,

[00:44:01] which is a war against multipolarism, right?

[00:44:05] And multipolarism is being represented by Russia, China, Iran, and other actors like Venezuela and other places and stuff like that, right?

[00:44:13] But this was just a battle of a war against bricks.

[00:44:17] That's how Pepe Esquipo called it, the war against bricks.

[00:44:20] But there was a huge amount of propaganda with this effect that you see a lot of, a lot.

[00:44:27] So a lot of people, a lot of young people, they don't tend to see a lot of mainstream media, CNNs, MSNBC and stuff like that.

[00:44:35] But they do get the media from social media and they do get the media news outlets like Breakthrough News, Al Jazeera,

[00:44:41] and stuff like that, online media.

[00:44:42] Al Jazeera, and I don't know if you know of Kirib Orygian.

[00:44:46] He's a journalist, a Syrian journalist.

[00:44:48] He's in Germany.

[00:44:49] And he talks about this a lot.

[00:44:50] He's been taught.

[00:44:51] I've been following him for a while on Syria.

[00:44:53] And he has a piece about Al Jazeera, right?

[00:44:56] Al Jazeera and how Al Jazeera propagandize a whole generation, right?

[00:45:01] Just what you were saying to young people to support Palestine, but to hate Syria passionately.

[00:45:11] And propaganda is a whole generation in the Arab world.

[00:45:13] Not only in the Arab world, because they have Al Jazeera English and they have Al Jazeera Arabic, right?

[00:45:18] And I'm told Al Jazeera Arabic is totally, the message is totally different than Al Jazeera English, right?

[00:45:23] But the messaging from Al Jazeera and then they have this little, I forgot what they call it,

[00:45:27] little sound bites that you see on YouTube and all the social media tools, right?

[00:45:31] Which is like 30 seconds of Al Jazeera or whatever.

[00:45:34] They're MO.

[00:45:35] They're modus of operandi.

[00:45:36] They're good on Palestine.

[00:45:38] They do a lot of reporting on Palestine.

[00:45:40] But at the same time, they tear down every other state that actively support Palestine.

[00:45:48] Not support Palestine by rhetoric.

[00:45:50] Like the GCC, like the Gulf monarchies, they have good rhetoric.

[00:45:54] But they don't do anything materially.

[00:45:56] They don't support anything materially to Palestinians, right?

[00:45:58] But the states that do support Palestine materially, Syria, Iran, Hezbollah, et cetera, they tear them down.

[00:46:05] I don't know if you noticed the reporting in Russia with the Ukraine war.

[00:46:08] They started with the Ukraine.

[00:46:09] According to Kivorika al-Mazan, Al Jazeera was used for this war as a huge to get people to turn against the Syrian government.

[00:46:17] But yeah, it's that concept of controlled opposition, right?

[00:46:21] Like that sort of thing, you know.

[00:46:24] Yeah.

[00:46:24] And I guess where I was starting, I went with that different direction than where I started.

[00:46:29] That's what I wanted to see in our movements over the past year.

[00:46:33] I wanted to see us having a robust discussion about what is the struggle for Palestinian liberation?

[00:46:42] Like, how is it being fought?

[00:46:44] How is it being, like, what is this struggle actually?

[00:46:48] And I think that changes the way that you approach it if you actually look at it, understand it, study it.

[00:46:56] And honestly, I think it very much changes the way that we look at how we need to organize, how we need to move, how we need to build in the West.

[00:47:06] I think we get so arrogant.

[00:47:08] But I feel like I've learned a ton just by learning how the Palestinian liberation forces are organized, how they move, how they plan, how they are patient, how they strike, all these different things.

[00:47:23] But anyways, but we need to do that both for our own liberation, but also so that we understand the Palestinian liberation movement, liberation struggle.

[00:47:33] So as not to unwittingly undercut it with our freaking support like this.

[00:47:39] This is crazy.

[00:47:40] It is crazy to be cheerleading the downfall of a crucial support for Palestinian liberation.

[00:47:50] It's not Syria.

[00:47:52] This cuts the supply lines.

[00:47:54] This cuts its fully decapitated resistance or the axis of resistance.

[00:47:58] The axis of resistance is still alive.

[00:48:00] And that does still provide me with hope because weakened tremendously.

[00:48:06] And before all these groups have been weakened tremendously in the past.

[00:48:10] They've had their victories and their setbacks and countless ones, right?

[00:48:13] So I have no doubt about the resiliency of global South resistance struggles and movements.

[00:48:22] But this one was devastating.

[00:48:24] This one was devastating in a very terrible time.

[00:48:26] And I don't think our movements did well enough to basically teach the huge amounts of support that they were getting in the streets online and whatever about what this all is, what this all means.

[00:48:41] But Jake, how can I move and teach?

[00:48:43] One of the first things I saw when the fall of the Syrian state, when they were showing these people on the street celebrating and stuff like that, right?

[00:48:51] Some of the people that I usually follow online and stuff like that, right?

[00:48:56] Will post something saying, no one is free until we're all free.

[00:48:59] That's a common phrase that people in our movement use.

[00:49:01] No one's free until we're all free.

[00:49:03] Something like that, right?

[00:49:03] That's one of the things that this person posted.

[00:49:06] So a lot of our movements just became movements of slogans.

[00:49:09] Just throw slogans, just throw these slogans around that sound deep, right?

[00:49:12] But there's not a whole lot of deep thinking behind it.

[00:49:14] You know what I'm saying?

[00:49:15] Yeah.

[00:49:16] So basically the question you have to like, how do we teach that when that's our movement?

[00:49:21] I don't know.

[00:49:23] That's what I'm saying.

[00:49:24] This is not an education.

[00:49:25] This is not a political education.

[00:49:27] This is sloganeering.

[00:49:28] Right.

[00:49:28] Yeah, exactly.

[00:49:29] Yeah.

[00:49:30] I was really upset and seeing what people were posting and what was happening.

[00:49:33] And especially we did a lot of organizing, a lot of movement.

[00:49:37] We did a lot of going to city hall everywhere, every weekend, every week to organize around

[00:49:41] Palestine.

[00:49:42] And now a crucial, like you said, crucial link to the better hour of this is got knocked

[00:49:46] off and people are celebrating.

[00:49:49] I'm curious.

[00:49:50] This is probably bad podcasting because I set it up a little bit, but I'm curious where

[00:49:54] you think, like where you see this goes from now with the different forces.

[00:50:00] And so you've got Hattop-Kerayyad Sham controls Damascus.

[00:50:04] You've got Israel moving in.

[00:50:06] We've got the U.S. and Kurdish forces in the Northeast.

[00:50:11] Turkey advanced and took more land as well.

[00:50:14] Turkey advancing.

[00:50:16] I'm actually wondering if this is going to be a rejuvenation of ISIS as well with the

[00:50:24] emptying of prisons and such.

[00:50:26] But anyway, just curious where you think stuff played.

[00:50:30] Is it just a little bit too much chaos to really tell?

[00:50:33] I mean, Syria's military was outfitted to be a bulwark against Israel.

[00:50:38] That was their mission.

[00:50:39] That was their main mission was to be a bulwark against Israel.

[00:50:42] Like I said, they were equipped by Soviet arms.

[00:50:45] They had a pretty good intelligence agency.

[00:50:48] And that was their purpose.

[00:50:49] Their purpose was to be a bulwark against Israel.

[00:50:52] Israel during the Cold War was seen as a satellite of the West and West Asia.

[00:50:56] Israel is a Western enclave.

[00:50:58] Israel is a Western country.

[00:50:59] It's part of the global.

[00:51:00] It's part of what the Russians call the collective West.

[00:51:03] You know, it's an enclave in the heart of West Asia.

[00:51:05] And it's meant there to maintain for the West to have a foothold in West Asia.

[00:51:09] Right.

[00:51:10] After the assassination of Soleimani back in, was it 2017?

[00:51:16] 2020.

[00:51:17] 2020.

[00:51:18] Yeah.

[00:51:18] After the assassination of Soleimani in 2020, Iran put their priority as their foreign

[00:51:23] policy was to expel the United States from a region.

[00:51:25] That became their foreign policy.

[00:51:27] Right.

[00:51:27] Now, I don't know if you notice, after the death of Raisi,

[00:51:31] the president Raisi, the new president changing his tune.

[00:51:35] Now he's going to Rash-Pashma with the United States, going back to the whole, what was it?

[00:51:40] The J-Talk, whatever that Obama was doing with the whole nuclear thing and stuff like that.

[00:51:45] So I don't know what they're doing.

[00:51:47] I don't know if going back to square one, why not?

[00:51:50] But yeah.

[00:51:51] And one of the things that Jeffrey Sachs said the other day, which makes a lot of sense with

[00:51:56] this whole seven states, seven states that Wesley Carr talked about, is that the Israel strategy

[00:52:02] to deal with this Palestinian power of annexing land, by taking land with other Palestinians

[00:52:07] and just pushing Palestinians out, is attacking states that supports them.

[00:52:12] And his word is Israel's strategy.

[00:52:14] Again, Israel's strategy against terrorism is to attack the states that support terrorism,

[00:52:21] right?

[00:52:21] Which is what they call the Palestinian movement terrorism, right?

[00:52:24] And who are those states that support the Palestinians materially?

[00:52:26] I'm not talking about with words, I'm not talking about with rhetoric and stuff like that.

[00:52:31] Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

[00:52:33] Muammar Gaddafi's Libya.

[00:52:36] Bashar's Syrian.

[00:52:40] Bashar's Sudan.

[00:52:41] They supported Palestinians materially.

[00:52:44] And those states are gone.

[00:52:47] You know what I'm saying?

[00:52:48] Those states are gone.

[00:52:49] So American reforming policy in West Asia is to secure Israel.

[00:52:52] And they would knock out any state that poses a threat to Israel.

[00:52:57] Right now, we notice Trump's first government presidency.

[00:53:00] His focus was to, what he called, to bring peace to the Middle East, right?

[00:53:04] By normalizing relations with Israel, right?

[00:53:06] What they call the Abraham Accord.

[00:53:08] What does that mean?

[00:53:09] All these Gulf TGC states, right?

[00:53:12] Normalizing relations with Israel.

[00:53:13] What does that mean?

[00:53:14] He normalized, because a lot of it, like, for example, the official policy of Syria was

[00:53:18] not to recognize Israel.

[00:53:19] Israel was a foreign entity.

[00:53:21] And that's also the official policy of Lebanon, by the way.

[00:53:26] And that's also the official policy of Saudi Arabia, by the way, right?

[00:53:30] It's a foreign entity not to recognize Israel, right?

[00:53:33] Right before the 7th of October in the Hamas surprise attack, Saudi Arabia was leaning towards

[00:53:38] recognizing Israel, right?

[00:53:40] Establishing relations with Israel.

[00:53:41] What does that mean when you establish relations with Israel?

[00:53:43] That means that you're abandoning the support of Palestine, for example.

[00:53:47] You're taking Israel as a friend, and one of the conditions of taking Israel as a friend

[00:53:51] is to abandon the Palestinian cause.

[00:53:53] That's not hard to understand.

[00:53:54] That's not hard to understand.

[00:53:55] It is exactly what it sounds like, right?

[00:53:58] That's not hard to understand.

[00:53:59] And a lot of these monarchies, they owe their security to Western backing.

[00:54:04] And that's a lot of people don't know that.

[00:54:06] So Arab nationalism was a threat to them because the Arab nationalists, like Nasser, Gaddafi,

[00:54:12] they overthrew monarchies in their country, right?

[00:54:14] Afghanistan was another one that overthrew.

[00:54:16] And with the Sauda, what do you call the Sauda revolution?

[00:54:19] They overthrew a monarchy.

[00:54:21] Iran overthrew a monarchy, right?

[00:54:23] So Arab and those two other countries are not Arabs, right?

[00:54:25] But the other ones that I mentioned, Egypt and Libya, that example poses a threat to the rule,

[00:54:31] right?

[00:54:31] A lot of these monarchies, they surrender their security to the West.

[00:54:35] So the West is responsible for their security.

[00:54:37] The UK first, and now the Americans, they're the ones securing their security, right?

[00:54:41] And that's something that you need to understand.

[00:54:43] And Qatar is one of those countries that relies on American support for their security.

[00:54:47] I forgot what you were going with your question.

[00:54:50] No, I actually like where you were with it because I feel like we talked about what's

[00:54:54] actually in Syria, but I like taking a more regional approach.

[00:54:58] And I think that's actually a good place to go with it.

[00:55:01] And it's important.

[00:55:02] And the reason I bring that up, just like a star of this podcast is that as active,

[00:55:05] a lot of people.

[00:55:06] So we live here in the West and we're conditioned to see the world from a liberal perspective,

[00:55:11] right?

[00:55:11] And what is liberalism?

[00:55:13] Classical liberalism, right?

[00:55:15] Started in Europe, right?

[00:55:16] And then around the 1700s, classical liberalism is that the individual comes first, it's centered.

[00:55:24] Individual is centered, right?

[00:55:25] It's central, right?

[00:55:26] Everything else is secondary, but the individual is central.

[00:55:28] And from liberalism, that's how you have the concept of human rights, of this, freedom of speech, and

[00:55:34] et cetera, et cetera.

[00:55:35] That's Western liberalism, right?

[00:55:37] Noble ideas, yes.

[00:55:38] But as activists, as social activists, have an analysis on a country or on a state that has a different

[00:55:44] history, a different relation, a different partner from a liberal lens.

[00:55:49] That's liberal imperialism.

[00:55:50] That means you're imposing your values on somebody else.

[00:55:55] Liberal imperialism, right?

[00:55:56] And that's what the neoliberals do.

[00:55:58] That's what Samantha Power and Hillary Clinton, Obama, that's what they do.

[00:56:03] They're using these liberal talking points to get consent to support their foreign policy,

[00:56:08] which is overthrow governments and post sanctions here and post sanctions there.

[00:56:11] Because why?

[00:56:12] Because these people are violating human rights.

[00:56:14] So when you have an analysis, I'm going down, I'm going all over the place, but when you have an

[00:56:18] analysis saying what happened in Syria was wrong, and that's something I just thought about right

[00:56:22] now, this and that, I know that a collapse of the state and supporting the HCS, the terrorists,

[00:56:27] and blah, blah, blah, blah.

[00:56:28] I know that Bashar was a dictator.

[00:56:29] So now when you start using the, when you start using these key words, the mind, well,

[00:56:33] this guy's a dictator.

[00:56:34] So it's not that bad then.

[00:56:35] If people start going down, it's out of the crowd.

[00:56:38] Yeah.

[00:56:38] Those are unnecessary comments.

[00:56:39] I think, I believe, I think that as activists, we need to step back and see the big picture and see

[00:56:44] the big world and see how things there correlate with each other, see how everything relate to

[00:56:48] each other.

[00:56:51] This sidetracked a little bit, but what you're talking about, when I was in interrogator school,

[00:56:57] so I wasn't an interrogator first.

[00:56:59] I got mandatory reclass to be an interrogator later, and that's what I deployed as.

[00:57:05] Anyways, we were supposed to write a paper on, I don't know, a country or a conflict or

[00:57:11] something.

[00:57:11] I don't really remember what the assignment was, but I think I'd gotten assigned the DPRK.

[00:57:19] And anyways, I might've chosen it.

[00:57:22] I don't know.

[00:57:23] But anyways, the thrust of my paper was basically like, basically the DPRK needs to continue its

[00:57:31] nuclear weapons program, because that's the only thing that's going to keep the U.S.

[00:57:36] from doing the, we're doing right now in Iraq, basically.

[00:57:41] At that point, this is probably like 2006.

[00:57:43] But just on that point, I basically listed out all different people the U.S.

[00:57:50] continuously said were crazy or dictators or whatever, basically just as an excuse just to go kill them or whatever.

[00:58:01] Or in this case, to drum up popular support to erode any sort of solidarity.

[00:58:06] It is unfathomable.

[00:58:08] Here we are.

[00:58:09] We're anti-war vets, right?

[00:58:11] And I was in...

[00:58:12] I don't know.

[00:58:14] But it is unfathomable that we keep falling through literally the exact same lines.

[00:58:20] It's the lines that were used with Saddam Hussein, just for example, are the exact same lines that were used for

[00:58:26] Muammar Gaddafi, the exact same lines that were used for Bashar al-Assad, like exact same lines that were used for

[00:58:32] Vladimir Putin, exact same line.

[00:58:35] It just never stops.

[00:58:36] And there is no creativity.

[00:58:37] It is just bullshit and repetition, bullshit and repetition, bullshit and repetition.

[00:58:44] And I don't know.

[00:58:46] I don't know.

[00:58:48] We've got to learn.

[00:58:49] And you mentioned how young folks get news these days and so on and that sort of thing.

[00:58:53] And that's true.

[00:58:55] Somehow we've got to build...

[00:58:57] We've got to build a memory, a historical memory in our movements because we can't continue letting our...

[00:59:07] The country that speaks in RNA get away with this shit.

[00:59:09] This is crazy.

[00:59:10] And it damages us too.

[00:59:12] It damages us too.

[00:59:14] And I think that's one of the roles for us as vets that one of our roles is to...

[00:59:19] We did the gallery last week or last month, right?

[00:59:22] And basically speaking to the pain of the experience of being in bullshit wars.

[00:59:28] Bullshit wars that don't benefit anybody.

[00:59:30] But the richest defense contractors, the most well-connected politicians and so on.

[00:59:35] Then there are stenographers in the media and such.

[00:59:37] It's basically just a circular pattern of who this helps.

[00:59:43] But it certainly don't help the vast majority of us even here in the U.S.

[00:59:47] Yeah.

[00:59:48] Yeah, I think this is a good place to wrap around.

[00:59:50] In a nutshell, what happened in Syria was catastrophic.

[00:59:56] It's not something that should be celebrated.

[00:59:58] It was devastating.

[01:00:00] No one should celebrate the implosion of a state, particularly of a state that other states, imperialist states, dedicate so much resources.

[01:00:10] Because you got to ask yourself.

[01:00:12] If you find yourself, if you're an activist, you see yourself in the same side of those people that you're supposed to be fighting against, right?

[01:00:19] And Al-Qaeda.

[01:00:21] Not just the U.S., but also Al-Qaeda.

[01:00:25] You have to ask questions.

[01:00:26] You have to ask yourself.

[01:00:27] And I forgot who said that.

[01:00:29] If I find myself next to or behind something I'm against, then I have to ask what priority.

[01:00:37] What side am I standing on?

[01:00:38] Yeah, I forgot who said that.

[01:00:39] I think I butchered the saying, though.

[01:00:41] But yeah, you got to think about it, man.

[01:00:43] Particularly when something's being so propagandized.

[01:00:45] When everybody's in sync with the same talking points.

[01:00:48] Everyone's in sync.

[01:00:49] Yeah, you got to ask.

[01:00:51] Everybody's saying the same thing.

[01:00:52] For example, one of the things that they were saying that Bashar was killing hundreds of thousands of people.

[01:00:57] Killing his own people and whatnot.

[01:00:59] And this was a guy that a couple of years before was celebrated as a reformer and stuff like that.

[01:01:04] How do we come from being this guy that is going to be a reformer and everybody's praising him and blah, blah, blah, this and that.

[01:01:10] And they write some good stuff about him in mainstream media to like the devil incarnate.

[01:01:15] Same thing happened when Gaddafi gave up his noobs.

[01:01:19] Everyone was like, oh, Gaddafi, he's changed.

[01:01:21] He's a changed man.

[01:01:22] And then five years later, he's getting torn apart in the streets.

[01:01:25] Exactly.

[01:01:26] That's happened.

[01:01:27] You got to think.

[01:01:27] Don't be that dude.

[01:01:28] Don't be a tool.

[01:01:29] But there's people you try to, the people you organize with.

[01:01:32] And then when you bring things up, they get angry and they shout at you.

[01:01:35] They'll get aggressive supporting the talking point.

[01:01:38] But yeah, I think.

[01:01:39] And don't fall for this thing.

[01:01:40] Like you said, this is not new.

[01:01:42] You just mentioned several incidents where the same thing just repeated itself.

[01:01:47] Just the same thing repeating itself.

[01:01:49] Right now, Syria's gone as we know it.

[01:01:51] Hopefully, the people there see peace.

[01:01:55] Hopefully, I'm wrong when things get better for people there.

[01:01:58] But sadly, I don't think I'm wrong.

[01:01:59] I think things are going to be wrong in that area.

[01:02:03] Yeah.

[01:02:03] It's either chaos or balkanization or both.

[01:02:07] Yeah.

[01:02:08] The one last thing I want to mention, as I've been reading things, listening to things,

[01:02:13] all this, there's always the question of whose fault is this?

[01:02:19] Who dropped the ball in Syria?

[01:02:21] Is it Russia's fault?

[01:02:22] Is it just purely Bashar al-Assad's fault?

[01:02:25] Did Turkey betray?

[01:02:26] Whatever.

[01:02:27] When I come to, there's that saying, right?

[01:02:30] Victory has a thousand fathers.

[01:02:33] The feet is an orphan or something like that, right?

[01:02:36] This is just what happened with years and years and years of constant pressure.

[01:02:44] And it's not to say that it was inevitable by any stretch, but the timing to break the back was basically like Syria had been so weakened through the sanctions, through the civil war.

[01:02:58] I think that the legitimacy, at least in a lot of pockets, had just devolved to a point because it wasn't able to provide this level of standard of living as it was before it was basically targeted for regime change.

[01:03:15] And so it was another, like Iraq, there was a country, and Libya, it was a country with a relatively high standard of living via the region.

[01:03:25] But whittled away by war, by sanctions, by all these things.

[01:03:30] It's not to say that mistakes weren't made either.

[01:03:32] I'm sure mistakes got made, too.

[01:03:34] You really got to put all of these things together because it's not just any single one of these things.

[01:03:40] It's all these things together that really made this happen.

[01:03:43] The reason I say that is it's important for us to understand all of them, right?

[01:03:48] You're not going to figure out why did Syria collapse when you read a biography on Bashar al-Assad in five years.

[01:03:56] You need to understand how all these things work, especially the hybrid war stuff, the hybrid war stuff, like maximum pressure campaigns.

[01:04:03] And so it just puts it in the pressure cooker forever, just hoping that thing's going to explode.

[01:04:07] And so it makes me take another sober view about our comrades in Cuba, our comrades in Venezuela, like fight to their ass.

[01:04:15] Because the Cuban economic situation is so dire right now.

[01:04:20] It might not be something that can hold forever if the wrong thing happens at the wrong time.

[01:04:26] This situation in Syria just emboldened folks in the State Department to replicate them.

[01:04:32] Absolutely.

[01:04:32] Now you got Marco Rubio coming in, you got all these people that emboldened, right?

[01:04:36] And they're going to try to replicate what happened in Syria.

[01:04:38] They're going to try to replicate it in Cuba and Venezuela and Nicaragua.

[01:04:42] Exactly right.

[01:04:43] That's exactly what I'm saying.

[01:04:45] It's not enough just to understand what happened in Syria here.

[01:04:48] We need to put this into our consciousness and move it in defense of the peoples who are in actual genuine struggle against imperialism and Zionism.

[01:05:00] And to fix ourselves with regard to the whatever weird shit we come up with.

[01:05:07] What do you call it?

[01:05:08] The Western Marxism stuff and the politics of purity.

[01:05:13] All the weird things that Western methods end up doing.

[01:05:17] Man, you're so frustrating.

[01:05:18] It's so disappointing.

[01:05:20] Thank you.

[01:05:21] Thank you, Jake, for coming on.

[01:05:23] We're here to talk for two hours.

[01:05:25] This is a short one for us, Giovanni.

[01:05:28] I'm sorry.

[01:05:28] I didn't mention that earlier, but Henry had to go.

[01:05:31] All good.

[01:05:32] Yeah.

[01:05:33] Drop out.

[01:05:34] No, but I really appreciate y'all having me on as always.

[01:05:36] Very cool.

[01:05:38] Yeah.

[01:05:38] Well, keep talking, man.

[01:05:40] Keep talking and just keep watching what's going on.

[01:05:42] And, you know, I don't know what to say, man.

[01:05:45] I'm just, I'm still monitoring and seeing what's going on.

[01:05:49] Hey, it's still pre-powered starting.

[01:05:51] Still in the blockade, in the sanctions.

[01:05:53] Yeah.

[01:05:54] Close all the foreign bases.

[01:05:56] The demands are the fucking same.

[01:05:57] Yeah.

[01:05:59] Jay, thank you for coming.

[01:06:01] Thank you for sharing your thoughts and your time with us.

[01:06:04] And I look forward to the better days, man.

[01:06:06] For sure.

[01:06:07] Appreciate y'all.

[01:06:09] All right.

[01:06:09] Out.

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