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tv   Book TV  CSPAN  January 30, 2011 11:00am-12:00pm EST

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phenomenon and path finders in iraq have wide rear ends. you this this phenomena which drive ling around time with ak-47s hanging out of them, two weeks later you find a sunni corpse in a dumpster with drill holes in the body because they were tortureed and killed. they were used by police acting in conjunction of militias. they suffered more in terms of the american representation. the population began to feel threatened and vulnerable and that was the real shift.
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.. >> we handed iraq over to the iranians. why the iranians? because in the eyes of many, she is are not really arabs. they are persians or poor iranians. that's not true. many of them have a very strong
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shia identity as well. it doesn't mean they are iranians. sympathizers though. but sunnis since they have lost. they didn't lose thanks to the american surge of american tactics. they lost thanks to black & decker. what we mean by that? black & decker is power drills. if you find a corpse in iraq, he was killed but sunni militias. if you found a corpse in iraq with the marks of power drills, that was the signature of shia militiamen. you had in 2006 a strong cooperation between shia militiamen, iraqi police and iraqi army. they pounded and punish sunni neighborhoods. to the point where sunnis began to depopulate baghdad. when i visited in 2007 it was totally empty. thousands of homes close,
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kitchens still fall but nobody was living there. sunnis were defeated. they were leaving. they're in syria, jordan. this was important to stress, six months before the surge and sunni militiamen began to realize they had lost, what this meant was they were also paying attention to discourse coming out of washington u.s. rhetoric from d.c. democrats are urging the u.s. to pullout from iraq. there is a lot applause. i had sunni friends in iraq who, for a couple of years, had been bashing the attacks. suddenly panicking if the americans leave we will be slaughtered. you also had a signal from saudi arabia we will have to come in and protect the sunnis. one more example of how things were defeated.
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in the summer 2006, in western baghdad, it's a majority shia neighborhood with a very large sunni minority. in the summer 2006, the army and collaboration with the iraqi army totally cleansed the sunnis. it was like bosnia. thousands of people in congress while the americans were watching. in western baghdad there was an iraqi colonel who used to go into people's homes, sunni homes, arrest the husbands at random and forced the women took with them in order for the release of the house and i do want to make it sound like only she is are being brutal here. she has had american superiority. they had the american military and the iraqi police, the iraqi army and the main shia militia. they had the numbers to defeat
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the sunnis. and the summer 2006, even earlier, the americans finally came to the realization three years too late that the occupation was the problem. so the american commander begin to describe the american occupation as a problem and our presence is creating antibodies. that was certainly true when the main struggle in iraq was an anti-occupation we had groups fighting the americans. by 2006, even 2005, the main struggle in iraq wasn't just the anti-american one. it was now a civil war. the americans were always a couple years too late in the realization of what was going on. in 2006 they began to pullout from the sunnis. suddenly he wouldn't see them anymore. it felt like iraq was occupied by randy militiamen driving around, people in weird uniforms, checkpoints in different neighborhoods, you
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have warlords. to me at felt like somalia. so the americans are pulling out and their motto was we're going to have security over to the police and the army. as they stand up, we will stand gather the problem was the iraqi police and the iraqi army were participants in the civil war on one side. the americans pull back and the iraqi police and iraqi army were going into sunni neighborhoods opening fire at random on houses, and they realized that they're going to comment, that this war in iraq could lead to a regional conflict. and president bush two years away from the end of his reign was being worried about his legacy. you begin to pay much more attention to events iraq. he realized the one thing would be leaving because he of the original conflict, jordan, syria, saudi arabia, iran would all get involved and it would be much, much worse.
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so he had the sunni position that they lost and you have tempers of the past by sunni militiamen to fight al qaeda. al qaeda came in. yes, it was effective against the americans because it had suicide bombers. yes, it was an effective self-defense militia because they're so brutal and have access to funds. but it was brutal against the sunni population. the anbar province it was disrupting smuggling routes. it was forcing tribal leaders to end the women over as wise. it was imposing these taliban like rules that would force the iraqis. so in the anbar and elsewhere, al qaeda began to be very progressive. you had passed since my transeventy fight al qaeda. in 2005 in anbar province, but the sunni tribesmen rose up against al qaeda were
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slaughtered because the americans just did by and watched. what you begin to see in 2006, six months before petraeus arrived in iraq was the awakening beginning. americans were more subtle in the way they viewed iraq. officers no longer view things as black and white, good guys and bad guys prism. and it again today but the cut deals with local power brokers. you have beginning in the anbar province the awakening phenomenon, the sons of iraq. the american sound about a third rate tribal leader, no real tribal leader but he knows he was tribal leader they empowered them, they protected him and they used him and his men as informers. together they begin to fight al qaeda in the anbar province. and this phenomena spread throughout iraq very quickly. just as in the past, sunni resistance groups had learned from each other and you had a
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domino, suddenly he saw happening all over the place. so to this tactic spread with the same rapidity, switching sides, fighting al qaeda, a language americans. because sunni communities felt like your present from the she is, from the iraqi police, iraqi military and al qaeda. the americans for the first time in 2006 begin to be the least of all evil and sometimes even the savior for iraqis who work and children often often hated them. petraeus arrived in january 2007 and each eating a surge, a surge of increase troops by about 30,000. a new tactics called counterinsurgency. the mantra was you're not going to focus on killing or any. we will focus on protecting the population in tempting them with all kinds of incentives to separate themselves from the insurgents and work with us. in reality during the search,
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you had three times as many civilians killed by the americans as before the search but didn't -- their children to increase air strikes, increase kill and capture missions, to rein to that which is when you fire artillery sometimes in populated areas. but the iraqis were so desperate because of the civil war that are able to absorb these. the key factor initially was the cease-fire beginning in 2006 and continuing on into 2007 when the guys who'd been fighting the americans put down the weapons or took the weapons and were not just neighborhood guards. not doing too much and inform the americans about al qaeda. but the surge is going to focus on baghdad. baghdad is now in the hands of sunni militiamen. the army had once been a local self-defense militia, had a certain ideology, was created and discipline. as it spread and became more
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powerful, its command began to lose control over its own men who begin to act like mafia dons extorting from their own population. they begin to turn on their own people. the army control baghdad by the time the surge began, the movement knew that they would be the target of the americans focusing on baghdad. they decided let's have a cease-fire as well. the surge will come, it will go, and we will remain in control in baghdad. the leader of the army was also concerned because the more criminal activity of his men were giving him a bad name. so he began to have this phenomenon, the iceman, the golden group which is a unit within the army which was going around sucking people, icing them, that was the slang for a
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killing them. sometimes in cooperation with the americans. the army cease-fire or 2007, seven months into the surge. that's when we saw the really huge drop in violence that remains to this day. so that was at the surge, it was the army's cease-fire. the violence then declined until december 2007. i was in iraq by bruce ago. i was at one of the sites of the worst places other were. hundreds of villages were destroyed, totally blown out. each house blown up. all the livestock, all the farm equipment destroyed. this was continuing into the summer 2007. i visited several villages just a few weeks ago that were all totally destroyed seven months after the surge began. so violence didn't decline into
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the army cease-fire, and yet a successful separation of sunnis in iraq. the iraqi social fabric was destroyed, possibly forever. you had a couple million iraqis displaced within the country, hundreds of thousands of refugees outside of iraq. so innocents but the iraqis were dying because the militia had succeeded. they were beginning to realize they had one. and crucially the third factor into the kind of violence was the rise of prime minister maliki. he came to power very weak. seem to be an american puppet. but as he began to flex his muscle and take his role as prime minister more seriously, he realized al qaeda has been sort of taken care of by the americans and shia militias, but i have competition for power. the shia militiamen who are unruly, or clashing with my own teacher to forces. and he turned on them to the
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surprise of even the americans but in march 2008, maliki declared operation charge of the night. and brutally, he targeted poor shia neighborhoods. his guys were losing. the americans would 24 hour prior notice to the operation came to his rescue with helicopters, gunships and say the iraqi army because of hundreds of iraqi soldiers and police standing down, didn't want to fight their brethren. so even though the americans are the one who ended up sort of crushing the army, it was perceived as a victory for maliki. it was the first time in sunnis in iraq might not love maliki but they grudgingly expected that he reduce violence, that he wasn't sectarian. it was a real shift in we even said he began to view therefore, not to mention middle-class iraqis.
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he was a national figure because he is perceived as having tested the army. the army still hasn't recovered from the. the decision was pretty brutal. they were killing women and children, but the army was also destroyed. for that, iraqis remain grateful to maliki for a couple of years. and you had an iraqi surge. unite americans and iraqis security forces of the worst of the, the guys that were killing innocent people just for being sunnis. and this was the main factor in the decline in violent but to take a situation and add the american ingredient. a sudden increase in density of troops in iraq in baghdad, the main prize in the civil war, and the concrete walls. these concrete walls, 12, 15 feet tall surrounding neighborhoods, might have reminded people of palestine but it was very impressive. it destroy the social fabric.
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if your kid lived in one day but he couldn't cross the street because these walls were surrounding him. but it actually work. does only one entry point and one exit point, and should militiamen working with the americans, the awakening guys controlling the entry and exit. so the americans were conducting the same in different neighborhood they would figure who lived where, who belong, who didn't belong. they could prevent arms from being smuggled in an equally informally they could now face the walls, prevent iraqi police and going up to a sunni neighborhood and opening fire on the neighborhood because of walls now blocked all of that. so the american sort of froze the gate of a civil war as they were. and yet the sunni militia phenomena which i thought was a terrible idea. you have a civil war, and suddenly you add more militia to the equation. now is that these militias were sworn to overthrow the government. i spent time with sunni militiamen, the awakening guys. when you talk to him they say we
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have two occupations, the american occupation and the iranian occupation, meaning she has. the americans will leave but the iranians will stay. so we'll make a cease-fire with the americans and focus on the shia. so they were openly saying they want to overthrow the government. and i thought they were very dangerous. but as soon as the americans begin to transition the awakening guys to iraqi authority, the iraqi state begin to decimate them. they took out the leadership. al qaeda was also starting revenge. this powerful sunni movement was mostly wiped out. as the sunni guerrillas they were only really powerful when they were underground, their names were not know, they were swimming among the masses. but now the sunni population has been reduced significantly, in some cases there were ghost towns, city neighborhoods. and the americans and iraqis had all the data and names and addresses of sunni militiamen so they could never go underground
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again. now they're being targeted and arrested. they went from big tough guys in the neighborhood to being on the run. today, most of the awakening guys i've known over the years are either in jail, exile, dead or asking me to give them visas to come to the u.s. and the army likewise miscalculated, declared a cease-fire that was destroyed by prime minister maliki with american help. so the two main militia groups were wiped out, and the iraqi security forces now were cleansed from the worst elements and were able to more or less fill the security vacuum but it seems in 2009 that they have more or less been able to control the situation in iraq. and prime minister maliki not a certain level of legitimacy but not popular because he was credited even if it wasn't totally true with being the guy that reduce violence in iraq, much better than 2006, 2007. so iraq today will be something like mexico or pakistan to a
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very strong central regime, nobody can overthrow it, nobody is trying to anymore. there's no movement. anybody wants a piece of the pie. better services, jobs. so have a strong machine, corrupt, brutal, a little bit representative, increasingly authoritarian, and terrible violence in the streets but not the kind of violence that threatened the civilians. but to adjust to the. sort of like a new normal. everyday i was in baghdad, constant assassinations with sticky bombs. you're sitting in traffic, someone walks by, they put on your car, no one knows what is happening all the time. some of it could be al qaeda inspired. that could be groups fighting together. it could be political parties
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fighting together. it could be your agenda of the hospital in your deputy watcher job. so violence in iraq these days, it doesn't threaten the system but it's terrible and people have to adjust to that if you're a normal civilian, it probably isn't going to thank you because you will not be targeted or just being sunni or just for being so shia. they will torture you though. if you get arrested it's pretty routine. you get sodomized with a glass bottle. enable rapid wet blanket around you and elected you. they might demand money from her family. you will confess, go to court, the judge will accept your confession even if it was with torture. you go to jail. if you pay enough money you will get out of jail. and that is the optimistic thing, unfortunately.
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none of these factors has helped reduce violence in iraq. from the terrible elza 2006, 2007 to the really, really bad levels of 2010 today. none of those factors exist in afghanistan. totally different situation where they sometimes implement the same tactics because the americans believe that it was the surge in general petraeus with his brilliant new tactics that won the war in iraq. if you can call that a victory at the price of close to 1 million civilians and millions of people displaced from their homes, and tens of thousands of families spending years in american or iraqi prisons. so this is the kind of victory you want to impose on afghanistan. you still have more iraqi civilians dying today than of afghan civilians. it's still kind of muddled and afghans which should if he knew what the americans are trying to bring to them. but iraq at least is better
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today than it was. the worst is over. in iraq, like i said, sunnis were crushed. they were told their new place and they eventually were forced to accept it. sunnis realized they had lost. she hasn't realized they had one. they now have a new order. it's impossible to reverse a. but in iraq the resistance was dominated by sunnis. a minority, 20% of the population. in afghanistan, the taliban are dominated by pashtuns. the largest of the group. the taliban is now spreading into non-posh tune areas. but the taliban don't feel like they are losing. mr. goodell 80% of the country. they're spreading more and more. you could in theory cross the posh tune population.
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the only successful counterinsurgency in modern times is malaya. it's up -- often the model the americans appointed a. what they did was take half a million ethnic chinese who were the source of the rebels and move them into concentration camps. so that works. you could take millions of pashtuns and move them into concentration camps, or bomb the hell out of them. you have to be genocide to do that and the americans are not that brutal. so there's no way to crush this population. iraq was easy from an american point of view. it was urban, modern, it has roads. the city, baghdad, the center of the populations in is gridlike. you can control the population. this isn't about protecting people. it's about controlling them so they obey you. in afghanistan russians had the cities in the 1980s. that kabul and kandahar and other cities but they never had the countryside. like wasted a the americans they had the cities but the talibans
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our rural insurgency and there in the villages. you have thousands and thousands of villages. take marja for example. it was described like a key strategic taliban see. e-mail they it was a tiny village of a few thousand people in helmand. it took the americans three months to take marja. c-span made it sound like it was the storming of normandy. we find that the taliban are still fighting the americans in marja. you have about 50,000 other marja in afghanistan. there are no roads. you can have these individual victories and successes, pushing them away from one village into another but you don't have, you never will have the numbers of troops required to occupy the entire pashtun south, southeast to control all of those villages. there's just no way to do. you can't ignite -- unite any of
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your victories into one. another key element is that you have to build the capacity of the national government so that they can take over for you. in iraq you had maliki who gained some legitimacy and clean up the security forces and destroy the militia, and you have a civil war. so brutal that it made the americans and maliki looking like a better alternative. in afghanistan bill the last thing you want to do is build the capacity of the karzai government because it's predatory. it's the major reason why people are doing the taliban. it's lacking legitimacy and credibility. that's not be peace you want to see. the americans are foolishly aligning themselves with this hated government, with police forces that were brought people checkpoints, i'll go into stores and take goods without paying for them. you'll never have it in afghanistan the key element, a legitimate government to take over for you.
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we see today that the taliban had succeeded in sending emissaries to the north and spreading into areas, uzbek areas. the americans afghanistan are also quite brutal. they may not be as brutal as the warlords but in the spend enough time with american troops in afghanistan will see or hear stories about america's soldiers shooting for fun. q. so in iraq. if you are an occupying force, even if you have the best intention of occupying force, they can be the goals cards -- it can be the girl scouts in denmark or something bigger costly poking guns at people. it's humiliation. certain people living in palestine and afghanistan and iraq and elsewhere can understand it may be way to go that our borders with huge white guys with can scream at you in a
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language you understand, pointing their guns at you, everywhere you go to a guns pointed at you american military guys, private sturdy contracto contractors, even militias that americans are backing the and they're breaking into your houses, resting their men. he don't speak a limited have very poor intelligence. half the time they are arresting the wrong guy. they cannot. the afghan army didn't fight. told us not to fight in the first search, obama's research into thousand nine. likewise, today in kandahar the americans are not using the afghan army. they are using the colonels border police. basically a warlord with 500 guys. in 2000 in kandahar the canadians relied on the colonel. he was so brutal that he turned much of the population to join the taliban.
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we are using the same warlord today. where is the afghan army that we pay billions of dollars? they just didn't show up. the americans are blowing up houses. totally destroying the fabric of life, all defied not al qaeda, but the taliban. we are in afghanistan to defeat, destroy, disrupt, dismantle, deter, whatever they say, al qaeda. we did that in 2002 and we won the war. why on earth are we fighting the taliban? mib group, fundamentalists, we might not like the way they treat women, but they are a local movement. historically, going back even to the 19th century it's been the taliban, the religious students to rise up and fight the opposition. there are poems about the
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taliban fighting the various occupations a century ago. in the 1980s, u.s. taliban as well. these are local students. when i met taliban in different parts of afghanistan the reminded me of what i saw in falluja. local people fighting for local reasons against the foreign occupier. they are fighting for very local reasons, fighting for islam, fighting for or in the country, fighting because maybe one of the young men was going on a bicycle and the americans shot them because they thought he was a village. whole village has risen up against them. they are for the most part poor local people raising money from within the committee to fight the foreign occupation. why would we fight them? why are we spending millions of dollars to fight guys in pickup trucks with ak-47s? how is it a bigger threat to the american dead for example? what we are doing so is in pakistan, a more fragile
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country, maybe much more important from a security point of view. you have no taliban in pakistan before the americans invade afghanistan. and i have the pakistani taliban phenomenon. we push them into pakistan. and things are drone strikes in the border area we push taliban and al qaeda deeper into pakistan into karachi. we push drug networks into pakistan which has 100 new and huge him and he permanent home in india. we took al qaeda which was somehow an army at one point in afghanistan and destroyed it. when we first winner in 2001. al qaeda had a couple thousand guys that could fight. they were destroyed or arrested. the others remain, fled to pakistan. pakistan is a much better place to live if you are al qaeda. infrastructure has cities and you can't go in as americans. why do have this massive
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military footprint in afghanistan where al qaeda isn't, and yet yemen, pakistan where al qaeda is? i'm not saying we should invade yemen or pakistan but bio-logic it makes no sense to be in afghanistan. but i think even more importantly al qaeda isn't that big of a threat in the first place. they got lucky in september 11. since then you can't point to any single success. they have become an inspiration to people but it's not like you some kind of james bond bad guy sitting in pakistan. but we persist with this war of terror with bush's policies under obama now. we are spreading the war on terror, or of their into yemen, somalia and elsewhere. the yemeni government is the worst regime in the region now that saddam has been removed. this is a regime in yemen the that bombs the north this point hundreds of thousands.
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this huge al qaeda threats of weapons and money from the u.s. to use against domestic opposition. we have dyed herself to them. we're getting ourselves deeper and deeper into conflict that has nothing to do with american national security. anyway, i guess i will take questions now. >> thank you. [applause] >> thank you very much. if you have questions, please keep your questions brief and please identify yourself when you're asked a question. [inaudible] >> hias far as foreign policy
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goes? >> now with only 40,000. they'll have a long-term presence in iraq i think, continue to train the iraqi military, air force, that kind of thing. but they have early reduce their presence. you can't call iraq an occupied country any more because it's not the americans controlling things on a day-to-day basis. in afghanistan though, afghanistan is a political problem. it can only be solved politically. it's not a military problem where you can defeat the taliban. we have to recognize that negotiate with the taliban is the always solution. the problem though is that trade is gotten better. that might seem like it's a good thing, but these taliban commanders are the ones who have ties to both sides of the committee and our that for much more moderate. are able to be pressure by the community and the tribal elders. and upon have much more inside
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with the taliban commander in pakistan. by killing these guys you're replacing them with much younger more radical guys who don't have these ties and don't have the tiger tell you much, much harder to dig osha within. right now the taliban in afghanistan are totally different than taliban in pakistan. totally different from al qaeda. the taliban in afghanistan our afghani controlled, have afghan interest and goals. pakistani taliban are different of course find the pakistani government come in some places moving to a kind of. but you've only had in history when afghan who try to attack the u.s. and that was ozzie guillen new york. he was tied to the sunny taliban any live most of his life in the u.s. you have to recognize that negotiate with them is the only solution.
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because i government and the various warlords that cause a has empowered are not that much better than the taliban. we don't see any kind of that. petraeus has undermined negotiations and in kandahar these agency not even counterinsurgency, not even an attempt for hearts and minds the military remind you what the russians were doing in 83 and 84, just relying on massive military power. so i think what we will see is then a solution by the radicalization of the taliban. they will be pushed into the hands of al qaeda which has not been national constituency. whenever i give a talk it should be what should be done. we would have to a longer be who we are for us to see any hope in the middle east which means we have to stop supporting israel in its occupation of houston, had just stop supporting dictatorships in egypt and saudi arabia and pakistan and elsewhere. and it's inconceivable to
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imagine this kind of revolution in american foreign policy unfortunately. so luckily i'm a journalist. >> one of the things that i think is more interesting about the current transition and iraqi government has been the relationship between maliki. as you said it sold ironic, this new development in the relationship considering their past. that you don't really have their name in this country without it being pursued by anti-american clerk in almost any context or decrease sort on any prospective. i don't see outsider being this. buy one if you just just become a about the procession of al-sadr as anti-american communist a relationship with the prime minister in iraq and what that means for our prospective. >> you remind of the competition
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i had today. a friend who is in london now, she a friend from baghdad, he flew yesterday from london to new york. at the airport as he are you sunni or shia? are you from sadr city? the airport at jfk, they asked him she a. he said i'm an atheist. this is a true story. it's pretty weird. because i guess they were not some kind of threat from sadr city. yes, they're anti-occupation and have a strong dislike for america because of its occupation, because of its support for israel. but it's an iraqi nationalist group. because they were we marginalize they look to iran for support of one point. iran knew they were next so they trained some of the shia militia in have to better both american vehicles.
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the our class differences. he destroyed the army. it was very brutal. sort of arbitrarily. and for a while they started backing maliki. that was also a surprise because he backed the americans in crushing them in 2004. he is an ex-baathist. they hated maliki. maliki did want to depend on them to reign in power because he knows in 2007 when they pulled out he would want to have to depend on them. he could blackmail against them. he was always with some of the city parties. those parties were being pressured by people in the region. one thing i forgot to mention that's interesting, what we saw from the last election wasn't
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that iran, it was saudi arabia and turkey has influence over. turkey help create that. there was pressure coming from different countries in the region, saudi arabia, who are funding some of the sunnis parties in the list. not to compromise, not to sell a. but, of course, they were sought eventually because maliki was never going to give up power. so it's better to be in the government that outside of it, you know, better to be in the tent than outside the tent, however johnson said it. i don't think al-sadr is that big of a threat. you do want them in the come. this is a group when you're marginalize they were pushed to violence. but since 2003 they had wanted to be part of the system. it is a strong ideology, it's more anger. in the '50s and '60s this
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revolutionary get people back to communism that in the '90s and follow the american occupation, they back of his be but they were poor angry people vaguely anti-federalist, antiestablishment. you can be antiestablishment. you've been part of the establishment since 2005. what he delivered for your people? not that much. so anti-federalist, everybody agrees with that except the kurds. so the movement that is that any strong win in its sales anymore and the popularity has declined because they associate with some of the atrocities of the civil war. but the movement you do want, you still have masses of shia in baghdad and elsewhere. the americans really fear them almost a rational he. but in iraq this is the only social movement, daily grassroots movement.
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so they initially were not that secretary and. sort of thanks to the occupation of the zarqawi% more and more into that direction. i think that it's a welcome development, as long as they don't get to the army or some currency duty force, which every knows will be a horrible idea. >> nir, in your book "aftermath" you talk about the middle east. specifically talk about afghanistan and the spillover effect of what's going on between iraq and afghanistan. what about the lebanon and the arab parts of the middle east? >> so i start the book with his fear that iraq would be lebanon and lebanon being a sectarian system which leads to competition and conflict between the various groups.
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in iraq for choice extremism is not enshrined. although it is de facto the way to achieve power, resource is to go to your sectarian group unfortunate so we did see increased sectarianism which might us of lebanon. but lebanon and the middle east, i mean the sunni-shia fight. that was a sort of a new phenomenon, and we can blame the americans for that and the civil war in iraq and the zarqawi, also saudi arabia and i will get to that. lebanon was the most sensitive place a cousin had a very weak state, and it had a strong shia militia. and as a prime minister who was assassinated, nobody knows by whom in 2005, really created the way they thought about themselves did you begin to see
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sort of, in whole region a sunni revival. many people talk about a shia revival but there's been a revival of sunni revival as well. and 2000s ask x. hezbollah defeated israel. hezbollah became the most powerful movement in the arab world. and a real threat to some of the sunnis who came to egypt, jordan, saudi arabia. it stood for challenge to american and israeli in the region. it was a popular movement, a populist movement, and openness about social justice. you had stagnant regimes in saudi arabia and egypt and jordan and elsewhere that will collaborate with the americans, collaborating with the israelis. this was causing them legitimacy. they had to undermine hezbollah and hamas also so they played a shia card. they will convert to shi'ism. the saudis controlled production of culture and media in the arab
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world, unfortunate. they have been working very hard on spreading this fear of shia throughout the arab world. lebanon was susceptible to that because you have a very strong shia military force. hezbollah. and a sunni population that just lawsuits prime minister, billionaire son of corrupt, and sunni population felt very weak. and yet al qaeda guys from iraq who were majorly defeated in 2006-2007, beginning to come into a lebanon and a division of the week state and the lack of law and order over the. and basing themselves in lebanon. you a different groups in lebanon, some sponsored by saudi arabia try to take advantage of these al qaeda guys just fight hezbollah, to fight a shia. they were hoping they could fight palestine. what we've seen in lebanon since 2006-2007 are increasing clashes between sunni and shia thugs on
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the street. they culminate in 2000 a when sunni militias were very quickly dispatched and defeated by hezbollah in 24 hours. that education remains. as long as hezbollah is a thorn in the side of the americans and the studies, the one group saying that you don't have to compromise, look, you can defeat israel or humiliate israel, it's going to be an embarrassment to saudi arabia which totally sold out. they will do their best to undermine it, undermine it by spreading its fear of shi'ism which is now becoming much more serious threat to the arab world. you see she is being tortured and arrested. saudi arabia has a significant shia minority. kuwait, we seek sunni and shia more than ever. she is are responding and developing more of a and identity.
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so i think that future conflicts in the region will be a result of this, and iraq may be deeply involved in that because in iraq have a very strong aggressively confident she faith. the saudis hate maliki and maliki and the ruling elite in the iraqis look down on the gulf arabs inc. so primitive and backward. they call them camel riders. i think you can imagine as iraqi military become stronger and stronger, the future clashes happening between the iraqi shia army and the gulf arabs. the battle in lebanon isn't over yet. as long as israel exists and hezbollah exists, you're going to have a strong military force. sunnis increasingly weary of it thinking it will turn on them.
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there's a history or evidence for them to be concerned about hezbollah turning on them, i think thanks to saudi agitation you have this year of sunnis taking over in the region. whereas before you saw that kind of stuff most of them pakistan. >> i have spoken to a few people who work in the green zone, and the way they describe it, i don't know that much about it, it sounds like an american compound. they have their own american bars, they don't really go out in the city, the kind of security, the sheer size of the u.s. embassy pics i guess my question is what exactly comprises the green zone? what is going on there? if it is the occupation, can you clarify? >> it has evolved and changed over the years. initially, the americans came in, they took over a neighborhood which is to be where the iraqi government was based. didn't have any walls around but
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as the security situation deteriorated they built higher and higher walls until the game very difficult for anybody to come in. that wasn't iraqi government are somehow working with the americans or the foreigners. but the americans have ceded authority over a year ago, it was to reduce their numbers. so there was a point when yeah, you have american soldiers swimming in pools. that was a weird side. and prostitutes, the prostitutes of the baathist or saddam's regime as well. and you all kind of private security comes basing themselves there, companies working on construction paper these days that saw been reduced. the americans would give up on that project and wasted millions of dollars. it's iraqi state they call it the green zone. so the whole phenomenon, largely
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of americans living outside the city, that sort of over. you do have the embassy which is a huge fortress. people in embassy, you can't really walk around baghdad. so they rely on the american military support, helicopters, private security to take them out when it have anything to do. the u.n. also fortunately was relying on american efforts to take them around. so foreigners living in the green zone, the iraqis, the red zone. i'm always impressed when i meet a journalist, you live in the red zone? the red zone is the rest of iraq. to them it's a foreign place. a place they can see sometimes when they can look at the rest of iraq. but it's a scary place for them. it's really skewed over the last eight years the way the americans view iraq. the rest of baghdad is a scary place where gangs will get you. whereas today, i don't think
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that's true. i think the threat of kidnapping is much lower. the iraqi nightlife right now is very active. bars are open and brothels. there is a curfew at midnight but until then, throughout the city the streets are packed with people shopping, which is a good sign if people feel much more couple of other security. even liquor shops are open. american journalist sent to celebrate in articles when they're drinking liquor, they are civilized. it's not about that. but what it means is that iraq is no longer afraid of religious extremist militias blowing up their liquor shops. so it's a sign that you don't have militia activity of the kind you had really from 2003 2003-2008, if you had a liquor shop someone would throw a grenade at it. so i do think liquor shops is a sign of progress but it is a
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sign that people feel more secure. but you don't have really bars inside the green zone these days. you don't really have been because the iraqis can't get liquor in the liquor shops. americans have this embassy which is like a university campus. the united nations, they are so, ties what happened in 2003 with a hotel bombing that they don't know what's going on in the city. they are afraid of going out. anyway, the whole phenomenon has sort of come to him because of the occupation and the vast infrastructure that came with the with the contractors, security contractors, and war profiteers, that's gone down and i down and i you can stay in a normal hotel in baghdad is you're a businessman, turkish businessman, chinese businessman, even everybody. >> what do you think will be the outcome of the u.s. attacks iran in the next year or two?
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>> i don't think the u.s. is going to attack iran thankfully. i think if mccain was in the administration they would attack. the republicans certainly want that kind of war. obama, i think and he should try to figure out a way to get out of afghanistan, thankfully. and italic iran i think -- an attack on iran, if the regime itself not threatened, if you start seeing people in the regime getting killed, the regime felt like had nothing to lose they would shortly strike in saudi arabia. depend on where the attack came from. is that the israelis fight over saudi arabia, those countries will surely suffer as a result of the. he americans are soft talker to an iraqi face on 40,000 americans there. in afghanistan yet many americans that iran could it. they can disrupt oil in the region.
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they can activate shia groups. i think what you would sedo -- what you would see though, they would disrupt hezbollah. certainly sunni regimes in the gulf and to wait, saudi arabia would crack down on the shia population more than they already have. we've seen it happening already. which only increased shia anger. and i think he would take him in his increase in sunni-shia violence in the region. iraq would be very couple with a because iraqi regime might not be pro-iranian but to have a good relationship with iran, the shia brethren. i think it would be a catastrophe. it would not stand down.
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you would have to hate the regime the way many iraqis hate the regime. millions of people in iran hoping that the government is adored by the americans. so you'd see a regional conflict developing them. but i think it's very unlikely. the americans are so overtaxed right now, the military is exhausted, and where this national debt which is limiting what we can do. a good example is iraq. the americans had hoped to have more bases. they call it enduring bases. more permanent basis that what they're going to have. they're hoping to have one. they closed one down because they couldn't afford to keep it. they are limited in part by the national debt and economic crisis. and a nation which has an appetite for this type of war. >> how has this conflict or the violence in iraq and afghanistan
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affected the conflict in israel and palestine, or has it? >> that's a good question. i don't quite know. i think -- you certainly here in rhetoric when they are criticized for torturing palestinians, for the occupation, for bombing lebanese civilians, you hear politicians and look what the americans are doing in afghanistan. look at how the great. -- look at abu grade. i think was a real blessing. finally, the americans are going to take it to the terrorists the way we have and they'll understand us. we certainly saw increasingly aggressive military. more specifically than that,
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it's hard for me to find evidence. hezbollah's victory over israel in 2006 was an inspiration for many people in the region. and an example, a lesson that israel is not huge and powerful, can't be defeated and humiliated. and that the right guerrilla tactics and the right training in the street you can defeat them. so has the i think was the first army, first arab army to achieve a close one-to-onone to one ratio of casualties, armed casualties. i mean fighters. so you saw palestinians demonstrating, carrying boehner's and signs that were inspired by hezbollah. i haven't been to palestine for a year and a half. i feel like it's been the other
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way around. one of them motivating factors for the u.s. to invade iraq was the defense of visual and the road to peace. if we defeat this regime then somehow we will be able to put in, and he'll be pro-israel. you have pipelines going from iraq. so i think -- it wasn't the main reason why the u.s. went to war with iraq. 9/11 provide a perfect pretext. in defense of israel's come in terms of israel's position in the region was one of america's main motives for what it does in the middle east. unfortunately. so certainly that was a factor in the war in iraq. so it's hard for me to think how iraq has affected the conflict with israel. do you have any ideas? i feel like there must be something.
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[inaudible] >> i think is so separate. i've seen the american activation and how incompetent it was. they did have american officers visiting israel in 2004 to see how the american israelis occupied and have a controlled popular areas. but even in the west bank, is just awesome in an evil sense when you see the level of population and control, and choose the fear that you can crush the spirit. every town surrounded by walls that a much bigger than the walls i saw in iraq. it's impenetrable. if you just lift your head in defiance of you will get crushed. crush not just by the israelis but crushed by the palestinian authority. this is the first national liberation movement that collaborates with the occupier. we have seen signs of some al
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qaeda inspired groups attempting to develop in gaza, and sort of referring to start out. but hamas has crushed them. because that's the last thing they want into a. i think one reason why we might not see too much bill over in iraq and afghanistan is at least in the short term unfortunately israel has one, and it proved in gaza if you try to resist they will get crushed. brutally. everything will be destroyed or people in the west bank were watching this, and at least in the short term they learned that lesson, if you resist you will be destroyed. but it's an untenable situation and the long-term. and what we do see though, i guess, a continuation of trends that really goes back a few decades now. there is no more leftist resistance, and islam resistance.

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