01/09/20 01/09/20 [captioning made possible by democracy now!] amy:y: from new york, this is democracy now! pres. trump: iran appears to be standing down, which is a good thing for all parties concernrnd and very good thing for ee world. amy: president trump vowed on wednesday to hit iran with new sanctions but appeared to pull back from taking any new military action. tension between the two countries soared after the u.s. assassinated iranian commander qassem soleimani at the baghdad international airport last week.

we wilill speak to r retired col andrew bacevich, author of the new book "the age of illusions: how america squandered its cold war victory." then we go to china. we look at how government authorities are systematically forcing muslims, mostly uighurs and kazakhs, to supply for factories with cheap and compliant workforce. we will speak with activist and attorney nury turkel about the ongoing crackdown. >> china began militarizing social control in the name of combating extremism. the regime is implementnting high-tech surveillance and on a vast scale, drastically expanding the placement of uighurs and other minorities. in exporting these surveillance technologies to other authoritarian regimes. amy: we will speak also with

austin ramzy of "the new york times" about his article "inside china's push to turn muslim minorities into an army of workers." we will also talk about how the newspaper recently obtained 400 pages of internal chinese docucuments, providing an unprecedented inside look at the crackdown on ethnic m minorities in the xinjiang region. all that and more, coming up. welcome to democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman. president trump vowed on wednesday to hit iran with new sanctions but appeared to pull back from taking any new military action. tension between the two countries soared afterer the u.. assassinated iranian commander qassem soleimani at the baghdad international airport last week. iran retaliated by firing 22 ballistic missiles at military babases in iraq hohousing u.

and i iraqi forces. no one was injured in the attack. iran had warned the iraqi government about the strike in advavance. on wednesday afternoon, two small rockets also later landed near baghdad's green zone. they did not cause any casualties or damage to coalition facilities, and no group has claimed responsibility. the house of represesentatives s slated to vote today on a war aimed atsolution president trump's ability to take future military action against iran without congressional authorization. a number of republicans say they will support the resolution after lawmakers attended a closed-door briefing on iran on wednesday with defense secretary mark esper, secretary of state mike pompeo, cia director gina haspel, and joint chiefs of staff chairman general mark milley. this is utah republican senator mike lee, speaking after the briefing. >> what i found so distressing about that briefing was that one

of the messages we received from the prefers was, do not debate, do not discuss the issue at the appropriateness of further military intervention against iran. if you do, you will be emboldening iran. the implication being that we would somehow be making america less safe by having a debate or a discussion about the appropriateness of further military involvement against a government of iran. insultingng and demeaning. i don't care if they are with the cia, department of defense,, or othererwise, to come in and tell us that we can't debate and discuss the appropriateness of military intervention against un-american, unconstitutional, and it is wrong. amy: we'll have more on the tensions between the u.s. and iran with after headlines with andrew bacevich. senate majority leader mitch mcconnell reportedly met with

president trump at the white house wednesday, where they discussed trump's upcoming impeachment trial in the senate. cnn reports mcconnell walked trump through the trial format. mcconnell has said he will coordinate the trial with the white house and that he is not an impartial juror, fueling criticism from democratic lawmakers who accuse mcconnell of trying to preside o over a sm trial. ukrainian international airlines has announced an indefinite suspension of all flights to iran after a boeing 737 passenger jet crashed shortly after takekeoff in tehran en roe to kiev, killing all 176 aboard, early wednesday morning. after the crash, iranian officials said the plane suffered technical problems. but iranian investigators now say the plane was on fire while it was still in the air. ukrainian investigators are looking into the possibility that an antiaircraft missile could have hit the passenger jet or that there wawas an engie malflfunction. iran says it is with holding the plane's black box and will not

give it to boeing or the americans. the jet crash came only hours after iran launched missiles at two iraqi military bases that house iraqi and u.s. troops as revenge for the u.s. assassination of iranian commander qassem soleimani last week. the jet was a predecessor to boeing's flawed 737 max passenger jet, which has been grounded worldwide folollowingno deadly crashes that killed 346 people. in election news, the youth climate justice group known as the nrnrise vemementas votot in a landslide to ba v vermo senator bernie sanders in the demoatatic pmaryry. the e nrise movement has more than0,00000 mbers,s,ith 318 chapters natnwnwide. senator sanders,asassachettsts senator elizabh warrenandd formererouth bend mayor te buttigieg ve all eororsed ee sunrise vement's siaturure policy, the green w deal. news onlimate cnge, a n analysisrom one the wor's

largest surance mpanies ys hurricanes, wildfires, and floods cost $150 billion globally in 2019, and that this figure is expected to increase in the coming years. in australia, the death toll from the raging, climate-fueled wildfires has again ririsen. 27 people have died and over one billion animals are dead. this is australian prime minister scott morrison. confirmed for7 tallies and there have been -- this morning's report, 2131 lost but i'm sure over the course of the day, for the damage assessments have been taken, particularly in victoria, the numbers continue to sadly change and they continue to escalate. increasingather is in the south and east today and it will spike along the east coast tomorrow. amy: prime minister morrison has opposed effort to curb

catastrophic climate c change. he famously brought a lump of coal to the floor of pararliamet to mock opposition lawmakers. meanwhile, conservative media mogul rupert murdoch's flagship newspaper, the australian, has repeatedly claimed that this yearar's fires are not woworse n in year's past. in fact, scientists say this year's fire season has scorched more of new south wales than in the previoious 15 years combine. murdoch's media company news corp. has s also spreadd misinformamation that has inflad the role of arsonists in the fires and has downplayed the role of climate change. supreme court justice ruth bader ginsburg has announced she's cancer-free following successful treatment for a malignant tumor on her pancreas. the 86-year-old justice is the leader of the supreme court's four-member liberal wing. the court is scheduled to hear a slew of landmark cases, including about abortion, the second amendment, and the effort to force trump to release his tax and financial recordrds. in immigration news, outgoing guatemalan president jimmy

morales says his government has not agreed to receive mexicans who wish to seek asylum in the united states. under a bilateral agreement, the united states can send honduran and salvadoran asylum seekers to guatemala to instead seek asylum there. but the trump administration now says it wants to extend this plan to mexican asylum seekers as well, sparking push back from morales. his term ends next week and he says trump will have to negotiate this idea with his successor alejandro giammattei. mexican asylum seekers are also speaking out against the trump administration's plan. these are two mexican migrants, rosario and lizbeth, speaking from the b border town of tijua. >> i have never considered it. i have never been there, but i know it is not a good option from us. i will never consider going there. kids suffering does not make sense. they want to send us to a country where we also faced

danger. i don't think so. seekingedly we're some from violence. it is not fair. amy: in spain, socialist party leader pedro sanchez was sworn in as spanish prime minister wednesday, one day after his proposal to form a coalition government narrowly won a vote in the spanish parliament tuesday. sanchez agreed to form a coalition government with pablo iglesias, the head of the leftist podemos party, paving the way for spain's first progressive coalition government since the 1930's. and in a correction to our headline yesterday, the formation of this coalition government was made possible when a group of pro-independence legislators from catalonia agreed to abstain from tuesday's vote, not join the coaoalition government. and facebook is insisting that it will not limit lies in political campaign ads, , refusg to back down from a policy that has come under massive criticism

from lawmakers and voting rights activivists. facebook also said it would continue to allow so-called "micro-targeting" for political ads, a tactic for targeting advertisements for a tiny group of facebook k users. critics say micro-targeting is an ideal tactic for spreading fake information. this comes as a facebook executive wrote in an internal memo that the trump campaign's facebook advertising strategy was key in his 2016 election and that if facebook keeps the same advertising policies in place, it could lead to his reelection. in the memo, andrew bosworth wrote -- "so was facebook responsible for donald trump getting elected? i think the answer is yes. that brings me to the present moment, where we have maintained the same ad policies. it occurs to me that it very well may lead to the same result." and those are some of the headlines. this is democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman.

nermeen: and i'm nermeen shaikh. welcome to all of our listeners and viewers from around the country and around the world. president trump vowed on wednesday to hit iran with new sanctions but appeared to pull back from taking any new military action. tension between the two countries soared after the u.s. assassinated iranian commander qaqassem soleimamani at the bagd international airport last week. early on wednesday, iran retaliated by firing 22 ballistic missiles at military bases in iraq housing u.s. forces but no one was injured in the attack. iran had warned the iraqi government about the strtrike in advavance. two small rockets later hit the green zone near the us embassy in baghdad but n no group has claimed responsibibility. amy: the two sides have reportedly been exchanging messages through a swiss diplomatic channel. during a televised address on wednesday, trump urged nato to become more involved in the

middle east and called for countries to pull away from the iran nuclear deal. pres. trump: they're very defective commit jcpoa expires shortly anyway. and gives iran a clear and quick path to o nuclear breakout. its nuclearandon ambitions and into support for terrorism. the time has come for the united kingdom, germany, france, russia, and china, to recognize this reality. they must now break away from the remnants of the iran deal or jcpoa. and we must all work together toward making a deal with iran that makes the world a safer and more peaceful place. nermeen: china rejected trump's proposal. earlier today, a spokesperson for the chinese ministry of foreign affairs said trump's unilateral withdrawal from the

iran nuclear deal is the root cause of the current crisis. >> tensions in the middle east are escalating and the iran nuclear issue is facing great challenges. the united states withdraw from the jcpoa, turning a blind eye to international law and obligations, imposing maximum pressure against iran and obstructing other party's of the jcpoa are the root causes of the iran nuclear tensions and should be the basic starting point for all parties to deal with the issues in an objective and faiar mannnner. nermeen: in washington, the house of representatives is scheduled to vote today on a measure aiming to limit trump's authority to take unilateral actions against iran. a coalition of progressive groups are staging anti-war rallies across the country today. according to moveon.org, more than 350 events are scheduled to take place. amy: joining us now and washington, d.c., is andrew

bacevich, a retired colonel and vietnam war veteran. out, "the agest of illusions: how america squandered its cold war victory." andrew bacevich is president and co-founder of the quincy institute for responsible statecraft. his latest piece for "the l.a. times" is headlined "trump's soleimani strike is more of the same old losing u.s. game plan in the mideast." his previous books include "twilight of the american century" and "america's war for the greater middle east." welcome to democracy now!, professor. first, respond to president trump's assassinating -- the assassination of soleimani, the iranian response yesterday, and then what you see happening now. >> well, the assassination was an act of great lyric list -- recklessness. in some respecects, it was typil of t this presesident's decision-making most of it appears he acted very much on

impulse. there is no evidence that he had thought through the cononsequens of assassinating soleimani. what would be step two, stepp three. plunged uskless act into an unnecessary crisis that, thankfulully, both the administration and the government in tehran found a way to back away from. t think.e avoided war, i that said, i think would be a mistake on our part -- everybody's part to sorort of breathe a sigh of relief and say, ok, everything is fine now s. nermeen: why do you say that, professor? with respect to what you said about whether there is a step two and a step three that trump considered, i mean, he considered, we have sent a powerful message to terrorist by killing soleimani. if you value your alive, will not threaten the lives of other

people. and then he said the u.s. would impose more punitive sanctions on iran and also said the u.s. is willing to pursue peaeace. >> yes. there are about six contradictions in what you just said to him accurately rereflecting with the presidentt said. if you are trying to figure out with the policy is, there is no policy. it seems to me, for r example, e president claiming victory and now insisting he is going to impose additional sanctions on themewell, i thought the of u.s. policy had been we were already putting maximum pressure on iran through sanctions. so what any additional sanctions could possibly involve remains to be seen. that is the first point. the second point is, it seems to me there is very little evidence that economic sanctions are

going to coerce the iranian governmement into complying with american demands. it is not an approach that seems likely to produce success, as far as i c can tell. amy: let's go back to president trump speaking wednesday. pres. trump: iran's hostility increased after the foolish iran 2013,r deal was signedd in and they were given $150 billion not to mention $1.8 billion in cash. instead of saying thank youou to the ununited states, they chantd "death to america." "death tohey chanted america" today the agreement was signed. then iran went on a terror spree funded by the money from the hell in yemen,ed syria, lebanon, afghanistan, and

iraq. the missiles fired last night at us and our allies were paid for with the funds m made availabley the last administration. money,at was iran's andrew bacevich. can you talk about president trump's obsession with president obama? more about the significance of him pulling out of the iran nuclear deal what that has led to every step of the way? d deeply to have toto say that that official from the people's s republic of china who stated the beginning of the problem here was our pulling out of the i iran deal, that his depiction is actually far more accurate than anything we just heard in that clip from our president. i would only disagree withth tht

notion that the root of the problelem is the americans pullg -- of the jcpoa in the sense the poisoning of u.s.-iranian relations certainly predates this a administration, the o oba administration, and in many respects goes back to the 1950's. i don't think we want to rehearse all of the history here . if i were going to cite one particular moment as creating -- as the root of the crisis that we are in right now, i would say it is the aftermath of 9/11. the terrorist attack o on the united states that did not involve iran or iranians in any way, yet the george w. bush administration resesponded by creating this fictiononal axixif evil in claiming that iran was therefore part of f the p probl, part of the axixis thahat the wn

terrorism m was going to destrt. hostilitystration of to the iranian r regime, then of urse, the e bush administration follows up on that b by invading and occupying iran's neighbor, iraq, and what was patently in the lelegal and highly foooolisr , and almost inevitably was going g to induce e a responsesm iran, which had everyry reason n the world to view the american occupation of iraq as a threat to its own national seserity. so the presisident got his litte narrative thatat makes it sound like the united states is an incident party here.e. we are not an innocent party. what i would emphasize is that the problem goes back k much farther than either what trump's owown folly, farther back than e jcpoa, which i personally

support and believe offers an opopportunity, thehe possibibilf moving u.s.-iranian relations to a more positive track. that possibility has now been completely discarded by this president. nermeen: professor, i want to go to an issue that you have raised with respect to what you're talking about now, namely what restraints exist, constraints exist, on the exercise at presidential power when it comes to the decision to wage war. in an "l.a. times" opinion piece headlined "trump's soleimani strike is more of the same old losing u.s. game plan in the mideast," you wrote -- "the democratic members of the senate and house who whine about not having been consulted or at least notified in advance of the drone attack that took out the quds commander deserve not a respectful hearing but contempt.

their behavior over the past decade and more in giving presidents a free hand to wage war however they see fit cannot be described as anything but cowardly. it was, after all, president obama who pioneered the role of assassin-in-chief to which trump has now laid claim." this is what you said, professor. could you elaborate on that? >> one o of the stories unfoldig right now, if i understand it, is members of congress -- mostly democrats, but some republicans -- want to pass a resolution that will put some kind of constraints on preresident trump with regard to the possibilility of further hosostilities with hn . i endorse that 100%. but it seems to me the issue is not simply finding wayays we out toto be concerned about, isis nt simply ways to constrain president trump with reregard to the use of force, but what we need to be concerned about iss

straining the comommander-in-chf regardless of who ththat may be with regegard to using forcece. has for decades now forfeiteted its constitutional responsibility with regard to war. you can make an argument that during the cold war, there was some kind of rationalele for d g that, for empowering the president to make war on hisis n whim becausese we were -- the continingency we were worried about was a surprise nuclear attack by the soviet union. but since the end of the coldd war, that possibility has virtually disappeared. and since the cold war, what we find is presidents of both parties exercisining this authority that they have now claimed to make war wherever and whenever they feel moved to do so.

so the effort to cononstrainin trump, which may or may not achieveve success, really o ougo be expanded to rethink the prerogatives of the commander-in-chief in this new post-c-cold war era. i don't see any evidence the congress is going to take up that issue, and they ought to. amy: we're going to go to break and come back to retired colonel andrew bacevich, vietnam war veteran. his book is just out "the age of illusions: how america squandered its cold war victory." he is the president and co-founder of the quincy institute for responsible statececraft. back with him in a minute. ♪ [music break]

amy: this is democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman with nermeen shaikh. on monday, i spoke with another retired colonel, that was u.s.

army colonel lawrence wilkerson, who served as secretary of state colin powell's chief of staff from 2002 to 2005. wilkerson talked about how the u.s. workeked with the running commander qassem soleimani. whom trump just had assassinated, how ththe u.s. worked with him m to fight the talibaban in afghanistan. andnd his entourage were actually helping us and afghanistan in 2001, early 2002, to fight the taliban. we got indispensable help from iran in that regard. amy: can you elaborate on what soleimani did back when you were in the bush administration? you were working with him. >> well,l, what we h had in the first days of our reaction on afghanistan was s not really a military actction. it was a c cia action. donald rumsfeld got furious with the army because he could not get into afghanistan fast enough.

if you look at the map, you will see why. of course, we had to go over to pakistan, uzbekistan, and asked them for o overflight rights and logistics rights and so forth and -- even to get into afghanistan. you sagely had a war between n e television, omar and his group, what was left of al qaeda, and the northern alliance, which the cia had been supporting all along. they killed m massoud, the guy o was really leading the northern alliance.. al q qaeda had killed him about the same time they did the 9/11 attacks. it was really chaotic. when we did get some spspecial operators in andnd we got a lotf aircraft in with precision guided munitions, we b began too turn the tide and get to a situation where i can tetell you we werere a almost apoplectic ae time. we did not know who was going to investst kabul. we did n not know we had just turned cabal ovever to the alliance. we were very anxious to make

sure everything worked the way we wanted it to after that so-called victory. and one of thehe groups s that helped u us the most, as you mit imagine, were the iranians becacause the e iranians look ae taliban as their enemy, too. you may remember the taliban had killed some ofof the iranian diplomomats andd o others in the months prior. so the iranianans were all foror eliminating the talent that as ththe legitimate government of afghanistan, and so pitched in to help. once president bush had given his spspeech about the axis of evev included d iranian that, their desire to help was not quite as ardent as it was before, but they nonethesess realalizing as iran almost alwas does, i hate these people who say they are irrational.l. they are far more rational than we are. let meme say thahat again. ththe leadership in tehran is fr more ratational than the leadership in n washington. ththey decided they would contie to help us because after all,

the e enemy of my enemy, all of that old good business about the enememy of my enemy is myy frie, and they did in fact continue to help us all the way through the conference. and soleimani was part of that at the time. amy: that is a colonel who is deeply involved at the time, chief of staff of secretary of state colin powell who gavave tt speeeech at ththe u.n. pushing r war, saying there were weapons of mass destruction. that was lawrence wilkerson. ee was responding to penc tweeting that soleimani and his entourage were actually helping -- he was sayingpence's words ire laughable, that pence just tweeted that soleimani assisted in the clandestine travel to afghanistan of 10 of the 12 terrorists who carried out the september 11 terrorist attacks in the united states,

trying to link soleimani to the 9/11 attacks. so he says he actively supported fighting the taliban in afghanistan. and even as trump admitted yesterday in his speech, the iriranians were also fighting against isis. if you can talk about that, that part of this, what is happening right now with this battleground now going back to iraq, a place you know very well, and taking out soleimani, who was key and fighting isis? >> is that directed at me? amy: yes, andrew bacevich. wilkerson wasry making the key point. ad that is that t iran is nationstate that pursues its own iinterests. many americans tend to think of

, thatn ideological terms it is a revolutionary state. now, there is s a veneer of idideology.. there are these demonstrations in which people chanant "death o america." wiseems to me, we would be to take all of that with a grain of salt -- not to ignore it, but to not let that define our understanding of what you exexpt from iran. it would make far greateter sense to assume they were consumed with the security of their nation, the well-being of their people, and the survival of the r regime. we have for far too long, we, the united states, have for far too long tended to view this part of the world thrhrough a ls in which there are good guys and

there are bad guys. and wewe find ourselves in a peculiar situation w wre the iranians are bad guys andnd the kingdom of saudi arabia ends up beining the good guys. this iss absurd. that manichaean perspective is one of the things that i think sustains the militarized approach to u.s. policy that we have been following i in this region for decades now. thecoconviction that somehow appropopriate use of amemerican military power is goining to dedestroy thee evildoers and ene the good guys to prevail. thatat hasn't happened. it hasn't workeded. it won't work. and i i do believe the o only conceivable way foror us to b bn to e extricate ourselves froroms terrible mess in the region that the instability, the chaos, the violence that we have helped to

stoke -- thehe only waway for uo begin to resololve thahat i is o abanandon thisis militareded approach and to take a more balanced position with r regardo the rivalries in the regionon. wewe are not f f good guysys ves bad guys. what we should be for is finding a way too end the instabilitytyd to create e some semblance o of peace.e. and the further use of military power, which multiple administrations have now undedertaken, the reliance on american military wewer has nott vanced ourur purposeses and will not. the beginning g of wisdom lies n acknowledging that fact. nermeen: i want to go back to 2017 when in fact president trump indicated the u.s. might not entirirely be t the good g s you said. this was just weeks after his inauguration in an interview with fox host bill o'reilly and

he was asked about his relationship to putin. pres. trump: i say it is better to get along with russia than not. if russia helps us in the fight against isis -- which is s major fight, and islamic terrorism all of the wororld -- that is a gogd thing. will i get a along with them? i have no idea. >> putin is a killer. pres. trumpmp: we have a lot of colors. you think our country y is so innocent? you think ouour country so ininnocent? >> i don't know o of any government l leaders that aree killers.. pres. trump: i i've been against the wawar in i iraq since the beginning. a lot of mistakes. a lot of people were killed. a lot of killers around, believe me. nermeen: that is president trump just newly inaugurated in february 2017 speaking to bill o'reilly, who is no longer at fox news. your response? >> you are backingng me into corner where i had to say

something good about p president trtrump. who o knows if he even knew what he was saying and d how serioioe was in saying it. but there is greatat wisdom in acknowledgdging that we are nott innonocent. we have e not been innoceninin e middle east. we have nonot been innocent in e entire history of our republic since 1776. we have enjoyed enormous success in accumulating wealth and popower. but the process of accumulation hahas been one that involved dog evil things.s. not all of it is evivil, but i o believe the presidident is absolutely right that if we are abable to a acknowledge thahat e not innocent, then that is a point of departurere for

reevaluating our role in the world d at the presesent moment. because if we are not innocent, the night gives you a d differet perspective -- for example, on this latest dustup between the united states and iran. all of that said, one of the great difficulties with this president that whatever he said certainay, he is almost to contradict by thursday or the next week. and he reverses course. and so it is very, very difficult, givenen all that he ins, whether in speeches or tweets, it is very difficult to pull the threads of continuity out of his many remararks in orr to ascertain what he reaeally believes and w what he really thihinks because he is such a contradictory figure. presidentw bacevich,

clinton famously bombed iraq when he was being impeached. and ththen you have president trump come as he i is being impeached and going to a senate impeachment trial, assassinating soleimani. you wrote an article last month, "if ukraine is impeachable, what is afghanistan?" you talk about afghanistan being the far greater crime. if you can talk about what is happening 10 washington right now, the same time trump is making his announcement yesterday about iran, ababout soleimanii, about increased sanctions strangling iran on the same day he is meeting with the senate majority leader, meeting with mitch mcconnell, going through what the senate impepeachment trial will bebe. >> well, what i was refererringo in the pieiece that you jujust reference wasas the afghanistan papers. that "thents

washington p post" had reveaeala coupuple of weeks earlier. a huge trove off documenents, wh demonstrated beyeyd any doubt whatsosoever that the amamerican peopople have beenen lieied to t the afghanistan war, the longest war in our country. we were consnstantly told there was light at the end of ththe tunnnnel. when the people running the war understood that no p progress ws being made. when the p people running the wr themselves acknowledged that theyey had had no strategy, no understanding of the problem that they were dealing with. anand the point i was trying to make in that piece was -- i certainly look forward to the day when trump is no longer in his, but but if whatever we want to call it, his antics with regard to ukraine

are worthy of impeachment, then by god, what are we to say of a war that is now in its 19th year that we have been lied t to repeatedly, that has led to the loss of thousasands of american lives, tens of thohousands of american wounded? i think more than 100,000 afghans dead, c couple trillion dollars of money expended? i mean, how does that compare? my answer is, that is indeed a far greater crime. that is not a crime thahat necessarily we can pin on one particular individual. but in terms of an issue, the demands scrutiny by our popoliticians, by ththe american people. i i think afghanistan is a p pat greater crime.e. and it saddens me greatly that here we arere in the midst of te impeachment issue now with the iranan crisis a also having

corrupupted, it saddenens me gry that the afghanistan papers have disappeared as an issue of any paparticular public ininterest. i think that is s a failure on e part of the media not to o have stuck with that and pursue the afghanistan papers revelations were deeply. before werofessor, conclude, i want to turn to your book, which explains in part how we got to where we are, especially the u.s. role in the middle east, the broader middle east. the book is called "the age of illusions: how america squandered its cold war victory." you begin the book with an epigraph from james baldwin's "notes of a native son," which reads -- "in america, though, life seems to move faster than anywhere else on the globe and each generation is promised more than it will get -- which creates, in

each generation, a furious, bewildered rage, the rage of people who cannot find solid ground beneath their feet." that is james baldwin whom you quote in this book "the age of illusion." professor bacevich, explain why you chose this as the epigraph to your book and why you understand a consensus that was reached by the foreign policy and military establishment elites following the cold war, you say led to the election of donald trump in 2016. >> i believeve that quotation by james baldwin captures where we were -- where we came to be as a country by november 2016 in the election that installed donaldd trump in office. ththat is to say that the people who were bewildered and enraged who felt they had no place to

stand turned the country over to someone who is manifestly ill-equippeded to serve as presidident because they were intent on repudiaiating the poly consensusus that had existed duringng the post-cold war peri. that is a phrase i use in the book to refer to the period rougughly quarr century between the end of the cold war, fall of 16. enormous moment of euphoria. we believed we h had one. we had triumphed.. we believeved in the famous tite of the e essay that the end of history had arrived. and i argued that a policy elile from that moment on set ouout to exploit what they believeved as our great triumph. in theirir exploitation took the form o of some very specific

notions. one of them wasas globalization. ththe conviction thahat corporae capipitalism on a glolobal scals going to create ununprecedented wealth and they b believed worko the benefifiof everyonone. they a also believed, in a permanently suprememe american mimilitary policy that could kep order r in the planet and bring about the further r advance e or export american values. ideas,,tionalizing those which is what t the post-cold wr jr., ents c clinton, bush and obama did, lead to results quite other than those expected. globalization did make some people really, really rich.h. and it also created economic inequality that we h have never seen in our nation -- at leasas, have never s sn since the end of the 1919th century. it l left behindnd millions andd millions of americans.

in thihis notion of american military s supremacycy as enablg and thus toto keep order -- enenabling us to keep order, all it did was plunge usus into a series of wars, some of which we don't t have any idea how to en. so i i think what happened -- there are lots o of explanations for how trump got elected. ththe earlier discucussion of an facebook. i'm sure thahat played a role. bubut my argumenent would be tht the centntral explanation fofor the act ---tory, that elecection was a repudiation. itit was americans who were not served and indeed work hurt by the host cold war consensus saying no, we're not going to puput up with this anymore. unfortunately, that leled to the election o of s somebody who is utterly y incapable of correrecg the mistakes of the post-cold war period, reunititing the country,y, and putting us on a more s sensible course.

hehence the continuation of this crisis, whwhich will l last throughout the trump years and in all likelihood will last beyond the trump years. amy: enter, thank you for being with us, retired colonel and vietnam war veteran. now president and co-founder of the quincy institute for responsible statecraft. his book is now out "the age of , illusions: how america squandered its cold war victory." andrew bacevich lost his son in iraq. when we come back come inside china's push to turn muslim minorities into an army of workers. stay with us. ♪ [music break]

amy: this is democracy now!, i'm amy goodman with nermeen shaikh. nermeen: we turn now to china, where a shocking new expose has revealed that chinese authorities are systematically forcing muslims -- mostly uighurs and kazakhs -- into labor programs to supply chinese factories with a cheap and

compliant workforce. "the new york times" investigation headlined "inside china's push to turn muslim minorities into an army of workers" is based on official documents, interviews with leading experts, and visits to the far western region of xinjiang -- where about half of the population is muslim. what it reveals is a sweeping program to push poor farmers, villagers, and small traders into sometimes months-long training courses before assigning them to low-wage factory work. the programs work in tandem with indoctrination camps where an estimated 1 million adults from the uighur community are being imprisoned. china claims its labor programs are designed to combat extremism and alleviate poverty. uighur activists say they are part of china's ongoing campaign to strip them of their language and community and carry out nothing short of cultural genocide. "the new york times" obtained rare footage taken inside one of

china's labor programs. >> in a far corner of northwestern china, a car drives along a wall lined with barbed wire heading toward what looks liliketandard apapartment compl. accessss is restricted and it cn represent is filming secretly. i'm just going to follow you inside andnd take a lookok. >> i'm. >> because this is no ordinary residence. it is part of a contentious settlement program run by the chinese government to extend state control over muslim minorities, mostly uighurs, by moving them from one part of china to work in another. this covert low-qualility footae that we have adjusted to reveal some details and obscure others gives a summary insight into how people this program live and are indoctrinated. >> love the party, love the chinese nation.

close of the last fears, the mass incarceration for more than onone million uighurss and kazas has led to international outrage. these labor programs are e partf that larger story. amy: that a "new york times" expose. for more, we go to hong kong where we're joined by austin ramzy. and in washington, d.c., we're joined by nury turkel, uighur-american attorney and board chair at the uighur human rights projeject. austin, can you layout the significance of these documents that you got? explain where you got them from, hundreds of pages, and what they saiaid. received hundreds of pages of documents from a member of the chinese political elite that

revealed the origin of the internment camps in she chain and how the chinese leadership including xi jinping, beginning for a solution to what he saw as extremism and violence that needed to be controlled, put xinjiang.rol in in the years that followed, we saw the beginning of small level internment camps and then beginning -- after 2016, new party secretary came into xinjiang and began an operation that led to as many as a million people who were put into these camps. the documents also revealed, publicly, the chinese government has described these camps as training centers to give people

skills to help them steer them away from extremism. but in the language of the documents themselves, describes these as -- these programs as punishment. it shows the authorities are plainly aware of the suffering that it has caused not only to the people in the camps, but their families and children who are left without parents. amy: can you explain what these camps are? you have indoctrination camps and you have labor camps. explain how you were able to document what you say is as many as one million people, uighur muslims, kazakh muslims in these camps. >> there are multiple programs happening. there is the internment program, which has as many as one of the people in these camps. the labor program is separate, but related. it involves taking people

primarily from southern xinjiang and sending them to northern xinjiang, to other parts of china to work in factories, to work as the video showed as street cleaners, to put them in more formal labor as opposed to the farm work that they did before. it is a separate system of control, not as extreme as the camps themselves, but from everything we've seen, there is coercion involved in forcing these people into the sort of work. people include family members of people in camps. so this is our connection and it is related to the overall program of control. but there are many different programs happening in xinjiang. nermeen: austin, earlier you talked about the fact that some of these -- when these uighurs

are disappeared from their homes and they have children who return from study either in hong kong or other parts of china, they come back and they discover their family members are gone. what explanation are they given? there's actually a document that is distributed? >> that's right. that is one of the most telling that wes in the cache received. it outlines basically what local officials in xinjiang should say to these young people who return home from other parts of china to learn family members have been put i into camps. itit was a document from 2017 wn the program really began ramping up. he told officials to tell these young people that their family members -- it uses almosost sort of pseudo-medical language to say they have been infected by a , just as if you were

impacted by an actual virus, you would want a period of treatment . it must be closed treatment so that this won't spread to other people. it describes these programs as being further -- for their own benefit. there are same time, messages to sort of worn these young people that they themselves should not complain because only through their agreement will their family members eventually get out. amy: austin ramzy, can you talk about the impact of the worst labor on the global supply chain and the participation by stores, uniclo and walmart? about 80%g produces to 85% of china's cotton.

china is, of course, a huge clothing manufacturer. and the government has been trying to increase the amount of clothing and textile production thesejiang, so some of labor programs involve clothing and textile factories and are tied with the production of cotton in xinjiang. anduniclo have advertised xinjiang cotton. respond to us but they said last year they worked very hard to ensure there is no forced labor in their supply chain. they do not work with partners in xinjiang. that thehort answer is significance of china production of all things and the significance of xinjiang in

terms of clothing and textile production means that it is very risky for companies that have any production connected with xinjiang, and requires really close investigation of their supply chains. nermeen: i i would like to brirg in nury y turkel uighur-american , attorney and board chair at the uighur human rights project. could you respond to the significance of this expose? callese are what lawyers in evidence. this is not a speculation. d done byt a report third-party or ngo. this is hard evidence that comes straightht out from m the chinee government's own archives. what we have today is in the past 2.5 years, we have been relying on open-source bedsmation on construction

in the future expansion of the camps as well as the personal witness accounts, survivor a closeseo come up with to reality figure. but now we have evidence. this evidence is so significant and revealing, several things comes to mind. one, this is not a local government officials trying to impress the central government and formulate these policies. this has come, apparently, directly from the chinese communist party general secretary xi jinping. and his local interested officials. so we have been saying -- amy: we h have five seconds. >> these documents have confirmed whatat we have beeeen telling g the world in the last 2.5 years, but it is incumbent

upon the government officials, lawmakers, judges, and prosecutors to look into this to this constitutes -- amy: we're going to do part two. thank you to nury turkel

trudeau says evidence indicates an iranian missile shot down the ukrainian passengeret. >> we have intelligence from multiple sources, including or allies and our own intelligenc