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Dec. 11, 2024 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
28:30
Post-'Liberation' Syria Looks A Lot Like Post-'Liberation' Libya

Just as in Libya (and Iraq), the "liberation" of Syria from the rule of Assad has unleashed mass murder and mayhem. Is this a regime-change bug...or a feature? Also today: Neocons for the win?

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Sharia Law's Spread in Syria 00:10:15
Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning in to the Liberty Report with us today with Daniel McAdams, our co-host.
Daniel, good to see you this morning.
Good morning, Dr. Paul.
How are you this morning?
Very good.
We still have a problem over there.
I think it's in Syria right now.
I think that's the one we're working on.
But we don't have to worry about running out of things to talk about because I'm sure there's some mischief going on in other places that ought to get our attention because America is probably involved.
Our CIA is probably involved.
The taxpayers in this country are involved.
But anyway, we've concentrated this weekend and this past week on Syria.
And things are changing there.
We have sent out a couple warnings on what we should be cautious about.
And it's a mess right now.
But some of the concerns we have, I think, are coming true.
And that is the chaos that's breaking out.
Because quite frankly, you know, there's a lot of groups involved.
And we can't say, well, except for America, we stay out of the center of internal affairs.
No, we're involved.
Russia's involved.
And every country around Syria and Israel, of course, is involved.
So it's a lot of sorting out to do.
But unfortunately, you know, it's not going to be simple.
And I think the best we can do is try to sort this out, but also advocating how we can prevent so much of this, because even though, you know, we don't have our troops in there, we just have CIA and other things.
But we're always involved in money and personnel and strategy.
And, you know, Syria just didn't pop up this weekend.
I mean, Syria's been around a long time.
And matter of fact, we have a little bit of oil interests over there that we've sort of protected for, you know, in case we have an emergency.
So it's a mess, but it's panning out.
But it looks like some of the groups that were supposed to have, you know, reformed and they were going to be better stewards of what's going on in Syria.
All of a sudden, there's a lot more violence going on over there.
And there's going to be no easy solution on that.
And Daniel, I'm sure our viewers are anxious to hear your take on this.
Well, I mean, I think it's the most predictable thing on earth.
And, you know, we've tried to not say too much about Syria for these past few days because we weren't sure necessarily how things would play out, but we could have guessed.
You know, remember the jubilation, Dr. Paul, when the statue of Saddam was toppled and President George W. Bush said, mission accomplished.
We did it.
We won.
It's over.
Well, we know what happened afterward, which is mass murder, killing, slaughter, and chaos.
The same thing when they knocked Gaddafi in the, well, when they knifed Gaddafi, remember, Hillary Clinton was thrilled.
She said, we came, we saw he died.
And what really died actually is the entire country.
And the country hasn't recovered.
Libya hasn't recovered.
Iraq hasn't recovered.
And now the same is happening in Syria.
And it's very predictable.
We toppled a tyrant.
And what comes afterward is far worse.
Now, go to this first article.
This is what we're talking about.
This is a piece picked up by Zero Heads.
It was originally in the cradle, which is a good publication to read.
Extremist groups carry out revenge, sectarian killings in HTS-controlled Syria.
And I've actually had the misfortune of watching a few of these videos over the past couple of days.
And it's an absolute horror show.
These terrorists are rampaging through the country and they're just literally slaughtering anyone who is not in their group.
If you go to the next clip, this is from the article.
Al-Mayeddin reports that on 10 December, a video circulating on social media shows armed militants from Hayat Taril al-Sham, the al-Qaeda offshoot that took control of Damascus on Saturday, carrying out field executions of unarmed men in the village of Al-Rabiyah in the countryside of the Takia.
The militants referred to the men as Shabita, a derogatory term used to describe pro-government Syrian soldiers and civilians.
Unfortunately, you know, Dr. Paul, there's these Syrian soldiers, they dropped their weapons.
They took off their uniforms.
They thought by surrendering they would somehow avoid the fate, but it's not worked out that way.
In fact, they have found themselves slaughtered as well.
And now the Syria Observatory for Human Rights reported on Tuesday, this is from the article, according to its sources, the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army.
So this is another faction vying for power.
Again, that reminds you of Libya, carried out executions and also assaulted properties of nearly 30,000 Kurdish families in Malmbij City, in the Nohara and other neighborhood.
SNA militants burned houses of civilians, stole their property, and executed at least these three people, including a woman, the Syrian Observatory has written.
So, Dr. Paul, it's absolute mayhem unleashed on the streets.
That's right.
And keeping everything straight is a job.
Now, HTS, I understand, it used to be associated with Al-Qaeda and they broke off, but they were going to be reformed.
They were going to be better.
But it looks like, and I think you personally did some warning, and we talked about this before, that watch out.
You know, their background isn't so good.
Their reputation isn't so good.
But lo and behold, it didn't take them long to show that they remember what they learned when they were called al-Qaeda.
But it just, there's so many factions.
There's so lack of organization.
And sometimes I think people wanted to believe that HTS would be better than they used to be when they were called Al-Qaeda.
But the whole thing is, is some people, you know, in this process, you know, Assad has been around a long time and he has committed a lot of violations.
There's been a problem.
But if you care, if you compare that to some of the things going on right now, you'd say, well, maybe there was more order then.
That's hardly an excuse for endorsing any kind of any type of authoritarianism.
But it's when you get, when you have mob rule, and I think it's safe to say that that's happening.
There's probably no rule at all is what's happening over there right now.
But there's a lot of people interested.
Everybody from the United States to Russia, Israel, the whole works, people are interested because, you know, of the stirrings around, you know, Eastern Europe, Ukraine is still a mess.
And the last thing is, is we need to get, we shouldn't be getting involved.
Now, Trump has made some decent statements on this, but I still have a little reservation about some of the people around him because they're not exactly people looking for a constitutional foreign policy.
Yeah, well, you know, there's a kind of a meme going around on X. You know, there was a TV show.
I never watched it called Extreme Makeover.
I guess they fix people up and make them look better.
But this one, they put out a meme called Extremist Makeover, where they made this fellow who is Al-Qaeda.
I mean, HTS is Al-Qaeda.
They just underwent an extremist makeover.
So he changed his clothes.
He cut his beard a little bit.
He took the thing off his head.
So that's exactly what's happened.
Is whitewashed.
And I have actually a clip about that later.
I do want to thank Daniel Hamill for chipping in $10 to the show.
But you know, Dr. Paul, the interesting thing is, I'm sure you remember this, especially right after 9-11.
A lot of the neocons and Warhawks in Washington, D.C. were screaming about Sharia law.
We have to immediately occupy all of the Middle East because Sharia law is coming.
It's coming to the U.S.
The Muslims are going to have Sharia law.
What's interesting is these very same neocons are cheering on the regime change in Syria.
They're cheering it on.
And in fact, if we can put that next clip up, this is kind of interesting.
The same neocons who screamed about Sharia law.
Go to the next one, actually.
This is the new Minister of Justice, Shadi Al-Wasi, and he has just announced that he will rule, and you can see it from the bottom.
He will rule according to Sharia law.
So Sharia law has come to Syria now, thanks to the same neocons who are screaming about it and raising money to block Sharia law.
And I do want to put on a short video.
Now, I will warn our viewers, this can be disturbing, but this will give you a sense of what kind of, as you said, Dr. Paul, mob rule is in the streets.
This is going on throughout Syria.
Put on just 10 seconds of that video.
Yes, so they're dragging a man through the streets, and I think that's being replicated throughout the country right now as we speak.
Particularly, Christians and Alawite minorities are subject to this kind of treatment right now in Syria.
So it is an absolute humanitarian nightmare, unleashed, as you say, by Turkey, by the U.S., by Israel, by any of those who supported this quote-unquote liberation.
You know, if you bring up the subject of things might not have been as bad, you know, under Assad, they immediately find some things to say that would be negative.
He certainly wasn't a perfect libertarian.
But when you think about it and you want to compare, say, the treatment of Christians and minority viewpoints, Assad put up with that and treated much better than what's going on now.
Necons Win The Transition 00:18:06
I mean, if people who are surrendering, putting their hands up are getting murdered.
And you really, you know, it's going to go on because it's going to be very hard to sort out who's doing what.
But you know why I see that as a danger?
It's going to invite somebody else to march in because there's weakness there and pick up some of the some of the loot and the property.
And it might be, you know, chaos and we're responsible.
We're the peacekeepers and we're the one that has all the money.
That will be that, not that I think we're not involved now, but our involvement may get much better because I cannot believe that this is going to be resolved in a week or two.
And I cannot believe that there won't be some emergency appropriation that will have to be there.
And if nobody witnesses the appropriation, it may be delivered in a way that the people don't know exactly what's going on because our government's been capable of doing that.
Absolutely.
I want to shout out to Render Caesar, who made a donation to us as we talk.
Let's see if we can skip ahead that next clip in the interest of expediency and go to the one with Scott Horton if we can.
Our good friend Scott Horton, by the way, here's an announcement.
Scott will be with us tomorrow on the show to talk about his new book, Provoked.
We're looking forward to that, Dr. Paul, aren't we?
That's right.
That's going to be great.
Well, if you have that up, so Scott made a good point.
He said, now this, he put up an article from July of 2017.
This is Trump was just getting in power, right?
And this is amid Dr. Paul the Battrop is, this is the Russia gate.
This is all the nonsense that he's taking his, he's taking his cues from Russia.
He's a servant of Putin.
Here's the Washington Post trying to undermine him.
Trump ends covert CIA program to arm anti-Assad rebels in Syria, a move sought by Moscow.
And Scott earlier today commented on it.
Remember last time?
Even though the USA had been back at war with ISIS, Al-Qaeda, since the summer of 2014, support for al-Qaeda in Syria continued until the summer of 2017, at which point the Washington Post accused Trump of treason for not supporting funding al-Qaeda or for stopping the funding of al-Qaeda.
So, and this does make, I read this tweet and it reminded me of this, Dr. Paul.
It does kind of make me scratch my head because he ended a treasured program by the CIA, which is to arm al-Qaeda in Syria.
I wonder if that turned the CIA against him and responsible for some of the things they did against him throughout his presidency.
That's probably true, but my one thought that crossed my mind is maybe the neocons and others, maybe they didn't realize that Trump had actually won that election with president.
So they didn't get around to it.
Maybe that, well, the downside would, but maybe that galvanized them to make sure that they didn't lose control of what's going on in this country.
The same thing is, is we still have that concern because there's a lot of shifting going on, you know, within our own government.
And, you know, when they put up all the pictures the other day of all the new people going into the administration, I mean, how many people do we need to run this country?
You know, if everybody was responsible for their own lives, we wouldn't have to have it so complex.
But then when the law and order breaks down and so many other countries are involved with hatreds, you know, intermingle, you end up with, you know, the Middle East problems that we have and what's going on in Syria.
So, you know, it's something that, you know, it's very frustrating.
I think we understand what would be better off, but the only thing that we really have proper moral authority is what we should have some say in what our government's doing.
It's our money, our time, our liberties.
And therefore, I think it's so important that the people express themselves, but, you know, they have enough to worry about.
Some of them are worrying about where their next meal is coming from or what's going to happen at the next football game.
And they're not really interested in what's going on.
But that is what's necessary.
When the people wake up, they do have an effect on government.
And I'm still hoping that this last election is going to see some positive things in our government.
At least that's what we'll be working for.
Absolutely.
You know, one of the things that's disturbing, but not surprising, I guess, especially if you follow foreign policy, is the same thing is being done for Jolani.
We talked about it before, his extremist makeover.
That's exactly what the U.S. did to bin Laden in the 90s.
Now, if you go to that next clip, this is from S.L. Canthon.
And this is a very important, I think this is probably the most important point to make.
What the U.S. did to bin Laden is now being done to Al-Jalani.
Al-Qaeda is being whitewashed once again by the U.S. Empire.
And you go to that next clip and you'll see how shocking it is.
On the top, it's how Jolani, how a Syrian rebel went from an American jail to seizing Aleppo.
He looks like a great freedom fighter, which if you remember, this is an article in the 90s in the Independent below it, praising bin Laden, anti-Soviet warrior, puts his army on the road to peace.
This is just a couple of years before bin Laden did 9-11.
So the lesson here, Dr. Paul, which they have repeated, is if you back extremists, if you back terrorists because they're going against people you don't like.
It's a thing called blowback.
I think I remember you talking about that, Dr. Paul, if I'm not mistaken.
If you back terrorists, they will come at you.
And that's exactly what's happening.
The same thing, whitewashing these people, and it's going to be blowback.
And it's going to be felt in Europe and elsewhere.
These people are unleashed.
Yeah.
And I remember I didn't want to make it complicated.
I says, they're over here because we're over there.
And it's probably not a whole lot more complicated than that.
But, you know, we're talking about what's going on here.
But there's an article about how the neocons seem to be a lot stronger in the upcoming new administration.
So we're hoping that isn't true.
And we're, you know, encouraging others who are not neocons.
But this recent article said that if you dig into this, the American people have to wake up.
But I also think that there's a possibility that the people have already awakened, but we have to keep them alert because just because we may have won the election on those issues of less warmongering and all these other things, it remains to be seen.
Because once this government gets rolling and you see the size and the scope, I mean, how are you going to manage your debt?
How are you going to manage $36 trillion worth of debt?
If we don't do anything, it's just going to continue to expose.
So it's sort of a monster and a necessity.
So I think the article we're talking about, how the neocons won the transition, this is sort of emphatic that they have won the transition.
And yet I say, well, Trump has not yet been sworn in.
And he has made some decent statements, especially in the campaign that have encouraged a lot of people that we want some serious changes in our foreign policy as well.
Yeah, absolutely.
Before we go on, I want to thank Spartan American Patriot who chipped in $50 for our program today.
We definitely appreciate that.
And now, if we can skip over to that article, it's from the American Conservative, featured on anti-war.com and written by James Cardin, who is someone I actually really, there's very few foreign policy writers I respect.
I respect James Carden a lot.
I think he's an extremely insightful person.
I'd love to meet him someday.
But he has an article, How the Neocons Won the Transition.
And it's an important article because it doesn't trash Trump.
It doesn't say that he's a bad guy.
It just says that what happened during the transition is that neocons, they claim their right to name everyone.
And if we could put on that next clip, this is the opening.
And I think I've highlighted, and it's funny, Dr. Paul, when we were talking about this article before the show, this same sentence, this same phrase was embedded in both of our minds.
Now, here's how Cardin starts it.
One of the least competent administrations in recent American history is now currently giving way to one of the least impressive presidential transitions.
It's hardly a stretch to observe that the Trump transition, co-chaired by Howard Lutnik and Linda McMahon, seems to have set for itself the goal of ensuring that the incoming president will receive the narrowest range of policy alternatives possible.
That is a critical thing.
And he points out, and we'll go into it a little bit more, but by the people he's named, they are all neocons who would be very much approved by Liz Cheney and Bill Crystal, ironically, two people who hate Trump's guts.
But the danger here, Dr. Paul, and I'm sure you agree, is that when Trump goes to have a briefing, he's only going to have people who agree with each other and agree with Liz Cheney and agree with the late neocons who had been controlling things.
That's a real danger.
No, and that will remain a problem because we don't know how this thing is going to work out.
But I just see some real danger signs and that more and more people, I'd like to see more people read this article.
And if they can want to challenge it, challenge it.
But just the people, generally speaking, if you find the people and the names in your record, just like we just talked about, who were the leaders with Al-Qaeda?
Oh, yeah, they've changed.
They've been reformed.
Yeah, well, has the reform that the people voted for just a month ago, is it in place?
Is it coming and working that way?
Well, that remains to be seen.
But I think people should be very alert to what is happening.
And it's not going to be automatic because there's a disconnect between what we want to hear, what we do hear, and the positiveness of what came out about, you know, one of the best things I think of the election was the rejection of the Department of Justice.
I mean, the Department of Injustice.
That has been such a sham.
And that, I think, is great.
And I think that's going to be ongoing.
I just hope they don't mess that up too.
But it just seems like neocons like war more than they like to deal with civil liberties here at home and try to protect us from the intrusion there.
Yeah.
And then Cordon went on in the article to talk about how it was disappointing that some of the people, including Donald Trump's own son, who does definitely show some realist and restraining tendencies, I would say very strongly, was not able to have more of an influence in the transition team.
Now, if you go to the next one, here's the article.
Here's the section I was talking about, where it says Trump's campaign rhetoric led many to believe his foreign policy realists, that foreign policy realists and restrainers might have a shot at some of the top national security and diplomatic posts.
I thought that as well, Dr. Paul.
I thought for sure we would see some people we recognized up there as being part of our, at least our sort of general camp of people who are not in favor of too much war.
But he said, whatever the reason, Trump's nominees for Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, Deputy Secretary of Defense, National Security Advisor, UN Ambassador, this is important, as well as those heading the staffing and landing teams at those agencies, seem as though they were assembled with the goal of winning the approval of Bill Crystal and Liz Cheney.
And I would add two people that the American people completely reject.
So it's not just having Marco Rubio as Secretary of State.
It's having the people underneath who are staffing that agency also being neocons.
These guys are people who are nameless.
Nobody knows who they are, but they have enormous power.
And that's how the neocons kind of wean their way into an administration and take control of it.
Boy, that's for sure.
When I see this and the number of people, some are bigger names than others.
I'm always interested.
And I never get the answer because they hide it.
What's their true motivation?
Is it power?
Is it money?
Or is it everything?
Or is it just hatred toward a certain group or a person like Trump?
Hatred seems to drive them.
So to me, it seems like a mixture.
But it's pretty amazing, you know, how they gather together and how organized they can get to be able to prevent the truth from coming out about what is really happening now.
So I'm hopeful that more and more people will continue to pay attention.
They have, I think there was an awakening time with the COVID episode, and I hope that remains.
But it takes a tremendous effort to do it because the people have to be completely reminded about what they're defending.
Sometimes they're too often too superficial on our clichés, because when you think about it, well, you ought to get people to swear they'll uphold the Constitution.
Guess what?
Everybody swears to uphold the Constitution in Washington.
And if you press too hard, you might have somebody like I had in a conference or in a committee.
They say, we don't follow that part of the Constitution.
Why do you worry about things like that?
So that's the problem.
It's really this understanding that people do have to understand what we're defending.
And to me, it is the ideas of liberty that we have to concentrate on.
Absolutely.
I also want to shout out to Gardner Goldsmith from up there in New Hampshire for chipping in $20.
And I'm sorry if I missed anyone.
I'm trying to keep up with what we're saying and make sure that I thank everyone who's donated while we're live.
So if I missed you, I'm sorry.
I would just say on this topic for the end, Dr. Paul, is that this is not to condemn the president, but this is just to say you're not really giving yourself the full range of options that you should have, especially if you want to please the people close to you.
Now, if you, he's already named these guys.
I don't think he's going to unname them.
But I mean, one of the things we were kind of talking about before the show, Dr. Paul, is to, I think it was Reagan who did the red team and blue team, you know, where you would have a team assembled to challenge the dominant team in terms of policy perspectives.
Now, they wouldn't have an official role, but you could create a commission of foreign policy realists or even throw a couple of non-interventionists in there.
It wouldn't be a bad thing to at least come up with alternative plans, something like that.
It wouldn't have a lot of authority, but at least it would be able to give some alternative plans.
And, you know, I think Trump's the kind of guy who would look at it and say, these guys make more sense than you.
What are you going to say about it?
To which the neocons, they can never defend their positions because they're always wrong.
We're just seeing it today with our lead article.
The neocons are always wrong.
They think that getting rid of Assad was a master stroke.
Tony Blinken is patting himself on the back so hard that his arm is aching him.
Instead, instead of having a foreign policy coup, what they've done is they've destroyed the Middle East.
So this is what the neocons always do.
And I'll just conclude if we can put up that very last clip to remind everyone once again, I'm going to unfortunately have to keep doing this until we reach our goal, but we're about a third of the way to our goal of $100,000.
We have matching funds.
We would hate to lose the rest of that money, that's $59,000 that's just sitting there waiting for us to keep the show going next year.
You don't want to get to 11 o'clock and turn on the computer and look for the Liberty Report and having it gone.
That would be a tragedy, I think, if I may humbly say so.
And I thank everyone for their support.
There is a link there that you can give your tax deductible, by the way, and of your support.
Put some money in your pocket, take it away from Uncle Sam and help us keep the show alive.
Seems like a win-win to me, Dr. Paul.
Sounds good.
And I think your suggestion about maybe a little bit of cooperation and coming together of the various groups, because just as you were saying, I was thinking, well, you know, there are a lot of groups.
They don't necessarily have to be huge.
I think they have to just say, well, we don't like the neoconservative foreign policy and there will never be absolute universal agreement on every single thing.
But bring them together, you know, loose knit that could, you know, have a position.
You know, let's say they are moving troops someplace or spending more money to have each group say, yeah, that's not part of American foreign policy, even though.
what has been said along those lines is have already been said.
But to have a group people representing a large number, I think could be beneficial because that's exactly how the opposition works.
They put all the people who want more government and they put them together and all of a sudden said, oh, we have 51%.
You know, we will further the welfare state and the warfare state.
So I think that's a great idea.
But I do want to close by just once again, thanking our viewers for tuning in.
It's been great that we're getting the support, but it is a struggle, to tell you the truth.
It's a struggle to keep up with all this going on, but we appreciate your support.
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