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March 21, 2011 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
21:40
1874 Dr Ivan Eland Interviewed on Freedomain Radio About Libya

From the Independent Institute - Dr Eland discusses the latest US foreign policy disaster.

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Well, thanks so much for taking the time, Stefan Molyne from Freedom Main Radio.
I have on the line Ivan Elland from the Independent Institute, and I thought that your article was excellent, that you had recently published about the quagmire, the imperial quagmire.
I would say that I'm fairly cynical about governments, but even I was a little bit surprised at the speed And enthusiasm at which the U.S. appears to be throwing itself down a third bottomless hole in the Middle East.
I wonder if you could share some of your thoughts about that.
Well, I think, you know, this is, I think Barack Obama was sort of dragged into this because certainly his military and defense secretaries weren't even enthusiastic about doing a no-fly zone in the first place.
And of course, now we're at a no-fly zone plus.
And the president sort of jumped into this And, of course, that was necessary to get everybody on board, I guess.
But really, he was dragged, I think, by the Europeans.
So the problem is, you know, the U.S. already has two quagmires going, so why not start another one?
You know, it's like there's a special, buy two wars, you know, get another for half price.
So, unfortunately, we can't afford even the half price in the United States because we have...
A huge yearly budget deficit and a $14 trillion national debt.
And I think we're sort of overextended as a superpower.
And much of the foreign policy elite, both Republican, neoconservative, and the Wilsonian left, like John Kerry, etc., have been dragging the president into it.
And he really needed to stand up for them because he's going to get himself into a quagmire in Libya also, I think.
Well, it seems that the no-fly zone is being touted as some low-risk, low-effort, low-expenditure situation, but if memory serves me correct, there was about 12 years of no-fly zones over northern and southern Iraq before the invasion of 2003, so it's hard to argue, I think, that it's a low-resource investment.
Right. I mean, John Kerry, he was trying to uh...
portray it as that not even a military operation and all the military people were shaking their heads that it certainly seemed like a military operation because the first thing you have to do is attack the enemy air defenses, runways, radars, command and control sites, etc.
So it is a war and we call it a no-fly zone.
I think the public, the politicians do that and the bureaucrats do that too They try every word but war, because that's what it is.
It's a limited war.
But the problem is it may not remain limited.
In addition to the cost that you mentioned, and they're substantial, the cruise missiles alone cost a million dollars each that they're using.
But the bigger problem, I think, than even the cost, What if it doesn't work?
Well, that's what happened with Saddam Hussein.
The no-fly zone wasn't very successful, and the accompanying sanctions started to unravel.
So then there's pressure, well, that didn't work, and we've demonized this guy, so that means we can't negotiate with him, which we've already done with Qaddafi starting back in the Reagan administration.
There's pressure. Well, certainly you can't negotiate with this tyrant.
You have to take him out. Well, the no-fly zone didn't work, so now what do we do?
Well, of course, we have to escalate.
Even if it just remains a no-fly zone, as you point out, it could be years and years and years as it was in Iraq, but even that may not be the tip of the iceberg if they have to do more to get rid of him.
Right, right. I thought that you made some excellent points about the unknown consequences of this kind of action.
Of course, the view from the Muslim world, particularly the radical elements, is going to be, oh, you know, now it's three.
I think we're beginning to sniff a pattern.
And also the degree to which this U.S. actions, or I guess the U.S. and European actions, might lead other resistance areas within the Middle East to believe that if they start something, that the West will jump in, thus further destabilizing the region.
Right, and if those rebellions can portray themselves as a democratic movement, then there's pressure for the U.S. to do something.
And, you know, we don't even really know if this is a democratic movement.
They're certainly anti-Qaddafi, but the eastern region of Libya, where most of these people are, had the highest recruiting rates for al-Qaeda in the world, and there's a significant Islamist presence there.
So we really don't know who we're helping, and that's very alarming after the episode where we helped The Mujahideen against the Soviet Union, and it later came back to bite the United States on 9-11, and I think the same thing could happen.
It's crazy to support people that you don't know that might be worse than Gaddafi.
At least Gaddafi had made his peace with the West, had stopped his nuclear program, and was mending relations with the West.
But this old demonization during the Reagan administration has come back, and certainly Qaddafi has a poor human rights record, but it's really not much worse than the Saudis or even the Israelis in the occupied territories, according to Freedom House.
So the fact that we're sticking up for people who might be killed, I suppose that's laudable, but we haven't done that where many more people have been killed in Rwanda.
The Congo, the Sudan, etc.
So the reason that we're doing it here, I think, is because Qaddafi has been so demonized, and also there's an oil factor in the background there as well.
Yeah, and I think that any rebellious forces in the Middle East are going to be pretty wise to the ways of the degree to which magic words like democracy and self-determination are going to trigger a moral response in the West.
So even if they have no intentions, those are certainly the words, the magic words that's going to open up the U.S. war chest.
Right. And once you start these things going, or if you aid them after they're At the start, as in this case, you don't know where it's going to end up.
Will it be a liberal democracy?
Many of these countries, including Tunisia and Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, they have only limited, if any, experience with democracy, and some of the countries don't have any experience at all.
So it takes a political culture.
It's not impossible for those countries to become democracies, but any country really has to have it bubble up from below rather than uh...
being imposed using military power and it's not clear that these revolutions are democratic they seem to be on the surface but as we saw with the Bolshevik revolution revolutions can be taken over by a small armed minority that are more radical and more ruthless than other people so you don't know when even a democratic appearing revolution will end up that way so I think we have to be very careful we've had so many examples of US intervention that have backfired When we overthrew the democratically elected leader in Iran back in 1953 and all the way up to the present,
you know, helping Bin Laden and that sort of thing, accidentally creating a big threat to the U.S. homeland.
So I think with all these backfires of intervention, it's really, you have to be very careful.
I think the Iraq War, of course, was a case in point of where we unleashed a can of worms by popping off a dictatorship in a tribal society.
And Libya is as much tribal as Iraq is, and so you don't know whether there's going to be a big...
Well, there already is a civil war, but the civil war may be continuous, and it really had nothing to do with Qaddafi as the tribes go after each other, even if Qaddafi is eliminated.
Yeah, and I mean, my argument would be that it takes at least 100 if not more years of intellectual development, which culminates in a political movement that a sort of mad corner driven rage against the existing oligarchy is not what creates at least not what that's not what happened in the which culminates in a political movement that a sort of mad From the West, from the Reformation onwards, you had a slow and steady progression of philosophical development that culminated in modern Western societies.
It wasn't like some space aliens went and blasted off the top of the feudal system and then we magically got democracy.
It is a much slower and more difficult development, I think.
Yes, I think you have to have a political culture that bubbles up gradually over time, as you're pointing out, rather than have some, you know, just revolution throw out a dictator.
I don't think we have that in much of the Arab world at this time.
That doesn't mean that it can't occur there, but I think we have to be a little skeptical that a lot of these revolutions are going to end up like the neocons saying that we're going to Change the entire face of the Middle East by reforming and instituting democracy.
I just think that's unworkable.
Yeah, no, everybody is in such a hurry to free the world that we, I think, end up going around in smaller and smaller circles.
Well, it's almost a religious, it's a continuation of the U.S. missionary inclination that started really before Wardrow Wilson, but he's really the one that institutionalized it in our foreign policy.
Instead of spreading Christianity, we have this holy war now to spread democracy.
We want everyone to be like us.
Previously it was religion, and now it's the political religion of democracy.
Not everyone's ready for it, and not even everyone wants it.
Our politicians like to say, well, this is a universal It's a set of beliefs, and it's really not.
Now, I think it is a great system, but you have to let people come to that on their own, as we've been saying, rather than try to help it along.
Because when you try to help it along, I think you sort of discredit it because outside powers are coming in and they're perceived as imposing it in one way or another.
I wonder if you could share any thoughts you have, because one thing I'm quite confused about, I mean, you can look at the naked economic interest and the fact that a lot of U.S. firms have pretty very close ties with the Gaddafi regime economically and through oil contracts and so on.
But it seems like I don't know what the purpose is of this no-fly zone.
I mean, he still has such overwhelming ground superiority that I don't know how the no-fly zone is going to fundamentally change anything.
Well, I think you're making an error by assuming that it's rational.
You know, governments, they have to do something because the pressure has been brought against them or whatever.
But it's quite interesting that Italy, which is the former colonial power, is much less enthusiastic about doing this in France.
France seems to want to lead the world and is taking the lead and that sort of thing, and usually they're the fly in the ointment, but Sarkozy is a more aggressive leader And I think the United States is sort of one of the reluctant parties on this end.
But the problem that you have is that it makes no sense rationally because the no-fly zone, as you point out, doesn't stop the tanks.
And also, what's even more ridiculous about it is The air crews have been told, you only drop bombs if they're attacking civilians, not if Qaddafi's forces are attacking the opposition.
And also, the official line is that we're not trying to overthrow them with the military stuff.
We would like them out, but we have sanctions and diplomatic means and stuff that we can get rid of them, which is absurd, right?
Because the military is a stronger response than a diplomatic or an economic sanctions type of way to get them out.
So if you're going to do military strikes, you might as well go all the way.
But of course, that opens another can of worms of occupation and that sort of thing.
And after Iraq, of course, the U.S. is very hesitant to do that.
So you have this situation where all these countries seem to have to do something about this.
But nobody really wants to do what would be necessary to actually do something complete about it.
They want to just do something that, you know, is a half a loaf, it's half-baked.
And I don't see any mass slaughter by Gaddafi on the order of, you know, Sabrinika or...
Some of these other places, Sudan, Darfur, etc.
Now, certainly he's killed civilians, but I don't think it's been determined if this is on a mass scale, and it doesn't seem to be on a mass scale like these other places.
So I'm wondering the same thing you are.
The thing doesn't make any logical sense, but I'm not sure that we can expect a bunch of governments to my ecological sense because the policy is being made in all these capitals and so it's what everybody agrees to rather than what should be done and of course Obama has a grander scheme than the UN and he wants Qaddafi to withdraw from some of these cities that the opposition had before which is of course still only half a loaf It makes no sense to stop there.
And so certainly I'm not advocating increasing the war aims because I don't think they should have done this in the first place.
But I'm just pointing out that the whole thing seems illogical if you want Qaddafi out, if that's your goal, because the rest of it is just sort of a half a loaf.
And Qaddafi could end up even winning with the no-fly zone above him or at minimum he can certainly just withdraw back into the cities that he has and the United States and the rest of the coalition is going to find it very difficult to ratchet up attacks when his forces are using the cities the population in the cities as shields and so he could exist you know he can still rule part of Libya doing that so even with the no-fly zone above Saddam Hussein did that in Iraq And so then he becomes,
you know, embittered, and he may sponsor terrorism in the West, or certainly a pressural mount to get rid of him, as it did with Saddam.
So 10 years from now, we may be talking about another ground war in an Arab country.
So this whole, once you get the camel's nose under the tent, pretty soon you have the whole camel under the tent.
And I think this is the camel's No, it's under the tent for a future intervention because it doesn't seem like they're going to do it now, but once the West gets involved in this, then we're responsible for any development that happens in Libya.
For example, if he did start killing his population when the no-fly zone is in effect.
It also seems surprising to me, and I confess to having put a close peg on my nose and watched some of the mainstream media reporting of this, there doesn't seem to be any particular consternation over a president waving his hand and launching $100 million worth of missiles into a country that has no strategic or significant economic interests, where the US has no significant strategic interests, which would seem to me to be against the War Powers Act of 1973.
Of course, he should consult Congress before declaring war, which of course he hasn't done.
But there doesn't seem to be any consternation about the lack of procedure in this.
It's just like, well, he wakes up, he gets a phone call from Hillary Clinton, he pushes a button, and all the missiles go off.
You know, the U.S. is supposed to have some vestigial checks and balances, and those don't seem to be referenced at all in anybody's reporting of this.
Right, and there are a few people on the left, like Dennis Kucinigen on the right, that are saying something about the lack of declaration of war, Ron Paul, etc.
You're absolutely right.
Now, he has followed the letter of the War Powers Resolution so far, but to me the War Powers Resolution is also unconstitutional because it allows the president to commit forces before the Congress declares war.
We are fighting a war.
We don't call anything a war anymore, but we are fighting a war against Libya right now, and therefore the Congress should have approved it under the U.S. Constitution.
But we haven't really done that since 1942.
So... It's really, and it's very worrisome because the founders of America founded the country because they didn't like the idea that the English king and other European kings would take their countries to war and all the blood and treasure would be ripped from the people to pay for these wars that were just, you know, over really...
So, of course, America had built in all these checks and balances which have eroded over time and now the president maintains that he can just go to war without consulting Congress at all and that's simply unconstitutional.
Whether the courts say it or not, it contravenes the written constitution under which America is supposed to be operating and under which America was created.
I'd like to, just before we end, and thanks so much for your time, I'd like to lead you down the highly dangerous slippery slope of prognostication.
And with all the caveats in the world, I mean, I'll go on record as saying that I simply can't believe this is going to escalate into anything permanent.
The US fiscal house is just so shaky that I just can't imagine.
Of course, Qaddafi has already begun to offer contracts To China, to Russia and to India in return for their opposition to this military escalation.
I just can't believe it.
I can't believe that. I never thought they were going to attack Iran.
I never thought there was going to be another war until there was some change in the fiscal picture for the U.S. But things are so Desperate and on the edge as far as U.S. deficits and debt goes, I don't think it's going to escalate much beyond, I think there's going to be a backing down, but I was wondering if you could just throw a few of your thoughts in, again with all the caveats that nobody can predict anything, but where you think it's going to head?
Yes, and I think Qaddafi is a very smooth operator, as you point out, and not only is he trying to buy the other countries in the UN, particularly the Security Council people, to get on his side, He also realizes that Obama is reluctant to do this, and so he realizes that we provide all the heavy lifting, the initial strikes, the AWACS. We're going to be in the background, even during this no-fly zone when they turn it over to other countries.
But he realizes that the U.S. is reluctant to do this because of our fiscal situation and because we have two other wars going on.
And so, therefore, that gives him some cards to play.
If he can ride out the He can either finish off the opposition and then just run his country with the no-fly zone above him.
What does he care? He doesn't need to put up his air force.
He's still in power, right?
Now, suppose he doesn't rub out the opposition.
He can at least retreat back to the cities that he controls and rule quite nicely because they're not going to be, even if they bomb occasionally, he's still in power.
So I think his strategy will be to ride out this uh...
initial attack and the U.S. is trying to get rid of this like a hot potato but unfortunately its allies I don't think are going to let it get off you know let them get off once they got the U.S. in there now the U.S. has a stake in this and everyone's looking to the U.S. but I think what's going to happen is Qaddafi will probably survive and the no-fly event will still exist and so we may have a military stalemate in the end and then it will just exist until The West is pressured in the future to alter the stalemate.
Certainly, I don't know exactly what's going to happen, but that would be my prediction, because I don't think the no-fly zone is certainly going to get rid of Gaddafi.
And he doesn't seem to be shaking in his boots.
His forces are still wailing away on the opposition.
I think he thinks he can ride it out, and he's probably right.
He may be kind of nutty, but he's also very shrewd.
Well, you don't stay in power for 40-plus years in that region without having a few tricks up your however strangely shaped sleeve you're wearing.
He definitely does seem to have something.
Right, and he's also very ruthless, and of course, that helps him, too, because it doesn't help anybody else, of course, but it helps him because he's willing to do what other Arab rulers were unwilling to do, like the Egyptian military.
Well, I really, really appreciate your time.
It's very timely to get this kind of information out there.
I will put a link to your article in the audio and video.
And thanks again, Dr. Eland.
I really do appreciate your time. Thank you.
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