GP:
Yes. And, I don't expect a "hot" war as
a result of deliberate US--or Israeli--policy.
I don't think the Israelis are going to attack Iran. As I've written in the past year, I think the
Netanyahu government has been bluffing--not just this year, but for many years,
about an attack on Iran--despite the fact that Israel has never had a genuine
military option that they believe could be effective against Iran. That's the assessment of political leaders and military and
Intelligence officials in Israel--and has been for years.
GSC: Because Iran
could strike back!
GP:
Because Iran could strike back. And the
military and Intelligence leadership of Israel does not believe that the
Iranians are irrational, nor that it's necessary to strike Iran; they do not
believe that Iran has made a decision to develop nuclear weapons.
GSC: You have just
been talking about reality and appearance.
And that gets into the issue of propaganda. " I want to ask you: How
difficult is it to discern the truth when covering issues that are the subject
of an endless barage of propaganda?
GP:
The answer is that it depends on the issue.
Particularly in the last few years, as related to the US-Iran policy, it
has been surprisingly easy to spot the lies that have been told by the United
States and Israel--once you establish the reality based on past history. I point to things like the US claim at the
end of the Bush administration that the Iranians nearly started a war in the
Straits of Hormuz in January, 2008. I
think I was the first journalist to write an expose showing how that was a
propaganda theme developed in the White House and the Department of Defense,
deliberately put forward and picked up by the news media to suggest that the US
and Iran were almost on the verge of a war when, in fact, nothing of the sort
had happened. And then there are plenty
of lies having to do with the Iranian nuclear program which are pretty easy to
spot once you've gotten into the details of this.
I
think the most difficult issues to discern the truth about are those that have
to do with what is happening between the President of the US and our military
leadership--or different factions within the US administration. In those situations it can be very difficult
to figure out what is really going on. Is
the President really trying to pursue a different policy from the military; or,
is the military forcing the President to adopt a more militarist solution on
Iraq or Afghanistan; or is the President really willing to go along, and, in
fact, more complicit than he would like the American public to believe he is? You can see the difficulties that arise
because of the interest of the White House in selling to the public one point
of view while, at the same time, leaking to the news media--or allowing it to be
reported--that the military point of view has some merit. And this was the situation we saw with Iran
and Afghanistan; and, I think I may have given Obama too much credit early on
for resistance to the military. Not
because he didn't understand that what they were proposing was unnecessary and
stupid, but because he is a weak leader and prone to basically going along with
the military because he thinks that's the best way to maintain his political
status--his credibility on national security.
GSC: Of course, you
get into this subject of internal conflicts within a nation's leadership in
your first-rate book, PERILS OF DOMINANCE. " Now" you've just called Obama a
weak leader, and that's going to provoke some people. Can you be specific?
GP: I think the main problem with Obama-as-leader
is that he has bought into some fundamental myths about military force and its
role in national security. He has bought
into that far more than is consistent with leadership in opposing what the CIA,
the Defense Department and the military want and need for their own
institutional interests. That's why you
get Obama making speeches in which he sounds like someone who is profoundly
influenced by American "exceptionalism."
The idea that the US has this mission in world history to be the
leader! So, I think that disarms him in
a way. A really strong leader is the
kind required to keep the US from doing what it did in Afghanistan--which was
to double-down on the Bush mistake of sending troops to Afghanistan and
occupying the country--instead of figuring out a way to get out of Afghanistan!
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