Al-CIA-Duh Takes Syria

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Richie Allen, a leading candidate for best host in international talk radio, has returned from his sabbatical refreshed and well-informed. (He must not have been on a news fast!) Below is a transcript of our conversation. -KB

Richie Allen: What can you glean from people locally (in Morocco) in terms of how they view cataclysmic geopolitical events like what we've seen in Syria in the last week or days? ...In light of what happened in the last week or so, the the fleeing of Bashar al-Assad to Russia, the taking of Damascus by a conglomerate of so-called rebels... What's the mood, Kevin, as far as you can ascertain in your own town there in Morocco?

Kevin Barrett: Well, Richie, I think a lot of people in the West don't really understand how people in the MENA region—that's Middle East North Africa region—see these things. And it's a little more complicated than the alternative media narrative versus the mainstream narrative, where the Axis of Resistance, for people like me, is the good guys, right? The folks resisting genocide are the good guys, and that would have included the Assad government in Syria. And all of the other forces tend to be more nefarious.

But basically, people here seem to be both absolutely fed up, appalled, and at their wit's end by this genocide of Gaza, which is the central issue affecting the whole global south. But they're not so much attached to the Axis of Resistance. There's been a certain amount of success, I think, with the propaganda campaign that's been designed to sort of contain Islamic Iran, and convince people in the so-called Sunni Muslim world that Iran and its Axis of Resistance are not all they're cracked up to be.

So for that reason, a lot of people in Morocco, even while they appreciated to some extent the way that Iran and its allies have been trying to stop the genocide—and certainly everybody here has been cheering for the Houthis as they shut down shipping in the Red Sea, and cheering for Hezbollah and mourning the loss of these great resistance leaders. But at the same time, there's a feeling that some of the the Axis of Resistance, particularly the Assad government, is not really capable of taking on the Zionists.

And so there's a propaganda talking point that's out there. I don't really think it's a strong, true talking point, but a lot of people here kind of believe it, which is that we need to get rid of Assad so we can get rid of the Zionists. "Assad didn't really do anything to stop the slow motion genocide of Palestine. He talks a good game, but he and his Iranian friends, they haven't really been very successful. And now that the majority population of Syria is back in the driver's seat, backed by Turkey, which wants to restore the Ottoman Empire, which of course used to run that part of the world with consent and was viewed as legitimate by the people there, that now we actually may be seeing down the line a force that can actually stop Zionism.

And so people here are actually kind of happy about whats happening in Syria. I'm not. I was cheering for the Axis of Resistance. I thought Bashar al-Assad was one of the very few decent human beings in a leadership position. But maybe he was too decent to be a powerful leader.

A number of journalists I've been hearing from in recent days—these would be Western mainstream journalists. So immediately the starting point is you've got to take what they say, with a large dose of salt. But a number of them are reflecting on their knowledge of Bashar al-Assad pre-2011 and shortly after 2011. And the picture one or two of these old hacks are painting is that this guy was a fairly weak guy.

Now, one or two of these journalists have even sounded like they've been inclined to give him a bit of a pass in terms of separating him from the Syrian army. There was always a large body of Syrians, not necessarily backed by the West, by the United States or by Israel, or not necessarily backed by Turkey, but just Syrians who hated Hafez al-Assad, his father, and hated the notion that the Assad dynasty was going to continue when Bashar al-Assad came back from the UK in the mid-noughties to take the throne.

I suppose the point I'm making is, could it be that he didn't really have any control over, or didn't have as much or enough control over his own military? Is that a fair question, and could it be legitimate? I'm thinking in terms of, we all know the Arab Spring and the National Endowment for Democracy, and we all know there was an awful lot of outside interference and stirring up tension in Tunisia, in Egypt, and then Syria. Of course, I know that. But there were always large, large numbers of people who were fed up with the status quo, with that way of living. You kind of get what I'm getting at here, that Assad was kind of lost in the middle of all of that, really, and didn't really have any real power. What do you think of that when you hear that?

Yeah, I think that's true. I think that's why he was targeted. They look for weaknesses, and that situation probably was not really sustainable.

The background is that for the centuries in which Syria was part of the Ottoman Empire, the upper class part of the population, and indeed the majority of the population, were Sunni Muslims. And then you had a whole bunch of other kinds of groups, Christians and Alawites and Shia people and all of these other groups that were marginalized, and tended to be in the mountains and were not as wealthy. So there was kind of a wealthy Sunni bourgeoisie that ruled the country and cooperated with the Ottomans. Then the French invaded after World War One and Ottoman rule was overthrown and the French took over. And the french put the Christians, and to some extent the Alawites and the other religious minorities, in charge, and demoted the the former elite. And that really rankled on those people who were demoted. Later when when the French withdrew, the rulers who were from the minority communities found a new way to legitimize themselves, which was to adopt the Ba'athist ideology of secular socialist Arab nationalism.

And that never really took hold. I think Baathist Arab nationalism and the different varieties of Arab nationalism have never actually become a thing. And people in this part of the world have thought of themselves as a whole lot of things, but "the Arab nation"—it has really been just intellectuals who dreamed that up.

Here in Morocco, hardly anybody really thinks of themselves as Arab. The people who grew up speaking Arabic technically might be called Arabs as opposed to Berbers or Amazirs who speak that language. But nobody thinks of themselves that way.

So how do they?

Well, here people think of themselves as Moroccans or Maghribis, that is the Western Islamic people, and mostly identify as Muslims—not that the Jews and Christians here would be any less Moroccan, but Islam is really the first kind of identification.

And so I think that's kind of what's going on is that the majority population of Syria is part of this group that was basically demoted and overthrown and knocked out of power by the French. And they've been wanting to get back ever since. And the Muslim Brotherhood is one of the groups that represents that and sees it in terms of trying to restore a particular kind of Sunni Islam.

And so those are the forces that are taking over. And is this good for the West and the Israelis? The West and the Israelis have been trying to do this for decades and they finally got it done. I think they're maybe going to rue the day that they did this. In Rise and Kill First, Ronan Bergman, the Israeli Mossad stenographer, talks about how the Israelis have repeatedly neutralized one threat only to create an even bigger threat. They neutralized the secular Palestinian resistance of the PLO, and then they got the religious resistance of Hamas and Hezbollah and the Axis of Resistance. And now that they've screwed that up, guess who's coming to town now? A new resistance. Hamas is totally cheering for this new leadership in Syria, which is, of course, dedicated to liberating Palestine. And it'll have the backing of the vast majority of the world's Muslims who identify as Sunni Muslims. That's like 85 plus percent of the world's Muslim population is gonna be far more engaged with being dedicated to avenging this genocide and liberating Palestine. So I think the Zionists are once again going to rue the day...they think that they won a battle, but it's going to be the biggest Pyrrhic victory in the history of warfare.

And you think Hamas is certainly excited by, is thrilled by this development. I'll tell you—and you know when I speak, I speak for myself and I'm not reflecting on anybody else's thoughts or opinions or anybody else's agenda. I, like yourself, followed the events of Syria and the Arab Spring over the last years. What I can see independently, and I can't verify everything. But videos emerging from Syria, from Damascus and the outskirts of Damascus in recent days, show these guys in the worst possible light, these liberators. I'm talking about the group known as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham HTS, which used to be an affiliate of al-Qaeda. Some of the atrocities being committed against Syrian army soldiers and people considered to be loyal to Assad, that I've seen on video in recent days, they're terrible, Kevin. I mean, it effectively looks like this is ISIS, what is happening. Now, have you seen some of these videos? Have you heard about them? And how should we react to them? And why would the Palestinians be happy about that kind of reality, where they're in Damascus now and they're brutally murdering and torturing anybody they can get their hands on who might have been loyal to Assad?

I actually haven't seen videos like that, Richie. Maybe I haven't been paying as close attention as maybe I should be. I haven't seen that, but it wouldn't surprise me if there are some of those kinds of recriminations going on. ّّWhether it's as brutal and widespread as the kinds of abuses committed by ISIS in Iraq, I don't know. I hope not. But I think there are a number of different groups in this so-called rebel coalition that's swept into power. And I doubt very much that they're all equally brutal. And how they stack up to the previous government, I don't know. There's so much propaganda being thrown around. But yeah, it's quite possible that some of these people and possibly the people in Hayat Tahrir Alshem are pretty brutal, crazy and, basically narrow minded. sort of like some of the same types of people that took over in Libya. And so you might end up with Syria as a sort of a failed state like Libya.

And Kevin, if I may just interject there, these were effectively funded, trained and armed by the intelligence agencies of Israel and the US, weren't they? And they were treated in many cases on battlefields. They were treated, patched up and returned to do their killing and torturing and videoing.

Yeah, a lot of these groups — and it's hard to keep track of them and to figure out which people among these kinds of groups are sincere, which ones are mercenaries, which ones are deluded and fanatical, and which ones actually know that they're fighting under a false flag. But it's certainly ironic that ISIS was created by the United States in a United States military prison camp. That's basically on the record. And Al-CIA-duh or Al-Qaeda was also largely created by the United States during the war in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union. And relations between the U.S. empire and its various minions in these groups have been ongoing. So, yeah, this whole narrative is that there are these scary, radical Muslim terrorists who do these terrible things like 9/11 and Charlie Hebdo and so on and so forth. But then when they overthrow governments that we want them to overthrow,like in Libya and Syria, with our help, then they're actually maybe sort of the good guys. But then again, now we have a good excuse to invade and occupy the country because we're scared of these scary, scary terrorists that we paid and we equipped and we sent there. The hypocrisy is off the scale.

You're listening to Kevin Barrett, academic researcher, broadcaster and writer. Go to Kevin Barrett dot Substack dot com. There's more than a few messages coming in with questions and points for you. One of the theories about the events of the last two weeks. One of the theories is that a few weeks ago Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky told the Times of London that he would be open to conceding territory in eastern Ukraine to Russia as a way of finding a solution to ending the war. And then we have a blitzkrieg type storming of Syria and Damascus by these rebels, and it's all over with very little bloodshed, and Assad is in Moscow. So one of the theories, I know you've heard this, is: Do you think a deal was struck between the West and Russia with Putin to say, look, stay out of what's going to happen in Syria now — Iran is occupied with Israel, Hezbollah is occupied with Israel, you're mired in Ukraine. Stay out of this. And your carrot, your reward will be you'll get the territory in Ukraine. What do you think of that?

Yeah, that's right. They basically traded Ukraine for Syria: Russia gets Ukraine and the Americans finally get Syria. But when I say the Americans, of course, what we mean is the Israeli project that was sketched out in the 1996 Clean Break document commissioned by Netanyahu. And that document laid out the plans to preemptively overthrow Arab governments that were seen as problematic for Israel, and thereby open a completely new chapter in the region, to "not just obliterate our problems, but completely transcend them." And that's the plan that was put into effect with the false flag attack on September 11th, which was done by Israel and its American stooges. The purpose was to put the Clean Break plan into action, overthrow seven countries in five years. And of course, Syria was on that list and Iran is the last and the biggest on that list. And they're still working on it.

So I think the Russians decided that sometimes the best way to teach a dog not to chase cars is to let him catch one. And I think the Russians said, look, these Americans are completely captured by the Israeli lobby. They let the Israelis blow up the World Trade Center and murder 3000 Americans and hijack their foreign policy. They caused the Americans to spend $8 trillion on totally counterproductive wars — counterproductive for the American empire, but very, very useful for greater Israel. And so the Russians said, look, these crazy Americans are dominated by lunatic Jewish oligarchs who have hijacked America and are wasting America's substance on behalf of greater Israel. That's harming the American empire. That's going to bring down the American empire. So let's let the Americans go ahead and have Syria, because that's what the Israelis want them to do. And let's let the Americans get bogged down there and get bogged down in all of these wars for Israel. And the Americans are going to continue to make these grossly irrational decisions and act against their own interests because they've been captured by a parasitical foreign entity, the state of Israel. And they're gonna bring their own empire down. And we, the Russians and the Chinese and so on, are going to build the multipolar world successfully because these lunatic Americans have allowed themselves to be driven into the ground by this gigantic parasitical tick that's sucking the blood out of the American empire.

What do you reckon to former U.S. Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, Paul Craig Roberts? Paul says that guys who believe that the United States is controlled by Tel Aviv or that Washington bows to Tel Aviv are wrong. It's the other way around. It's just meant to look like that. The state of Israel is the neocons' base in the Middle East, and it's the land, it's the state they use to push these plans. The Wesley Clark, as we talked about many times over the years, plans for these seven countries. Paul is adamant and he's no fan of Israel or Zionism. He reckons we've got it all wrong. Not we, because I don't necessarily agree with you or Paul, but he says, look, it's Washington controlling Israel, not the other way around, even though with all the money going into AIPAC, it might look that way... What do you think of what Paul says?

Well, I think he's wrong. Chomsky says the same thing. Caitlin Johnstone is saying the same kinds of things. I don't think they understand that the United States is not one coherent entity that's always going to act in one coherent imperial interest. There are ten United States foreign policies in each location around the world where the United States is trying to get things done. So who makes U.S. Central America policy? Well, maybe it's United Fruit, because the banana imports are the biggest economic interest there. So who makes American Middle East policy? Well, guess what? More than a third of the richest oligarchs in America are Jewish. All of those people, virtually all — if you can name me one anti-Zionist Jewish oligarch that would be great — but basically all of these Jewish oligarchs who, working together, have a lot of power in the United States, are loyal to Israel. And so for the same reason that the only people interested in Central America policy is United Fruit, so they totally run it, the people the most interested who have the money and power to run the policy towards the Middle East — it's the Jewish lobby. And James Petras has proven this in his books, including The Power of Israel in the United States. Walt and Mersheimer too have famously proven this. And the counterargument just doesn't hold water. The oil companies did not want these wars. They were against them. They want stable operations. The business community wants stable operations. They want the Americans to be friends with all the governments in the Middle East and all the people in the Middle East. But what we have now is that the region hates America because of Israel. And the leaders have to kowtow to America and to Israel, and the people hate it. And it creates huge problems for the United States. Ultimately, the United States is going to lose the region and the world because it's been hijacked by this gigantic Zionist leech that's sucking its lifeblood.

Yeah, I mean, there are two camps, right? So there's the everything comes down to the greater Israel project from the Nile to the Euphrates. And that's what it's all been about for a century or two centuries or more. And then there's, as you mentioned, Paul Craig Roberts and Caitlin Johnston and Chomsky and other Jewish intellectuals who just say, no, it's not the tail wagging the dog, it's the dog wagging the tail.

Kevin, thanks for that. It's eight minutes to the top of the hour. Let's talk about Gaza then. Bit of limbo. Now, there isn't limbo. If you're in Gaza, there's no limbo. It's genocide. It's terror. It's unimaginable horror and fear. But at the moment, you've got a guy leaving the White House and you've got a guy preparing to move in. The guy preparing to move in, I will concede — I don't need to concede anything, it's obvious — is 100% owned, controlled, lock, stock and barrel by the Zionist lobby. What does that mean, Kevin, for the possibility of an end to this genocide in Gaza? And breathing room for the Palestinian people to pick themselves up and start to rebuild their country. What does it mean, this Trump presidency, this second term of Trump? What will it mean, do you think, to what's happened and what will happen in Gaza in the future?

One would like to think that Trump sees himself as a deal maker and a pragmatist, and he wants everybody to like him because he stopped the wars. So he would like an end to this genocide and to get credit for it, but under terms that he could brag about being favorable to Israel.

But I don't think that's entirely likely because of the people that basically control Trump, like Miriam Adelson, the gangster widow who gave him $100 million, want the full ethnic cleansing of Palestine. The quid pro quo for that $100 million from Adelson was for Trump to rubber stamp the annexation of the West Bank. And obviously, the settlers and their representatives in Netanyahu's government, Smotrich and Ben-Gvir, are totally dedicated to, if not exterminating the entire population of Gaza, certainly exterminating enough of it so that they can take over North Gaza and build their real estate projects with the help of Jared Kushner.

Can you confirm something for me there? I know Adelson's widow gave him $100 million, which is an outrage. Is she on the record as saying that she is in favour of the annexation of the West Bank? Forgive my ignorance if she has said this. I did have a sabbatical for about seven weeks while a lot of this stuff was going on around the election. Is she on the record as saying she wants to see the West Bank basically annexed completely once and for all?

I'm not sure if she's on the record, Richie, but I'm pretty sure that it's universally accepted that she wants that. And it's been reported in the Israeli press and to some extent picked up by the American press that the quid pro quo for the hundred million dollars was Trump rubber stamping the annexation of the West Bank. So yes, she obviously wants that. She's on board with the extremist settler ultra genocidal faction in Israel. But whether that deal was made officially...I think it almost certainly was. I don't think that would have been reported in the Israeli press the way it was unless it were true. I don't know why anybody would have forged it. So, yeah, I think we can pretty much take that one to the bank.

Yeah, she's not giving him $100 million just because she likes the way he looks or she's enamoured of his domestic policy plans. I hear you, but I'd love to do a bit more digging into this particular woman. So really, it's wait and see. But I mean, Trump is an avowed Zionist, isn't he? He's enthralled to Zionist bankers. We know about Trump's history in business. We know where he got his money. We know when and where he was bailed out and by who. I don't mean to be pessimistic, but it doesn't bode well for the people of Palestine if they have to depend on the US president to broker some sort of a deal for them. It just doesn't look good at all. And just before you come back, Kevin...You know, we had another United Nations complaint or statement condemning Israel's activity in Syria. I lost count after United Nations directives to Israel to stop doing what it's doing. In my years as a journalist, none of these diktats coming from the United Nations come with any teeth, like "we will sanction you back to the Stone Age" or anything like that at all. So I suppose what I'm saying is, if I was a Palestinian, God love them, I don't know what I'd be thinking now or where I could find any optimism.

I don't think there's any short-term optimism. Even more Palestinians are going to be brutally murdered for probably the foreseeable future. And it's going to continue to enrage the world, especially the Islamic world. And as I said we're going to see a shift to more support for the Palestinian resistance from the Sunni side of the Islamic world and it's not going to go well in the long term or even the medium term for the Zionists. If Trump takes over and is seen as being even more in the camp of even more of a slave to the most radical genocidal Zionists than Biden was, this is going to destroy America's reputation, not only in the region, but all over the world. Both the World Court, the ICC and the ICJ now are charging Israel with genocide. The Special Rapporteur of the United Nations is charging Israel with genocide. Amnesty International just put out a report charging Israel with genocide. And so Europe, which doesn't like Trump that much anyway, is going to become even more pro-Palestinian and anti-Zionist as Trump does these things. The Islamic world, likewise. And the rage about this is ultimately going to backfire on the Zionists.

The military strategy for the resistance is basically that if we inflict even a tiny bit of the suffering and create even a tiny fraction of the level of insecurity for you Israelis that you're creating for Palestinians and others in the region you guys will go home, just like the French went home from Algeria. We'll have to wait and see. But with advances in military technology, making Israelis insecure may actually get a lot easier. And it's quite likely that some pretty horrible things, although maybe not quite as horrible as what's happened to Gaza, will happen to Israel. And it will become clear that the Jews can't stay in Palestine, because billions of people have committed themselves to make sure that they'll never be allowed to.

Final word to you then before we wrap it up. Final word on sanctions. Because for me, we've seen how the West has destroyed opposition to its imperialism by imposing sanctions on countries. We've seen it over the years. Chile—you know I'm an old Bolivarian socialist. I've told you that too many times over the years. So I know what they did in Chile, in particular Chile and Venezuela in the last few decades. It works wonderfully well. But where's the appetite for sanctions? And does the world need to wait for the United States to join in with sanctions? Why doesn't the wider region come together and say, look, we don't need the U.S. to join in with the sanctions we don't even need China to do it, but regionally we can do it and a number of European countries would probably say okay we'll go along and really hurt Israel where it matters — ban its exports don't import anything from Israel, don't export anything to it, starve it until its people realize that its behavior its government's tyranny and genocide are unacceptable.

Yeah, you put that really well, Richie. I don't know what to add. But I think that with Trump in the White House, rubber stamping genocide and annexation and so on, the world's revulsion will very likely lead to those kinds of sanctions. And it should have happened a long time ago. And I think that with the Axis of Resistance that's been based on Iran and its friends sort of stepping back, and now those who are not so friendly with them stepping up, it is going to create a very tough situation for this pariah nation or self-styled nation that's occupying Palestine. And so I think that there is some hope for resolving this through sanctions and pressure rather than the military strategy of ultimately causing so much terror and insecurity among Zionist Jewish settlers that they have to leave. It would be great if there was a way to do it that didn't require yet another ethnic cleansing.