'The President Has Accepted Ethnic Cleansing'
Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh has
consistently led the way in telling the story of
what's really going on in Iraq and Iran. SPIEGEL
ONLINE spoke to him about America's Hitler,
Bush's Vietnam, and how the US press failed the
First Amendment.
12/16/07
"Spiegel" --- - SPIEGEL
ONLINE: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was
just in New York for the United Nations
General Assembly. Once again, he said that he is
only interested in civilian nuclear power instead
of atomic weapons. How much does the West really
know about the nuclear program in Iran? Seymour
Hersh: A lot. And it's been underestimated how
much the International Atomic Energy Agency
(IAEA) knows. If you follow what (IAEA head Mohamed)
ElBaradei
and the various reports have been saying, the
Iranians have claimed to be enriching uranium to
higher than a 4 percent purity, which is the
amount you need to run a peaceful nuclear
reactor. But the IAEA's best guess is that they
are at 3.67 percent or something. The Iranians
are not even doing what they claim to be doing.
The IAEA has been saying all along that they've
been making progress but basically, Iran is
nowhere. Of course the US and Israel are going to
say you have to look at the worst case scenario,
but there isn't enough evidence to justify a
bombing raid.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Is
this just another case of exaggerating the danger
in preparation for an invasion like we saw in
2002 and 2003 prior to the Iraq War?
Hersh: We have this
wonderful capacity in America to Hitlerize
people. We had Hitler, and since Hitler we've had
about 20 of them. Khrushchev and Mao and of
course Stalin, and for a little while Gadhafi was
our Hitler. And now we have this guy Ahmadinejad.
The reality is, he's not nearly as powerful
inside the country as we like to think he is. The
Revolutionary Guards have direct control over the
missile program and if there is a weapons
program, they would be the ones running it. Not
Ahmadinejad.
SPIEGEL ONLINE:
Where does this feeling of urgency that the US
has with Iran come from?
Hersh: Pressure from
the White House. That's just their game.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: What
interest does the White House have in moving us
to the brink with Tehran?
Hersh: You have to
ask yourself what interest we had 40 years ago
for going to war in Vietnam. You'd think that in
this country with so many smart people, that we
can't possibly do the same dumb thing again. I
have this theory in life that there is no
learning. There is no learning curve. Everything
is tabula rasa. Everybody has to discover things
for themselves.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Even
after Iraq? Aren't there strategic reasons for
getting so deeply involved in the Middle East?
Hersh: Oh no. We're
going to build democracy. The real thing in the
mind of this president is he wants to reshape the
Middle East and make it a model. He absolutely
believes it. I always thought Henry Kissinger was
a disaster because he lies like most people
breathe and you can't have that in public life.
But if it were Kissinger this time around, I'd
actually be relieved because I'd know that the
madness would be tied to some oil deal. But in
this case, what you see is what you get. This guy
believes he's doing God's work.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: So
what are the options in Iraq?
Hersh: There are two
very clear options: Option A) Get everybody out
by midnight tonight. Option B) Get everybody out
by midnight tomorrow. The fuel that keeps the war
going is us.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: A
lot of people have been saying that the US
presence there is a big part of the problem. Is
anyone in the White House listening?
Hersh: No. The
president is still talking about the
"Surge" (eds. The "Surge"
refers to President Bush's commitment of 20,000
additional troops to Iraq in the spring of 2007
in an attempt to improve security in the
country.) as if it's going to unite the
country. But the Surge was a con game of putting
additional troops in there. We've basically
Balkanized the place, building walls and walling
off Sunnis from Shiites. And in Anbar Province,
where there has been success, all of the Shiites
are gone. They've simply split.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Is
that why there has been a drop in violence there?
Hersh: I think
that's a much better reason than the fact that
there are a couple more soldiers on the ground.
SPIEGEL ONLINE:So
what are the lessons of the Surge?
Hersh: The Surge
means basically that, in some way, the president
has accepted ethnic cleansing, whether he's
talking about it or not. When he first announced
the Surge in January, he described it as a way to
bring the parties together. He's not saying that
any more. I think he now understands that ethnic
cleansing is what is going to happen. You're
going to have a Kurdistan. You're going to have a
Sunni area that we're going to have to support
forever. And you're going to have the Shiites in
the South.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: So
the US is over four years into a war that is
likely going to end in a disaster. How valid are
the comparisons with Vietnam?
Hersh: The validity
is that the US is fighting a guerrilla war and
doesn't know the culture. But the difference is
that at a certain point, because of Congressional
and public opposition, the Vietnam War was no
longer tenable. But these guys now don't care.
They see it but they don't care.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: If
the Iraq war does end up as a defeat for the US,
will it leave as deep a wound as the Vietnam War
did?
Hersh: Much worse.
Vietnam was a tactical mistake. This is
strategic. How do you repair damages with whole
cultures? On the home front, though, we'll
rationalize it away. Don't worry about that.
Again, there's no learning curve. No learning
curve at all. We'll be ready to fight another
stupid war in another two decades.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Of
course, preventing that is partially the job of
the media. Have reporters been doing a better job
recently than they did in the run-up to the Iraq
War?
Hersh: Oh yeah.
They've done a better job since. But back then,
they blew it. When you have a guy like Bush who's
going to move the infamous Doomsday Clock
forward, and he's going to put everybody in
jeopardy and he's secretive and he doesn't tell
Congress anything and he's inured to what we
write. In such a case, we (journalists) become
more important. The First Amendment failed and
the American press failed the Constitution. We
were jingoistic. And that was a terrible failing.
I'm asked the question all the time: What
happened to my old paper, the New York Times?
And I now say, they stink. They missed it. They
missed the biggest story of the time and they're
going to have to live with it.
Interview
conducted by Charles Hawley and David Gordon
Smith
© SPIEGEL ONLINE
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