We, the talking heads of Alternative Media…feed on one another
Later today I will be appearing on ‘Dialogue Works’ with host Nima Alkhorshid. In preparation for that challenging exercise, I am doing what my peers surely also do: listening to what everyone else has been saying on this platform, or on the latest ‘Judging Freedom’ broadcast, or on and other highly popular shows where we are given the microphone. After all, the hosts routinely put the very same questions to a succession of interviewees, and we each should be au courant if we are to be taken seriously when our turn to speak comes.
I applaud this methodology because it should provide the audience with a chance to hear various interpretations of the otherwise confusing daily barrage of news presented in major media. Whether that is true, we will explore below. And I have the further caveat that this methodology tends to draw each of us out of our area of genuine expertise into areas beyond our depth, and that is something not easy for the audience to see.
My only very special point is that we should listen to more than one another.
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As for today, the leaders in the Alternative Media are stressing the dangers ahead of us in the Middle East conflict. For the most part they bring to the discussion military expertise, which I do not possess and so I listen very closely. I think in particular of Jacques Baud with respect to the THAAD air defense, or Scott Ritter with respect to the Iranian nuclear program and its readiness for deployment should the showdown with Israel go all the way.
Then in the top ranks of geopolitical experts today there is Jeffrey Sachs who has just returned from a visit to the Middle East and presumably has picked up some very valuable intelligence to share with the audience. For good reasons, Sachs is silent about his sources, but he speculates on US subservience to the will of Benjamin Netanyahu going back 30 years and what that means for the implementation of the escalatory ladder that the Israeli leader is now plotting.
Apart from Baud, who does not address American politics, the others paint very dire pictures of what lies ahead and assume that Netanyahu will defy the US and stage a major attack on Iran that quickly brings the US fully into the war. The latest decision of the Biden administration to dispatch 100 American soldiers to Israeli to man the advanced THAAD system being delivered there suggests such a further development. The several experts named above see the Russians being obliged to join the fight. One of their peers who often sides with their evaluations, former senior CIA analyst Ray McGovern, disagrees, pointing to Russian foot-dragging over signing a military cooperation pact with Iran that is essentially a mutual defense alliance.
I listen to these gentlemen and think what they are saying is very important to spark a public discussion in the US and to put pressure on the otherwise very distracted US Congress to exercise its right and obligation to empower or not empower the President to wage war on Iran, before we get in over our heads.
Yet, I believe what most of them are saying is unnecessarily fatalistic. At a minimum, with the exception of McGovern, they assume that Iran and Russia are joined at the hip so that we are well on our way to Doomsday.
As I hear what my peers are saying, I am drawn to the moment in Charles Dickens’ Christmas Carol when Scrooge is taken in hand by the Ghost of Christmas Future and views the death of Tiny Tim, as well as his own miserable and unmourned death. The Ghost tells him that this is what may happen but not necessarily what will happen.
So it is with the trajectory of the Middle East conflict today, especially if you add to the equation what no one seems to be discussing, the position of China with respect to Middle Eastern developments. In an essay published yesterday on these pages, I suggested that Beijing has issued a warning to the United States via its military exercises around Taiwan. The message is that damage to Chinese oil supplies from the Persian Gulf resulting from a U.S. attack on Iran can lead to the immediate absorption of Taiwan into China, thus vitiating entirely the U.S. strategy for the Pacific theater.
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In recent weeks, I have offered contrarian opinions on air regarding the tail wagging the dog interpretation of the US-Israeli relationship. My point was that the Alternative Media need some ‘disrupters’ in their midst if they are to draw close to Truth and not only to Consensus.
So it is with what I have to say today on the latest developments in the Middle East conflict.
I note that even in the military sphere about which I have the least to say, my expert colleagues can know less than they should when they are not exposed to what is freely available on Russian state television.
I have in mind now the question of the significance of the Hezbollah drone attack on the Israeli military base south of Haifa, a question that Andrew Napolitano has posed to his latest expert guests on air. The answers of my peers have focused on the damage to Israeli morale that can follow the loss of even the four reported deaths and 60 or more seriously wounded. When asked how this attack by Hezbollah can have been accomplished without the Israeli air defenses sounding the alarm, we heard the view of military expert Larry Johnson that the Israelis never expected an attack coming in from the sea and so did not have their radars pointed there. He called this ‘a sucker punch.’
Well, my friends, here we have a good demonstration of why everyone should pay more attention to open sources in Russia, namely Russian state television news and political talk shows. Once again, The Great Game, proved last night its invaluable qualities when one panelist explained what was the real significance of the Hezbollah attack on the military base: the drone set off no alarms because it was invisible to radar, being made almost entirely of composite materials, not metal parts. This drone corresponds to the latest models being used by the Russians in the Ukraine war.
Was this drone supplied to Hezbollah by the Russians? Or did they assemble it themselves from Russian designs? That is not essential. The point is that the Russia-Ukraine war has taken both participating sides into wholly new technological levels of warfare for which the United States and its allies, including Israel are utterly unprepared. This is what must send jitters up the spine of the Israeli high command, not the loss of four soldiers.
Shipment of the THAAD system to Israel, in this context, is one more example of the United States investing in Maginot Line technologies that the Russians today easily outrun. The military experts interviewed on ‘Judging Freedom’ and ‘Dialogue Works’ agree that this system is no match for the hypersonic missiles that Iran will deploy. Baud goes on to say that adding one more layer of air defense to the existing multiple layers makes it still harder to devise a command and control system that uses these assets effectively, so that they are not wasted chasing one and the same incoming missiles.
Finally, on the subject of the Hezbollah attack, I call attention to the entirely overlooked reality of their ability to conduct sophisticated intelligence operations on their target in Israel. After all they knew where and at what hour the soldiers would be sitting at table for their dinner. This comes against the background of the decapitation of Hezbollah’s top leadership and of the supposed damage to its internal communications from the explosive walkie talkies and pagers several weeks ago.
In closing, I salute the efforts of colleagues to bring the dangers before us all to the attention of our audiences and beyond them to the political classes in the West. At the same time, I remain committed to open conversation among ourselves without any compulsion to support some half-baked Consensus.
©Gilbert Doctorow, 2024