 This is Jeff Deist and you're listening to the Human Action podcast Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back once again to the Human Action podcast the podcast where we read and examine and discuss books Current or otherwise and as most of my listeners know We usually focus on economics and try to do a deep dive into theoretical and conceptual stuff But this week we are taking a little bit of a departure from normal because there's a new book out. It's an important book it's a book all of you need to read and order and think about and Getting the hands of many of your friends and family and neighbors and that is by none other That's Scott Horton. It is called enough already time to end the war on terrorism. This is hot off the presses It's a 2021 release. It's available in physical form already via Amazon and as many of you know it is in in a sense a Follow-up to Scott's book fools Aaron which was in particular about the war in Afghanistan which came out back in 2017 and in a earlier iteration of the show, I had him on to discuss that book So all that said if any of my listenership is not familiar with Scott He is now basically the editor of anti-war comm in the sense that Justin Romando Once was he is also heading up the Libertarian Institute, which is the publisher of this new book enough already So with all that said hey Scott. How you doing? Thank you very much for having me Jeff great to talk to you And thanks for that nice introduction. Appreciate well Look, I got to ask you something open-ended for starters Okay, what motivated you to write this book because it's a pretty thankless task being an author well I I'll tell you what when I was writing fools Aaron. I swore I was never gonna do it again and And and honestly, I think a lot of your listeners may know if they're Tom wood show fans I've talked about this on his show that I had to throw out about a year's worth of work and start over Because I just I'm it's like a fractal. You know when I get into these footnotes I'm not trying to write a PhD thesis, but that's how it keeps turning out and so I just I Always did get bogged down in the details too much even doodling on the back of my homework in junior high I always do the Little Baroque part of the picture and ignore the larger thing So I had to start over and do it again The point of the book was supposed to be from the get-go fact I'll tell you story Tom woods called me one day in I don't know 2015 and said let's write a book together about the war on terrorism We'll keep it real short and sweet and it'll be kind of the The you know America's war on terrorism for dummies kind of a thing And so what do you think about that and I said absolutely and I I sent him an outline in like an hour And so here's what it'll say, you know ready to go and then So that kept getting the can kept getting kicked down the road there And then when I started writing it basically the deal was I was gonna as I wrote stuff I was gonna send it to him to have his way with eventually or whatever and fix up and rewrite and whatever And then what happened was chapter two turned into a book about Afghanistan was like I couldn't wrap it up I got bogged down in the quagmire. So This book enough already Is what that book was supposed to be in the first place before I got to sidetracked on Afghanistan and Turn that into a whole book. So this is of course, it did grow into 300 pages I really wanted it to be 150 pages easy-peasy for everybody and their uncle to read but You know that turned out to be impossible, but there's no footnotes in it There's plenty of sourcing in the text and plenty of direct quotations and you can double-check my Assertions all you want no problem, but It's meant to be a much easier read than fools there and and as you said in the introduction there I really want this to be not just a great libertarian book or a great book for the anti-war movement or for people who have heard My show before or something like that, but I really want this to be an American book I want this to get out there and I want it to move the margin as you economists say right to To have a difference in the conversation. I want people to be able to say You know, there's this new book out that says that we just call this whole thing off, right? We don't have to do this anymore And and help you know the American people already believe that right? We just need to be galvanized We just need the American people need to somehow Get the idea that this is something that we could all do together How's this for national greatness Fred Barnes will end Fred Barnes's wars together the right and the left and town and country and black and white and north and south and everybody and And this is what we want is an end to these wars And this is something that we can all come together to agree about best kind of unity I could think of and the calendar proves the case. You don't even have to open the book Jeff Look at the calendar. It's 2021. How could it possibly take 20 years to kill 400 guys? This is not what they sold Everybody's mom and dad back 20 years ago about what they were going to do with their writ to fight terrorism and So that's it. They're fired. We have to call it off now And so this is my part to try to do that get people to say, okay This is a thing that yeah, you're right about that at least, you know Well, Scott, you have the freedom to publish through the Libertarian Institute without censorship without having to Take any radicalism out of the book, but you're also a known quality I mean you have your book on Afghanistan. You had many many years of Pacifica radio, for example Did you consider shopping this with publishers? No, actually, I did have a publisher come to me from I won't say which but I'll say a division of McMillan a Guy came to me said he loved fool's errand. He knew I was writing this book. He must have heard me on Tom So talking about it. I think based on what he already knew about it And really nice guy and he tried to pitch it to the boss over the holidays And and he thought that he could quadruple my numbers and and that he would really make sure the marketing department did their part to Really get it out there and and really do it So I was I was pretty cool with the idea Although I knew I was risking some of that independence that you're talking about there But it turned out that you'll like this too. I like it the the boss rejected it because she said it was too scholarly Wow too too many footnotes for an airport book. Yeah, well, I mean in fact, there's not footnotes But it is just and I assail you with facts until you give in essentially It's it's a Bo Vardy and Chomsky. I book in that sense, right? So it's it's light on just you know, here's a bunch of feelings and emotions and one time I interviewed a guy and he you know, it's not written like that. It's written just things I remember or whatever and so they had just published I think Michael J. Fox's autobiography and a couple of things like that that were pretty big-time stuff But you could see how This is not exactly their cup of tea and in fact because this is the kind of book that usually would be written by a liberal professor And have a hundred thousand footnotes and no one would ever read it, right? So I'm trying to split that difference, right? I'm trying to say, you know I know the burden is on me to prove that I'm right when I'm saying every grown-up in America has been wrong for My entire lifetime. I got to prove the case but at the same time I'm trying to do it in a way where it's digestible enough To a much broader audience than just who might read a Chomsky book or something like that Well, it's interesting to me though You get some pretty big names to endorse and write blurbs for your work I mean you've had people like Stephen Walt and Daniel Ellsberg So you must have some relationships where people must know about your work You know in broader circles beyond our kind of austral libertarian circles Well, I kind of cheat there too, right? Because I interview all these guys So then I have their email address and I get to I don't you know They don't owe me a favor in terms of giving me a blurb any more than you do, right? But they're willing to look at my book because they know me from before in the same way as you really, right? So I would count you in that exact same list of the people who just mentioned by the way And your your name is in there and the blurbs right with theirs Well, the introduction of the book makes it clear that this you're your immediate focus is the last 20 years Since the attacks of 9-11 and the so-called war on terror declared by Bush Ashcroft you Etc in the wake of that but but really there's there's some history required here that goes back several decades to understand The broader picture. So it is this a history book in a part in part Yes, I mean and really just like with fool's errand in a way time to end the war on terrorism time to end the war in Afghanistan is A little bit misleading right there looks that's the that's the conclusion on the last page of the book What it really is just like with fool's errand is an alternative history or just You know a history of what's going on here. I guess from a point of view that you don't usually get to see But you know, I think Austrian school leaning Economist types and libertarians will pick up on the theme that's pretty obvious in here about the unintended Consequences of government intervention and how governments no matter what program we're talking about but especially with the military They always pretend that today's the first day in history None of this is their fault All they need to do is apply a little bit more power and a little bit more money and a little bit more finesse and everything Will work out and that if you go back to whatever economic consequences We're talking about even if you have to go back 50 paces on the chain It's always Congress's fault in the first place the US government intervening distorting normal patterns of life in places causing blowback and consequences and then using those Consequences as an excuse to just carry on to the next one And so in fact, you know, there's a lot of little details in here But at the same time, I think it's a history that should fit in with people's broad memory of this time, right? like in other words When I say Ronald Reagan helped back the Mujahideen in Afghanistan in the 1980s, that's not a big secret That's not a conspiracy theory. They made Rambo 3 about it Everybody knows that people give credit to Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter before him for helping bring down the Soviet Empire Because that was one of the straws that broke the camel's back and this is a widely understood phenomenon on and in culture and in history and so all I'm doing though is Explaining what that has to do with anything else, right? Everybody knows Saddam invaded Kuwait in 1990 and that we went to war in 1991 in order to reverse it But why'd that happen in the first place? And what were the consequences of that that led to the next problem is that's what my book is here to do Everybody is looking at pretty much the same general puzzle I'm just here to provide a lot of pieces to fill in the gaps to show how all of this makes sense as one big story of of course You know Government and competence and malevolence. I don't mean to sell that short But it's and of course as a libertarian I have a great advantage in being completely non-partisan about this I wasn't raised to favor Ronald Reagan and or Bill Clinton either, you know, I I And and in fact in recent history, so people get a taste of this my personal absolute vile Childish hatred for Bill Clinton and George W. Bush is Right about equal. I guess Bush a little more than Clinton But Obama and Trump even though I absolutely hate them on paper. I don't feel that way about them So it's not really a partisan thing as much as just the certain things that they did that just absolutely drove Me to madness like Bush's torture program, for example or Bill Clinton's butchery at Waco and all the rest of those things from the 1990s getting us into this mess in the first place You know if we took a maybe an average American off the street And you laid out your basic thesis to them I fear some of them would say well Scott, you know, so what? Biden's new and he needs to have real politic and you're giving me all this history from before and and I Sometimes I wonder if because we're so materially comfortable here be because it's been so long that we had any war You know within our domestic shores that Because are you know, we export war and we don't so much import it that that Americans sometimes just don't much care about all this history Yeah, I think that's true and a big part of it As we're talking about on my show earlier with David Swanson was that ever since they pulled the bulk of the infantry out of Iraq That then anything less than that seems like nothing we could wage drone wars forever I guess and people won't care and I kind of think that's not really right I mean if you look at the polls people are against the wars and if you said to them specifically After they said no, I don't support the wars. Well, do you support sending drones to kill people from now on? Instead they I think they probably would say no to that too, although Obviously, hey, geez I guess if our guys aren't dying and you say it's really necessary That's you know easier for them to go along with but I think if people could actually Really grok my narrative then they ought to be able to just abandon all of that They ought to be able to understand that look our government got us into this mess there what they call fighting the terrorism that they created is at Best counterproductive Inefficient disastrous filled with collateral damage and consequences and blowback and at worst They're outright taking Al Qaeda's side all over the Middle East Especially of course in Libya Syria and in Yemen fighting literally on the side of our enemies Because our government and the Israelis and the Saudis hate Iran more than they hate the guys that knocked the towers down so You know whether Biden is brand new or not It's he's the same old permanent establishment He was Bush's handmaiden in the Senate that got us into Iraq war two when he was the chair of the foreign relations committee I mean he was really the whip. He was Bush and Cheney's whip in the Senate to force that war through the Senate The opposition party was in the majority could have stopped that war led by him But he was actively their guy and getting it done They say that he was less worse. I mean he was less worse on Afghanistan He still favored escalation just not quite as bad as Petraeus in them They say he was opposed to the war in Libya And I don't think they have an official position about what he ever said as vice president on Syria or Yemen We certainly didn't resign over them even if he did oppose them And then but his staff is also just a bunch of lunatics and crazies and monsters His national security adviser Jake Sullivan is the guy that wrote in the memo to Hillary Clinton He he a queue is on our side in Syria Meaning they are on Al Qaeda's side in Syria, but instead of saying boss I think we need to call a meeting and reevaluate our policy This is just like something to be considered ironic and funny and They continued pushing for that policy of putting arms directly into the hands of those terrorists for years after that well for the rest of That was at the beginning of her last year secretary of state and she pushed the rest of that year for more and more escalation of that exact same policy Then she and he was her right-hand man at state for four years. That's who Sullivan is Biden's right-hand national security adviser is was Hillary's and And then his right his old right hand Anthony Blinken who's now going to be the secretary of state has been a hawk on all of this stuff and openly Talks about how he disagreed with Biden on Libya He was for it when Biden was against it the one thing Biden got right hmm and and you know and I could go on But so it's the same old same old suspects of the humanitarian interventionist center left you know all a bunch of Hillary Clinton clones essentially right and And and and back to backtrack to that one point when they mean well So to speak on the grading on the curve when they're actually trying to kill real Al Qaeda guys Which was supposedly their mission? They still only make things worse They still only kill innocent people. They still it's like pouring blood on a garden of terrorists growing up there It doesn't work. They call it a surgical strike the drone is a scalpel But it's a 500 pound bomb that tears women and children apart and their men don't forget that They join up the fight just the same as anybody and any other time in place on this planet and so You know the war on terrorism even if Biden said no more regime change no more sanctions No more picking on the Ayatollah and the Shiites who really don't have anything to do with this if anything They're on our side in this But we're only gonna fight Al Qaeda from now on it still would be an absolute catastrophe and and the proof of that is the fact Of the last 20 years that Biden himself has been in on all along Well, as you point out, we need to understand a little bit of history and background to understand blowback But it looks like in this book. You also explain that to understand any particular Internal or regional conflict. Let's say Syria or Yemen. We have to understand this tendency towards proxy wars So give us your take what do you mean by proxy wars and what what do we not get about proxy wars? Well You know, I don't want to all of this is shades of grace So don't anybody get me too wrong on this But we do have a weird phenomenon in America where our client states especially Saudi Arabia and Israel have so much Influence in Washington, DC far more than the American people have and it's much more The case that they use us to fight their wars for them then we use them to fight our wars for us and and you know Especially you see that in the case of Iraq war two and America's really entire Cold War type relationship with Iran that we have That is based in Tel Aviv and Riyadh that in Washington, DC I mean Ronald Reagan was selling missiles to the Ayatollah a couple of years after Beirut Just a couple of years after the hostage crisis, right? So we could have gone along Bill Clinton could have normalized relations with Rafsin Johnny back in 1993 But the Israelis insisted no we have to have dual containment from bases in Saudi Arabia which provoked Ronald Reagan's Mujahideen into knocking our towers down and became the excuse for the rest of this stuff and So it's not just a pure case of the tailwags the dog just because that's a cliche But that is kind of part of it and the Americans. I mean, please don't misinterpret this as like acquitting them By calling them clueless, right doesn't make them innocent There's they're still so guilty for the things that they do and yet I think there's really not that that Hobgoblin of consistency in the mind anywhere of people especially in the Obama administration where He's trying to make peace with Iran by passing the nuclear deal to take the threat of war off the table over their fake weapons program That never existed anyway But to take the threat of war over their nuclear program their civilian program off the table there at the same time He's backing al-Qaeda suicide bomber head shopper terrorist crazies in Syria Just to spite Iran because Iran is friends with Assad and they're trying to take Assad away And at the same time they launch a war and listen man. I'm sorry big G word people get emotional I'm not trying to be hyperbolic here. It is what it is. It's a war of Genocide being waged against the people of Yemen and it's being waged Why in the words of the Obama team themselves? Well, we had to placate the Saudis Google that placate the Saudis. We knew the war would be long bloody and Indecisive indecisive Right, meaning they knew that there was no end game. There was no victory There was no plan for what this is supposed to look like to paraphrase Petraeus. Tell me how this ends Yeah, long bloody meaning innocent people will be blown limb from limb tortured to death God knows what and Indecisive, but we had to do it to placate the Saudis Because why the Saudis were upset that we were making peace with Iran And this is crazy It should not be like this and I'm not saying that America should hire Israel and Saudi Arabia to fight our wars for us either But why can't we just call this whole thing off? Well, sometimes I'm shocked by you call it a blunt instrument these machinations. I mean if we look at The factions just in Iraq for example And how deep-seated some of this history is there's a tremendous amount of hubris regardless of how many Diplomats or how many spooks we have on the ground somewhere. It's really really really hard to understand Another country and all the nuance I think that's absolutely true and especially when you're the one on the ground in your entire game is Justifying what you're doing and trying to do the job I mean if anybody could have told you the story of what was happening in Iraq war 2 it was people who hated it You couldn't find people who are hardcore pro-war War blogger hawks who are gonna sit here and tell you okay? This is who Abdul Aziz al-Hakim is and this is the significance of his Supreme Islamic Council And his Bada Brigade faction and what they're going to do to the Sunnis of the Ambar province And why that matters in the scheme of the war They didn't have any incentive to tell you the truth the truth made them look really bad So instead they just said oh yeah No, it's America and the Iraqi people versus the terrible terrorists who are trying to thwart democracy And then so you get some what that's like you get on a some Disneyland program or something That means nothing and had nothing to do with what was going on if you want to know what's going on You had to read and still curse him because he supported the war and the war in Libya But still Juan Cole from informed comment wrote great stuff explaining who was who and why it mattered on the ground at the time The great war reporter Darja male Robert Dreyfus from the nation magazine and back then wrote for Tom Payne and all that Old friend of mine just great because he had this you know real critics lens. Oh Forgive me for for omitting Patrick Coburn who is the greatest Western reporter in the Middle East forever bar none These guys could tell you Here's who's who and here's why it matters and and it was because they were in no way married to the policy Right, but you think that Paul Bremer staff is Going to has any incentive at all to write up a report about oh my god. Here's all the things were doing wrong Here's all the reasons why this is never gonna work all the reasons why men boss You made a really bad choice last Thursday. I mean that just doesn't take place. And so I've had Enumerable men come home from those wars and tell me oh now I get it You know they had to read the perspective from some skater kid who stayed home in Texas the whole time to understand What they were living through at the time? Well, I have to say I like the organization of the book in the sense that you have individual chapters on particular country So like most Americans for example, I don't know much about Mali and there's a chapter on that There's a chapter on Syria. There's a chapter on Yemen. There's a chapter on Pakistan and Somalia Was your desire to make these sort of digestible individual units so somebody could get up to speed pretty quickly on those particular issues Uh No, I mean, I think it just sort of fell that way honestly. I'm not that good of a writer Jeff I'm I'm good at names and dates I read other people sort of polemical things where they make smart guy points about stuff and I appreciate those things But I'm not really that kind of a Thinker, you know, I basically can just sort of marshal a bunch of evidence that I remember That just at some point is sort of inexorable that you must give in I'm right You're you got to give up because I know so much more about this than you Something like that, you know And and so like that's that's basically how I get my point across Is in that way and then essentially these wars are almost all just chronological one thing happened That's sort of the the story itself is how one one war caused the next war caused the next war Of course in chapter one causing problems. That's three or four wars right there That's the afghan war the iranian revolution the iran iraq war iraq war one and iraq war one and a half In the bill clinton years all of that is in chapter one again Roughly in chronological order right a little bit of overlapping order, but Going through and just explaining how one thing led to the other and then You know, it's a little bit of a juggling match trying to figure out I had to cut afghanistan's chapters in half because that war has gone on so long It wouldn't be right to bring it all the way through to 2020 and then take you back to 2003 when we get to iraq so You know little weird choices like that I had to figure out where to put somalia in pakistan really but somalia has got to go before pakistan because bush Really started the worst of that, you know six and so it's just most of it just sort of fell into place about where it should fit and then On molly. I'm glad you mentioned molly. So I think in the scheme of things when you read the libya chapter You're ready to move on to syria And then I have to say wait hold your horses right there We got to stop and talk about molly for a minute because what happened in molly is a terrible consequence for these people From the war in libya and it spread on from there And so I only give it I think two pages It's just enough to let you know that hey this happened. This matters. You ever heard of timbuk too. That's a real place It's in the western sahel. That's the strip of arid semi-desert land Just below the sahara And in the far western sahel is this land of molly this nation the size of texas Where the consequences of the war in libya came and ruined everything for everyone and and and the jihadis the obama's bin ladenites Tried to sack these ancient libraries and destroy all their ancient scrolls that go back, you know A thousand two thousand years and this kind of thing Maybe maybe further than that and these heroic you can read about in the national geographic these heroic librarians went and and grabbed all the scrolls and and and Spread them out to the families the trusted families of the town to protect the ancient scrolls and all this stuff This is all america's fault. It's just disgusting. It is it's just disgusting jeff and then But I give it two pages because I know we're in a big hurry We got to get to syria and then at the end of the book we get back to the consequences For the the further spread of the terror war in africa But those are the kind of choices I try to make as an editor that I know that once we do libya You want to talk about syria? You want to know what I got to say about syria? it's the biggest deal in the whole wide world obviously how The war in syria grew into the islamic state and then the war against them and and all these further consequences there but At the same time You know, i'm really glad I had a chance to say The people of samalia and molly. They do deserve their own chapter. They always get omitted But the story of what's happened to the samalis is no less worse than what we've done to the yemenis You know, no less sickening than what's happened to the people of timbukh too Well, one of the recurring characters in this book. It appears that a thread is uh been lauding And what's interesting is it appears 20 years on now that he really has been the architect Of us foreign policy. He got his war of attrition Absolutely. I love this line. I'm ruining the best line of the book. It belongs to my old friend jeff huber died a few years ago now But uh, right after the navy seals finally got was it delta? Yes seals got uh been lauding there in uh, About abad pakistan in 2011, which he did die there that day by the way My wife is an investigative reporter and I know that is true. Um, but uh, Right after that happened about a month or so after that happened Jeff wrote this article called Been lauding dead and loving it And he says eat your heart out charlemagne et to julius caesare You know, so like uh, how about them apples? uh, alexander something uh, because osama bin laden Hiding in his attic I forgot this was my line or his even from his wife. He's hiding in the attic and yet He's commanding the world's greatest armies in all of history To move all about the earth disrupting and destabilizing and removing regimes that he disfavours He's doing all of this without an army of his own. He's doing all this, you know, basically by giving Especially first the bush team a crisis to exploit, right? He didn't fool them in a way that makes them innocent He fooled them in the sense that they were too clever by half Taking the advantage of the crisis that he created But that is in fact what he was betting on and you know, I remember right after september 11th You know, I didn't know if the cia did the whole thing or what but I was saying You know if these terrorists were doing this because they thought they were going to fight the new world order and make the american empire Go home and leave them alone. They're crazy. They just gave bush a giant kick in the pants They just gave him him and chaney the excuse to do whatever they want and then you know what happened Jeff was about six weeks later four weeks later Maybe I read william norman grig in the new american magazine and this this quote is in the book He quotes sololinsky the leftist radical from chicago Who points out and this is not talking specifically about terrorism, but essentially all asymmetric political activity Whether it's outright violence or not and that is that the action is in the reaction That yes, of course bin laden was giving bush a kick in the pants That's what he was trying to do. He knew the only way to destroy the american empire was by replicating the same way The american empire helped him and his friends destroy the soviet empire in the 1980s Provoke us bog us down bleed us to bankruptcy and finally we'll go whimpering home With our leg with our tail between our legs if not just finally do the right thing and call our intervention quits in the first place And that was what it was all about was can I get these idiots to do something Angry and stupid and then of course the answer was yes And that goes for the american people. Sorry audience who went along with this too I mean somebody does something crazy and violent like knock down some towers Obviously, you're gonna be emotional, but that means we all as a society By the hundreds of millions we just turn our brains off Let george bush's idiot son lie us into wars against people who didn't do it It you know, we should have all been better than that the entire right wing just said no way We're not buying that maybe if he was ronald reagan's son or something But george bush's son gets to shovel a load of dishonesty like this and we're supposed to swallow it come on But they did And I know you were there you were in the congress watching this thing first person at the time my god I should interview you for this book Well, let me ask this let's talk about the domestic impact of all this when w Comes into office at the beginning of 2001 there's about five trillion Of u.s. government debt now there's 20 whatever almost 30 How does war come home help help us understand Yeah, well and the first thing and and there's a section on this in the book is about war is bad for the economy and Unfortunately, it's still just as everyone in your audience knows this huge widespread myth I saw it on twitter just the other day that no dummy fdr like in biden's portrait on the wall He didn't save us from the great depression. It was world war two that did it and everybody knows that And except the people who've read robert higgs, right or whatever, you know few murray rothbard and a few other examples But otherwise that is sort of the received wisdom and even when the economy is bad You can hear people saying well war is good for the economy It's like but we've been a war this whole time Shouldn't we all be filthy stinking rich right now then if that was right? I mean not that that would make it worth it if all we have to do to be rich is murder innocent people by the millions in fact Drive 37 million people from their homes so we can have some money And that's crazy anyway But it's not true right all of this is at our expense whether right now In the taxes that come right out of our paycheck and the rest of that or whether in the near term consequences when the next bubble pops And everything goes bust from all their inflation to make the war seem free And then in the meantime just the price inflation on the shelves and in the cost of everything we buy I mean right now try to buy a house in austin texas where Where prices are going up five and ten percent every couple every quarter right now um You know a lot of this due to monetary inflation And a lot of that made to make the wars seem free if they just had to raise all our taxes Look everybody we're going to iraq you ready? Yeah, let's get them Okay, all we got to do is raise your taxes all of you buy four percent each five percent each And then we can go on to iraq you might have a whole different discussion on your hands But instead you know the the effects are delayed But look at the economic pain that the people are in now and look at the destabilization and all the resentments And all of the chaos that's come from that as the direct results of that the betrayal of the lies of the iraq war And then and thank god jet that it happened in september 08 before he got away on george w. Bush's watch and the whole economy can crashing down And destroyed all of these lives and people are still you know There's still not back on their feet from that before the lockdowns and and the recession of the last year And and all the consequences from that so people are really hurting and that is a huge part Because of the war and then of course you just have the entire all of the Wars the health of the state type effects of patriotism suspending people's thinking So you might remember in 2004 when the abu grabe scandal broke at first the republican right on talk radio said well We're not for that. I mean jeez that those national guard guys got out of control But then they found out that bush ordered it and then they said no we are torturers. That's what makes us americans That's what makes us patriots is that of course we would torture anybody to protect americans That's what it means to be a good conservative and it's just all these good church-going people cutting their own soul out In the name of partisanship so they can serve the interests of war criminals Who who never had their best interests at heart in the first place at all? And then there's all of the patriot act and the patriot act 1 2 3 4 5 and all the different guys's of it since then And on the state level to the 1033 program and the homeland security programs for militarizing Every police department in america every sheriff's department and city police department in america and all of our state police Training them all on military bases is you know paramilitary hit teams And just all of this is completely out of control, you know the minarchist argument I used to make Once upon a time was jeez if we could just stop government from doing all of this extraneous stuff And their only jobs was providing a fair court system for dispute settlements criminal and civil And night watchman state security services and stuff. Well, then maybe the democracy Could be effective at controlling that and making sure that that stayed fair and good, but It's so wild and so out of control. There's no check and balance from the people There's no referendum that can rein this in Right. Um, we are so far gone now. There's um, the great journalist william arkin Uh, who was then at the washington post wrote a whole book with dana priest called top secret america about how the entire military industrial complex that grew up from 1945 Through 2001 has a mirror image opposite domestic homeland security complex that's virtually as wealthy and powerful with hundreds of thousands of contractor Employees, you know collecting intelligence and including on americans. We have all the snowden revelations This is the one that gets me that no one ever talks about despite all the hacking of all the database and everything They save your location data They track your cell phone and they save it for at least five years that we know about So they can figure out which backseat of which car you ever rode in who you were associated with who you ever sat next to at a bus stop And we know from the way they murder people in afghanistan And pakistan and other places based on this link analysis stuff that when they launched this new domestic war On on right wing radicalism and this kind of thing that the first thing that they do is go with this ridiculous link analysis, which is just like asking your windows 10 machine to explain The world to you and and explain, you know to come up with conspiracy theories Basically to explain why certain people's cell phones have ever contacted each other before And if you're if the computer says that your phone number is on the list then You get the zap, you know in this case probably won't be drone strikes, but um You know, they they asked daily mccrystal. Jeez. Should we use your counter insurgency doctrines from afghanistan against american right wingers? He's like, yeah, we sure should here's how we'll start with my link analysis conspiracy theory machine You got john brennan on tv mister, you know First of all drone striker murder of innocent civilians there And and pro torturer But also the guy who back job at all those were al-qaeda in syria for years guilty of high treason and framed donald trump for treason with the kremlin in the russia gate thing This guy should have been buried under the supermax a long time ago And here he's on tv saying that they're gonna unleash they already are unleashing. He said present tense america's intelligence capacity against the american dissident right, which means Conservatives too, right? It means everything from the center all the way to the right Uh anybody is fair game to them and he made sure to include even libertarians and so these are the consequences for all of us and um And i'm only just scratching the surface really I mean if you look especially at the militarization of the police And what that's meant for what was already a lawless police state, right? Which was already especially for poor people and for blacks essentially a totalitarian state in the name of contraband enforcement Get this jeff. I don't know if you saw the statistic a clu 60 thousand SWAT raids a year 60 This is just like the navy seals, right? This is this is your local deputy sheriffs as special operations forces Kicking in people's doors and terrorizing them in the middle of the night In a way and this is all just they wouldn't even make the connection to the war on terrorism, but that's where they got all that junk Well scott one last question for you Before we wrap this up. Do you hear from vets pro or con regarding your work? Oh, yeah, constantly never con never con You know, I went on tom wood's cruise and they go hey scott. You better meet these army guys This one's a green beret. This one's a ranger and this one is you know afghan combat veteran I'm like, oh boy. I'm about to hear what I got wrong And then all they want to do is agree and shake my hand. I thought it was gonna be a bra I was actually really nervous for a second um But no everywhere I go and and and all the feedback that I get you know from email and twitter and whatever It's been years. I mean As far as I can remember, you know off the top of my head right now if I think hard, maybe there's some exceptions I can't think of any exceptions. It's been years since my job I don't think these letters even come in anymore But my job used to be answering the letters to anti war dot com and we would have soldiers who would write then and say You guys hate america. I can't believe how dare you even be called anti war dot com when we're fighting the enemies and fighting for freedom And then I would you know me I would just answer back say no see you're fighting for the supreme council for islamic revolution In iraq against these guys these guys and those guys and this is the result and this and that you ever heard the name al-hakim before He's your master not donald rumsfeld donald rumsfeld works for him And then they would answer me back. Actually, you know what? I think that's right Now that you mentioned it. Yeah, that botter brigade. I think that is who we're embedded with here You know fighting their enemies not ours and What you say makes sense anti war boy, right? Like if I was saying peace and love and hippiness or whatever I probably wouldn't have gotten very far but I always know more about this stuff than the guys in the middle of it and so I can help them see And I'm pretty sure I won every single one of those arguments back then And I haven't heard a one in a very long time. In fact, I'll tell you a story. I hope this is okay to say I think so November before last we all did thanks to you inviting me sir We did the the wrong paul event there in lake jackson And I was selling my wrong paul book that I put out and a guy came up to me and said hey listen Um of all of tom woods's guests. You're the one. I had the hardest Time listening to and and and accepting and I kind of laughed and said well, you know I could understand that I rubbed people the wrong way a little sometimes whatever i'm not exactly from around here um And uh, he goes no no no that's not it. It's that I know that you're right about all of this stuff and it really sucks because It means that I was wrong my whole life and I hope i'm paraphrasing this guy right I don't remember his name reading but he was saying I I believe he said that You know himself his father his brother. They were reaganites They believed in all this stuff They hated the Arabs and the muslims and the enemies the commies and the whoever and that the government said That we should be killing and the democrats. What's wrong with them? They're weak. They won't do enough And that then no actually he just heard me lay out the here's how it went tom Did it did it did it down the line of cause and effect and as I was saying earlier about the puzzle piece, right? He's got a narrative. He remembers the history of jimmy carter through right now And he knows i'm right about this stuff when he hears me put the same history that he knows my way And now it makes more sense than it ever did And now it means that he was mistaken and it was like You know what I give the guy credit It also goes to show how hard it can be for people to admit I mean he told me this was really hard for him because I was essentially Without I didn't say this to him. I never say this to anybody I I sure didn't mean for anyone to take it this way But what he heard was me convincingly telling him he lived his life all wrong That he really had screwed up and it mattered, right? It wasn't just he'd been He decided that he liked the saints over the rams now or something, right? This is something consequential These were arguments he'd had with friends and co-workers his whole life long That they were right and he was wrong and it was he but he was man enough to say, you know what horton you got me You know, and I'm not sure if he was a veteran or not, but he was certainly a conservative hawk, you know and it was because tom To his great credit And and my sincere gratitude He essentially roughly paraphrasing introduces me on his show and says Listen up everybody. He's right about everything. Tell him scott, right? Like he vouches for me And that kicks the door open If tom wood says that this guy's right on I guess I gotta listen And then eventually those crossed arms Kind of start getting unfolded because yeah, I remember that Okay. Yeah, that makes sense then right and then once I fill in your puzzle for you You're looking at the same picture as me and it's not what you thought it was And now we can move on from here. I hope you know and actually Really make a change on this and you know what let me give credit to donald trump, too This is the only thing really I can think of off the top of my head to give him credit for There's a couple I guess But what he did for his own purposes he had to do it for political reasons was denounce bush's wars The republicans were never going to win again as long as they were mit romney running on double guantanamo Right and this kind of thing and trump got up there and said because he had to destroy jeb That hey jeb is george's brother and george is the guy that did all that horrible stuff in the wars And the right wing republican voters of america love trump so much that they said Yeah, that's right. We hate bush and his stupid war and I didn't support it. Did you I don't remember that Or if I did I don't care, but I like trump now and let's end these wars not that he did that But he helped to seed that sentiment on the american not just populist right, but overall the conservative and And everywhere on the conservative spectrum on the right wing spectrum in america People are more anti-war than ever before probably because of donald trump and his Statements because he's so total in everything he says he sounds like me when he denounces the wars. He's just You know black and white issue about it all absolute condemnation when he does and and when he did And so he has done a lot too in that very same tom wood sense to open the door For these kind of arguments for people who are willing to listen and to me I think that's the most important thing we need leftists to constantly keep up pressure on the liberal Democrats no question about that and there's some great ones doing that great work But what we need more than anything else is conservative and libertarian and especially combat veterans But even still just people who don't talk in left wing language To oppose these wars to really fight to educate people about these wars to show that These old cliches about jane fonda and even michael more and whatever these Old jannis joplin glasses and tie-dye and whatever doesn't have anything to do with this whatsoever You know go look at dan mcnight and the guys at bring our troops home dot us These guys are combat veterans with massive barrel chests who have been there and are telling you That this isn't right. We have to stop and they are they have not moved left They just got smart. They're still tough guys. They're still patriots And now they know better and they're setting such a good example and for anyone in your audience Who's a combat vet who's against these war or any kind of vet who's against these wars? I urge you to check these guys out. Bring our troops home dot us. They're really great and there's also Concerned veterans of america is another explicitly right leaning group not that libertarians are the right But you know what? I mean, we're not the left so the iraq veterans against the war and veterans for peace and those anti-war groups that lean left they do great work and they fit right in the In the discussion right where they belong and and doing that but these guys too this is how we get them is In attacking the right from the right undermining the last support for these wars among the american people So that nobody believes on them anymore outside of dc And I know that on almost any other issue that doesn't make a difference But I think on war it does if you don't have the american right In the in the broad numbers of the hundreds of millions out in the country to support your war then you can't have a war Well scott we got to wrap it up. I thank you I'd ask our audience to consider this very sobering story that we've just heard Obviously, we cannot separate foreign policy from domestic policy. We can't separate it neatly from economics And I mean more importantly, I think we can't separate it from our basic humanity Which is really being challenged by this story that scott tells find scott Horton on twitter find him at anti war dot com find him at the libertarian institute and find his book Enough already time to end the war on terrorism at amazon scott. Thanks a million for your time. Thank you sir The human action podcast is available on itunes soundcloud stitcher spotify google play and on mesas.org Subscribe to get new episodes every week and find more content like this on mesas.org