The longest war in US history keeps going on and on. No end in sight. Not even an end-goal in sight. How did we get to this point? Scott Horton, author of Fool's Errand - Time to End the War in Afghanistan, joins today's Liberty Report in-studio to discuss this and the many other wars of the US empire.
The longest war in US history keeps going on and on. No end in sight. Not even an end-goal in sight. How did we get to this point? Scott Horton, author of Fool's Errand - Time to End the War in Afghanistan, joins today's Liberty Report in-studio to discuss this and the many other wars of the US empire.
The longest war in US history keeps going on and on. No end in sight. Not even an end-goal in sight. How did we get to this point? Scott Horton, author of Fool's Errand - Time to End the War in Afghanistan, joins today's Liberty Report in-studio to discuss this and the many other wars of the US empire.
Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning in to the Liberty Report.
With me today is Daniel Mick Adams, our co-host.
Daniel, good to see you.
How are you this morning, Dr. Paul?
I'm doing very well, and we have a special guest today, and we're excited about that.
And I'm going to hold up a book that he's written, and we'll do a little discussion about his book.
But he's also been involved in the libertarian movement for a long time, has a radio talk show, and I've been on it at least three or four times.
He might even tell you how many times I've actually been on it.
But he's been in this business of promoting libertarianism for a long time, but especially in the last 15 years.
But the book is something that is dear to our hearts.
It's on foreign policy, and guess what?
He's a non-interventionist, and he writes about Afghanistan.
And it's called A Fool's Errand.
Time to end the war in Afghanistan.
Scott, welcome to our program, and let's end that war as quickly as we can.
Thank you very much for having me, Dr. Paul.
Okay, very good.
As you know, I consider you to be the greatest American hero ever.
Very happy to be here with you.
So what got you first involved in the libertarian movement?
You've been involved even before you had your radio program.
How many interviews have you done now?
I was making fun of a few interviews, but you've had quite a few, haven't you?
Yes, it's 4,600 and something interviews now, going back 15 years to April 2003.
Right.
The beginning of the war.
And that is, you have ScottHorton.com.org, right?org.
30 interviews of you so far.
Oh, boy.
That ought to be enough.
Not quite yet.
I've got some questions.
Well, and also, I see it a lot of times on anti-war.com.
It pops up there, too.
So you've worked with anti-war.
But what got you motivated on this other than the fact that the war in Afghanistan is insane?
I was kidding you before.
I said, you know, you better start making notes about writing the next book.
When are we going to stop the war in Syria?
And it goes on and on.
But of course, our goal should be to stop all these ridiculous wars of aggression.
And that's where our real problem is.
But I'm sure that you keep up to date on these various invasions that we have made.
And we've just finished this weekend.
I guess you were very much aware of what was happening and probably not too encouraged by our reaction in Syria.
Yeah, I mean, it could have been worse.
It doesn't appear that the policy has changed back to regime change against Assad.
But of course, anytime that they're bombing the Shiite partisan forces there, they're risking killing Iranians and possibly even Russians on the ground there.
And that kind of thing really could escalate.
Now, we talk a lot about Syria recently because they've been more in the news, but Afghanistan has been in the news for a long, long time.
And the way it started, we could spend a couple hours going into the details of that.
You have detailed a lot of this.
But do you see similarities between how we slip into wars and get involved in Afghanistan?
And yet we never seem to learn.
Yeah, it is.
It's the same in Afghanistan as it is in Yemen, Somalia, Iraq, and Syria and Libya.
Once they get in there, it was just another government program.
They never can solve the problem that they claim that they're there to fix.
And so they just make matters worse, and that gives them more to do.
And so here we are working on almost 17 years later and still occupying Afghanistan.
Daniel, do you have a question for Scott?
Yeah, Scott.
You know, I've known you for a number of years.
I've been on your show.
Actually, just this last week I was on your show, and I love your show.
You've really built something.
But one thing your reputation is as a meticulous researcher.
I mean, you always dot the I's and cross the T's when it comes to these things.
And I really think that's important at a time when people throw out opinions left and right.
But I would like to talk about your book with that in mind.
And I remember because we talked as you were writing it, and you agonized, blood, sweat, and tears pouring out of your body as you were writing it, getting everything right.
Walk us through writing the book and tell us what it's about if you can.
Sure.
Thanks.
Yeah.
I'm a big fan of yours too.
Thanks.
Okay, so the book actually started out.
It was going to be refuting the war on terrorism in general.
And then I basically got stuck in the Afghan quagmire and chapter two ended up becoming a whole book.
So chapter one is getting into this mess for anybody familiar with Dr. Paul and the blowback argument.
Chapter one is all about how Jimmy Carter threw Bill Clinton's policies is what provoked the al-Qaeda war against the United States.
And then with the rest of the book, basically I make the case that, first of all, we didn't really have to invade.
We could have negotiated with the Taliban to give over Osama bin Laden.
But if you don't buy that and you say, no, we really needed to just bomb al-Qaeda, not arrest them, then, okay, but we still didn't have to fight the Taliban.
And then if you say, nah, but the Taliban hosted Osama bin Laden for five years, and so they had to go because I'm just so angry about 9-11, then, okay, even if you had to carpet bomb the Taliban, you didn't have to create a new government in Kabul, and then you definitely didn't have to stay and build up this new government and take on all of its enemies as our own enemies.
So now that our government has done that, we've picked a fight to oversimplify it slightly with the plurality post-tuned population of the country that we absolutely cannot defeat.
Our side cannot defeat.
And so they got into a war they didn't need to have, and then they built it up so big that now they're stuck in a quagmire and can't get out of it.
And you know, our friend Eric Margulies, whose opinion we both value very much, his point all along has been, basically, we're taking the side of the communists in Afghanistan.
We always have since we started.
Trump On American People Over It00:12:28
Right.
Yeah, we switched sides.
And really, it's the guys that we were backing.
The terrorists to the communists.
That's right.
The guys that we were backing in the 1980s against the Soviet sock puppets are the guys, the SOG puppets are the ones we're backing now, the Tajiks and the Uzbeks and the Hazars in their war against those Mujahideen.
You know, there are so many ideas and different things happening, whether it's the drug war or foreign policy, monetary policy, and all these things.
But I want to ask a question or get your opinion about, you know, libertarianism.
Where is it going?
There's articles now coming out and saying the libertarian moment is over and done with.
And if we went up to Washington and I shook hands with some of the people I know, you know, you might see why they have that opinion.
If you turn on the evening news, you might get that opinion.
But I make an effort to try to refute that and also to come down on the side of optimism.
So tell me where you stand on that on the unfairness of saying, well, libertarianism is, you know, it's almost like it's orchestrated and to show that we don't exist anymore.
At the same time, it's always painted so negatively.
Right.
Well, you know, part of our problem is we eschew power.
And so instead of doing everything we can to insinuate ourselves in Washington, D.C. and take over policy creation, we kind of stay out here in the hinterlands complaining because we don't really want to do that much participating.
And frankly, without you on the national level being interviewed on the cable TV news shows regularly as it used to be when you had your seat in Congress, we don't quite have the leadership that we used to have in terms of publicity.
Although Rand has been doing some really good stuff, especially lately.
But so I can see, again, agreeing with you that I can see why the TV people and the Washington, D.C. establishment types, as far as they can tell, we're sort of absent.
And yet, out in the country, it's not like that at all.
I think that, you know, primarily because of your two presidential runs that did so much to boost the discussion about real economics, Austrian school economics, peace, and limited government, and all these things, and to show people, especially by example, really, that you don't have to be a liberal or a leftist or some Michael Moore millionaire communist hypocrite to be anti-war.
That you could be a Texas conservative Republican and be more anti-war than those people even.
And I think that that is the real appeal of libertarianism.
That's obviously my focus as well as yours.
My primary focus is foreign policy.
It's the worst thing our government does.
And it's also, I think, it's the comparative advantage that us libertarians have is that we stay anti-war when liberals are in power.
And so, and you know, when Donald Trump, somebody like Donald Trump, a populist right-winger who makes some anti-war promises, when he breaks them, we're the ones who stay consistent.
And so whenever the parties in power shift back and forth, we get the flotsam and the jetsum.
Everybody disappointed in Obama for not following through on ending the wars, and everybody disappointed in Trump, they come back to us.
I think what happens sometimes, people don't realize the difference between political power, and you sort of alluded to that.
At the same time, ideas are pretty important, and they sort of in the background.
But it makes a difference, and that's why I was surprised so often in campaigning that I thought, well, nobody knows about this.
And all of a sudden, I've mentioned something, you know, the drug war, foreign entanglements, and non-interventionist foreign policy, and there's support out there.
So the ideas have been out there.
So I think if we're looking to see that libertarian ideas can only be present by a political knowledge and a political presence, I think you can be discouraged.
But I think that the ideology is so important because I think, you know, with the drug war, we've made progress there until we got the current Attorney General.
But I don't think he's going to get anywhere.
I think nullification has been hurt.
I think the Federal Reserve has been out there.
And in spite of the disaster of the foreign policy, I think the American people actually are with us on foreign policy.
Why are we going into these wars?
That's why the work that you do and all of us that try to do is getting the truth out.
Because I think truth is more powerful than all the power of these politicians.
You know, truth wins out in the end.
Absolutely.
Well, and especially when their policies are completely crazy and wrong and immoral.
You know, backing al-Qaeda, the only enemies of the American people, against Assad because he's allies with Iran, who they may be the enemies of the American Empire in the Middle East, but they never did anything to us.
And yet our government prefers al-Qaeda to Iran and Iran's friends.
So that's a pretty easy argument to win because we're right and they're not.
Daniel?
We talked a little bit about politics, and I'd like to get your take on this, Scott.
You know, two-part question.
Do you believe that Trumpism has hurt non-interventionism?
And if you do, is it temporary?
Has he done permanent damage?
Not just non-interventionism, but libertarianism in general.
No, I mean, I really think that Donald Trump is a side issue really to non-interventionism.
I mean, he ran on promising war crimes.
We're going to kill not just ISIS, we're going to kill their family members.
We're going to bring back torture.
It doesn't matter if it's good for getting intelligence.
They deserve it anyway.
We're just going to punish them with it.
Right?
So, you know, his instincts are very right-wing nationalist.
And so, as part of that, that meant that he was against overthrowing secular dictators.
At least he finally learned the lesson after Libya, which he supported the war in Libya.
But he learned the lesson finally after that, that enough of overthrowing these secular dictators in favor of these jihadists.
So, I mean, I think overall, he's actually still better than Hillary would have been on Syria, even last Friday, included in that.
I think, you know, if it was her, Zawahiri would probably already be on the throne in Damascus.
But, you know, I think he was elected in part because half of what he said sounded kind of anti-war.
And I think that overall, the populist right rank and file in America, sort of the Tea Party right Republican voters, they're sick and tired of this.
And they don't necessarily even necessarily have really good arguments, just that look at how long it's been.
How can it take 16 years to kill 400 men?
What is going on, right?
And so you have these families.
They've lost one son in the wars.
They don't want to lose their other son in the wars.
It's still going on.
They can't stand it.
So now when Trump bombs Syria, the polls show that Republicans support that.
But I don't think with George W. Bush numbers, and I think that their overall sentiment of being over this foreign policy and wanting to see an end to it is still there.
So I guess it remains to see how much more damage he does as president.
But, you know, I'm told, I won't say who, but, and I won't say I believe this either necessarily, but I know somebody who knows somebody in the White House, and they say that Trump absolutely wants out of Syria, wants out of Afghanistan.
John Bolton, notwithstanding, does not want a war with Iran.
He wants out of the Middle East and to spend this money at home, like he always says.
You know, there's this brand new article in the Washington Post this morning, or last night's Washington Post, where they say, it's about Russia specifically, but they say there's Congress's foreign policy, there's the president's foreign policy, and then there's the executive's branch foreign policy.
And they just refuse.
They're just completely insubordinate.
They refuse to do what he said.
So they tricked him when he kicked all those diplomats out.
They told him, well, what we're going to do is we're going to kick out the same number of diplomats as our European friends.
Well, they met all the European countries together.
He thought that, and then when he found out the next day that the French and the British had only kicked out four each and that the Americans had kicked out 56 or something, that he went absolutely ballistic.
Wow.
They're basically framing him up and doing everything they can to try to prevent him from doing the right thing as far as the Russians go.
And I, you know, honestly, I think it's going to end up blowing up in their face.
I think the American people agree with Trump that we do want to get along with Russia.
I mean, I was thrilled.
Weren't you guys thrilled when you heard that he invited Putin to D.C.?
And that's what he should have done on the very first day in office.
He should have invited Putin to D.C. and just shoved this whole Russia Gate argument right back down the throat.
Head on the Democrats and the CIA.
Scott, how do you think this will end?
You've written about this in great detail.
It's been going on for a long time.
It can't go on forever, but it can go on for a long time.
Yeah, these wars can last.
But do you think it's going to end some of these things, whether it's economics or foreign policy?
I claim, you know, it's an overwhelming task to convert the people in Washington, not the American people, that I can't see next month or next year, after the next election, that all of a sudden the majority will be agreeing with us.
So what do you think the odds are that eventually that's the way it'll end?
Or do you think that something like going broke might play a part in this?
Because it doesn't look like we're going to all of a sudden have the right kind of people there.
Not that we shouldn't keep trying.
And even if you have somebody moving us in a direction, it's beneficial.
But it just seems like their dead sent and the power and the clout of the neocons and the media and all is so strong that I keep thinking that the American people have to support getting out of there.
But the big question is, how do you think it's going to be resolved?
Yeah, I mean, the American people in the polls have been against the Afghan war since at least 2013.
They've even said that it was not worth fighting in the first place, even including September 11th.
No fake weapons of mass destruction in Afghanistan.
They still are saying we should have never even gone at all.
You know, in this book, Fire and Fury, about the first nine months of the Trump administration here, there's a quote from Dina Powell, who was the deputy national security advisor, saying, look, at the end of the day, bottom line is if Trump pulls the troops out of Afghanistan, then he loses a war.
And Trump can't lose a war.
So they're just talking about politics there.
And I just think that that's wrong.
I think especially that Donald Trump being Donald Trump, never a senator, never a governor.
He didn't vote for this.
He has nothing to do with it.
He could have easily just come in and said, this is all Bush and Obama's fault.
It's not my fault.
The poshtoons of Afghanistan are not our enemies.
And now they're not again.
And we're just going to leave.
We're not calling it a loss or a victory.
We're just coming home.
And if the government in Kabul can't stay, then blame that on George W. Bush and Barack Obama, the dummy and the coward or whatever his bad names.
And then he could do it.
And I think the American people just applaud.
I think it's only in Washington, D.C. they say that, you know, oh, that would be bad.
But, you know, part of this, though, too, is they say, well, ISIS is there now.
Well, these are still just local Pashtoon fighters, local militiamen, not real ISIS international terrorists at all.
But, you know, the story that they claim is that Obama didn't create ISIS by backing al-Qaeda in Libya and in Syria, and then that blew up in his face.
No, he created ISIS just by pulling the troops out of Iraq.
So the lesson is you can never pull any troops out anywhere because then anything bad that happens in that country will be your fault.
Right, exactly.
Send in more troops.
So now anything bad that happens while our troops are still there, well, that's just despite their best efforts.
Right.
But I just think that that's wrong.
And I think the American people are over it.
I think if Donald Trump ended the Afghan war tomorrow and told the American people, look, you're going to hear a lot of criticism about this.
Pick which side you're on.
I think the American people will decide to hit him.
Scott, I want to thank you for being with us today.
It's a great book here.
I want to put it up again for our viewers to see because Scott writes well and he also is on the side of non-intervention.
He knows about Afghanistan and he knows how to apply that to our total foreign policy.
Scott, thank you very much for being with us today.