02/12/15 – Ron Paul – The Scott Horton Show

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All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
It's my show, The Scott Horton Show.
Scotthorton.org is my website with all the archives there.
I'm on the Liberty Radio Network from noon to two Eastern Time weekdays.
And our first guest today is a man whose name is on most of my shirts.
He's the greatest parliamentarian in world history and my hero, Dr. Ron Paul.
Welcome back to the show.
Ron, how are you doing?
Thank you, Scott.
Nice to be with you again.
And thank you for the exaggeration.
No, no.
It's all very much deserved.
And I want to mention here, too, in your introduction, RonPaulInstitute.org, of course, is the website of the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.
And then, of course, there's VoicesofLiberty.com, which is sort of the improved and expanded Ron Paul channel, which I'm very happy that they're running some of my archives there at VoicesofLiberty.com.
Very proud of that.
And thank you for that, whatever part you played in okaying that, if you did.
And also, I want to make sure everybody knows that you're the author of great titles like A Foreign Policy of Freedom and The Revolution, A Manifesto.
Those are my favorites of the many books that you've written that I've read.
So there we go.
Very happy to have you back on the show.
I guess the big news is, like in your essay, running on AntiWar.com and all around the Internet today, is about the new authorization to use military force.
And I thought of you, actually, when I saw them saying that the administration was even officially saying that.
They're leaving it deliberately fuzzy, they call it, deliberately vague.
And does it really matter?
Even if it's explicit, for them, it's always fuzzy.
It's sort of like the Constitution.
It's pretty explicit in most places, but it always ends up being interpreted in a very fuzzy manner.
Right.
Yeah, exactly.
Well, now, the authorization to use military force from back in 2001, they still want to keep that.
That's the one that you voted for in response to the September 11th attacks, after you warned against that kind of thing, actually, and introduced a letter of mark in reprisal instead.
Can you tell the people about what a letter of mark is and what that would have been?
Well, this was used in the early history, and Jefferson used it.
It's sometimes as great as a man as Jefferson was.
I look back now and think that maybe he did a little bit more than I would have wanted.
Anyway, he wanted to exert the notion of sovereignty of the United States, so he would use this in a naval sense.
If anybody attacked an American vessel anyplace in the world, he wanted to even send the Navy to help.
But the letter of mark and reprisal was an accepted instrument throughout the world.
If you had a letter from your government and you were sailing in a private ship, you could act as part of the government to defend yourself and to attack those who were attacking you.
So it was more than just self-defense.
It was more or less getting the authority from the government to do something in a very limited fashion, rather than saying, well, the only thing that we can do with the Barbary pirates is to declare war, and that was the only option.
So this letter of mark and reprisal, which they put in, I guess they were thinking of things like this, to limit it.
And, of course, there was a lot of hang-ups with that authorization.
In 2001, that was actually totally abused because that was directed at those people who actually participated in 9-11.
But nevertheless, they went much, much further than that.
And that is when I started thinking about letter of mark and reprisal, because even though we so often can talk about what led up to it, what led up to World War I and World War II, once the country is viciously attacked and there's no way you can't defend oneself against it, then you don't have many choices in the matter.
But I was still looking for one, and since Al-Qaeda, whoever did 9-11, wasn't a precise government, so you really can't declare war against a government.
And it's sort of similar to what's going on today with ISIS.
It's pretty hard to declare war against ISIS.
And that's why I got to thinking about the letter of mark and reprisal.
Maybe this could be done by a small group of people.
Matter of fact, can't you just see the difference that might have occurred?
They knew where Ben Laden was.
I don't think they really wanted to catch him because he was used as the excuse for us invading various countries and building up the military.
So if he had a private force that was going to be paid to go over and get him, because they had pretty good knowledge of where he was, and taking care of him early on, just think of the benefits that would have come from a very, very narrowed approach to going after those people that were participating in 9-11.
Yeah, I mean, and that's the thing is you were probably pretty much alone on Capitol Hill of having a realistic assessment of just how big of an organization Al-Qaeda was and saw 9-11 sort of as the desperate Hail Mary kind of attack that it was, rather than believing in this giant caliphate that they said was coming to get us, but that didn't really exist out there, but they were just looking to exploit it and get away with murder.
But your way, I agreed, I remember thinking back then, boy, if they would listen to Ron Paul, this thing would be over by Christmas.
But again, the extent of Al-Qaeda was one thing, but the nature of Al-Qaeda was something else, because I still don't think it's a monolith.
Yes, it looks like they're getting organized under a force in Iraq and Syria, conditions which we created, but they're still talking about 30,000.
And what about the millions?
How many millions of people are around that area that claim they don't like them, everywhere from Israel on to Turkey and Syria and Iran?
Nobody likes them, and yet there's apparent success.
So it's more than fighting a country, because there's people who support these people and at least go along with it, and they're not willing to fight them.
But that's why I think it gets to be silly if they think they're going to ever declare war against ISIS.
I compare this to back in the 50s and the 40s or so declaring war against communism.
Well, you can declare war against the Soviet Union, but you can't declare war against communism, because it's pervasive.
It's all over the place.
And people who are angry at us now and have been radicalized and feel desperate, they do want to do – they're anxious to do something.
And I think right now there's a real question about the 20,000.
Everybody accepts, well, how many people are on the way to Syria?
20,000?
It's going to go from 30,000 to 50,000 in one day, and we're going to be in that much trouble.
So that's the reason we have to vote for more authority and more weapons.
It's just the biggest mess I can conceive of in foreign policy.
Well, yeah, and it's true that when you talk about listing off all the people who are their enemies in the region who are against them, you include everybody they've conquered too, or pretty much everybody they've conquered, because we've seen how these guys acted in the past where it was the Sunni-based insurgency themselves, their allies, that turned on al-Qaeda and got rid of them back in 2006 and 2007.
And they're such horrible guys.
They obviously have no concept of – you thought America was bad at counterinsurgency.
They have no concept of hearts and minds whatsoever apparently.
They're happy to turn everyone against them.
It really hurts us who are trying to get the people to understand what's really going on, because all you have to do is have one person burned to death or one people beheaded, and they don't think about the 60 that were beheaded in Saudi Arabia last year and how Saudi Arabia may well have been instrumental, especially in the financing of 9-11, these kind of things.
It just sort of distracts and the people concentrate on this, but that's all part of the war propaganda.
But nobody – and if we would suggest, well, how would you feel if you were out at a funeral, and lo and behold, a cruise missile was misplaced, and they killed my whole family or they killed my cousin or my friends?
How many people would feel outraged about that?
But nobody wants to look at it that way, no matter how many people have died at the hands of our foreign policy.
And there have been many.
Some estimate it could be a million Iraqis died since we've been – All right, now hold it right there, Dr. Paul.
We'll be right back, everybody, with Ron Paul after this.
Hey, y'all, Scott Horton here.
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All right, you guys.
Welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
It's my show, The Scott Horton Show.
I'm on the line with the great Dr. Ron Paul, anti-war activist.
And we're talking about the past and future of the war on terrorism, really.
And sorry about the heartbreak interrupting you there, Dr. Paul, but where we left off, you were talking about a little bit of that put the shoe on the other foot kind of thing.
And, you know, it's so important that, as I saw in a recent interview you did with Newsmax TV, where you were basically explaining, hey, history was already going on before September 11th happened.
It reminded me of the talk you gave on C-SPAN in 1998, a warning during Operation Desert Fox, the bombing campaign against Iraq, that this is the kind of thing that could lead to terrorist attacks against us and that kind of thing.
Two different examples of that before September 11th.
And the Newsmax interview, I was thinking, if only you said it was Bill Clinton's policies that led to this, then maybe he, because he almost understood, you know, that the 1990s existed.
Maybe a little bit partisan.
Maybe the Republicans could get their head around that.
Maybe it didn't all just start because the Koran said kill Whitey or something like that.
But maybe America had done something to get us into this mess.
Our government had done something to get us into this mess.
You know, it's really amazing how much partisanism there is.
And yet the parties are the same.
You know, they all believe in the foreign policy of intervention and the Federal Reserve and welfare and spending and deficits and central economic plan and all that.
Yet they really do fight tooth and nail.
But I think that's part of the things that they've been snowed on.
I mean, these – the hardcore Republicans and hardcore Democrats give up all their beliefs when it becomes a partisan thing.
I came across that when we were fighting these wars, and Dennis Kucinich, who's an honest, progressive Democrat, I could work with him and other Democrats.
But too often there were a bunch of the Democrats that worked real hard with us to try to stop Bush's war, but immediately wouldn't say boo to Obama.
And now if I come out and say, well, you know, I sympathize – and I think I did that on Newsmax one time – that I sympathize with Obama's statement about, hey, why more sanctions on Iran right now?
Why not let us talk a little bit about it?
And when you listen to his words, I don't know how sincere he is, but I gave him the benefit of the doubt because I'd much rather him wanting to talk to the Iranians rather than saying, well, it's time to bomb.
I guess they will put McCain in charge of all this and let him go ahead.
But then they come down hard on you.
The conservatives come down hard on you.
They say, oh, you're a Bush lover or you're an Obama lover.
And then if you say something about, why don't we have an understanding of what's going on in Ukraine?
Oh, you're just a Putin lover.
You say anything which tries to explain why there's a civil war going on there and why NATO is fighting Russia, then they of course want to destroy your argument only by character assassination.
But that's the way things have been for a long time.
And the only way we can confront that is with as many facts as we can get out there and shows like yours and what we all try to do.
And fortunately, we have more ability to do this now than in the old days.
It used to be very difficult for our side.
And with people like Snowden around, it becomes even easier for us.
But there's still a lot of ignorance out there and there's a lot of need to just go along.
You can imagine how the zombies will follow Hillary once she gets rolling.
Right.
Yeah, we saw that with the recent Washington Times series on the Libya war where almost uniformly the conservatives are just as bad as her on it, the Republicans.
And so they don't want to make much of it, even though it's in their newspaper, the Washington Times there.
And the liberals don't want to say anything about it, even though that series is just absolutely huge.
The scandal behind how even the Pentagon tried to stop her, but nobody could get us into that thing.
But even the strongest critics from the Republicans aren't saying, well, you know, this could have all been avoided if we wanted to decided that we had to get rid of Gaddafi at this particular time.
I mean, we were in there.
We messed it up.
And look at what's there now.
Total chaos.
But it is it's either going to be they didn't use enough force or Hillary screwed up by using the force that she did have.
And her policies weren't correct.
But they never look at the overall policy of the downside of foreign interventionism.
All right.
Now, back when I don't know, 10 years ago, when they were pushing all this stuff, they kept threatening that this Islamo fascist caliphate is getting us right.
As you were talking about before, inflating al Qaeda into this almost Soviet empire sized thing that needs to be battled.
It was a fantasy of bin Laden's.
It was a fantasy of George Bush's.
And yet it seems like that kind of is what has replaced the old Baath regime in the predominantly Sunni parts of Iraq and Syria.
Now, with this guy, Baghdadi, who is for intents and purposes bin Laden himself up there on the balcony like Mussolini declaring himself the caliph and all this kind of thing.
So just playing devil's advocate as best I can here, Dr. Paul.
Is it is it possible that maybe we need to fight one more real good war here against these particularly heinous guys, the guys that Bush pretended Saddam was and only then maybe quit?
I am not quite ready to go in and try to clean up the mess with our money and our our troops.
But I do think they're stronger.
They seem to be more organized.
But that's not so much that their philosophy is winning out, that they're such they get in such support.
But they're getting support by the default out of our failure.
It was sort of how did we beat the Soviets?
We didn't beat him by military might.
We beat him by them beating themselves because they had a non viable system.
But the more we get involved, the more we enhance our enemies, because, you know, we send we the biggest thing is the incentive.
The more we're we're blamed for everything that goes wrong and every people, everybody that dies over there.
And now it'll be Ukraine and elsewhere because we are involved.
And most of it's justified, but some isn't justified.
But we can be the whipping boy and they can they they can blame us.
But then even in a practical sense, I can't believe they do it on purpose, but it's sometimes it's so stupid.
It seems like it is that we stand like sending weapons into Syria because we had to get rid of Assad.
Well, they didn't.
And then they listen to McCain.
Oh, I know who the good guys are.
We'll send them weapons.
Now, who would have ever guessed that there was chaos over there and the weapons might end up in the hands of somebody that we don't like.
So we incentivize them and we give them their weapons.
I mean, look at how many weapons and an energy that we ignited in in Afghanistan and how the CIA supported the radicalization of Wahhabism, you know, and in in in Saudi Arabia.
So I think it's our I think if if one argues it, it looks like they're stronger than ever and it looks bad.
I think it's it's a mere reflection of our stupidity and the failure of our our side presenting an alternative philosophic system.
And that's where our downfall is.
So I don't think I don't think ISIS is something that you attack militarily.
I think we didn't defeat the Soviets that way.
We couldn't.
And they had already killed 100 million a week.
And we became allies of theirs.
And but it was defeated philosophically.
And I think that's what has to happen.
But it can't be if we're going to finance them and do enough harm that all it does is they don't.
I'm sure there's still some good feeling in that part of the world for us.
But I think everything we do, it diminishes the good feeling for America that used to exist.
Yeah.
Very good point.
All right.
Again, everybody, that's Dr. Ron Paul at the Ron Paul Institute.
That's Ron Paul Institute dot org and also Voices of Liberty dot com.
And I'm under the impression, Dr. Paul, that you actually have a new project in the works coming out.
Do you want to talk about that at all?
Well, I have I have several and I'm not quite ready to.
I do have I do have a book on war that I want to get out.
And I think we're going to be modifying the channel and our broadcasting.
But it's it's not quite ready yet.
OK, well, that's great to know, though.
A new book coming out about the war where we say it's the war as an issue rather than a war.
You know why?
You know, it's it's in it's very it's written from a personal viewpoint, from my early remembrance of World War Two and all the things that, you know, how did I become so anti-war?
It wasn't that I, you know, had it in one single day.
And it was as the years went on, I became stronger.
And, of course, in Washington, it seems like some people become more enamored by the establishment.
But the longer I was in Washington, the more adamant I was against the establishment, especially of the wars.
And and it hasn't hurt me for my arguments that I did spend some time in the military.
So it's a lot more difficult for the attacks on me that they can put on others.
But anyway, that will be out someday.
As soon as I get it ready.
OK, great.
Well, certainly looking forward to that.
Thank you so much for coming on the show.
Good talk.
Good to talk to you, Scott.
All right.
So that's the great Ron Paul.
He's at RonPaulInstitute.org and VoicesOfLiberty.com.
The books are The Revolution, A Manifesto and The Fed and A Foreign Policy of Freedom.
That's a collection of foreign policy speeches that Dr.
Paul gave starting, I believe, in the late 70s and then all the way up through the early 2000s, which is such a great read.
You've got to get your hands on it.
Foreign Policy of Freedom.
And we'll be right back after this.
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