For Antiwar.com, I'm Scott Horton.
This is Antiwar Radio.
Introducing Antiwar.com's editorial director, Justin Raimondo.
He writes behind the headlines at Antiwar.com slash Justin.
Welcome back to the show, Justin.
Great to be back.
How's it going?
I really like this article here, which, you know, I've been a big fan for a while, but this particular column had me laughing out loud.
Putin to the West, take your medicine and don't go socialist.
So what's this about?
Well, it was his speech to the Davos conference where he's talking about, you know, what Obama is doing in the U.S.
And he's saying, well, you know, you really ought to reconsider getting all this state intervention in the economy and don't go down that road because, of course, Russia has been down that road and it wasn't that great.
So, I mean, here we have a Russian leader red-baiting Washington.
I mean, it's just, you know, I'm glad I lived to see that.
Now I can die in peace.
Yeah, that's funny.
You know, we've been headed that way, it seems like, with the whole domino theory about, you know, once you create a democracy, then they'll all become democracies and occupying, well, the former Soviet bloc, you know, Warsaw, the former Warsaw Pact in Central Asia and Eastern Europe, using the Russian supply lines to get our stuff into Afghanistan.
And now it's so bad, our country is acting so much like the Soviet Union, that the Russians are calling us out on it and calling us that.
Right, I mean, you know, we seared into the abyss and then we fell into it.
Well, but I thought the totalitarian bureaucracy on our shores was just for the duration of the emergency, right?
Well, right, but, I mean, you know, when Buckley wrote those lines, you know, we were still a semi-free country and, of course, now.
You know, it's interesting, I mean, you know, I think that this whole incident really underscores how right I was when, right after 9-11, I wrote about bizarro world and said that everything is now inverted.
You know, the sheer force of the explosion of the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, you know, propelled us into an alternate universe where up is down, right is left, and Russian leaders are lecturing us.
I mean, you know, Putin even used the phrase free enterprise, which I found just astonishing.
I mean, and, you know, coming from him, of course, this is even, you know, more astonishing because, you know, Putin has intervened in the economy in the Soviet Union, you know, quite extensively.
And so, you know, to hear this speech, you know, I mean, it reads like, you know, he's been reading, you know, the Austrian economist.
Right, because he does even say specifically, and now I don't know exactly how this contrasts with his policy in Russia over the past couple of months, but he says, you know, as you say in your article, he sounds like Ron Paul saying it's a mistake to try to print more money in order to prop up the bad investments that have been allowed to be made during this time.
We have to not follow that temptation, but go ahead and let those bad investments shake out, and so forth, and he's saying we need the recession, that's the corrective, which is something that almost no one else in mass media anyway, you know, gets across at all.
Well, and it's very interesting, you know, he actually talks about how, you know, this has shifted, you know, the center of world politics away from the U.S.
You know, the old system was that we printed the money, and then we spent it, and then foreigners staved our dollars and, you know, basically paid our debts with them, you know, or financed our debts with them.
Yeah, we've been buying their stuff with inflationary money.
Right, and so, you know, what's happening now is that that whole system, says Putin, you know, is coming to an end, and that now there's going to be, you know, many reserve currencies, not just the dollar, and there's going to be some competition.
So it's the end of a unipolar era.
Well, I certainly hope that's right.
I guess the fear is that they'll try to create some kind of world currency, although I can't see how they'd ever really be able to do that with anything short of just gold anyway, which gold is the global currency by default anyway, always has been.
Right, I mean, you know, don't be so quick to say, well, that's good, because what it really means is an end to American economic, you know, supremacy, and it means really the end of our prosperity, our perceived prosperity.
I mean, what it really means is that eventually, sometime soon, relatively soon, America is going to be a third world country, and a second rate power.
Well, but see, that's not really true, because there's so much actual wealth that still exists in this country, and infrastructure and factories and skills and so forth.
I mean, I think of it as a good thing, because I think of it sort of like the recession itself.
You know, it hurts like hell, but it's setting things back on the natural order from the way that they've been artificially skewed away by the government.
But then, of course, government is still there, and our rulers, including Mr. Obama, are not going to be creating a free market economy.
I mean, what they're going to be doing is driving us further into debt, spending money we don't have, and printing money.
So I am not optimistic, as usual, and to me, this is really a turning point.
Well, do you think that the financial crisis is actually going to serve to limit their ambitions as far as, say, for example, escalating the war in Afghanistan, that kind of thing, or is it going to keep driving us down that same trying-to-reenact-Roosevelt path?
Well, I mean, look, see, here's what they're counting on.
You see, we've been moving toward this role more and more, and they are counting on their role as the sole superpower.
I mean, it seems like there's this international division of labor, right?
And, of course, China is the factory, and we are the army.
And so more and more, we are going to play that role and count on our allies not to call on our debts and count on the Chinese, who are our big trading partners, not to turn on us and call on their debts.
And so as long as we have this overriding military strength, then the status quo can continue to exist.
Yeah, except that what does China need our military for?
I mean, what status quo are we protecting for them, really, other than if they start dumping all their securities, they'll make the ones that they haven't been able to dump yet worthless and have to take a hit on their own side of the equation?
I mean, our power is a threat to them.
So there's an implied threat there.
Well, and I guess our navy provides all the security for the products they export to America, too.
Right.
And so as long as we play our role and they play their role, and then, of course, as you mentioned, they're counting on this World Central Bank, which they're going to spring on us any day now, to where they can inflate the world economy at will by pushing a button and mark inflation.
I mean, that's what they're counting on.
But, of course, it's all very unsustainable.
I mean, it's not going to work out.
And bad times are ahead.
Well, it seems like, well, you know, I don't really know how to gauge the level of change in this kind of debate.
You know, since, for example, when there was the big stock market crash in 1987 or something, I was in middle school, and I don't really know how they talked about it then.
But it seems like now, well, you know, I saw Ron Paul was invited on Neil Cavuto to basically say that this is the end of dollar hegemony.
And the Austrian school told you back in 71, or we told you in 49, and we told you in 71, and we're telling you now this doesn't work, and we're going to have to, you know.
Ron Paul talking about basically revolutionary change in America's financial system, and Neil Cavuto sitting there going, uh-huh, uh-huh.
And basically it seems to be that the recognition of just how much trouble these people have caused us is sinking in, if not a total willingness to listen to Ron Paul or to go with his suggestions.
It seems like they're at least, you know, willing to listen, I guess is what I'm trying to say.
Well, look, as the economic situation gets worse, then, you know, the politics of this country are going to get even more skewed.
And, you know, the popular narrative is, well, the free market caused all this.
So, of course, you know, we're going to move toward more state intervention.
We're not going to take Putin's advice.
And, you know, in answer to your question, no, we're not going to pull back in Afghanistan or anywhere else.
In fact, we're going to go into Pakistan.
Well, but see, here's the thing, though.
I mean, we get back to how untenable all this is.
I mean, at some point there's an equation on the Chinese balance sheet where it's just no longer worthwhile, and I guess, you know, this will be when the inflation hits in a year or two or something.
When the dollar is so devalued, people aren't going to want to use it as the reserve currency anymore, and the U.S. Army isn't going to make them keep it that way when it's no longer in their interests anymore.
Right.
And so then what?
Well, you know, I mean, then we'll see what happens.
But our rulers show no interest in this issue and no indication of understanding what is involved.
I mean, they actually believe they can keep reflating the bubble and they can spend their way out of approaching poverty.
I mean, that seems unlikely.
So, you know, the empire is still there, and they're going to keep going.
Well, you know, the last time I spoke to Robert Higgs, he said, yeah, the empire is a humongous thing, and don't look for it to go anywhere anytime soon.
No.
And, you know, of course, it has a momentum, you know, like all of its own.
Yeah.
You know, it's there.
I mean, what government program has, you know, been stopped voluntarily?
Ever.
Right.
You know, once you have a program going, and especially, you know, an international empire in which the sun never sets, you know, certainly it's going to remain around as long as it can, you know, because there's too many financial and political interests intertwined with it.
Well, you know, I just spoke with Gareth Porter, and he's got a new piece out for IPS, and he has two sources that say that the day after the inauguration that Petraeus and Odierno met with Barack Obama, and they tried to convince him that we need to delay the 16-month timetable or whatever, and that he refused and told them, no, bring me back a plan for 16 months just like I told you before, and that they are kind of actually actively working to, if not necessarily thwart his will on the issue, to at least get to work already on a media narrative about how anything bad that happens in Iraq from here on out is all his fault, not theirs, and that kind of thing.
And basically Odierno is insubordinate, told the New York Times, well, I think we should wait a year.
This is after he's been explicitly instructed by his boss.
Well, I, you know, I too read that, and, you know, I'm wondering, you know, how accurate that is.
I mean, how do they know that Obama said no?
Well, Gareth, when I talked to him, he said he has two sources.
One of them, and it was, you know, they talked to people who were in the meeting, supposedly, each of them did.
One of them was from the military side, and one of them was from the Barack Obama, you know, inner circle side, both of them saying the same thing.
And I even asked him, well, what are the chances that Obama's just, that actually his team is attempting to spin you when it's really their decision, they're just trying to blame it on the military, that even though they want to stay longer.
And he said no.
He was real certain about his, very confident in his sources and their interpretation of what this meant, and that apparently Petraeus left the room angry, visibly angry, that he expected that he was going to be able to go in there and change Obama's mind, and then apparently found out not.
I don't know about that, but it sounds nice, the idea that the president really does want out in 16 months, like in the SOFA, so-called.
Well, I mean, what he wants is not out, but he wants to transfer those soldiers to Afghanistan.
Yeah, well, out of Iraq is one thing.
I'm not saying I approve of escalating somewhere else, but out of Iraq would be a good start to something, I hope.
Well, look, I mean, mark my words, we are not leaving Iraq.
I mean, you know, look at this 70,000 men, a person, in a residual force.
I mean, that doesn't sound like they're getting out of Iraq to me.
Yeah, well, again, that's the military guys saying that to the newspapers.
But apparently Obama's guys are, at least for now, saying otherwise.
I'm not sure, again, whether I believe that or not, but that's at least the story being reported out of the media today.
We'll see.
Why it takes 16 months to come home is beyond me.
I mean, why does it take 16 months to get out of Iraq?
Yeah, I never understood that either.
You know, we could do it in six.
If they wanted to leave Iraq, they would.
I mean, look, those guys just had their second major national election.
You know, is the war over yet?
Look, it's all just a big game.
I mean, we are not going to leave Iraq.
At the end of 16 months, we're still going to have 70,000 troops there.
That is not leaving Iraq.
And, you know, of course, just taking into consideration all this rhetoric about the unity of the region, which Obama keeps blithering on about, well, we can't take any region, any country, in isolation.
Iraq is related to Afghanistan, which is related to Pakistan.
Of course, this has this technocratic sound to it that, oh, yes, these are very competent people, and they're looking at it in a holistic way.
But actually, it's just a lot of rhetoric.
Yeah, conflating a bunch of issues together in order to expand their policy.
Right, exactly.
So, you know, these are warning signs that all those campaign promises and all the anti-war rhetoric was just a lot of window dressing.
In fact, if you look at what his plans are, his announced plans, you know, you see that it is an overview of escalation, that taken together, what he is planning is an escalation of the war on terror, and that there's going to be new frontiers in that war, notably in Pakistan.
I mean, if they keep pounding away at Pakistan, that government is going to come tumbling down, and who knows what's going to take their place.
It almost seems like that's what they're trying to do, is to weaken what's left of a parliamentary government there so that they can replace it with an invading force.
Although, I mean, that's the other thing, though.
I mean, really, they don't want to occupy Karachi and Peshawar and everything, right?
They just want to go up into the mountains there and try to find the Arab side now with bin Laden and all that.
Do you think they really want to invade and occupy all of Pakistan?
Well, I mean, I don't think they know what they want to do.
It's interesting, I saw Dianne Feinstein on MSNBC tonight, and Keith Oberlin was asking her about the Afghan campaign and how they were going to deal with that, and she says, well, you know, it depends on the mission.
Well, but what is the mission?
I mean, what are we doing in Afghanistan?
What do we hope to accomplish?
Do we want to establish democracy, like in Iraq?
Do we want to occupy the country?
Are we after bin Laden?
But he's long gone.
I mean, this whole rationale for the Afghan war is just crazy.
They want to stay so that they don't have to leave, that's all.
It's a tautology, basically.
It's a government program like any other.
Like you said, some chieftain would have to give up his base.
Yeah, but I mean, I don't get this.
I mean, they went into Afghanistan purportedly to go after the perpetrators of the 9-11 terrorist attacks, Osama bin Laden and his crew.
And then they let them get away.
And somehow the bad guys got away.
So now they're gone, right?
So why are we still there?
I mean, bin Laden isn't there.
Al-Qaeda isn't really there.
It's just the Taliban.
Well, isn't it all about pipeline routes, or at least proposed pipeline routes?
I mean, it seems like part of some larger power game that they're playing that they just aren't talking about.
And, of course, the war on terror gives them an excuse to set up bases all around Afghanistan, like in Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan and all the other stands up there.
Well, maybe it's really about Russia and China and establishing a base between the two, really.
Yeah, but, you know, isn't it kind of funny that, I mean, here we are trying to figure out what these people are up to in Afghanistan.
I mean, it sounds just like the war in Iraq where people were talking about, why are we in Iraq?
What's the real reason?
Well, it's oil.
No, it's Israel.
No, it's this.
No, it's that.
I mean, it's this big mystery, this totally irrational policy, but it's not in our interest.
And, once again, we're actively pursuing it.
Maybe it's just about selling Lockheed products.
See, I think that guy Richard Cummings is really on to something.
That article he wrote, Lockheed stock and two smoking barrels, and he points out how, you know, you take your Bill Kristol and your Francis Fukuyama and all these nitwits, but you look at the real neocons in power.
They all were tied to Lockheed, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, et cetera, and they're basically just lobbyists.
They're like the brain on top of the military industrial complex kind of thing, just making money for Bruce Jackson and the boys.
There you go.
I mean, that seems to be the emotional zeitgeist of the times, that everybody is out really in a really kind of vulgar out front way to just make as much money as they can, however they can.
Yeah, and those F-22s and F-35s are expensive per each one.
You know, they're $20 million each or more.
I forget even.
I'm sure it's higher than that.
You know, I much prefer the neocons who were, you know, at least had some interesting ideological rationales for all these wars and all this military buildup.
Yes, we have to liberate the Middle East and blah, blah, blah.
I mean, that at least had some kind of a moral tone to it.
But I think that the new interventionism under Obama is going to be more crass.
And then, of course, soon we're going to be hearing that it's all about jobs, jobs, jobs.
Remember the rationale for the first Iraq war, James Baker?
Right.
Yeah, he was asked, you know, why are we in Iraq?
Oh, jobs, jobs, jobs.
Well, here's one thing.
You know, I talked with Stephen Zunes earlier, too, and one of the things that he mentioned was that there's no constituency really.
I mean, actually, this was my point that I made out of it.
There's really no constituency on the right, or as you know, a very small constituency on the right for peace.
However, there's a huge constituency for peace on the left, and, in fact, they were the ones who helped Obama beat Clinton and then McCain and fell for his line and put him in power.
So at least there's some kind of force there pushing him to go the right way on any of these things, whereas Bush-Cheney have only had to please the 30 percenters of the John Hagee churchgoers and everybody else.
He didn't really care if nobody else supported him.
That was enough.
But, I mean, what does this pushing really consist of?
Who's pushing?
Well, I don't know.
I mean, that's the whole thing, is we need to push, was basically the argument, the anti-war movement.
Well, look, I mean, what if, you know, he says no?
Or, you know, what if he just ignores the so-called anti-war movement and just keeps doing what he's doing?
Well, then everybody who was fool enough to support him should then stab him in the back and finally open their eyes and then let him lose next time, at least.
Lose to whom?
A Republican?
Yeah.
I mean, the thing is, it's just like the anti-abortion people in the GOP.
I mean, where do these people have to go?
Nowhere.
Yeah, that's true.
Yeah, so, you know, it's a captive constituency, and if anybody's pushing anybody, you know, it's, you know, like Obama's pushing the anti-war movement, you know, and the lefty progressive type, you know, into just, you know, like supporting him personally no matter what he does.
Yeah.
I wonder how that's really going to play out over the first year, because I know that there's a tremendous amount of personality cult not seen since the days of George W. Bush surrounding this Obama guy, and I wonder if it's going to take, you know, five years or something for this to really start wearing off on people like it did with Bush.
Oh, no.
It seems like everything gets kind of accelerated, and it seems like after a year of this guy being the mad bomber of Central Asia, killing kids every other day or more, that the people who loved him are going to kind of snap out of it.
They're going to have to, aren't they?
No?
Well, yeah.
I mean, look, you know, he's been compared to John F. Kennedy and, you know, FDR, but actually he's a lot closer to Lyndon Baines Johnson, as Katrina Vanden Heuvel pointed out in an interview with you, which I found fascinating.
I mean, look, it's the same thing.
You have this liberal Democratic president who comes into office.
There's a popular war going on.
He escalates it, and he gets bogged down in it, and it undermines his domestic policies, and he's carried away by his own hubris, and he's a one-term president.
Now, I don't know if, you know, I'm not saying that Obama's going to be a one-term president, but what I am saying is that he does somewhat resemble LBJ.
Well, the script for his catastrophe is certainly all laid right out there for him, and, of course, with Pakistan filling the role of Laos and Cambodia, the safe haven across the border that we have to do raids into there.
Exactly.
Yeah, I was thinking about that actually today, thinking, yeah, it's just like Laos and Cambodia.
Of course, that was Richard Nixon who did that, but still, you know, it's the same era.
Yeah, say more.
And, you know, plus, there's other frontiers of intervention.
It's not just in Central Asia and Pakistan and Afghanistan.
I'm looking at Nigeria.
Well, I was thinking more of a confrontation with the Russians.
Oh, well, why don't we get back into that, because that's where we started this, with Vladimir Putin sounding like Ron Paul telling us to take our recession like a man.
That brings up the whole question of America policy towards Russia and NATO expansion and all that.
Do you really think that that's the kind of fight that this guy is willing to pick?
Well, I mean, you know, I haven't heard lately as to what the Obama administration is going to do about those anti-missile defenses, which are not really defenses, in Poland and the Czech Republic, whether they're going to continue that policy.
He stayed wishy-washy so far on that, I think.
Well, but he's going to make a decision one way or the other.
Yeah.
And, of course, we haven't heard the last of Saakashvili in Georgia.
Certainly, he's going to test the administration and launch new provocations against the Russians.
And, of course, if you look at or listen to what Obama said during the campaign, he was very Russophobic.
And the only time he got really belligerent during the debate with Hillary Clinton was when he tried to out-Hawker on the Russian question.
And, of course, Putin is really unpopular in this country, especially among liberals.
And that's the one point that the neocons and the liberal interventions really get together on, and that is this anti-Russian stance they have.
Well, yeah, but, I mean, Russia's also the thing that everybody agrees you can't really do anything about, too, right?
I mean, they've got forests of hydrogen bombs.
Well, right, but, you know, you can engage in, you know, the kind of polemics that the Bush administration and especially Dick Cheney engaged in, and, you know, you can engage them with soft power, like the color revolutions that we financed, you know, from Ukraine to Kyrgyzstan.
Well, some say America was behind, basically, the coup that put Putin in place over Yeltsin on New Year's of 2000.
No, no, no.
Actually, Yeltsin, you know, appointed.
Yeah, he resigned and appointed Putin a couple of months before the election, kind of assuring the spot.
No, I don't think that's true.
Of course, the U.S. probably had prior knowledge of it and signed off on it before it happened.
That would explain why they would be especially mad now if he's turned out to not be the puppet that they thought he was going to be, like Yeltsin was.
Well, I mean, he's certainly nobody's puppet.
You know, Putin is very intelligent, as his speech shows, and very well read.
You know, I really think that the Americans resent his rather sharp public statements over the past two years.
You know, Putin has not been very shy about engaging us, you know, rhetorically, and I think that this has really provoked some, you know, opposition in U.S. ruling circles.
And so I think that, you know, that's one front that we have to watch.
And I would watch Ukraine, as John McCain told us to do during the late campaign.
You know, I think those guys are our allies, and I think that there's going to be some friction there.
And as I said, Georgia is still an active front.
So there's plenty of opportunity for Obama to meddle from Central Europe to Central Asia.
And, you know, it's no accident that Russia borders all those flashpoints.
Did you notice that?
Yeah, well, Russia borders a lot of things, but yeah, that's true.
Yes, and so, you know, the old American program of encircling Russia, I mean, they've been trying to do that since the end of the Cold War.
So that project, you know, has not been abandoned.
Yeah, it seems to continue on.
And what about Africa?
I mean, in Nigeria there are rebels who are getting braver and braver about, well, basically fighting the stealing of the resources right out from under their villages.
And that looks like a perfect opportunity to escalate a conflict.
And then, of course, there's Darfur in western Sudan.
And just the other day I saw President Obama, I don't know exactly what he was threatening to do, but making some pretty belligerent statements of one form or another about Zimbabwe, too, which Bush mostly stayed silent about, which I was always very thankful for, that they never took advantage of the terrible crisis going on in Zimbabwe.
But do you think that they'll really attempt to expand the empire further into Africa over the next four years, too?
Well, I think that's, I mean, given Obama's views on Africa, yeah.
I mean, it's very possible that we're going to just show how enlightened and humanitarian we are.
And I think the Samantha Power faction will have some say in this.
And to put a humanitarian gloss on it, we may just move into Africa for police action.
It's hard to imagine how that could be pulled off without it looking like just expanding another front of the war on terrorism to the people of those regions of the world.
I mean, no matter what they call it to the American people, that would seem to be just another Iraq.
They'd have to be really stupid to do it.
But, of course, they are.
I mean, every time we've ever intervened anywhere in Africa, there's been a huge disaster.
And, I mean, under Clinton, going with Somalia, that was a disaster.
Going back to the 1950s or early 60s, right?
Katanga and all that, remember that?
Yes.
Oh, yeah, Katanga.
I mean, it's just always been a problem.
And no one's ever not gotten burned in Africa.
So if Obama is dumb enough to go into there, then he deserves everything he's going to get.
I mean, that would be really disastrous.
Yeah.
Well, one thing is, you know, a giant conscription program, as FDR proved, can be wonderful for the unemployment rate, as long as you never mind the context.
Someone in the New York Times will always write that, look, the economy is being saved.
What we need to do is just export our labor force, give them all M-16s, and have them stand around in somebody else's neighborhood overseas somewhere.
Well, you know, I'm really glad you brought that up, because back to Putin's speech, Putin talks about military kinesionism.
He talks about how some people in America might be tempted to look at military spending as a jobs program.
And, of course, Martin Feldstein just wrote an op-ed piece, I think it was in the Wall Street Journal, advocating just that.
Yeah, there's been a lot of that.
In fact, Bill Kristol wrote that one, Small Isn't Beautiful, saying that just because conservatives lost because they listened to him doesn't mean they should stop listening to him, basically.
And at the end, that's what he says, is that, well, you know, everyone outside of Ron Paul and Vladimir Putin's office understands that what we need is giant fiscal spending stimulus.
But I say, put it in the military.
Put it in the military.
That's something that really defines us as a people, and all this Straussian nonsense is right in it, plain English, even.
Well, it certainly defines him as a person.
I don't know if it defines us as a people.
Well, that's the one bit of good news, though, that we do have, is that he was fired from his perch at the New York Times.
Yeah, but that still leaves him the weekly standard, which is, I guess, I don't know who reads it except in Washington, D.C., and I guess you read it.
I don't know how you stand it.
I can't.
No, I read a lot.
It's my job.
Well, I read a lot, but I don't read the weekly standard unless I have to.
Something specific that I just got to see otherwise.
And, of course, he's still going to be in the Washington Post once a month.
Oh, really?
Oh, yeah.
Well, and there are enough clones of him that remain at the Times and the Post and everywhere else.
But he's been kicked off the Times.
But, of course, his successor is repeated to be David Frum.
Oh, well.
Things can go from bad to worse.
There you go.
Out of the frying pan, into the fire.
Well, that's really the definition of what a conservative is, somebody who expects things to get progressively worse, no matter what.
Well, I guess that makes you pretty right-wing, then.
Well, I guess.
What can I say?
I think that reality is confirming my views.
Yeah, it's tough, but there you go.
There you go.
All right, everybody, that's Justin Raimondo.
Justin, the book is called Reclaiming the American Right, the Lost Legacy of the American Conservative Movement, or something like that.
Anyway, thanks a lot for your time.
Anytime.
