09/04/13 – Sheldon Richman – The Scott Horton Show

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All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show here.
I'm Scott Horton.
This is my show, Scott Horton Show, and our next guest is the great Sheldon Richman.
Now, where did my Sheldon Richman article go?
I had it here a second ago.
I don't know.
Hey, welcome back to the show, Sheldon.
How are you doing?
I'm doing fine.
Can you hear me all right?
You know what?
Your cell phone doesn't sound nearly as good as your old landline did.
I'll tell you that.
Oh, is that better?
Yeah, that's quite a bit better anyway.
Good.
All right, good.
All right, so I'm looking at your piece now.
It's called We Must Not Be the World's Policeman by Sheldon Richman.
Good use of the term must not there.
I like that.
That's at FFF.org.
It reminded me, actually, of a video that I saw of you and Joe Soberan and I think Pat Buchanan and a couple of others organized to oppose the first Gulf War back in 1990 and what at that time was called Operation Desert Shield.
I believe that I remember you, Sheldon, making the point that, you know, we don't know what might happen here.
There could be severe long-term consequences that we might wish we had avoided.
Yeah, well, I didn't have a crystal ball.
I just thought I had some common sense.
Yeah, a little bit of economic sense, too, I guess.
Which that whole panel had.
Yes, I have fond memories of that.
It is online, actually.
It's on YouTube somewhere.
Yeah, it was Americans Against a Middle Eastern Holocaust or something like that, right?
Something like that, yes.
It was organized by the late Phil Nicolaites.
A couple of million people have been killed in wars since then over there, so.
America's wars.
So good choice of the term holocaust there, too.
Nobody learned the lesson, unfortunately.
A few people learned the lesson.
Yeah.
Now, take us back to that time, actually, because, you know, I was just in ninth grade and I was for the government exploding whoever oversees, you know?
What a great indulgence when the government is leading the parade of evil, you know?
Hooray for, you know, a 14-year-old sociopathic young man like me.
But you know, for the rest of you who were, you know, grown-ups and thinking, was there not especially, it was George Bush, Sr., and he was known to me, especially by, you know, by way of Dana Carvey on Saturday Night Live.
His catchphrase was, to be prudent and to be, you know, careful and responsible and very grown-up and whatever.
And yet, really, the Americans, they chose at the end of the Cold War, rather than being prudent, they would go ahead and take every opportunity that they had to expand.
And it seemed like if people go back and watch that video now, it's you and Pat Buchanan and them, y'all are the ones saying, hey, let's be prudent, and it's George H.W. Bush is up there beating his chest.
Well, look, George H.W. wanted to be prudent and George W. wanted to be humble.
What's Obama want to be?
He wants to be the Peace Prize winner.
So there's a bad pattern here.
Maybe we need a guy who says, let's be a warmonger, and then when he gets in, he becomes a pacifist.
That's what we need to do, I think.
It should have been McCain.
We'd all be rich and at peace right now.
The other telling thing that George H.W. said in the build-up to that war in 1991 was, quote, what we say goes.
I'll never forget that quote.
That doesn't get quoted very much, but I saw him say that on TV, and so I'll never forget it.
He said, you know, his first inclination was not to get involved.
He did want to be prudent, but he happened to be at some Aspen event with the late Margaret Thatcher, who said, don't go wobbly on us, George.
I didn't mean to say this in too many of the obituaries and eulogies about the great limited government person, Margaret Thatcher, but she said, don't go wobbly, George.
And from that day, he became gung-ho about going into Kuwait and bombing Iraq, and that's when he said, what we say goes.
And that goes with the America as world policeman role, which people generally take for granted.
Now, thank goodness people aren't gung-ho for getting into this.
They seem to think this is a bit too much.
But I think most people generally think the U.S. is the source of order in the world and needs to be the policeman who, you know, if things get bad enough, has to come to the rescue, and we have to break that mindset.
Well, are you sure it's so wrong?
I mean, after all, it's got to be somebody, and America really does have fairness mostly in mind.
We keep the sea lanes open, and we encourage the Europeans to get along instead of blowing each other up for a change.
And isn't America's global hegemony a bit more benevolent than the average empire, Sheldon?
Well, I just saw an article by Libertarian being distributed now that says our intervention has been humanitarian and altruistic, and has not been for any kind of, you know, economic self-interest or political self-interest, which I think is ridiculous.
No, if you look at the record, it doesn't exactly live up to this image that you're citing here.
I know you don't adopt it yourself.
But, you know, we ignore brutality.
Heck, we support brutality when it serves, you know, the U.S. government's political, you know, geopolitical and economic interests, including the interests of its cronies.
So we don't mind overlooking the Egyptian government, military, which for number one stages a coup and overthrows an elected government, and then mows down 1,400 people in the street.
We look the other way when Israel has its periodicals fought against the Lebanese and the Palestinians, and their presidents could do something that would be perfectly libertarian – withdraw the aid, stop the aid.
But does it do it?
No, it does not.
It keeps supporting them, which means it is an agent, it is an accomplice in those crimes.
And so the world sees this selective indignation.
It doesn't fool, and they fool Americans, but it doesn't fool anybody else.
You know, we wring our hands and cry our crocodile tears when we happen to have other interests aligned with that particular case, but it has nothing to do with humanitarianism.
Yeah, you know, I heard a caller on C-SPAN yesterday desperately trying to just make up reasons she couldn't hear any coming from her heroes in the Democratic Party that she could support, so she just started making up her own, and really reaching back to the bottom of the barrel to the Free Republic scribblings from 2002 about how, well, if we don't stop the chemical weapons over there, then they'll come over here.
And I guess, you know, we're talking about just an average – you can tell she's just an average American Obama supporter trying to come up with a reason for this war, and it must be that I guess Assad is going to attack us with chemical weapons.
If we don't attack him, there's got to be a post-hoc reason that's good enough, and there's just got to be a post-hoc reason that's good enough, and there's just got to be a post-hoc reason that's good enough, and there's just got to be a post-hoc reason that's good enough, and there's just got to be a post-hoc reason that's good enough, and there's just got to be a post-hoc reason that's good enough, and there's just got to be a post-hoc reason that's good enough, and there's just got to be a post-hoc reason that's good enough, and there's just got to be a post-hoc reason that's good enough, and there's just got to be a post-hoc reason that's good enough, and there's just got to be a post-hoc reason that's good enough, and there's just got to be a post-hoc reason that's good enough, and there's just got to be a post-hoc reason that's good enough, and there's just got to be a post-hoc reason that's good enough, and there's just got to be a post-hoc reason that's good enough, and there's just got to be a post-hoc reason that's good enough, and there's just got to be a post-hoc reason that's good enough, and there's just got to be a post-hoc reason that's good enough, and there's just got to be a post-hoc reason that's good enough, and there's just had to demonstrate said recognition of a concern that it would reson.
Right Yeah, I mean that was what one of our previous guests was Speculating about what if Congress is no or what if one of the houses of Congress says no, what's the president gonna do then?
Is he really gonna go ahead anyway, or I'll have to back down then, right?
I thought that was Rand Paul's great moment yesterday in tangling with curry He said to him unless you can tell us now that this vote is binding This vote will be binding on you guys, even if it's a no he said look you're probably gonna win this Rand Paul conceded that the Senate the House and Senate probably gonna vote for this, but he said Unless you tell us right now that this is a binding vote then this is theater What are we doing this for and curry just wiggled out of it and said well?
We're not contemplating that we're going to win the vote, and it's not theater, and you know and You know he I wish Iran had going after a little little harder, but he did he did fine and But the Secretary of State's always gonna be able to you know wiggle off that hook Yeah, so they have not given a very good explanation to the American people I hope There'll be a way to get the Garrett Porter's point, and you know other people have Cast doubt on all this so-called evidence I hope there's a way to get that to the American people although I tried I tried to insist in this op-ed that you just referenced of mine That came out today that the case against intervention does not hinge on whether there was an actual chemical attack by Assad We can grant that he used sarin gas on civilians in the eastern suburbs of Damascus And it was ruthless and terrible and monstrous we could grant that for the sake of argument That's still that only proves that he's a thug.
It doesn't prove that we should intervene.
That's a separate issue altogether So we we I mean we should debunk that sure because we need to know when the government's lying to us But that's a full-time job, but but but that doesn't mean that the case against intervention Who stands if it turns out they're right in a given case well?
You know what in this case?
Let's just say for the sake of argument here and obviously I'm for the abolition of the US government in its entirety So I'm just playing devil's advocate here I don't mean to be like Richard Wolff when he says let's just put aside the evidence for a minute and Argue based on my fantasy about why we got to do this, but no let's argue for devil's advocate point of view here and Maybe make it absurd.
Okay.
How about this and this and that absurd?
Let's say that at least to the satisfaction of the average Sunni Arab in Syria It is a proven fact that Assad did it and that's it.
They've had it They're willing now to leave home and go join up the job at al-nusra Suicide bomber brigades and try to take down Bashar al-assad And now let's say Assad's response to that is to use every last drop of chemical weapons he has to kill as many Sunni Arab fighting-age males and whoever happens to be nearby them as he can and it really does Turn into a massive chemical weapons Genocide basically against Sunni Arabs inside Syria is there no point at which Sheldon Richmond says that look the US government is the only one able and Somebody's got to bomb this guy till he stops this you can't just Sarin gas hundreds of thousands of people now again in case you're just tuning in I'm making this up It's a hypothetical situation, but I'm just saying where's the line Sheldon?
We're actually somebody does need to intervene It's not it's not our fight the US has no authority even in the international law But no authority in internal law or constitutional law to be the policeman of the world It just does not have that and we we must not let it play that role because it won't be confined only to the You know the rarefied case you can come up with hypothetically It'll do plenty of other things that you wouldn't want it to do It'll kill innocent people and you know we can call that collateral damage, but you know as a friend of mine points out If we're on the receiving end of collateral damage, we don't just shrug it off as collateral damage, do we?
So we have to apply the same standard to you know to us as to them so know what it The government the US government has no legal or moral authority to play full police morning, you know somebody pointed out to me on Twitter the other day about how there's so little discussion of possible collateral damage from American airstrikes as though after all this somebody all of us believe that airstrikes are these pinprick surgical Type scalpel sort of instruments that only kill high-level bad guy government employees Right no, that's right And I you know I'm getting sick of this phrase boots on the ground or no boots on the ground because the way that's used Now is to say hey, there's nothing wrong here where there's a risk.
It's flying no boots in the ground It's like a magic word You tell you the magic phrase you tell the American people it's like okay, then do whatever the heck you want Well, there's no boots on the ground You know I imagine that onion headline where I had Obama issuing Nike Nike shoes to those troops so he could truthfully say there'll be no boots on the ground Yeah, you know this is ridiculous or just dropping H bombs on them see no boots Exactly no Americans.
I rather they just take you know fly over and drop a lot of boots Okay Just drop boots That's funny Yeah Wouldn't that be great if that's what the Navy was for like in the public relations to just go around helping people when there's a flood or something That would be hilarious We have to break this mindset that u.s.
Is you know look there's a lot of you You know you had this horrible nightmare scenario that's hypothetical you just came up with this bad stuff going on on a lot of places The Congo has been a hellhole it was all these other places to be terrible things go on We're very selective the US government's very selective And it's very cynical and this is we should not let that we cannot let the government get away with this pose That it's this humanitarian was you know first responder or maybe not first Eventual responder and it only has humanitarianism at heart.
We have to strip that bear It sponsors atrocities as I say in the article whenever a government Represses its own population chances are it's using equipment labeled made in the USA Right yeah, and you know As Pepe Cannon has pointed out.
I think he raised a couple of hypotheticals like oh, yeah well, what if the Chinese go to crush Mongolian independence and what if the what if a hardcore regime rises to power after Putin in Russia people think he's bad.
It could be a lot worse, and what if they reinvade Eastern Europe?
Are we really gonna give up the United States of America in a fight with Russia over Eastern Europe?
No?
We're not I mean depending I guess on how much of a maniac the president is at any given time but you know drawing the line at Germany was tough enough back there in the Cold War, but Yeah, we will we being the US government and its policymakers will tolerate and of course in some cases Encourage and be in other cases directly responsible for mass death All over the world and if the Russians reinvaded Estonia and whatever that would be really sad But it would also be tough for them Well, and we could we can do our part to make sure things like that don't happen Make sure things like that don't happen when I'm not saying that's a perfect solution, but let's not threaten Russia Let's not bring NATO up to their doorstep Let's let's not keep acting as if the Cold War was on with you know we keep saying Oh, well the Cold War was over the US didn't behave like the Cold War was over in back in 91 that they were encircling Russia and digging it in and doing their their zone You know their end zone dance and spiking the ball They never stopped doing it, that's one reason one reason we're going after Assad is Russia the other reason is Iran We don't want Russia to have any you know you know Ally in the Middle East because that challenges the u.s..
Flash is real hegemony and of course we don't want Iran to be anything But a compliant compliant talk puppet as you'd like to say For the same reason and you know that's one reason look Assad was a was a good friend of ours Not that long ago when we sent him people to be tortured we outsourced tortured him He was our friend then, but you know he's getting the Saddam Hussein and the Tadakhi treatment now Right he's outlived his usefulness for us in fact his father was even welcome to help America war against Saddam Hussein back in the first Gulf War in 91 Yeah, and and his father kept the peace with Israel the Golan Heights have been quiet for what over 40 years I'm not sure Israel might want chaos in in Syria.
I'm not sure they want Assad overthrown Yeah, well, that's my question.
What the hell.
I don't understand.
I really don't when the Assad's From the Israeli point of view they're not perfect obviously whatever but still Like you just said they've been keeping the peace for generations there now Why in the world how in the world could Israel think that they're better off with a smashed warring nation-state as suicide bombers and and ethnic cleansers running around there for the Medium time if not indefinite future you know I guess they've got a calculus that it's better to cause headaches for Iran's ally and has both has Hezbollah's ally Then to you know have things remain That's a guess on my part, but I yeah, I don't pretend to know what's going on in that thing.
I was mine Well now when it comes to American domestic politics I saw a story that said Raytheon stock is doing real good I guess they do the cruise missiles and some of the drones and stuff and then Obviously there's stories many many stories more than could be expected.
I think More than I would have expected The American Israeli Public Affairs Committee and their allies up on Capitol Hill lobbying for this thing But you know what I saw thing this morning.
It's on anti-war calm this morning We're the chief of the Air Force's you know he's kind of crabbing about his sequester cuts, but he's also saying Well, you know we're not really ready to do this.
This is gonna be a lot harder than Libya was and I don't know I take that as a shot across Obama's bow that even the head of the Air Force doesn't want to do this, and I'm thinking that's shocking to me because If this was three four or five years ago, and we were talking about the threat of war with Iran The theory was that the Air Force was this was Gareth Porter's thinking on it was that the Air Force was the only part of The military that was happy to go ahead and do it the Marines and the Army were happy to go ahead and do it The Marines and the Army sure as hell didn't want to they would have to clean up the mess You know or try to that kind of thing, but here in this case in Syria Apparently the Air Force doesn't even want to do it And I was just wondering can you tell is there anyone that you know of in America any organized?
Faction that wants to do this other than the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee at APAC org Yeah, what's the White House some White House spokesman referred to as the 800-plus?
Some White House spokesman referred to as the 800-pound gorilla in this matter heavily lobbying Congress to To give Obama what he wants and they would like to go much further not just have some you know limited two-day strike but actually regime change I suppose Thankfully the military seems reluctant I I read that the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Debsi kind of undercut Kerry sitting right next to him Uh in that senate hearing Kerry threw the ball to him a couple times and he didn't exactly pick it up and run with it Like about what what would be the consequence of a u.s.
Strike, you know, uh, you know He wants to curry wants to be able to say oh and we know absolutely this will only have good effect And it will stop.
Uh, uh Assad from doing this again, and he didn't get the backup he expected to get from From Dempsey, uh, so maybe the military really doesn't want to do this.
That would be good news Well, you know they're doing another one of these things in front of the house right now, um Thankfully i've left the closed caption off But uh yesterday it was really something else watching the the expert witnesses Uh, kerry dempsey and hagel and and the senators as well all trying to dance around Who the opposition is and how if you attack the government?
You're pretty much de facto fighting on the side of its opposition at that point in this war going on over there I don't know if you really call it a civil war or just a bunch of foreign mercenaries at war or whatever it is but um Boy, I mean they were even talking about As we talked about with our previous guests boots on the ground came up in the context of well Geez, if our strikes are too effective And the regime is unable to keep the rebel jihadist suicide bomber types away from the chemical weapons That's when we might have to put boots on the ground would be to keep our rebel friends away from the chemical weapons Because geez if these guys are willing to do suicide attacks, what might they be willing to do with some sarin?well, you'll notice that the jury early in the hearing Said he didn't want anything taken off the menu including boots and then he had to backtrack And said well, I was just answering a hypothetical And uh, you know, we we will accept language in the resolution Uh that that uh, you know that there won't be troops, but he earlier on said the president does not want to be limited And that's the logic of it.
You're right.
What if that does happen?
You know, that's the that's the the whole fallacy of this.
Oh, we can do a limited strike in one or two days Because you never it's a chess game You've learned you've forgotten something there's an opponent who's capable of making moves they always act like there's no opponent Right, we just can move any way we want and that's the end of it.
We we decide when it's over Well, that's the thing You know that people keep making like the head of the air force making the comparison to libya um make the comparison to libya, even if this was libya, which means Much simpler much easier much smaller army to fight much more east versus west kind of uh, Progress that could be made on a simple risk map or whatever um Very cookie cutter war compared to the complicated mess going on In uh syria and and meanwhile, it was an absolute disaster.
Don't get me wrong But i'm just saying compared to syria is pretty cut and dry and a little matter of it They lost an ambassador and three other people well yeah, there was that and then the war spreading to mali and of course the Massive racial pogroms of the arabs against the blacks and and oh, what happened?
Look, they're talking about the balkans, but there's still a european union or nato troops in bosnia and kosovo Right.
Yeah, keeping the sides apart They're not american troops, so they don't count right?
But yeah, I mean in the in the libya thing Too it was um, it's that slippery slope.
It's so obvious to begin with I mean we talked about on this show probably you and me talked about on this show when they were still Uh dithering, I guess as they call it and deciding what the hell they were going to try to do there But they were you know Leaking trial balloons about no-fly zones It was so obvious the logic that once you make a no-fly zone you're taking responsibility for the civilian population of libya Under the claim that he's going to kill them all of course, which was what they claimed Oh, he's going to kill every last man woman and child and and breathe in little baby in all of benghazi If we don't stop them and then so once they take the responsibility of the no-fly zone They ultimately are taking responsibility for regime change Um, you know the same thing as iraq only in fast forward But the premise being that the people aren't safe from their own government and it's our we're their government now We're their security force now.
And so we have to supplant him the logic is inexorable as they like to say on fox news, so um Once you start doing pinprick strikes Once you start, uh, you know Saying that our our explosions must determine the behavior Of the dictator there in his war you're taking responsibility for the outcome of the war at that point, right?
Look they either live in a fantasy land the policy makers or they take us for morons So you can decide which is the more realistic scenario.
I think it's a little Yeah, they assume we're not going to think of any of this or the average person's not going to think of any of this and You know, maybe the average person isn't tracing it out.
Well, yeah, I mean and john.
Kerry said yeah, we've had enough Talk of the armchair isolationists.
In other words, you either work in the state department or shut up.
This doesn't concern you Right, and of course they throw around that word isolationism Uh, and that you know as uh, joe showburner wants somebody said it's you know Somebody who was against bombing other people when I say isolationist Yeah, somebody doesn't burn down their next door neighbor's house.
It's a harmony That's right It doesn't matter that you want to trade and you know have freedom of movement and capital moving across national boundaries and economic exchange But but you're in isolation is because you don't want to buy you don't want to drop your bombs on Well, and you know To conclude here Would you talk a little bit about how you end your article about the morality of the united states who we are and what?
We are and what we do and what we believe in about ourselves and all these things and how it all just gets sullied Uh when we embrace this dishonesty and violence Well, I tried to point out that uh, we we can't live up to the values.
We claim to hold And be the world's policeman We can't do both things because when uh, we've already talked about the you know collateral damage the killing of innocents that inevitably will happen if we're Attempting to uh, you know get involved in situations like this, but at home, of course, we also uh, Create the havoc because uh number one there's the possibility of retaliation terrorism Uh, and then then there's and then that's used to spy on us because we have to be spied on to be protected Because we have to be spied on to be protected against the enemies the government created so it It sets in motion a whole bizarre set of negative consequences that are inconsistent with our values There you go.
That's the great sheldon richmond vice president of the future freedom foundation at fff.org.
Thanks sheldon Thank you, scott We must not be the world's policeman.
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Why does the us support the tortured dictatorship in egypt because that's what israel wants Why can't america make peace with iran because that's not what israel wants And why do we veto every attempt to shut down illegal settlements on the west bank?
Because it's what israel wants seeing a pattern here sick of it yet It's time to put america first support the council of the national interest at council for the national interest dot org And push back against the israel lobby and their sock puppets in washington dc.
That's council for the national interest dot org You