02/17/09 – William Astore – The Scott Horton Show

All right, y'all, welcome back to Anti-War Radio.
It's chaos in Austin, Texas.
I'm Scott Horton, and I'm pleased to welcome back to the show Bill Astori.
He's a retired lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force, taught for six years at the Air Force Academy, currently teaches at the Pennsylvania College of Technology, Tom Dispatch Regular.
He is the author of Hindenburg, Icon of German Militarism.
And he's got this great article called, Whose Military Is It Anyway?
That he wrote for Tom Dispatch, which of course ran at antiwar.com slash Engelhardt.
And of course, I think it's just TomDispatch.com for Tom Editor, Tom Engelhardt's website there.
Welcome back to the show, Bill.
Thanks, Scott.
Thanks for having me again.
Well, it's been too long since we spoke.
You've got this great article here, and it covers a point that I think is so important and so often left really undiscussed in major media.
And that is the growing separation between the American people, the society at large, and those who serve in the military.
And as we evolve into an empire, our military seems to become more of a specialized Praetorian Guard kind of thing that most of us don't have much to do with.
And of course, the usual answer for this problem is we need to have the draft.
That way we can force at least a few people from every neighborhood to be part of the thing and that will help solve this problem.
Although it seems like in your article here that you wrote for Tom Dispatch, you have another idea about how we might begin to solve this problem.
Right.
Right.
No, that's a good introduction.
It's good to remember that we have this concept of the all-volunteer military, but in a sense we really have an all-recruited military.
As you know, the military spends a large sum of money each year to recruit people into the military once we get away with the draft, of course.
And because of the way that the military recruits and the reluctance of many Americans to serve in the military, in a way the all-recruited military is recruiting primarily from the working classes.
It's recruiting primarily from rural areas.
It's recruiting even what might be termed in a way foreigners in the sense that it's recruiting so-called green card warriors, people with green cards.
There's more than 20,000 in the military right now.
And then there's even a plan now to recruit people who only have a visa to live here in the United States.
So it is a case where you do see our military, I think, separating from certain segments of our society in ways that are quite disturbing.
Well, you say in the article it's becoming like the French Foreign Legion.
And now I'm from Texas.
I don't really know about that.
I guess I saw a movie about them one time.
What is or was the French Foreign Legion?
Right.
Well, the French Foreign Legion, the idea behind that was that France as a country would recruit people actually from outside of France.
In fact, there were even cases of former German soldiers who had fought during World War II actually being recruited by France after World War II to fight in French Indochina, which of course we call Vietnam.
So the French used this Foreign Legion of members being recruited from outside of France, not citizens of France, to do its fighting for it.
And it was in many ways a very effective military force.
But it was certainly not necessarily what we see as our model.
I mean, in the United States, we like to see our military being obviously drawn from our citizenry.
And that's been part of our history.
We've actually until, as you know, until after World War II, our country historically has kept a small, a smaller military, but precisely because our country is skeptical about the value of a large standing military until and some of the dangers of a large standing military until that was changed with, you know, after World War II and the Cold War.
Well, and I'm not really an expert about this, but I've heard people make the comparison before.
I think Justin Raimondo has written about Roman history.
And now when the Roman Empire kept expanding and expanding, more and more, the people back at the heart of the empire didn't want to do any of their fighting anymore.
And they were making so much money off of looting everybody that they conquered and that kind of thing.
And they would hire the conquered at the fringes of the empire to guard the empire.
And basically what ended up happening was those people didn't really have an interest in guarding the empire.
And so that was the end of that.
Right.
Right.
And that, you know, that is that is a danger, I think, when when I don't necessarily think that that the and in fact, I don't believe that that reviving a draft is the answer.
I think one approach might be if if we revive the idea of of national service and national service could mean military service, but it could also mean so many other things.
You know, it could mean you're working in an AmeriCorps or educational corps or the Peace Corps or or some other some other non-military venue.
But just having the idea of owing some sense of service to the United States, you know, I think that's I think that's a much better approach if we decide to go down that road than to revive the draft.
Well, and before we even go down that road, the real problem here is that we have our military spread all over the world.
Our Pentagon is a foreign legion for someone, but apparently not for the people of this country.
Yes.
And that's that's part of what I was trying to get across in my article, that in a way, you know, we're not exactly like the French Foreign Legion, obviously, that our military is not exactly like that.
But but in a way, we're we're headed down that road.
I mean, we keep sending out the our our army and and and our soldiers and Marines on these extended tours, you know, sometimes five or six tours over the last six to eight years.
We've been fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.
You know, we don't have we don't have enough soldiers and Marines.
So so in a way, we're we're hiring mercenaries, you know, kind of what I would call them anyway.
You know, a lot of them being, you know, ex Marines and ex soldiers who have moved, who have retired or decided to separate from a service because they can make more money, you know, working for Blackwater, which is now called V and Triple Canopy and Dying, you know, Dying Corps, some of these other companies that are actually hiring, you know, attracting people because they pay more money.
You know, some we're losing from the American military, losing experienced people who who are going into Blackwater and and and these other contractors.
I mean, I know you you know this, but many Americans don't realize that there's actually more private contractors in Iraq than there are, you know, American troops in Iraq.
And, you know, as I point out as well, given given a little bit of, you know, so-called foreign taint to our to our troops is the fact that, you know, we we are we are drawing our troops predominantly from a certain segment of our our population.
I mean, that, you know, that as I say in the article, that it'll take more than the sons of Joe Biden and Sarah Palin to to redress, you know, class inequities as far as burden sharing in our military.
And this is not the this is not the approach that we used in World War Two.
Yeah, it used to be that when the elites would get us into a war, it was a matter of honor that they sent their own sons to fight, like Joe Kennedy sent all his kids.
Right.
Right.
And, you know, and obviously there are many different examples of that.
But now, you know, it seems much more common, although, of course, there are a few exceptions, but it's much more common for for members of the American elite not to sign up for the military.
And really, there's there's really no stigma against that anymore.
I'm not necessarily saying the stigma was right, but but, you know, it used to be that when we went to war was the idea that all Americans went to war.
And in my article, I, you know, I talk about the the silk stocking regiment from World War One of rich, rich people from Manhattan who who were proud to sign up and go fight in the front lines on the Western Front in World War One.
But the idea of a bunch of privileged people from Manhattan signing up to go, you know, fight in the front lines of Afghanistan, I mean, that that very idea seems almost farcical today.
Right.
Yeah.
Jonah Goldberg wrote in the National Review that, like, hey, I'm busy.
I've got a wife and a kid.
I, you know.
Right.
Right.
I understand.
Unlike all the other guys in the military.
Right.
Well, and see, here's the thing, too, is there's a pretty big segment of liberals, I think, except the kind of historical example that the draft is a good antiwar device because it helped end the Vietnam War.
But I can't remember who it was that cited the years and did the math.
But I think it was after they changed the rules to where now rich white college kids could get drafted to go to Vietnam, too, which was basically, you know, they had the draft all along, but it was only for the poor before.
But when they changed the rules and people said, well, that's what really cranked up the antiwar movement, really got the kids out in the street and got their parents to turn against it.
It still took eight years to get out of Vietnam after that.
So that's a lot of people who were forced to go fight a war they didn't want to fight and get killed in it and be forced to kill people, individuals who had their rights violated in order to serve this larger goal, supposedly of ending the war.
And yet people cite that example and say, well, that's why we ought to have a draft.
That's what Charles Rangel says.
That's why we ought to have a draft, because if the Manhattan kids have to go fight, then we won't have wars anymore.
But that seems to me like just from an economic point of view, if you give the government access to a bottomless supply of cannon fodder, they're going to use it.
They're not going to be restrained by the fact that some rich kids have to do it.
They'll invoke all that World War Two honor stuff again and get right back into it.
Right.
And personally, I think that idea is hypocritical.
And I was in the military for 24 years, four years as a cadet and 20 years on active duty.
And it's hard for me, to be honest, it was difficult for me to write this article.
Just the idea of comparing our military just a little bit to a foreign legion.
I wrote it that way because I thought, as you said, that the way in which our military is being transformed, the recruiting techniques, the repetitive tours overseas, the fact that our military is being used in ways that I don't really see as completely consistent with the oath of office that we take.
We officers and enlisted swear an oath to support and defend the Constitution.
And it's hard, it's not easy for me to see exactly how what we're doing in Iraq and Afghanistan right now is consistent with that oath of office.
But to get back to the draft, in my mind, I know some of your listeners may disagree, but in my mind, military service should be considered somewhat of a privilege.
It shouldn't, you shouldn't be coerced to join the military, forced to join the military by a draft.
And if the only way we can generate significant resistance to war is by reinstating a draft, I think it's a sad commentary on the state of our country.
Well, sure.
I mean, the idea to me is real simple.
If we're fighting just wars, you won't have to coerce anybody to take part in it.
Right.
And if it's really a matter of, you know, grab your rifle, son, we got to go defend liberty or whatever.
If people really believe that, then they'll fight for it.
If not, then apparently the threat of from, oh, I don't know, for example, Iran or all the stands that they want to conquer in Central Asia or whatever aren't really enough to want us to join.
You know, maybe they're not really the kind of threats we need to be at war against at all.
Right.
And I am a little concerned because I read a lot of military literature and I see a lot of high ranking officers, you know, generals and admirals referring to what they call the long war.
You know, we are we are involved in the long war against whatever, you know, against terrorism, against Islamic jihadist extremism or whatever.
But that very term, you know, long war disturbs me because it's so open ended.
It reminds me of Joel Haldeman's book, you know, that the forever war, the idea of, you know, you you end up fighting for decades, if not centuries.
And I just I look back on American history and and I see there's there's always a powerful urge, as you know, in World War Two and other wars as well, to bring the boys home when the war is done, you know, when the fighting is done, when we when we when when when the mission is accomplished, you know, we we bring the troops home.
But I see very little pressure being exerted right now to to bring the troops home.
In fact, as you know, our current president, you know, President Obama is looking at possibly sending another 30000 troops to Afghanistan.
The administration is thinking about adding another 90000 soldiers and Marines to to the, you know, effective strength of the military.
That's that's disturbing.
Well, and, you know, here's the thing, too.
This is something that Andrew Bacevich has commented on as well.
The long war thing, the idea that Central Asia or Eurasia itself maybe even is Injun country.
And basically all the people in all the stands are all red Indians and we're going to kill them all and take all their land from them like it's the old West and, you know, same old manifest destiny from one hundred and twenty five years ago.
And they really seem to think this.
I mean, they call it Injun country.
Right.
Right.
And so you talk about a long war.
We're talking about the rest of the century and, you know, maybe even one against Russia, which happens to share a southern border with all this frontier we're trying to take.
Well, I guess I guess what I would say is that we need to be careful if we talk about a long war.
We had to we have to be careful that it doesn't become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
I mean, if you keep talking about long war, long war, you know, we really should be thinking, how do we shorten this war?
How do we end it rather than rather than think rather than taking it for granted that it's going to be, you know, long and open ended and take several years, if not decades?
Well, and back on the draft and because you mentioned the oath to the Constitution and how the oath isn't to a world empire, it's to defend the Constitution.
And I wanted to point out, I'm sure you're familiar with this, but it's out of We Who Dared Say No To War, which is a collection of American antiwar writing from 1812 to now.
And the first chapter is Daniel Webster.
The draft is unconstitutional, a speech that he gave in the U.S. Senate in 1812.
And this is a time when the British are actually bombing American cities from, you know, and coming ashore when they have troops in Canada, where the French control all the land to the west of us, the Spanish are to the south of us.
People say, oh, the oceans don't protect us anymore.
The oceans didn't protect us in 1812.
America was completely surrounded by European powers and at war in the middle of a war with one of them.
And Daniel Webster was saying that if this government has the power to take sons from their fathers, then this government should not be fought for and it ought to fall anyway.
Right.
Yeah.
And as you know, there's been a lot of resistance to the draft throughout American history.
I mean, I think the first official draft actually came in the Civil War, and it was the Confederacy that had to draft first.
Yeah.
And then, of course, in 1863, there were draft riots in New York City, you know, against the Union draft.
And then, you know, throughout our history, there's been resistance to the idea of the draft, precisely because there's this sense that, you know, in America, you shouldn't have to coerce citizens to serve in the military.
We join the military to defend, you know, to defend the Constitution, to defend what we hold dear, the principles we hold dear.
We don't join the military to create or expand an empire.
You know, that's the theory anyway.
Mm hmm.
Well, and now we're also in the midst of well, not even in the midst, we're just seemingly at the very beginning of what they're calling the global economic meltdown.
Right.
And the New York Times already ran an article, I guess, just a few weeks ago, documenting the economic draft.
I think you call it in your article, where there's really, you know, if you're a young guy, and you don't really have skills, and you don't have, you know, a good education or what have you, but you have a family.
Well, there's one sure institution that's going to continue to exist no matter what.
And we'll get you, you know, three hots and a cot and a roof over your head.
And that's the US Army.
All you got to do is kill some people, but there's giant bonuses, and you get to be all you can be.
Right, right.
Well, obviously, there's definitely truth to that.
It's easier for the military to recruit in difficult economic times.
Now, again, you know, I was in the military a long time, and I've seen a lot of young people come into the military and really, you know, sort of find themselves and acquire useful skills.
But it is also true, as you say, that, you know, if you join the military nowadays, especially if you join the Army and the Marines, and you go into the infantry, you know you're going to Iraq and Afghanistan.
You're going to a very dangerous place.
And it's, you know, as you say, obviously, it tends to be, you know, people who have been laid off from their jobs, or, you know, from some of the very hard hit American towns and regions, who look to the military as an option, whereas, you know, people who are more affluent, you know, just have more choices.
Well, and that whole thing about making a man out of you, like, I guess, clearly, as you say, that kind of thing happens where snot nose kid joins the Army, and then he's full grown by the time he's done and that kind of thing.
But there's also an entire multi-billion dollar, and I wish I had the number, Aaron Glantz on the show last week talked about the number of billions of dollars of increase in advertising in order to get people to join the military, since, as you said, they're so much more reluctant nowadays to join.
And they push that theme so hard that if you're a lost young man, this is where you go.
Right.
No, no, absolutely.
And one of the small things that disturbs me, and you've probably heard outside of Philadelphia, the Army created this sort of very fancy, almost video arcade-like recruitment center, where mostly young men can go, and they can sit in sort of a virtual reality of what it would be like to defend yourself in a convoy driving through the city streets of Baghdad.
And the idea is, of course, no improvised explosive devices are exploding in this mall-like setting outside of Philadelphia.
And again, it's sort of unsettling to me to think that we somehow have to entice people to serve by lots and lots of advertising or these sort of video arcades where young guys who are 17, 18 just happen to gravitate toward them.
And then all of a sudden, there's a recruiter there giving them a recruiting spiel about how they should join.
In my mind, we as a country should not have to do this.
We just shouldn't be.
We shouldn't have to do it, and we shouldn't be doing it.
All right.
Well, let's get specific about Afghanistan.
You mentioned how Obama apparently is going to double up the troops there.
Although it seems like there's kind of been a delay in announcing that as they review it one more time or something.
I don't know whether to put any real stock in that.
But you're a former retired colonel in the U.S. Air Force.
Obviously, you take protecting America from its enemies very seriously.
Do you think that there's a mandate to stay in Afghanistan at all?
It seems like you'd have to send the whole freaking Marine Corps if you wanted to try to take the mountains where Osama is supposedly hiding.
Should we just call it quits and get out of there?
Well, you're right.
You're right that some military experts have said if you really want to support the Afghani government, which does not have the full support of the people, and you really want to launch a concerted counterinsurgency campaign, you don't need another 30,000 men sent to Afghanistan.
You probably need half a million men.
And of course, that's a scary statistic, because now you're talking another Vietnam.
Because we had more than half a million men in Vietnam, and that wasn't enough.
So I guess in my mind, I'm not convinced that another 30,000 American soldiers or Marines, you know, that a few more brigades are going to make enough of a difference to tip the scale in the struggle that's going on in Afghanistan.
I mean, Afghanistan, as I know that you and your listeners know, has sometimes been called the graveyard of empires.
You know, the British Empire was not successful there.
Obviously, the Soviet Empire was not successful there.
I don't see necessarily how we are going to be more successful there.
And the topography of Afghanistan and the demographics of Afghanistan, the country itself, the hills, the mountains, the people, it's a situation that negates a lot of the American military's advantages.
A lot of our advantages and high technology and force projection are kind of neutralized just by the terrain and the mixing of the various peoples over there.
And so, you know, we're sort of sending our military into an incredibly difficult, you know, what some people, and I use this term, I really see Afghanistan as a quagmire.
I mean, yes, we need to be there in the sense of fighting against terrorism.
But as far as sending another 30,000 men or a few more brigades, personally, I think it's a mistake.
Well, it's about shoring up the government that they've created there.
And it looks like they're even talking about maybe a Diem style coup or something against Karzai at this point.
Exactly.
That's what disturbs me.
I mean, the parallels, I mean, they're not perfect parallels to Vietnam, but...
They're pretty close, though.
You even have the safe haven in Pakistan slash Cambodia next door and all that.
Right, exactly.
So the idea of, you know, we tried propping up, you know, propping up a government in Vietnam that was corrupt.
We did that with hundreds of thousands of American troops, and that wasn't successful.
So, you know, here's a case where maybe we really can learn from history.
You know, that famous statement by LBJ, President Johnson, you know, we're not going to send American boys 10,000 miles away to fight a fight that Vietnamese boys should be fighting.
You know, he said that, I think, you know, before the election that he won in 1964.
And then the next year, what are we doing?
We're sending thousands and thousands of American boys to fight that fight.
And it didn't work for us.
I hope somebody in the Obama administration is saying, do we really want to send more and more American troops 10,000 miles away from home, you know, to fight this fight?
And I hope someone is saying, maybe the delay is good.
You know, maybe we'll be pleasantly surprised when President Obama announces that another 30,000 troops is not the answer.
I hope that's what he says.
Well, and in terms of terrorists, I mean, how many friends of Osama Arab Afghan types were actually hanging around after September 11th?
And how many even exist now?
I mean, we're talking about, what, dozens of people or something?
This is no-causes spelling.
Right.
And, well, you know, Tom Engelhardt, you know, like Tom Dispatch, he makes the good point that when Al-Qaeda attacked us on 9-11, it didn't just come out of Afghanistan.
It came out of Hamburg.
It came out of our own flight schools here in the United States.
The answer is not necessarily in Afghanistan.
You know, fighting something like Al-Qaeda is, you know, it's still a fairly small organization.
The problem is it's dispersed, and it's clever, and it's not a national organization.
It's a, you know, it's a network that's hard to fight with a conventional military.
It's really something that needs more to be policed than to be polarized by the military.
Well, and as even the 9-11 Commission showed, and James Bamford has certainly shown in his latest book about the National Security Agency, the American government had all they needed to stop this plot before it was carried out anyway.
So, and that was, you know, I guess the NSA is considered the military, but basically it was the intelligence agencies had these guys, had their address and phone number.
They just didn't give it to the FBI.
Right.
I mean, yeah, when you go back and take a look at all the breakdowns we had before 9-11, it's certainly, we certainly could have done and should have done more.
You know, the signs were there, but for various reasons we, you know, we just didn't connect all the dots.
And maybe that's all I should say on that.
Yeah, various reasons named Michael Hayden.
But anyway, no one should be put on trial for that criminal negligence.
Let's see.
Well, I wanted to ask you this too.
I saw here that, you know, you're a professor and obviously an officer in the army.
I wonder whether people in the army generally believe, like the officer corps, is it kind of generally understood that empire is a profit-making enterprise?
Like, for example, guaranteeing this supply line or that, or these are those resources in Southeast Asia or anything like that, or is it pretty much accepted that this is a waste of money?
It's just to guarantee maybe this company's access to certain resources.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's a very interesting question.
And I can answer it kind of, you know, personally.
And also, you know, I, although I was an air force officer, I worked with quite a few officers in the army.
And I personally, I really think that the officers that I've known haven't given the economic or imperial dimensions of America's, you know, use of the military.
They don't really think in those terms very commonly.
Most of the officers that I've known, and even myself, were more focused on doing the mission.
You know, doing the mission, performing our duty, you know, being loyal to, you know, our superiors and the orders that they give us.
You know, I don't think there's a lot of thought about, you know, occasionally you are aware of it.
I mean, obviously in Iraq, you're surrounded by contractors, you know, KBR, for example, is there and you see the connection to, you know, safeguarding our supply of oil, for example, you see that, but that's not what drives you.
I don't know if that answers your question or not.
No, I certainly, yeah, yeah, it does to a degree.
I mean, I wouldn't think that it would be necessarily the motivating factor for particularly lower down people.
I just wonder whether the belief is, in general, that what they're doing is the right thing.
I mean, I don't know, it's hard for me to think of, you know, whichever officers inhabit and run the bases in Tajikistan and Kazakhstan and whatever, for them to not know exactly what it is that they're doing.
They're on an imperial mission.
Right.
They're a million miles from home.
What the hell are they doing in Kazakhstan?
Right.
No, I hear you.
I understand.
I mean, you know, one battalion commander that I know that I've talked to who is right there in the thick of things in Iraq, of course, you know, his number one concern as an infantry battalion commander was to get his troops home, was to get them through the mission, their one-year tour in and around Baghdad, to get as many home as possible and to get them home, you know, safe and sound.
That's kind of really the focus.
And, you know, the politics, I think a typical military officer, whether, you know, rightly or wrongly, I think the thing is kind of like, you know, politics is not my business in the sense of I can't think too much, I can't let the politics distract me because I need to focus on the safety of the men and women under my command.
You know what I'm saying?
Well, right.
And that's I think you mentioned that in your article, too.
And that is a healthy thing.
I forget exactly the way you phrase it, but something like a kind of cynical distance that they keep.
Oh, no.
You know what it was?
This is something I was reading the new book about General Petraeus, and they were talking about how he was one of these perfume prince kind of guys.
They call it saluting too close to the flagpole or something like that.
He likes to spend a lot of time on the other side of the river, whereas the rest of them don't really trust politicians, but they also know it's not their business to decide whether a policy is right or not.
I mean, clearly, when you're talking about torturing someone and breaking the law, that's one thing.
But in terms of larger strategy and whatever, they know that's not their business.
And that's good because ultimately they have the power to completely overthrow the White House in a day if they want to.
We need to, basically all we have is our tradition against that that prevents them from doing so.
Right, right.
Yes, I agree.
Well, so what a fine mess.
So what do you think is going to happen with the economic crisis and what bearing do you think that might have on the future of the expansion of the empire into Central Asia?
Do you think that the financial crisis is weighing very heavily on the people that run this government?
Or do they really believe that war is good for the economy and that if they expand the war, it'll be good for us?
Well, I hope they don't believe the latter, because I hope they don't believe that war is good for the economy.
Because actually, I think, as you'll probably agree, the fact that we've spent almost a trillion dollars now fighting this war in Iraq and also in Afghanistan, I mean, that's money that we've largely lost.
That's a lot of money that obviously could have been invested in this country and many other ways in improving our educational system, our infrastructure, et cetera, et cetera.
Certainly, we're not going to fight our way out of this mess.
I think, logically, I would expect that in difficult economic times, we would consider the idea that this is the time when we should be retrenching, when we should actually not be enlarging our military, but actually beginning to retrench, beginning to decrease the number of bases we have overseas, to decrease our foreign entanglements, if you will.
That would be what I would argue would be the most effective way, given the economic conditions that we're in.
It seems to me incredibly wasteful.
If we're suffering here at home, we continue to run these huge deficits.
There are better ways to stimulate the economy than to continue spending billions and hundreds of billions on the military.
I know there have been studies that for every billion dollars spent on private industry versus the military, typically the fewest jobs per billion dollars are created in the defense industry, because the defense industry is so driven by high technology that it's not a very good job creator, compared to all things being equal.
If the government spends a billion on infrastructure repairs versus a billion on the U.S. military, more jobs tend to be created on the civilian side.
Well, sure, and the military doesn't make anything except weapons, and they break things.
They don't create wealth.
True, true.
You know what's funny?
You reminded me earlier when you were talking about the long war and kind of a permanent state of war like that.
It was reminding me of 1984 by George Orwell, which I read as a sophomore in high school or something like that.
I remember seeing in the newspaper that other than The Fellowship of the Ring, that was the most popular book by a British author ever published in America.
It sold millions and millions and millions of copies, and a lot of people who don't even really read books, they've read that one kind of thing.
Pretty much everyone knows about 1984, and yet we continue to just embrace the Orwellian model as though it's a blueprint.
He even talks in there about the reason we build the floating fortress, the aircraft carrier, and the reason we make all these rockets and all this stuff is to take the excess wealth from the people and keep it from them, pour it into the stratosphere or dump it into the ocean where they can't get to.
It's right there in the book.
Right.
Well, Scott, I think maybe that's because when Americans read or read 1984, I think they tended to see it not so much as a critique of America, but as a critique of totalitarian systems.
So they tended to read it as, oh, well, this is kind of the way Nazi Germany was, or oh, this is kind of the way the Soviet Union is.
But they didn't necessarily say, boy, 1984, this could actually apply to the United States.
Yeah.
And you think about it, there's a reason that England is called Airstrip One.
It's because it's the forward operating base of the American empire in the book.
I mean, it's a world divided in three at a permanent state of war, wink-nudge agreements on all sides to keep the war going forever.
Right.
Oh, no, that's just about the Russians.
That doesn't concern us.
Right.
Right.
Okay.
Well, I got to tell you, I really appreciate your time on the show today.
It's been very illuminating.
Okay.
Thanks, Scott.
And hopefully we'll do this again soon.
Oh, yeah, absolutely.
I hope so, too.
Okay.
All right, everybody, that's William Astore.
He's a retired lieutenant colonel in the U.S.
Air Force, taught for six years at the Air Force Academy, currently teaches at the Pennsylvania College of Technology, writes for Tom Dispatch regularly, and is the author of Hindenburg, icon of German militarism.
This is Anti-War Radio, and we'll be right back.