06/19/09 – Joshua Frank – The Scott Horton Show

All right, y'all, welcome back to the show, it's Anti-War Radio on Chaos 95.9 FM in Austin, Texas.
Introducing Joshua Frank, he's the author of Left Out, How Liberals Helped Re-Elect George W. Bush, and Red State Rebels, Tales of Grassroots Resistance in the Heartland.
You can also often find what he writes at counterpunch.org and at original.antiwar.com slash joshua-frank.
Welcome back to the show.
Joshua, how are you doing, man?
Good, Scott.
How are you, man?
Well, so how about those Democrats, huh?
Yeah.
Well, I mean, I don't think that we should be too surprised about what transpired this last week.
President Obama, while he was campaigning for president, promised to continue funding both wars.
He does talk about de-escalating the war in Iraq, but at the same time he's talking about escalating the war in Afghanistan, and as we've seen, it looks like he's also going to take it into Pakistan when he can.
So the Democrats are hook, line, and sinker behind his policies, and they continue to fund the wars that were started during the Bush administration.
Well, what about all the Democrats in Congress who are the anti-war Democrats?
Their numbers have only been increased by the recent last two elections, right?
Well, I guess the litmus test for having the label of anti-war next to your name is pretty weak these days.
There was only a couple dozen Democrats that opposed the bill.
The majority of the opposition in the House, as you know, came from Republicans, and I would say the most vocal opponent of the legislation was Ron Paul, of course, from Texas.
The anti-war Democrats and the Democratic Party in general have been very good at co-opting movements and, in this case, the anti-war movement.
Meanwhile, during the campaign, we didn't see any protests to Obama's policies of expanding the wars in the Middle East to tough rhetoric toward Iran.
There was no protest at all, and there was no protest leading up to this bill either.
I mean, if you think back during the Bush administration, every time a supplemental bill would come up like this, there would be moveon.org and the rest of the liberal advocacy groups, the so-called anti-war groups would be on the front lines opposing the stuff and organizing their members and constituents to call Congress, and there was nothing this time around, completely mute on this issue.
I think it shows a lot of what the Democrats are able to do, and unfortunately, the anti-war movement has taken a big hit by Obama being elected.
Yeah, it's just sad.
I mean, geez, who believes in a Democrat or something?
This is my biggest problem with Barack Obama so far, too, is just the whole personality thing where people like the guy.
If he was just Joe Biden or some other run-of-the-mill Democrat in there, then people would see right through him, but somehow this whole People Magazine version of this guy, as Glenn Greenwald just characterized on the show a little while ago, is, you know, don't fads like this wear out?
Shouldn't he be out of style like the Backstreet Boys now, or whatever the hell?
You know, I think people can see through the personality issues, and he is a gifted speaker, and he has a fabulous multi-million dollar marketing campaign behind his persona, and it's turned him into a celebrity, but unfortunately, people have laughed on to that and haven't looked at what's really going on in the policies.
People haven't taken off those Obama T-shirts yet and thrown them in the trash.
The signs are still in the yards, the bumper stickers are still on the cars, and these are people that are probably well-intentioned, but unfortunately, they've become to a sort of cult mentality when it comes to the new president.
Well, you know, and it really is a testament to the powers of Madison Avenue over people's minds that, you know, I know people who are intelligent, well-informed people who, you know, they watch the NewsHour, not Brian Williams or whatever, they watch, you know, at least PBS News and care and know about these things, pay at least somewhat of attention, you know?
And I say, you know, all Obama's doing is exactly what he said he would do, increase the size of the military, expand the war into Pakistan, and, you know, this one specific person I'm thinking of, absolutely shocked, what?
Expand the war into Pakistan?
And you know, willing to cede to me that I probably know what I'm talking about because I read about such things, you know, more than this person or whatever, but really surprised, really shocked, wait a minute, I thought this was the peace guy.
No, he's not the peace guy.
He never even claimed to be the peace guy.
He's not even lying when he goes and escalates the war in Pakistan, he's only proving how honest he was back a year ago and two years ago when he said that's exactly what he was going to do.
Yeah, and he's not, and the other thing is, I mean, one of the biggest, and we've talked about this on your previous shows, and I've written about it, I mean, I think the most dangerous aspect of this administration is that people are going to continue to give him a grace period, even those people that are in the know, and this means the media, this means people that are watchdogs, they're giving him time to see what transpires, but meanwhile, we know what's going to transpire, because we know where his budget's going for the next, until September, he's also calling for another $100 million to be added on to the budget, the defense budget that will start in the beginning of October, so we know what's going to continue, and it's going to continue to expand, so we believe his rhetoric, you know, here he says, yes, I'm not going to, I don't want any permanent bases in Iraq, but meanwhile, they're constructing a base that's the size of three football fields, large, they're throwing more and more troops into Afghanistan, I mean, one of the silver linings, perhaps, of the Bush era was that we saw a crumbling of U.S. imperialism, meaning we couldn't just march in, at the end of the Bush administration, we couldn't just march into another country with international support, we were despised around the world internationally, and here we have Obama being shipped off to Cairo to give a speech filled with rhetoric about change and hope and unity in the Middle East, and new foreign policy, but on paper, and in reality, are two different things, and on paper, it reads well, but in reality, we're going to continue to support Israel, we're going to continue to be hawkish toward Iran, we're going to continue to escalate the wars in the Middle East, and we have new people on board and more support internationally for these ventures, and I think U.S. imperialism is off the ropes now, and it's back in the ring, and I think that's a really unfortunate predicament that we put ourselves in, and Obama is leading the charge with little opposition.
Well, and you know, despite all that change, I think a lot of people knew that what they were getting with him was really safe change, that things would not really change, at least not too fast, and the American people didn't want to give up their empire, Ron Paul said, let's give up the empire, and they're like, yeah, right, we like this guy, he's going to shore it up and try to make it work a bit better, but, you know, change, even a year ago, change meant, eh, a little bit of change, you know, we're going to go back to sort of Clinton era American imperialism and not try to be quite as Bush-like, although even that has proven to really ring hollow, it really might as well be George Bush running this thing now, only, again, you know, 2002 George Bush, with the approval rating.
Right, I mean, it's the same ship, it's just a different captain, but it's the same ship, and it's, the passengers on board are the same people as well, I mean, these are the same people that we've seen running foreign policy in the United States for the past several decades.
The envoy, special envoy, other shipmate in Afghanistan is Richard Holbrook, who you know has been involved in many atrocities across the world, Hillary Clinton as well, I mean, we, the face of foreign policy under the Obama administration has not changed one iota compared to the Bush administration.
The only thing that's changed is this delivery device, and now it's being candy-coated so the liberals can absorb it much, much easier.
Well, you know, one thing you wrote about back in 2006, and the counterpunch, I remember there, was about how this guy Rahm Emanuel, who is a veteran of the army of Israel, and is the chief of staff of George Obama's White House there, he was the guy in the House who was in charge of making sure to support all the pro-war Democrats in the primary elections of the midterm congressional elections of 2006, and if I remember your reporting about this correctly, did you not go back and count and show how each one of these pro-war Democrats that Rahm Emanuel helped win in the primaries actually lost in the general election, and where he failed and the anti-war Democrats won the primary, they won in the general?
That is true, but in the end, he lost more of those campaigns than he won, but in the end, one of the caucuses, the Blue Dog faction, which is a very conservative, pro-war, neoliberal faction of the House Democrats, took hold, and they started to outnumber the progressive Democrats in the House.
So this last couple weeks, Obama dispatched Rahm Emanuel to the House to rally his old colleagues there around his bill, and he was the bulldog in the pit, and he really rounded up everybody to support this bill, and that's why he saw very little opposition, and you can go back and look at 2006, and you can rest assured, as well, that Rahm was promising them financial support during their next upcoming re-election campaign that will be kicking off this next year, so it's a game that Obama may be new at, but he's pretty darn good at it, and Rahm Emanuel is the puppeteer behind the curtain, and really can rally those votes around whatever issue Obama wants, especially in the House, and we saw very little opposition on the planet, which isn't a surprise.
Yeah, well, you know what they say, I guess, everybody hates Congress, but they like their congressmen?
I'm not sure why that is, but, you know, people will just, and of course everything's gerrymandered, and the whole electoral system is one giant incumbency protection racket for both sides, you know, they'll let each other have safe districts, as long as they can have theirs, and that kind of thing, but it seems like, you know, I don't know, Jane Harman, for example, who's been exposed, not just in Congressional Quarterly that nobody reads, but in the New York Times and the Washington Post, as a traitor asset of a foreign intelligence agency, and she's going to be re-elected here in Long Beach, over and over again, as long as she wants it, and I'm not sure exactly why that is, people just can't get their act together, and exercise their influence through the House of Representatives, I mean, that, according to the Constitution, and even just, you know, reality-based politics, that would be the only way that the American people could ever put the brakes on any of this, would be to get enough people in the Congress so you could have some kind of, you know, Ron Paul, Lynn Woolsey coalition, that would just say, no, dammit, we're not spending another penny on this war, you take the money you already have, and spend it bringing the troops home now.
Other than that, you're not getting another cent, and that's what it would take, and yet, you know, how likely is that, you know, we're so far from that, we got Nancy Pelosi running this thing.
Yeah, well, I mean, big money always outpowers people power, right, and in this case, in the House, and one of the things that Rahm Emanuel is so gifted at, and his brother is a big witty in Hollywood, and they can raise enormous amounts of money for these candidates, and people like you and I don't have access to that kind of power, you know, getting big money out of politics, and out of our electoral process, is essential if we're ever going to retain any sort of semblance of democracy, so, I mean, there's a lot of steps that need to be made.
Well, I guess a lot of liberals and leftists think, you know, the only other alternative is the Republicans, so what are you gonna do, you're gonna really, this is, I read this in the comments section over at Glenn Greenwald's blog all the time, aw, man, come on, he's not perfect, but at least he's not George Bush, and why you wanna pick on our guy, because you're gonna only help the, you know, Newt Gingrich.
Right.
Well, the other failure here, and I think, you know, Glenn is one of the few exceptions in sort of mainstream press, but the real failure here is our media.
If you can imagine what kind of criticism the Bush administration would receive for a lot of the policies that the Obama administration's carrying out, but yet in the op-ed pages of the New York Times, on the front page stories in the Washington Post, there's very, very little criticism, real criticism, and real scrutinizing of his policies and of the machinery behind them, and I think that's probably something that's not surprising, but it's definitely something that's detrimental to our democracy as well, because an uninformed public is a public that isn't going to be able to engage in our political process.
Well, you know, you mentioned your skepticism of, you know, whether we're actually going to be leaving Iraq while they're building this giant embassy and all this.
It seemed to me like when Bush negotiated the Status of Forces Agreement, on one hand, he was, you know, as Patrick Cockburn and Juan Cole and all those guys seemed to agree, he was forced to by Maliki, he basically had no choice but to agree to, you know, as the Iraqi people call it, it's the Withdrawal Agreement, it ain't the Stay Here Agreement, it's the Get the Hell Out Agreement, and he got until December 31st, 2011 to get every last soldier out of there, and so there's that angle on it.
The other angle on it is, wow, so Barack Obama has two and a half years or something before he's proven a liar for breaking the deal and staying longer than that, and so it seems like all the pressure that used to be on the Bush administration to get out of Iraq is just on hold for another two and a half years now.
Yeah, well, and as you know, also, that Obama has changed the way he talks about extending the war in Iraq, so he didn't talk about de-escalating it, saying, yes, I'm going to draw back combat forces by, you know, a certain percentage, but as Jeremy Scahill and others have pointed out, well, what's going to remain are mercenary forces, the paid military, and combat troops are not going to be called combat troops, they're there for, quote-unquote, protection.
In fact, Robert Gates even went, I think Jon Stewart on the Daily Show even made fun of Robert Gates, who went on Meet the Press with David Gregory and just kind of stumbled in his honesty and said repeatedly, well, we're going to find new names to call them so that we can keep our combat troops there, and that's the name of the game, coming up with new titles for the brigades, and like, he just kept saying it over and over again.
And that's all it takes to deceive the public.
That's all it takes for Obama to pull off these sorts of stunts, but again, if you look at the fine line on the budget, they're pulling more and more money, and that money is going to go somewhere, and it's to maintain forces there, it's not to de-escalate, it's not to move troops, if anything, it's to move troops into Afghanistan, but they're definitely not coming back home.
And meanwhile, drone planes are dropping bombs on civilians in Pakistan, and what is the end goal in Afghanistan?
I mean, this is a liberal's war, and it's becoming Obama's LBJ moment.
This is a liberal's war now in Afghanistan, and a lot of people supported it when we went in there to get Bin Laden the first time around, but what's the end game?
I mean, now we're fighting a directionless, pointless war, we're going to be occupying the country in a decentralized government, and we're far outnumbered, they took on the Soviets granted with our support and kicked them out, I mean, what's to say that they're not going to do the same to us?
This could be a very long and treacherous and debt-ridden battle that we're about to enter and bring into even a new, more drastic phase.
You're right, I mean, look, they've set out the goal as the impossible, they're going to create, never mind democracy necessarily, sort of, kind of, they'll tell you, and roll their eyes a little bit, but they do mean to create some sort of modern state there, with a real monopoly on force over all of Afghanistan, and one that has this giant army and police force and all these things, which is completely unsustainable without the American people paying for it the whole way, and supporting it with our soldiers and whatever, this is something that cannot be.
There's no gross national product in Afghanistan to support what they claim to be creating for these people.
It is only a prescription for staying forever and killing people every day, between now and then.
Well, and what a lot of people don't talk about is that Obama's using 9-11, just like Bush did, as a pretext to carry on these atrocities.
I mean, if we were really serious about getting bin Laden, there would be an international peace force, if you want to call it that, that would go in and arrest them and put people on trial, if that was what their goal was.
But that's not their goal, it never was their goal, and we don't know where he is, we don't know if they're alive or dead, and really, the public doesn't really know at what stage or how strong Al-Qaeda is.
All indications point to that they're strengthening in Iraq, and they're strengthening in Pakistan, and the more civilians that are killed, the more innocent people that are killed, the more people that lose loved ones and people that they know to U.S. bombs and other military apparatuses, the more people are going to despise the U.S. and our policies in the region, and the more power Al-Qaeda and bin Laden for the world are going to have.
And it's just amazing that someone as intelligent, you'd think intelligence would be a barometer for this, but as intelligent as Obama would buy into this and not challenge this common, I think, wisdom.
Well, you know, that's the whole thing, though, is as long as Osama bin Laden's out there, even if Obama wanted to do the right thing, he couldn't.
Not that I'm saying he does, because I don't think he does, but, you know, in fact, I think probably they would rather let him free, because that's the excuse.
Once he dies, you know, they'll have to find a new Zarqawi or somebody to replace him in the public imagination, but it won't be nearly as successful as Osama and his, you know, serene murderousness.
Well, there always has to be a boogeyman behind the scenes that draws people in and makes people afraid so that the U.S. military can continue to inflate their budgets and keep the machine in Washington and the Pentagon running as usual.
So even in a recession like today, we're seeing a drastic increase in spending.
Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Boeing, all of these companies are doing exceptionally well and building things that our U.S. military doesn't need, and wasting our tax dollars on projects that are going to end up killing people.
And it's a really sad state when we're living in a society that is, jobs are being exported, industry is failing, but I guess the industry and the only product that we are producing now in the United States is war, and it's a pretty sad reality.
Yeah, well, and you know, as the Senator here, by the way it's Joshua Frank from CounterPunch and AntiWar.com, as we're talking about the Senate passing $106 billion more for mass murder in Iraq and Afghanistan and Pakistan, and all this war spending, I'm trying to find the article here while I'm droning on about Congress pushing back, successfully pushing back in their confrontation with Robert Gates, the Secretary of Defense, over the F-22.
And even though the Secretary of Defense, here it is, House panel votes to keep the F-22 jet fighter alive.
Here, the Secretary of Defense is saying, listen, we need to spend our money focusing on killing brown people in their own countries, you know, homemade landmines and AK-47s and stuff, not these high-tech fighter jet transformers to take on China one day or whatever.
We've got to focus our resources on fighting insurgents in our colonial possessions.
And Congress has basically said, listen, you're going to take these F-22s whether you like them or not.
Right, well, if you look behind the scenes there as well, those pieces of those machines are made in districts of the people that are on that panel.
So, of course, they're not going to oppose it because they don't want to risk jobs where their constituents are.
It's a bloody game, and there's no real voice in the Senate, unfortunately.
And I think one of the few voices in the House is Ron Paul.
And Dennis Kucinich has some nice things to say now and then, and so do a few others.
But overall, there is no voice, no anti-war voice in really either House, no group of people that's going to speak out.
And I guess this begs the question that the next time we have an election, what are these people that are in the know right now, those people that are upset at the Democrats and upset at the party that continues to support policies that are detrimental or go against their own concerns?
What are they going to do?
Are they going to step up and oppose the Democrats?
Are they going to fight these Democrats, like you were saying?
Are they going to rally around them and try to elect people that aren't going to support militarism?
Or are they going to fall back in line with this lesser evil politics and continue to say, I'll vote for the least worst because the worst is still, you know, it's worse.
Well, here's the thing, man.
Our dilemma is this.
And you know me.
I'm a plumb line libertarian, and I know you.
You're a bit of a leftist, but you're a very libertarian leftist, too.
And but the thing is, there's always going to be things just like you and I will never agree on some things.
There's things that none of us will ever all see eye to eye on.
And there's always going to be the left and the right.
And that is really the trap that we're stuck in in this country, is that they can switch off from Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives.
Half the population is mollified and the other half is annoyed half the time.
And then they switch back again.
And so here's my thing.
And I didn't get a chance to talk with Glenn Greenwald.
I wanted to have the same conversation with both of you all today about this, but I'll at least have this conversation with you.
Here's my thing.
The right and the left are going to be there.
Conservatism and liberalism and whatever.
People subscribe to that.
They buy into that whole both sides of every argument type set up.
I guess it's just because we have two eyes and two ears.
And that's just the way we see things, you know, in a binary kind of fashion like that.
But my thing is this.
The libertarian point of view is the real moderate center.
That the realignment, the political realignment we need to have in this country, where the liberals and the conservatives agree and make progress, needs to be on the things where the left and the right are agreeing with the libertarians about what government needs to stop doing to people.
That is the moderate stance.
Right now we have Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman and John McCain and people like this are the center in this country.
And they are the extremists.
They are the most ignorant and dishonest mass murderers on this planet right now.
And so, you know, that's what we need is to accentuate the libertarian part of the left and the libertarian part of the right and have a real realignment where, even though ultimately the left-right spectrum isn't going to change, the middle ground goes to the real moderates.
People like Lou Rockwell who wants to abolish the state.
You know, his argument needs to be where the paleo right, the anti-war right, the pro-bill of rights right, and the anti-war pro-bill of rights left, you know, get along.
And if that's the political conversation in the country, if that's the argument that we're going to have and the premise upon which the argument is based on, then we see John McCain and Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman for the extremist wingnuts that they are.
And the war party becomes marginalized and freedom becomes the common ground, you know?
Well, and I think that we can agree that the most pressing issues of the day are the imperialist United States and our policies that we perpetuate around the world.
And in countries that most of us have never even visited or been to and may never go to.
We're wasting money on this.
We're killing people.
And this should bring people together regardless of however they define themselves politically.
This should be, in my eyes, should be a human rights issue.
And it's a practical issue.
It's a humanistic issue.
And those are, I think, the rallying points that's going to bring people together.
And those are the things that the U.S. needs to stop doing.
And these are the things that we're all culpable in.
If we pay taxes, we're supporting these atrocities.
And we have a right to demand where these tax dollars are spent.
And this is certainly not the we can maybe argue over social services and those sorts of things.
But this is one thing we can agree on where it shouldn't be spent at all.
And that's our militarism.
And so it's got to stop.
And I think those are the points that can bring people together and hopefully bring some change.
And Obama, the ones who are running for Obama may be that he might be willing to listen to us a bit more than Bush on this issue.
But unless we're yelling in his ear, he's not going to listen.
He's not going to hear us.
So we need to be just as vocal, if not more vocal, than we were during the Bush administration because we might get a little bit more response.
And that's the hope, I guess, I have.
And I hope people will wake up to that and continue to put pressure on their local representatives and on the president.
All right, everybody, that's Joshua Frank, counterpunch.org, antiwar.com.
That's Antiwar Radio for this week.
Thanks, everybody, for tuning in.
See you all next Tuesday, 1 to 3, Texas time, Chaos Radio, Austin, 95.9 FM.