07/10/14 – Philip Giraldi – The Scott Horton Show

Hey y'all, Scott here for Liberty.me, the brand new social network and community-based publishing platform for the Liberty-minded.
Liberty.me combines the best of social media technology all in one place, and features nightly classes, guides, events, publishing, and so much more.
Sign up now and you get the first 30 days free.
And if you click through the link in the right margin at scotthorton.org, or use the promo code SCOTT when you sign up, you'll save $5 per month for life.
That's more than a third off the regular price.
And hey, once you sign up, add me as a friend on there at scotthorton.liberty.me.
Be free.
Liberty.me.
Alright y'all, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
Next up is our friend Phil Giraldi.
He's formerly a CIA officer, now he's the executive director of the Council for the National Interest at councilforthenationalinterest.org.
The anti-Israel lobby, you might call it.
Also he writes for the American Conservative Magazine, unz.com, and america.aljazeera.com.
Welcome back to the show, Phil.
How are you doing?
I'm fine, Scott.
How about you?
I'm doing real good.
Appreciate you joining us today.
Good.
And hey, I had a great time reading this article, because I don't know if you know, but this sure as hell is how I feel about it.
Rand Paul, unfit to lead.
That's at unz.com.
We'll get to that in a second, but you're right.
The breaking news is, well, go ahead and tell us the breaking news out of Germany, Phil.
Well, the Germans have expelled, they call it in diplomatic talk, persona non grata, a person not acceptable, the CIA chief of station in Germany, who was in Berlin.
And this is unprecedented.
I can't think of another case ever of a NATO country expelling a CIA chief of station.
This is the first time it's ever happened.
And this was in response to, well, first of all, the NSA was listening in on the German Chancellor Angela Merkel's phones.
And more recently in the last week, there have been two stories that have developed.
One about a German intelligence officer who was reportedly recruited by presumably the CIA.
And the other one about a German defense official.
I don't know whether he's in uniform or a civilian, who apparently also was recruited and is currently being investigated.
So it's in response to three distinct issues.
But this is an unprecedented move by a country like Germany.
Yeah, wow.
And now, so if he's the chief of station of Berlin, does that mean he's the boss of the whole country then?
Yeah, right.
Because the chief of station is in the capitals normally.
That's how it works.
There would be a CIA base, say, in Frankfurt and in Munich.
But the station is in the capital always.
So that is, of course, currently Berlin.
And so that's where the chief who runs all the operations in the country is located.
Now, is that because the people of Germany have had enough of this and they need to be shown that their government is doing something about it?
Or is it because the German politicians are really that pissed off, or what?
Well, I suspect it's more the former.
I believe that Merkel is having to show to the people, to the public and the media that she's willing to be really tough about this.
Because, you know, let's face it.
I mean, these three episodes are violations of the sovereignty of a close ally.
So it's a serious issue.
And I think that the public is taking it seriously.
And she's given a strong response.
I think the reality is that someone like Merkel knows that this kind of crap goes on all the time, that the CIA has been recruiting German officials since 1950.
And, you know, probably hundreds of them, if not maybe thousands of them.
And so, anyway, it's not a secret.
But the fact is that she has to defend the sovereignty of her own country.
So she has to act as if it is, that this is a big surprise.
And the other issue, of course, is that intelligence agencies, they spy on everybody.
I mean, they spy on friends and foes.
It's just a question of what kind of information are they trying to get and where is it?
And so this whole distinction between allies and enemies is kind of, in some ways, superficial.
All right.
Now, I wonder if you think that this could lead to any sort of change in policy, like a shift in the politics of the country where all of a sudden people start remembering proud pasts they'd like to recreate.
Not that any Germans have ever set down that path before.
But you know what?
Why would, I don't know exactly if there's an exact definition of what level of power they are, but I'll call them a major power, right?
They are the powerhouse, economically speaking, of Europe.
Why would they sit back and be nothing but a pathetic satellite of America like they're nothing but Mexico or something?
And just sit back and take the humiliation that comes with that role indefinitely?
Yeah, well, of course, the reason for that goes back to the fact that the United States provided, in the post-war years, a security umbrella for all of Europe.
And Germany was the one that benefited probably most from that because it, as you know, had the strongest economy and was well-positioned to take advantage of that and not have to spend its own money on defense.
So, you know, Germany has been a beneficiary of this relationship, but at the same time, NATO and these kinds of issues are no longer as relevant as they were.
And you have a new generation in Germany that doesn't understand this or doesn't remember the post-war years.
And so I think you're right.
I think to a certain extent there is going to be a – I don't think this is going to do permanent damage, but I think it's going to bring about some kind of recalibration of how the relationship between the two countries works.
All right.
Now, you ready to start talking about what a bum Rand Paul is?
Yeah.
Yeah, I am.
You know, the whole – I was a super supporter of his father, of Ron Paul.
I thought Ron was, to me, saying all the right things and was basically an honest man who said what he believed and believed what he said.
And now we have Rand, and Rand is kind of a different breed of cat.
He basically says a lot of things.
He does a lot of things.
He grandstands a lot in the Senate, you know, filibustering and making speeches and things like that.
But what bothers me most is that, as I say in the article that appeared today in Unn's magazine, what makes a guy who was an eye doctor, who was elected a junior senator from a border state, suddenly – how does he turn into an expert on foreign policy to the point where he is coming out with all these positions on things that he clearly does not even know about?
That he clearly does not even understand?
And this kind of bothers me a lot because the whole foreign policy schtick that Ron Paul has is basically designed to work his way into the good graces of a number of constituencies in the Republican Party and is essentially unconnected with any kind of reality.
Yeah, and you know, the real shame of it – and we can get back into the particulars – but the real shame of it all is that he could just lead.
And, you know, this is what – as you say, he's adopted his father's campaign people to help run his thing, the same people who failed his father.
This is what they got wrong.
They ran him as the true conservative.
Like, run to the right in the primaries and then to the center in the general according to same old conventional wisdom.
Instead of saying, no, look, this guy's changing the whole game.
Just let him go out there and be himself.
And then use the best clips of his speeches and answers as his campaign commercials.
And, you know, Ron Paul could really inspire people with his honesty sometimes.
Not that he's always the most eloquent, but he's so damn right and honest about stuff that people love him.
And so they could have really just changed the entire game.
I don't know if he could have won the presidency or whatever, but it could have been done – both of his campaigns could have been done so much better if they had not tried to run him as the one true conservative in the whole thing, I think.
But then also, it's the same thing for Rand.
Rand could just lead and say, no, you know what?
This is all wrong.
I don't have to come halfway toward Richard Perle's point of view because Richard Perle is 100 percent wrong.
Here's what's right.
And nobody wants to listen to Richard Perle and them anyway.
Everybody would rather hear what Rand Paul has to say that people are already come to his father's position while he's retreating from it.
Yeah, yeah, I think you've got it exactly right.
And the fact was these were deliberate decisions made by the people around Ron Paul to de-emphasize the foreign policy issues.
That's where Ron came from.
I mean, Ron was originally, you know, he's the original non-interventionist.
Right, and it was the fight with Rudy Giuliani that made him famous.
Yeah.
My friends, being honest, the first time I've ever seen that in a Republican debate in my life, the people cried.
Hang on, Phil, we've got to take this stupid break, but we'll be right back after this with Phil Giraldi, y'all.
So you're a libertarian and you don't believe the propaganda about government awesomeness you were subjected to in fourth grade.
You want real history and economics.
Well, learn in your car from professors you can trust with Tom Woods' Liberty Classroom.
And if you join through the Liberty Classroom link at ScottHorton.org, we'll make a donation to support the Scott Horton Show.
Liberty Classroom, the history and economics they didn't teach you.
All right, y'all.
Thanks for showing up and listening to the show today.
Wrapping up now.
On the line with Phil Giraldi.
Talking about Rand Paul.
And it's funny, Phil, the way you write about the secret Rand Paul that people believe in.
Oh, he just happens… he has to pretend to be horrible on, I don't know, 25 different things or something in order to get the power, at which point he'll reveal how wonderful he is.
You could have been, and I ain't accusing you, you could have been directly plagiarizing that from Alexander Coburn's speech that he gave at the Future Freedom Foundation conference in 2008 talking about Barack Obama.
Oh, the secret Obama who only pretends he wants to bomb Pakistan, who only pretends he wants to conquer Africa, who only pretends to want to spend us into complete and total collapse.
No, no, no, just wait until he gets the power.
Then he'll reveal himself as the true hero that I know he is somewhere.
This is the exact same thing that I hear from the Rand-bots, just like the Obama-bots, which is why you got so close to his assessment of Obama.
It's the very same phenomenon.
I want to believe, damn it.
Yeah, that's it.
I mean, it's like the people who are behind Rand Paul and who are behind Obama, they've got the same kind of mindset.
They say, well, you know, just wait.
When he gets in power, he's going to change.
He's going to be a different guy.
But of course, that's BS, because he is what he is.
I mean, if he's saying things now that he doesn't believe in, then he's a hypocrite and a liar.
So if that's the guy you want to elect your next president, well, more power to you.
And the other argument that really kind of turns me off is that, well, he's better than the others.
You know, we've had garbage in the White House for so many years now.
Are we supposed to have it forever?
I mean, is that the idea that you pick the least bad guy out of a pack?
I don't know.
Yeah.
Well, and the thing is, too, is it's all for nothing.
The neocons will never accept him.
And even when he does things like come out to the right, as you talk about in this article, where he comes out to the right of AIPAC and to the right of any part of the Israel lobby, none of whom are saying that America ought to stop paying Israel's auxiliary oppression force, the Palestinian Authority.
He's the only one saying that.
And I saw when he first came out with that on Twitter, all the neocons are saying, LOL, Rand Paul, you know, grandstanding again.
Yeah, right.
As though we would really trust him to back Israel if it came down to it with a last name like that.
So no matter how hard he bends over backwards, it doesn't impress them.
Yeah, that's right.
You know, you kind of wonder who's advising him.
It's probably Jesse Benton or somebody like that.
You know, a skilled operator like Jesse Benton.
Because this kind of stuff is just nonsense.
He's damaging the support he would have inherited from his father.
Because most libertarians and most people who were Rand Paul supporters were not particularly fond of going to war for Israel.
And instead, he's not going to pick up anything.
He's not going to get the evangelical vote.
He's not going to get Sheldon Adelson giving him $10 million.
It's just not going to happen.
Yeah.
And the thing of it, too, is and it's important for, you know, any family and especially, I don't know, in politics or I don't know, just as well in politics as any other family for a son to be separate from his dad in whatever important way or whatever.
But the thing is, anything that the bad guys really want to accuse his father of is something that his father is awesome on.
And so it's not even necessarily a matter of him having to defend his dad all the time and being married to his dad's legacy unfairly somehow all the time.
It's they're the right positions that he could win if he defended him, where sometimes we say, oh, geez, Ron, speaking complete sentences for a minute, dude, or something like that.
Rand's better at it.
Rand could take the exact Ron Paul position and, you know, clear the room with it, you know.
And instead, he backs down on every single thing, throws his father under the bus on every single thing as though it's personal.
And if he just stuck to the issues, his dad is the one who's actually right anyway.
Yeah, that's right.
And here he's got a father that he could be copying that that basically was tremendous on virtually any issue that you might want to look at.
And he's kind of, you know, saying, no, tactically, we have to do this.
Or his advisors are maybe saying that tactically we have to do this, tactically we have to do that.
And, you know, he's going to wind up with nothing.
Yeah.
Well, and the other thing is, too, that you talk about in the article and that you mentioned here is he doesn't he's ophthalmologist.
He doesn't really know anything about it.
And the thing is, I mean, there are cab drivers and bumper sticker makers and nobody's know a hell of a lot about it.
But it requires principle in the first place to be mad enough to want to really know.
Otherwise, he's, you know, basically going off his same impression of world events that the average boob would pick up from CNN instead of, you know, waking up every morning and checking antiwar.com to see what the hell is going on around here.
The way his father does.
That was another reason his father is so good on everything is because he could actually back up his arguments because he actually knew what he was talking about.
And I know because whenever I interviewed him, I never ask him about, you know, campaign stuff.
I always ask him about what's going on in Korea these days.
And he always knows because of his principle comes first.
And then, you know, his commitment to the knowledge, you know, comes from that.
And that's something that Rand Paul lacks big time.
And everybody's had a boss like that.
Hey, boss, if you only did it this way, it'd be so much easier.
Don't you think?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
He knows everything and doesn't need to learn anything.
Right.
Yeah, well, the problem is, you know, you get some of these guys in the Senate and the Congress in general, they really don't know anything.
And so they're dependent on who's feeding them whatever the story is that they want to sell.
And I think he's clearly a victim of that.
He really doesn't know anything about how the world works and, you know, what what the meaning of allies and what the meaning of of defense pacts and all this kind of stuff.
And I point out in the article, he doesn't even understand that the United States has national interests.
I mean, you know, clearly, if you're going and you're just mouthing off all the time, you're not paying any attention to the fact that in the in the Middle East and every other part of the world, we have interests.
And these interests are vital to either American security or vital to our economy.
And if you just go and you're shooting your mouth off left, right and center, you're not paying any attention to that.
And that's that's the kind of guy he is, unfortunately.
Yeah, I mean, that's the whole thing is ambition, I guess, is important if you want to be a senator or something.
But when it comes that far first in front of everything else, it's self-defeating, as you're saying anyway.
And, you know, I saw this recently where and you may have saw him on the Sunday shows or the recap where he actually did pretty good, saying that America has been in effect backing the ISIS revolution against Assad in Syria.
What sense does that make?
And it was America's war, George Bush's war in Iraq that turned that place into a jihadist wonderland, he called it.
And that's pretty good stuff.
But I thought when I heard him say it that, you know, if it wasn't Candy Crowley, but if he was up against a real adversary like Liz Cheney or something, that he wouldn't really be able to back it up because he really hasn't done the work.
So he even got his talking points right.
And they were some pretty damn good ones.
But what was he really basing it on?
You know, was it one thing that he'd read or was it 100 things that he'd read, you know?
Well, and it's always, you know, it always comes out as kind of a soundbite or as a, as I put in my article, as a bumper sticker policy.
He says, you know, he constantly keeps coming back to the, oh, these people in the Arab world, you know, chanting death to America and burning our flag.
I think he's probably used that phrase 550 times.
And Iran is always described, you know, you put Iran and then next to it, it's always terrorists supporting Iran or Iran, the terrorist state.
You know, he's got some, some obviously words and expressions that have been fed to him as being the right way to express things to, to presumably appeal to whatever, you know, constituencies he's after.
And he comes out with them again and again and again.
It's not like he's, he's not, he hasn't thought about these issues down to the next level.
And that's what's really disturbing about him.
Yeah.
Well, and you know, what's funny about this too, is that you and I are both so damn cynical, Phil, he's probably the best senator ever when it comes to most of this stuff.
And he's certainly the best Republican senator, you know, right now.
And, you know, I'll, I'll play devil's advocate for a second here.
You know, Justin says the same reason that the neocons will never believe in his shtick and will never accept him when he panders to them like this is the same reason that we got to support him is because at the end of the day, you know, is he going to carry on with this NSA, Gestapo stuff?
No way.
He'll, he'll be better than the rest of them by a long shot.
I think even I'd have to admit that Obama is probably light years better than Hillary or McCain when it comes to some, well, should we or should we not completely carpet bomb Syria and Iran off the face of the earth, for example?
Or, or McCain, should we pick a fight with Russia, a real one?
Those kinds of questions.
I got to admit that, you know, secret utopian Obama or not, he, you know, maybe has been better than the alternatives than we had at the time.
And maybe that is true for Rand too.
I don't know if that would mean vote for him or not, but what do you make of that?
Well, I, I kind of agree with you.
I mean, in the last two elections, I voted for the least, the least bad choice.
So that's what we can, we come down to.
Now, I think you said you did vote for Obama back in 08 for just that reason, right?
Yeah, twice.
So I voted for him both times.
Well, anyway.
Thanks Phil.
Something else to be ashamed of.
Good talk to you.
Okay, Scott, take care.
All right, y'all.
That's Phil Durali.
Unfit to lead is his new article at UNZ.com.
UNZ.com.
UNZ.com.
Unfit to lead.
Rand Paul's bumper sticker, foreign policy is dangerous.
I take offense to that.
I think you can put great foreign policy on bumper stickers if you put the font small enough.
Anyway, see y'all tomorrow.
Thanks for listening.
Oh, John Kerry's Mideast peace talks have gone nowhere.
Hey, y'all.
Scott Horton here for The Future of Freedom, the monthly journal of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Edited by libertarian purist Sheldon Richman, The Future of Freedom brings you the best of our movement.
Featuring articles by Richman, Jacob Hornberger, James Bovard, and many more, The Future of Freedom stands for peace and liberty and against our criminal world empire and Leviathan state.
Subscribe today.
It's just $25 per year for the back pocket size print edition, $15 per year to read it online.
That's thefutureoffreedom at fff.org slash subscribe.
Peace and freedom.
Thank you.
You hate government?
One of them libertarian types?
Maybe you just can't stand the president, gun grabbers, or warmongers.
Me too.
That's why I invented libertystickers.com.
Well, Rick owns it now and I didn't make up all of them, but still, if you're driving around and want to tell everyone else how wrong their politics are, there's only one place to go.
Libertystickers.com has got your bumper covered.
Left, right, libertarian, empire, police, state, founders, quote, central banking.
Yes, bumper stickers about central banking.
Lots of them.
And, well, everything that matters.
Libertystickers.com.
Everyone else's stickers suck.