10/03/14 – Tom Engelhardt – The Scott Horton Show

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All right, y'all, welcome back.
Hey, I got Tom Englehardt on the line.
Tom Editor.
Tom Dispatch.
He has lots of names.
They all start with Tom.
He's at TomDispatch.com, and virtually everything he writes or publishes gets reproduced at AntiWar.com as well.
I guess about maybe 10% or less, 5% is a different topic, too far off topic to run, but mostly we run pretty much everything at AntiWar.com.
That would be original.antiwar.com slash Englehardt.
And, of course, Tom Dispatch is also where Nick Terse is the executive editor, and he's the single best journalist on America's invasion of Africa.
And they got a whole, hell, half my guests come from essays published at TomDispatch.com.
And I'm very happy to have you back on the show, Tom.
Welcome.
Hey, Scott, glad to be here from Hysteria Central on the east coast of the United States, you know, inside the terror dome where the American way of life is going down, etc., etc., etc., etc.
I didn't realize you were a Public Enemy fan.
Very good.
Listen, so you have a new book.
The book is called Shadow Government.
What do you mean by that?
Well, you know, back in 1964 there were two journalists, when I was a kid, who published a book called Invisible Government.
And it was a shocker at the time.
They said there was a government inside the United States government that was unaccountable to the president, and it was a big bestseller at the time.
You know, so there's a long history here, but, of course, since 9-11, our, and I put our in quote, our government, in the George W. Bush era, and then in President Obama's so-called Sunshine Era, has become ever less accountable for the things it does, particularly its crimes, in our country and in the world.
It's become ever more secretive, and it's expected that citizens will, that your government will, quote, protect you, but you should know nothing whatsoever about what it's doing.
And so, basically, you know, we have, functionally, a shadow government.
I mean, we have a global surveillance network that would have been the envy of totalitarian states of the 20th century, who could only do this sort of thing for their own citizens, but didn't have the technology to do it for the world.
We have, we have, I was just writing about it the other day, 17 interlocking intelligence agencies, forget the military or anything else, just intelligence agencies, all overlapping, all functionally doing similar things at the cost of, the open cost of $68 billion, and who knows how much else lurking somewhere or other, you know, all of whom, you know, are less able than you and I, Scott, as far as I can tell, in cumulative advice to the President to actually offer a reasonable, actionable view of our world.
It's been quite a performance, you know, in the last 13 years, and, you know, that's what I write about in Shadow Government.
I mean, its subtitle is Surveillance, Secret Wars, and a Global Security State in a Single Superpower World, and that kind of sums up our strange world today, where, you know, we Americans, I mean, since Vietnam, I mean, the history of America is in some way the history of the demobilization of American citizens, the ending of the citizen army, and so on and so forth, and today, all that's left of our, in essence, our link to the world and in some aspects to our government is this endless sense of hysteria about supposed terrorist plots that are going to take us down and that provide the basis for building an ever bigger version of what I've called the Shadow Government, but I won't go on.
Well, you will, but you've got to let me get in here some more, so I can direct the conversation a little.
But, no, listen, I'm all about what you say, but, so my question is, along the lines of stupidity or the plan, you know, when I was a kid, I mostly got interested in politics from a much more kind of centralized control view, where all of this seeming chaos was really a grand design and blah, blah, blah, and yet now it seems like, no, really, it's just an imperial court of complete chaos, where the reason that none of the policies make sense is because the policies are all just a mishmash of what different corrupt interests want, and we'd actually probably be better off with some table of skull and bones men who actually have a veto power over just how crazy the policy's going to be on, for example, backing Al-Qaeda men against Assad for the last three years straight in front of everybody in broad daylight.
Yes, you know, I guess what I would say, I'm always struck by this, because when people read Shadow Government, they'll see I am not in the normal sense a conspiracy monger at all, and I'm always struck, you know, I get letters at Tom Dispatcher regularly from people who say, oh my God, didn't you realize, you know, the Osama Bin Laden raid was a conspiracy, 9-11 was a good blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, you know, basically, you know, I don't think, I think that the government, you know, that Shadow Government is an incredibly functioning system.
It's not in the normal sense, I think, a set of conspiracies at all, I agree with you, but what I would say is that in some weird way, you know, what we think of out here as failures, and they are failures, they're grotesque failures, you know, the failure of, say, the American military, the most powerful in the world, you know, with, I don't have my numbers here, but, you know, I don't know, more money goes into the U.S. military than the top 12 other militaries combined.
I'm making that up, but it's close enough.
And they're all our allies except Russia and China.
Yeah, exactly.
I mean, but despite the inability of, say, that military to do a single thing in the world since 9-11 that actually worked by Washington's own goals, you know, it doesn't matter if you're talking about Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, whatever, or the present situation, which you know is going to be a catastrophe, I mean, the present bombing situation.
Despite all that, you know, in some ways, it's a system that thrives on failure.
I mean, it's very interesting.
I just wrote a piece at Time Dispatch called Failure, you know, Success is Failure, or Vice Versa.
Because, you know, I mean, 9-11 was the beginning, I mean, it was the first and greatest example of this.
That is, 9-11 had an intelligence level, was a colossal failure, you know, and the result of that failure was the largest explosion of building, in every sense, of, you know, American intelligence.
I mean, you know, these scores of new intelligence headquarters, I mean, billions of dollars into it, and almost every person who might have been accountable for what happened on 9-11 was actually, in some sense, you know, nobody was fired, some were promoted, some were given awards like, say, George Tenet, etc.
And ever since, in a sense, what we've known, at least in our bones, is that every failure actually spurs, you know, greater building of this structure.
So, I mean, if you just take the present, you know, the most recent thing that's in the headlines, and it's been a field day for every cartoonist on earth, which is the intruder with a pocket knife, the PTSD intruder with a pocket knife who managed to make it all the way through the White House.
You know, we know the upshot of this before we begin, which is, you know, they will have to bolster the Secret Service in some sense, and they will have to keep you farther from the White House, you know, it will be a little more like the Kremlin or whatever.
Yeah, quicker shoot to kill orders.
Yeah!
When all this guy needed was a good stiff elbow to the jaw or whatever, and they would have had him.
But instead, now they're going to kill other people to make up for this.
Yeah, it wasn't, he was tackled by, you know, he was tackled by an off-duty, an off-duty guy who just happened to see him.
So, you know, yes, I think that that's quite true.
But there is some way in which each failure leads to the next step of the institutionalizing.
Well, see, this is why I was such a conspiracy theorist when I was a little kid, because I understood this immediately, and I just assumed that, of course, all the people in charge understand this, and that's why they screw up on purpose all the time.
And that's why the truthers do have a point that, boy, with the head of the CIA's hair on fire, they sure weren't looking when those planes came out of the clear blue sky.
And so, I mean, I'm not saying, and of course the way they exploited it, they might as well have done it for as cynically as they exploited it to get their extra wars and everything else.
But all I'm saying is, it's possible, Tom, that there are people in government who figured out what you figured out about how they thrive from failure.
But anyway, we've got to take this break, but we'll be right back with Tom Engelhardt from TomDispatch.com in just a second.
Hey, Al Scott Horton here.
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All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
I'm on the line with Tom Engelhardt.
We're talking about government failing upwards, especially the national security state.
I was going to say, Tom, welcome to Libertarian Economics.
This is the thing.
Government has a monopoly, and whenever they fail, like making more people poor, they succeed.
Making more people stupid, they succeed.
Making the roads more dangerous, they succeed.
But failing entirely to stop two dozen real-ass Al-Qaeda guys in the country from training up on airplane piloting and crashing them into buildings, they do better.
Robert Higgs, the great, highly credentialed Libertarian economist, has a book called Crisis and Leviathan, where he describes the ratchet effect.
Where every time there's a crisis, government gains in power, and you could even paraphrase James Madison here somewhere, the power never quite goes back to what it was before when the crisis abates.
That's the turning of the ratchet.
It just gets tighter and tighter.
Of course, they know this.
I'm not some true believer kook, like I said.
On the other hand, it was obvious to me, and I was just a kid in the 1990s, that the cocaine lords of South America were working on ginning up a war on terrorism.
That's what Bill Clinton called it starting in 1996.
They had the Council on Foreign Relations commission to create a Department of Homeland Security to protect us all from Osama bin Laden before Bush even took office.
They called it the War on Terrorism.
I remember Covert Action Quarterly had an excellent piece.
I even ended up interviewing the guy years later all about the creation of Homeland Security that I read in 1998.
It was pretty obvious that whether or not 9-11 happened, they wanted to go to war in the Middle East.
They wanted to go back.
That was the real 9-11 plot, of course, was to make the American people believe Saddam did it.
That was the real conspiracy.
They wanted to get over there and get back to war and have an excuse to sell more Lockheed products and do what Errol Sharon wants.
I actually wish that there were a few more libertarians in Congress right now because one of the things that strikes me about the Republicans is they always talk about small government but here we have something I happen to be writing about lately you could do it about other things but here we have these 17 interlocking intelligence outfits.
If you had 17 interlocking outfits dealing with highway safety protecting Americans from highway deaths and there were 400,000 out of those since 9-11 the Republicans would have gone after that structure with a meat cleaver.
You would have done the realistic thing because it's kind of madness.
Forget what they're doing.
17 intelligence outfits.
You assumedly could whoever you were and whatever your politics were you could logically act.
15 of them would downsize the other 2 and I've always believed that the government could take a couple of million dollars instead of billions of dollars hire a bunch of smart people open source document stuff in our world and you would end up with a far more actionable view of what to do in the world than they get out of 17 huge incompetent disastrous interlocked agencies.
I only wish that the Republicans non-libertarians would stop bowing down before the truly oppressive powers of big government.
That's me.
On the other subject you're quite right.
Of course the moment the stunning moment in our lives in a way was given the story that had been going on for several hundred years which was great powers and then greater powers and finally 2 superpowers facing off against each other in a world of utter power concentration was the leaving of the United States as the only power.
1990, 1991 I mean Washington was stunned the people in Washington typical of intelligence they never thought the Soviet Union was going to go they didn't predict it, they didn't have any idea when it went.
And they were stunned almost for a decade in their own fashion as you say and they started looking around a landscape which to this day remains remarkably compared to previous times, remarkably without enemies.
I mean scattered jihadists and whatever but you know very small scale if you went back to 1970 to the 1970s or 80s and said to any American hey look you know the Soviet Union is going to be gone and the only things left are a few things we called rogue powers, a few rickety states you know I mean North Korea whatever and a bunch of jihadists in the backlands of the world I mean people would have gotten down on their knees and thank God or something you know I mean it's quite extraordinary I mean we're in an amazing period of enemylessness but you would not know it in this country where exactly as you say they have successfully, I mean even to themselves and the one thing I would add, it was on our conspiracy discussion earlier, the one thing I would add is that ruling groups classically tend to manipulate populations but before they do that they manipulate themselves because it's so much easier to manipulate people if you kind of believe it or half believe it yourself so you know even on the Saddam stuff you know I mean you look at Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense after the invasion of Iraq when they sent those teams in to look we have accounts of him just getting after we had taken Baghdad, of American teams going into Iraq and not funding weapons of mass destruction, I mean they knew that he didn't have a fully functioning nuclear program or whatever but they thought they were going to find something at least some old stuff from the previous wars and they couldn't find the damn stuff we have inside accounts he would get angrier and angrier, throwing stuff back at people, saying this is not possible because these people, they had convinced themselves of what they wanted to do and I think that's typical of ruling groups, they go through a kind of process of, almost like an auto-hypnotic process before they turn and manipulate us which they do, but conspiracy theorists tend to think that they are simply that they themselves are a part of this thing they're just manipulating and part of that is because they're such bastards, I mean again back to 9-11 Dick Cheney might as well have killed those 3,000 people himself as far as how willing he was to exploit their deaths to go and declare war on 60 countries, I mean what kind of a leap is it to say that he did do it, that he arranged with Bandar to do it or something, because why the hell not he would have killed us all to do whatever he wanted By the way, 60 countries is by some standards an underestimate because the CIA about a week or two after presented to Bush a program that they called I think the Worldwide Attack Matrix in which they identified 80 countries, supposedly with terrorist outfits I mean this was like ridiculous but I mean it's true we declared a global war and of course a lot of people in that world for a while they wanted to call it World War 4 World War 3 being the Cold War it didn't really stick, but that was the urge, so you're quite right, yes the great comment was Donald Rumsfeld he was standing more or less in the ruins of the Pentagon, and he turned to his aides and said sweep it all up sweep it all up, it had to do with Iraq he immediately turned to the issue of Saddam Hussein and the thought was there instantly, we wanted to take this guy down now's our chance, I think it's quite clear one of his aides wrote down notes, which we have on what he said almost immediately after it was that classic line, sweep it all up I think it was, I'm sitting here without my I can't obviously look, but it was something like sweep it all up it was and then it was something like sweep it all up related and not exactly, and you thought boy, you can't ask for something in the newspaper that same month of September oh yeah, Iraq's next, William Sapphire said it's the big mo, take the momentum and run with it, hit Saddam now, it was clear we're going to lie into war starting now, get ready so now let me ask you about I understand that these guys believe what they need to believe for the reasons they need to, and they have all these weird perverse incentives and this and that, but I'm just little old me and yes, I make it a habit to talk to Patrick Coburn as often as I can get him on without making him hate me and I read everything he writes and so he was talking about a year ago last spring ok, almost a year and a half ago now Tom, that jeez, the Iraqi army is pulling back from Mosul, and they're pulling back from Bokooba and some of these places and then right around that same time Baghdadi broke off from Golani and said he's naming his group the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, and so I was talking with Coburn on the show, and I wrote in the Future Freedom Foundation magazine for April, I wrote in April of 2013 that this, because it's the lawless uncontrolled western part of Iraq, already de facto independent from Baghdad and the terrorists controlled east of Syria here this is the rise of the Islamofascist caliphate that Bush and Paul Wolfowitz and them would have had us believe in back then.
I was saying that almost a year and a half ago and then Obama's on TV saying, you know, we were taken by surprise everybody, I don't know what happened so my question to you is is that really right, do you think?that they just could not possibly imagine that by backing al-Nusra de facto, in effect by way of a couple degrees of separation yada yada yada, backing the Hadeen in Syria for the last three years could blow up in their face like this?
I mean, how could they doubt that?
These are the Zarqawiites, man!
I think the like this is the key thing here, yes, I think it probably was hard for them to imagine it would blow up like this, but yes I mean, you could go back even farther I mean, one of the things we now know is that al-Baghdadi and the other people who are basically running this war, I mean, who are they?
First of all, I mean he came out of al-Qaeda in Iraq, which wasn't in Iraq of course, until we invaded but he was put in the US military prison, Camp Bucca, and he was put in there with, among many other people a bunch of former officers from the Iraqi army that we had disbanded which was undoubtedly, I mean, forgetting politics, forgetting anything, was simply the stupidest act any invader could have done having taken a country which was to take a full army that actually could fight unlike the army that we trained up and disband it and throw them all out on the street without jobs, I mean, if you want to start an insurgency, start it that's how to do it, so basically they all went, their West Point was an American military prison, it's where they met it's where they clearly honed their ideas, they came out functionally together, and the rest happened, I mean, ISIS is in many ways our creation not just in terms of the acts of the last year or so, I mean, without the invasion of Iraq, without what we did in Iraq, without the disbanding of that army, without so many acts it's literally inconceivable I saw a Twitter friend said the other day what if, it was kind of in all capitals and stuff hey, what if ISIS are the moderates well that's the other thing, you know, be careful what you wish for I mean, if the US were successful in destroying this group which by the way is such an extreme and sectarian group, that and with so many potential enemies in the region that even without us, I think it would sooner or later burn itself out but don't assume that they're the worst we could get, they're not, they're not at all, and by the way, I also agree, I mean Coburn is the single best unembedded reporter in the Middle East, I mean, he's been fantastic for years and years and years and I've been following him for years, and actually he's written for Tom Dispatch so, and by the way I want to remind your readers, since I know that we're getting there you know, pick up my book Shadow Government yeah, in fact we're going to stop right there, because we're already into the break, they can't even hear us now but the people listening to the archive later will be able to hear the very end of this interview, the live audience heard the super majority of it, so that's pretty good alright but thanks very much for coming back on the show great at radio, and I want you to know you have an open invitation, I will go ahead and try to get you on as often as you write articles so be well I will try and do it more often, you know me, but I will try alright, good deal, thanks Tom bye, thanks Scott alright everybody, that is the heroic Tom Englehart from TomDispatch.com he's at original.antiwar.com slash Englehart TomDispatch.com and the new book is Shadow Government and before that of course Unfinished, Unaccomplished, The End of Victory Culture The World According to TomDispatch The American Way of War Terminator Planet, oh that one's Nick Terce Oh, The United States of Fear was the one before this very good stuff TomDispatch.com, we'll be right back Hey, Al, Scott Horton here to tell you about this great new book by Michael Swanson, The War State In The War State, Swanson examines how Presidents Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy both expanded and fought to limit the rise of the new national security state after World War II This nation is ever to live up to its creed of liberty and prosperity for everyone We are going to have to abolish the empire Know your enemy Get The War State by Michael Swanson It's available at your local bookstore or at Amazon.com in Kindle or in paperback Just click the book in the right margin at ScottHorton.org or TheWarState.com Hey, Al, Scott Horton here for WallStreetWindow.com Mike Swanson knows his stuff He made a killing running his own hedge fund and always gets out of the stock market before the government generated bubbles pop which is, by the way, what he's doing right now selling all his stocks and betting on gold and commodities Sign up at WallStreetWindow.com and get real-time updates from Mike on all his market moves It's hard to know how to protect your savings and earn a good return in an economy like this Mike Swanson can help Follow along on paper and see for yourself WallStreetWindow.com Hey, Al, 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 Produced 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 The Future of Freedom at www.fff.org slash subscribe Peace and freedom, thank you Hey, Al, Scott here.
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