01/13/15 – Rory Fanning – The Scott Horton Show

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Alright y'all, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
It's my show, Scott Horton Show, here on Liberty Radio Network.
Our next guest today is Rory Fanning.
He's got a new one at TomDispatch.com.
We'll be running it tomorrow on AntiWar.com.
It's Rory Fanning, Unpacking the War on Terror.
Also titled, you know how they do it at Tom Dispatch, got a Nick Terce intro here.
It's Letter to a Young Army Ranger from an old one.
Welcome to the show, Rory.
How are you doing?
Terrific.
Thanks for having me on the show.
Very happy to have you on.
Very good article.
You know, I got a call about, well, I guess two, three weeks ago from someone, a friend of a friend, who their nephew was going to join up the Marine Corps.
They said, what do I do?
It was someone who knew better, but couldn't figure out how to make their nephew know better.
The best idea I had was give them the number to the Bill of Rights hotline and hope somebody there could recommend some good reading material.
I know there's a good Chris Hedges book, What Everyone Should Know About War, that's very specific stuff about what it's like to be in battle and what it's like to be shot and what it's like to be in the Army and these kinds of things.
But I wasn't really sure what to tell them.
I think if somebody asked me tomorrow, I'll probably have them read your article.
I wonder what your advice would be to that question, first of all, here.
Yeah, well, I've been wanting to write something like this for a long time.
I mean, we have 10,000 recruiters stalking the hallways of our high schools and they have a $700 million advertising budget to work with, and there really isn't a lot of pushback.
You know, I think it's only fair to have kids here both sides, you know, particularly from someone who's actually been overseas and sees that we are actually not fighting for freedom or democracy around the world.
And you know, if you're a high school-age student, a lot of times you don't have a ton of options.
The military seems like the only option, but it's not the case.
And you know, I don't think the rest of the world should have to pay for our search for meaning, our search for something to do with our lives.
We've long since passed the time that we've been fighting for freedom and democracy around the world.
And I don't know, it's an involved discussion, and it's a nuanced discussion.
And you know, I just like to have, we should have more of those conversations.
Yeah, it's funny how even after the opinions of the wars have shifted pretty much, the job itself is always still sanctified in the minds of most people, because as you talk about in here, you know, as you talk about, I think, when you're describing your own feelings when you were joining up, that, hey, as far as you know, there's consensus for this.
It's the right thing to do.
For defending the country from its enemies, and it's a rite of passage, and this kind of thing.
You see the commercials for it in every football game your entire life.
So it's so very normal and part of life, and very much an option for anyone turning 17 to start thinking about, really.
And it all just kind of goes without saying, even still, and there doesn't seem to be too much challenge against it.
You know, the actual shtick.
Now when it was the 90s, and I was turning 17, 18, it was so-called peace time.
So it was a little bit easier sales pitch too, that look, you'll go in, you'll do a few years, we'll make a real man out of you, and then you'll be able to get good work done and aim high and all that the rest of your life.
But there's not too much risk that we're really going to make you kill somebody, or that you're really going to get killed.
It's just money for college, and push-ups, and marksmanship, and because shooting rifles is fun, and so who doesn't want to do that?
And so it's a little bit more complicated now, but as you say, they really narrow the discussion to a very narrow thing, right, to push-ups and marksmanship, and the guy on your left and your right, you say.
Yeah, well we're entering the 14th year of the global war on terror, and we've been spending, on average, $700 billion every single year to fight this war.
You know, that money is not going towards sustainable energy, it's not going to education, it's not going to any kind of health care, and plus we're killing hundreds of thousands of people, and we're certainly proven, you know, as we see the rise of ISIS, Taliban is as strong as it's ever been, there's nothing to show for any of this stuff.
We're not going in there rebuilding any countries, I mean, right now, Afghanistan is holding on by the skin of its teeth, we're funding its entire army.
The second the U.S. pulls out its funding, that state is going to collapse.
So what do we have to show for this, and why is there a critical discussion about the ineffectiveness of the U.S. military and the fact that we're actually creating the thing that we were being told we were sent to destroy, and that's more terrorism.
Yeah, and you know, you point out in the article, and this just blows me away to think about this, that when you were signing up and you were becoming an Army Ranger, being deployed to Afghanistan, the kids who are being deployed to Afghanistan as Rangers today were in kindergarten.
They were going into kindergarten at the time that you were going into Afghanistan in 2002, and that's just mind-blowing.
But what that means is, because it's gone on so long, that means that in their mind, this is kind of the ultimate of consensus, right?
This is a consensus ongoing for a decade and a half, that clearly this is the right thing to do.
This is what we're doing.
This is our mission, is to make Afghanistan better, or something like that, right?
Right.
I mean, they know nothing else.
I mean, if you've been raised in the global war on terror, I mean, since you're 17, that's all you've ever seen, you know, and you know, we're being sent around the world to control other countries' natural resources, bottom line, and to ensure that the West controls those countries' resources.
Making other countries poorer, only a handful of people are benefiting from these wars, the richest of the rich, and yeah, you know, the anti-war movement, unfortunately, is at a low point, and everybody thinks that the war on terror is being wrapped up, and we still have 10,000 troops over in Afghanistan, we just sent another 3,000 back into Iraq.
You know, the special forces have basically conducted military operations in two-thirds of the world's countries since 9-11, and 49 of the 54 African countries.
I mean, national sovereignty exists for every, for no other country but the United States at this point, and, you know, you've got to start talking about that.
Yeah, now tell me, Rory, real quick here, if you could, what was the turning point for you?
You make it really clear in this article, again, it's at TomDispatch.com, a letter to a young Army Ranger from an old one.
You really were hook, line, and sinker into this thing, no insult intended here, that's as you write it, but so what was it that made you, during your time, it was during your time in Afghanistan, you decided, this is not for me, what was it?
Well, it was the level of poverty I saw for once, I mean, it felt like a bully, here I was in the most powerful military on the planet, rolling into one of the poorest countries on Earth.
You know, it was pretty clear we were acting on horrible intelligence, we were a little more than pawns in village disputes most of the time, and we were actually trying to draw the enemy back into the fight.
The Taliban largely surrendered after the initial assault in 2001, and unfortunately our policy, that wasn't good enough for our chain of command, they wanted to give the American public more blood, and so we probably drew them back into the fight, and so it was pretty clear to me that I wasn't doing anything for the world, I was only making it more dangerous.
Yeah, well, I think it's great that you're doing this kind of writing, and that, as it says here, you do all this great work going around and doing counter recruitment and trying to get through to people here.
I remember being young, and it can be very difficult for people to accept that, well, wait a minute, I mean, you're really telling me the consensus of my parents, my coaches, my teachers, my church elders, that they're wrong, and that actually this, you know, code pink view of the world is the one that's actually more accurate about what's going on in these wars, and that can be strange and unsettling to people to think that, oh yeah, no, really, it's really not true what they've been telling you, but so of course it makes it much more powerful when it's somebody who walks in and says, hey, I was a ranger, and I was over there, and so I'm not kidding here, you know, you need to listen up, I think it's very important the work that you're doing, so thank you for it, you know?
My pleasure.
If people are interested in having me come talk to their high school, they can email me at walkforpat at gmail dot com.
Walk for Pat, oh yeah, because, well, we're already into the break, so tell that story real quick, you walked across the country, what's that about?
Pat Tillman and I served in the same unit, and he was one of the- Oh, I didn't realize that, or if I knew that, it was a long time ago, I'm sorry.
We can talk about it next time.
Sure.
I walked across from Virginia Beach to San Diego to raise 3.6 million that Pat gave out, excuse me, years ago, so anyway, call me next time, we can talk more.
Okay, well, thanks, Rory, I really appreciate it.
All right, talk to you later, bye.
Okay, y'all, that's Rory Fanning, and the book is Worth Fighting For, an Army Ranger's Journey Out of the Military and Across America, came out last year, and here he is at tomdispatch.com, and the article is Unpacking the War on Terror, Letter to a Young Army Ranger from an Old and already I see in the chat room, a relative is getting this article, so this kind of thing is very important.
Anybody else out there have something to say along these lines?
Do that.
We'll be right back.
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