04/21/15 – Daniel McAdams – The Scott Horton Show

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All right, guys.
Welcome back.
I'm Scott Horton.
It's my show, The Scott Horton Show.
I've got Dan McAdams on the line.
He runs the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity and is now a Texan.
Welcome back to the show, Dan.
How are you doing?
Hi, Scott.
Great to be on your show again.
Good, good.
Very happy to have you here.
Let's talk about what's going on in Ukraine.
It's so far from here, it seems like it might not matter, and yet I'm reading a headline here.
It says political murders in Kiev, U.S. troops to Ukraine.
I'm not sure which is which, but which is worse.
But go ahead and, I guess, start with the U.S. troops.
How many and for what?
Well, it looks like it will be up to 300, but since it's a battalion, it could be up to 800 troops.
This is the 173rd Airborne Brigade, and they have arrived in Ukraine to start training the Ukrainian military, and also they brought some goodies with them too that they're going to leave behind just to help them out.
But more seriously, they're training them in infantry tactics.
It's very unusual, I think, that a country that's involved in civil conflict would have an outside power coming in to train one side.
Isn't that what the U.S. was claiming that Russia was doing and blaming them for it and using it as an excuse to put sanctions on them?
Yeah, well, I mean, and help me understand this, because, okay, if this was happening, I don't know, last summer or something, I'd be completely against it, but I would understand that it made sense in context.
But right now there seems to be the giant obstacle of the fact that we already got a peace deal.
It's already signed, and major powers are behind it, and there has been some fighting, but there's been no official breach of the ceasefire and reinstitution of hostilities.
And so who the hell wants to escalate that when we got peace now, Dan?
Well, I don't know if you saw yesterday, but there were plenty of pictures going out on Twitter and elsewhere about Poroshenko having lunch with the U.S. troops, being photographed with two thumbs up next to the American troops.
So it's clear that he takes it as a signal that the U.S. is giving him a green light, and he said as recently, I think as a month ago, that they plan to take back eastern Ukraine.
So I think, at least in his mind, he's got the U.S. behind him.
It's like some scrawny kid on the block who all of a sudden has the big tough guy behind him and starts bullying people around.
Yeah, except in this case, the other guy that the big tough guy is supposedly bullying is just as tough when it comes down to it and has a lot more reason to fight.
I mean, and they've got to know that, right?
That Obama himself has even said, well, I'm not sure how much power and influence he even has on this situation, but he has said, hey, listen, they're not a member of NATO, in like a very kind of frank way that, no, we're not going to war for Ukraine, even if it comes down to it, we're not.
But think about false flags and think about accidents.
Think about things of this nature.
When you've got 300 or so American troops and you've got a bunch of volunteer battalions, let's put it that way, in Ukraine that have some very unique notions about who are the good guys in history, when you have these types of people that want to suck the U.S. in, don't they have all the incentive in the world to off a couple of American soldiers, make it look like the Russians or make it look like the East Ukrainians or something?
It's just, talk about just begging for a disaster.
Yeah, well, and even without that, I mean, they could just, the Kiev government, just like you said, thinking that they have, and maybe correctly thinking that they have America's support, can just attack the East and just, you know, accuse their whatever degree of separatism they actually have of being the pretext.
Or, you know, like we saw, I forget if it was in your article, I believe it was in an article that you wrote recently where, oh no, it was at Moon of Alabama blog, where they pointed out how the AP story reported that, yeah, there was some fighting where the guys in Donetsk had fired some shots at the Ukrainian forces.
But then the OSCE report, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe there, that the AP report was quoting, when you went and looked at the source, it said that, yeah, right sector attacked them first.
So, there's not even really necessarily a false flag, but just a provocation that gets ignored.
And then you call their retaliation the aggressions.
Absolutely.
Well, you know, AP is famous for this kind of thing.
I mean, they are absolute regime propagandists.
I just came back from doing a program with Dr. Paul and we were talking about Yemen, different topic, but the same thing.
The AP reported that the USS Theodore Roosevelt was steaming toward Yemen to head off all of these Iranian arms shipments that are going to Yemen.
But what arms shipments, you know?
So, the AP does this a lot.
And, of course, there was selective reporting when it comes to this.
But I think the US probably has some interest in maintaining a kind of strategic ambiguity as to its intentions in Ukraine.
But as history shows us, this can also be dangerous.
If you remember back in 1956, the US had the same kind of strategic ambiguity where it appeared that they gave a green light to the Hungarians trying to fight the Soviets.
When it came down to actually fighting, the Hungarians felt they had the US on their side, but they didn't and they had no assistance from the US.
The same thing has happened before in history.
So, it is a very dangerous thing.
And as you point out, Scott, this is not Yemen or Syria that we're kicking around next door.
It's a country with hundreds of strategic nuclear weapons.
Yeah, and tactical ones too.
Another great example of that would be the Great Bad Pigs in the desert of 1991 when George H.W. Bush urged the Kurds and the Shiites to rise up against Saddam and then even went so far, not just didn't help them, but turned on them and helped Saddam crush their revolution before it got out of hand.
Well, that's a great example.
Exactly.
So, yeah, they'll do this kind of thing.
They will.
Which in this case would be at least preferable to going ahead and backing them up, which could mean, as you say, a thermonuclear war.
But now, okay, so talk about the political murders in Kiev because I guess we've all seen the footage of the fistfights in the parliament.
It must be all sides killing each other's political leaders, huh?
Yeah, you do see fistfights in parliament.
It's quite entertaining.
But what is interesting, and this is actually Dr. Paul and I did a little episode of his Liberty Report on this, is that now I think it's up to about 12, and actually we cited Justin Raimondo's column from earlier this week on the same topic.
It's up to about 12 individuals in Ukraine who are affiliated with or members of the now opposition, but who had been affiliated with the Yanukovych government.
They have been either, they've committed suicide under very strange circumstances, they've been suicided, or in the case this past week where three people were just flat-out murdered, including the guy who was the head of the opposition newspaper, the editor-in-chief, although he had resigned a few weeks ago because he said he was having so much political pressure to change his editorial line, but just flat-out shot.
And to this day, there has not been a single word uttered by the U.S. government about this.
Not that they should get involved, but look at the double standards when it comes to what happened to Boris Nemtsov earlier this year.
He was a Russian minor opposition figure who was gunned down in the streets of Moscow.
Right, and now it really is, what, a dozen guys have been shot and they're all just calling it Arkansas kind of thing, or what?
Well, what Poroshenko, this great, I don't know what to call him, what he said is it's basically a Russian provocation.
The Russians have snuck in and they're killing all of their allies in Ukraine just to make Poroshenko look bad.
That's his explanation.
Yeah, I'm not buying that.
I mean, I guess anything's possible, but how many of these leaders of the so-called pro-Russian factions are that expendable to the Russians?
It seems like they would meet them for later, right?
Yeah, you're right.
I mean, it could be true.
But the fact is, I mean, I think what's, to me at least, what's most interesting in this story is just the blatant double standards and hypocrisy when it comes to U.S. foreign policy.
I'm less interested in their policy and more in our policy.
You know, you have one minor guy killed in Russia, it's terrible.
But that very day, you know, John Kerry said, you guys better get to the bottom of this.
The chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Ed Royce, essentially blamed Putin for it, you know, right then and there.
And here you have 12 people killed and the U.S. hasn't said a word.
Right.
All right.
Well, yeah, and it's a good comparison because it was just a couple of weeks ago.
Everyone can remember the context.
So, you know, black and white kind of thing.
All right.
We'll be right back after this with more Dan McAdams from the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.
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All right, you guys, welcome back.
I'm Scott Horton.
It's my show, The Scott Horton Show.
Talking with Dan McAdams from the Ron Paul Institute about the American-backed coup d'etat junta in Ukraine.
The violence befalling the opposition parties in their so-called parliament.
The ongoing threat of a renewal of the Civil War in the east of the country.
And by the way, speaking of that, going back to that, I guess.
Dan, just how peaceful has been the, I guess, more or less border between the autonomous east and the rest of Ukraine and Ukraine's forces?
I know there have been skirmishes back and forth, but more or less the Minsk II agreement has been holding, correct?
It has not fallen apart.
There was an uptick last week.
And as you pointed out earlier, the OSCE, which has hardly been pro-east, they even admitted that this uptick was because of some of the Kiev-associated forces.
So there had been, there's some tit-for-tat, there's some fighting around the airport in Donetsk and elsewhere.
But you're right, it's by and large, it's held for now.
And now we can assume, right, that the special forces are vetting the rebels, I mean the regime, to make sure everybody is a moderate who's joining up the training of the new National Guard units, right?
Oh, absolutely.
There's no question about it.
Just like in Syria.
They're all given their copies of the Constitution.
So, but now, okay, when I read a headline that says, yeah, we're going to train up their National Guard units, you know me, Dan, I assume the worst.
Oh my God.
Are they saying that they're going to train up the Azov Battalion or Azov Battalion, the Right Sector, the avowed Hitler-loving Nazis of Ukraine?
Or are they going to, do they have a PR officer there at all?
Anybody who's got an incentive to try to weed those guys out of their new project?
Or, no, really, it's as cut and dry as, yeah, no, America's going over there and beginning on Hitler's birthday, they're training up a battalion or two of Nazis.
You know, what's kind of sad is that, you know, I've, although I'm appalled by the, you know, the proclivities of some of these groups, I found that there's absolutely no traction here in the US or in the West at all to point out the obvious that, you know, we've all seen the Hitler tattoos and the SS tattoos and the flags and the salutes.
But isn't it weird, Scott, that when you say that here, they look at you as if you're a kook, you know, that you're pointing this out.
They'll even say, what are you talking about?
The real Nazis are in Russia.
What's your problem?
You know, nobody wants to admit what, you know, anyone who wants to look at it would see these are pretty unsavory types.
Yeah, absolutely.
And, you know, I know at Antiwar.com, the best one so far that we've run that kind of compiled all the great quotes was by Chris Ernesto, who went and found, and there's plenty of holes in the reporting, right?
It's just the narrative hasn't changed, but you can read the Sunday Telegraph or whatever the crap, European papers or even the New York Times at times will have an admission here or there.
But Chris Ernesto had a great piece where he just compiled all of the best quotes of Western acceptable, quote unquote, acceptable journalists and reports, quoting these guys, talking about how much they love Hitler and how they're fighting for the white race and, you know, all the worst kind of things that if they were said by people here in America would cause a panic, you know?
Yeah, and I don't think it's because the Obama administration or the Republicans or anyone here loves Hitler, you know, or loves the Nazis.
But, you know, the U.S. has a pattern of this.
Look at one of our greatest allies in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia, you know, they don't have a very good record when it comes to human rights either.
I think the U.S. finds these are very useful groups to be involved with overseas because they certainly can get things done.
You're not going to have the Azov Brigade sitting here reading about human rights and how to make people feel good, you know?
If you want to start blowing stuff up and hurting people, that's the kind of people you want on your side.
I guess so.
Well, so in a very limited sense, then it makes sense to go ahead and bring them into the military and try to train them and get them, you know, under control of officers instead of just being, you know, neo-Nazi militias out there.
Because really, you know, groups like that are mostly good for killing civilians and getting killed and not being very effective in real battle, right?
But that's what you need.
You have to demoralize the East.
You have to fight psychological warfare against the people in the East.
They have to believe that their cause is failed because when it comes to, you know, militarily, they have an advantage because they're fighting for their homeland and what they view as their freedom and liberty.
So you have to destroy their moral – their morale.
I think it's more important than on the battlefield.
So when you see these crazed lunatics coming in and carving people up for fun, that's going to really make people think that maybe this is not a battle worth fighting.
Yeah.
But now on the other hand, I mean the Minsk agreement for the ceasefire has – it promises what exactly?
They'll rewrite the constitution in a way concerning those eastern provinces and their degree of autonomy or federal control?
Well, it's kind of – I mean it kind of freezes the conflict in a way.
I mean it's not anything – I think to the extent that it stops the active fighting, it's something that's good because innocent people are getting killed.
But in terms of a long-term solution, it really isn't because to the people in the East, if you can imagine, we'd feel the same way.
They never want to be part of Minsk again.
These are the guys that took up arms against them.
They don't feel they're legitimate.
They've bombed their houses.
So they're never going to – pardon me – want to join again.
It's going to be sort of a frozen conflict on the lines of Serbia and Kosovo, and that's probably the best case scenario unless there's some way to have a real autonomy.
And certainly the Kiev side does not see the Minsk agreements as granting any kind of real autonomy or even independence.
So it's put on hold, I think, the conflict.
Hey, so the thing is about a conflict this big or with implications this big is it seems like there must be some kind of very deliberate plan behind it.
But the best I can see is really the most retail-level politics that the Republicans are saying, oh, yeah, be tough on Russia, that kind of thing.
This is a battle politically Obama doesn't want to fight.
I mean it is his government that got us into it.
I'm not trying to acquit the man of the thing.
But I'm just saying – I guess, Dan, using my best imagination, I don't see much sense behind picking this level of a fight with Russia when they see that this is the kind of consequence they get.
It seems like they – with Minsk too, they were being offered a very easy out, and now here they are continuing to escalate the thing by sending in trainers and more equipment and more money when their bluff had been called, right?
Yeah, but the thing in Washington among the foreign policy community is that they really are in an echo chamber whether you're at Brookings or Heritage, wherever you go for the so-called experts.
They're all involved in the revolving door between government and the so-called think tank private sector, and they all listen to each other.
If someone like you or I went over there, Scott, and sat down at one of these lunches and talked the way we're talking now, they'd look at us as if we were blue with feet growing out of our head or something.
It really is an echo chamber, so I think they do believe their own propaganda, and I think that is – we've seen throughout history that's a very, very dangerous thing to do.
Yep.
Well, yeah, 100 years ago we had World War I based on this kind of jackassery basically.
Good word.
Wide spread and all around.
Could happen again.
But yeah, thanks for doing your part, Dan.
I sure appreciate it.
Thanks for having me on.
Take care, Scott.
All right, y'all.
That's the great Danny McAdams.
He's at the Ron Paul Institute, ronpaulinstitute.org.
Hey, you own a business?
Maybe we should consider advertising on the show.
See if we can make a little bit of money.
My email address is scott at scotthorton.org.
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