07/22/15 – Jacob Hornberger – The Scott Horton Show

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I got Jacob Hornberger on the line.
Welcome back to the show, everybody.
This is the Scott Horton Show.
I'm here on the Liberty Radio Network, noon to two eastern time here, and 11 to one Texas time.
I got Buffer Hornberger.
He is the founder and the president of the Future Freedom Foundation and a longtime advocate of the end of America's cold war against, economic war against Cuba.
So I'm sure you're celebrating.
Jacob, welcome back to the show.
How are you?
Hey, fine.
Thank you.
It's always nice to be back with you, Scott.
Good to have you here.
What do you think about the Cuba situation?
Well, I think it's fantastic that we're finally establishing what hopefully will be just normal relations with this country.
I mean, it's absolutely ludicrous what's been going on here with this, what, 50 year old embargo, economic embargo against the Cuban people and the assassination attempts and the terrorism within Cuba.
And I mean, it's just been an absolute horror story.
So the fact that relations are being established, I'm not totally satisfied.
I don't think the government has any role trying to tell the Cubans how to run their system or trying to represent American businesses or American people or Cuban people that lost properties there.
But in terms of establishing formal relations, lifting the embargo, I think that's fantastic.
Liberating the American people to travel and trade to Cuba and anywhere else around the world.
So, yeah, it's a good thing.
All right.
Now, so there's so much to talk about here with this story.
First of all, maybe especially for the young people.
I don't know why I should assume that older people know the history any better.
But can you refresh us about America's relationship with Cuba?
I mean, you can go back to the Spanish-American War if you want or to Batista and the revolution or however you want to to try and give give a little bit of context for what this Cold War has been up till now.
Yeah, well, I think it's important to go back to the Spanish-American War.
That's where the obsession with Cuba really began 1898, that the American government says we're going to help liberate you from Spanish imperial rule.
And the Cubans and the Filipinos were happy about that, of course.
And they double-crossed them.
The U.S. officials double-crossed them.
As soon as Spain surrendered, the U.S. said, now you're under our control.
And that was the turning point for America's overseas empire.
I mean, they'd already established, of course, a domestic empire with manifest destiny and so forth.
But this was the turning point on establishing an overseas empire.
And so that's where it was during that period of time when we get Guantanamo Bay, we installed a puppet regime and then forced them to sign over a really what amounts to a perpetual lease to have a foreign military base in a foreign country.
That's Guantanamo Bay that the U.S. pays a nominal amount for every year in which the Cubans went back as part of this opening up of relations.
And then the Cold War gets established after World War II, where the national security apparatus is in existence, the Pentagon, the CIA, later the NSA.
They need a big official enemy to get people scared and riled up so that that was communism.
And with that comes the anti-communist crusade and the Soviet Union, who had, of course, been America's World War II partner and ally.
And the crux of all this was right there in Cuba, because just like the Soviets didn't want Western governments over there in Eastern Europe near the Soviet Union, the American government didn't want a communist government 90 miles away from American shores.
And there was all this fear-mongering that, my gosh, America's going to fall, the dominoes are going to fall, that this is a dagger pointed at America, all of which was ridiculous because Castro, while he was a communist, never threatened the United States, never attacked the United States, certainly never assassinated anybody over here.
It was always the other way around.
US-sponsored forces invade the island, trying to affect regime change.
They don't succeed at the Bay of Pigs.
Then the CIA starts trying to assassinate Castro for just being a communist.
I mean, that was his crime, for believing in communism.
They felt they had a license to murder him.
They instigated terrorist attacks and acts of sabotage against businesses in Cuba.
And as a libertarian, of course, none of us would ever defend what was going on in Cuba.
I mean, it was horrible.
I mean, communism and nationalization of businesses and economic controls and suppression of dissent.
But we've always said that that has nothing to do with the US government.
It's not the US government's business to right the wrongs of the world.
So they imposed this horrible embargo that just has squeezed the lifeblood out of the Cuban people for decades.
I mean, again, using the citizenry as a tool to affect regime change, and it's never worked.
And so here we are today.
The Cold War is over in 1989, but the CIA and the Pentagon insisted on, and US officials, including those in Congress, insisted on continuing to wage the Cold War against Cuba.
They were opening relations with Vietnam, which they're still doing to this day, but not Cuba, because it was personal.
They just could not fathom the idea that Castro was still in power when relations were finally going to be re-established.
And so here we are today, 50 years after the embargo gets going, to punish Castro for not kowtowing to the United States.
And hopefully, we still don't know, the jury's still out, whether Congress is going to vote to lift the embargo.
As you know, there's a lot of conservatives that are opposing it.
But it looks like the die is cast, and that finally, this madness, this insanity, is finally going to come to an end.
Well, but then you're right.
Already in your first answer, you're looking ahead to the possibility that, well, not only are we going to end the Cold War against them, but now the empire is going to make their move to reintegrate Cuba.
Maybe put in another Batista, but even short of that, send in the corporations, try to buy up the whole place, maybe turn it back over to the mob and the casinos or whatever, whoever, whatever special interest, whatever plantation owners.
And so, you know, never mind communism, but the independence of Cuba is at risk here, whether without the communism or to whatever degrees that they still have, you know, control under the Castro regime.
Yeah, your point about Batista is very good.
I mean, he was a U.S.-sponsored dictator, and he was just as brutal as Castro and corrupt to the core.
And he had filled the island with the mafia and the mafia-run casinos, and he was making a lot of money himself.
And the U.S. loved him because he did whatever the U.S. wanted him to do.
So if Castro had just done what the U.S. ordered him to do, there would have been never any problems.
But Castro was a nationalist.
He said, enough's enough.
The Spanish-American war was a double cross, and we don't want U.S. government control over our island.
And what the CIA could never figure out was that the Cuban people, while they really are not enamored with socialism, love Castro for standing up to the United States and making Cuba an independent country.
Absolutely.
Same as in Vietnam.
They weren't communists, but they sure preferred Ho Chi Minh to a bunch of Yankees.
Why wouldn't they?
Of course they would.
All right, hang on one sec.
We'll be right back with Jacob Hornberger, y'all.
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All right, y'all, this is Scott Horton Show.
I'm him.
It's libertarian foreign policy, mostly.
Talking with Jacob Hornberger from the Future Freedom Foundation.
FFF.org slash subscribe for the future freedom.
All right, so we're talking about Cuba, America's relationship with Cuba here.
You know what, Jacob?
I always wanted this.
It's just an American embargo, right?
It's not like the U.N. Security Council, economic war against Iraq or Iran.
So how come in Cuba, I mean, obviously it's a communist country, so it's still poor.
But how come all the cars are from the 50s?
How come they don't have new Japanese cars?
At least some are German cars, whatever.
You know what I mean?
It seems like every time I see pictures of Cuba, it's always a 57 Chevy.
Well, but those are actually a very tiny subset of the cars in Cuba, those 50s cars.
I've been there, and some of the cab drivers have them and stuff.
But that's why I see pictures of them is because they're unique.
But in other words, they do have Japanese cars.
Yeah, I don't know what the extent of their car industry is.
My hunch is that it's not Japanese, but the old Russian cars and whatever is cheap.
But it is a tremendously impoverished society.
I mean, the poverty there, Cubans are very proud people.
When I was there, this is like maybe 10 years ago or so.
I mean, they were not begging, but they were doing everything but begging.
I mean, they were on the verge of really disaster.
And so yeah, some people have made the point, well, look, this is just an American embargo, they can go buy things from other countries and stuff, which technically is true.
But the problem is, is that the cost of doing things from overseas is tremendously higher.
And when you're deeply impoverished, that's very difficult.
Moreover, the US government puts the squeeze on other countries and private companies that violate America's wish on the embargo, so that if they go and start investing there and stuff, the US starts to put the squeeze on them and saying, well, you can't do business over here, that sort of thing.
So it's a pretty much all encompassing type thing, not total, because they are certainly free to do business with countries that don't care about alienating the United States.
But that's a rare country that can afford to do that.
Now, the other important thing to keep in mind here is this embargo was not just a control on the Cuban people.
That's the myth.
The real control was on the American people.
That is to say, it's illegal for Americans to travel and trade and spend money there.
And so if they caught you doing that, it's not the Cuban officials that would put you in jail, it's American officials would put you in jail and they would do this to people.
They'd prosecute them in federal court, prosecute Americans for spending their money in a country that they didn't have permission to spend their money in.
Now, so here you have this massive infringement on the economic liberty of the American people at the hands of their own government to retaliate against a government whose philosophy was economic control over the economic activities of their own citizens.
How's that for irony?
Yep.
Well, and now again, like you mentioned Vietnam, of course, before we have North Korea is basically in the same boat with Cuba.
But who would argue that Nixon and Kissinger should not have gone to China and that we should have a Cold War right now, as long as the Communist Party Politburo rules Beijing, that America should have a total economic war against them to try to starve the people of China into getting so fed up with the Politburo, making them the target of American sanctions that they'll rise up and overthrow it.
That was the policy, the same policy, the same excuse anyway that they've used in Cuba this whole time.
And that was, of course, the excuse in Iraq too.
If we just make the people absolutely helpless, then they'll rise up against their totalitarian dictatorship and overthrow it for us and do their regime change for us.
But it's, you know, a pretty haphazard sort of a policy.
It applies in some places and in others it doesn't.
Maybe, like you said, it's really personal here.
You still got Fidel.
Maybe if Ho Chi Minh was still alive and was still, you know, the dictator in North Korea, they wouldn't have been able to warm up relations or something like that.
Who knows?
But it's certainly not because we're taking a moral stand against communism.
No, it is the epitome of immorality to kill citizens and to impoverish citizens in a way to squeeze them, with a purpose of squeezing them into ousting their regime, which means a violent revolution where a lot of people are going to get killed, is the very epitome of immorality.
And I'm glad you brought up Vietnam because right now they're establishing friendly relations with Vietnam, U.S. officials are.
The Pentagon is even sending friendly warships as a sign of our friendship.
I mean, it shows you how pathetic the national security state is.
They're expressing friendship with warships and they're asking the Vietnamese communist regime.
It's a no different regime than during the Cold War and during the Vietnam War.
They're asking them to permit the Pentagon to establish friendly military bases there.
Now, that goes to show you, and this is what I've been arguing in many, many of my articles in the past several years, that the Cold War was never necessary.
That what they're doing with Vietnam today is exactly what they could have done with the Soviet Union, with China, with North Korea, with Cuba.
You can have friendly, formal relations, diplomatic relations, with communist regimes and liberate the American people to travel and trade.
That's the best way to deal with these regimes.
Don't adopt their totalitarian tactics and put your own people in jail for spending their money the way they want.
Liberate the American people to travel and trade to Cuba, North Vietnam, North Korea, China, the Soviet Union, and none of that Cold War was ever necessary.
What they're doing right now with Vietnam proves it.
Yeah.
Well, and who could argue that the people of China are worse off now under fascism than they were under communism when 40 or 50 million of them starved to death or were murdered by the dictatorship there.
And so, no, they're not free and they do still have a one-party dictatorship there.
There's a lot more private property ownership, a lot less people dying of starvation, you know, on the very lowest level, which is what Mao Zedong had reduced them to.
And so, you know, and a great part of that is the wealth that's been created that's, you know, helped to set the people of China relatively free is the wealth that's been created trading with the Americans and our willingness to open up with them.
Yeah.
And who's to say that they would have been better off if America, the national security establishment, had gone in there with military force to liberate them with bombs and missiles and assassinations and totally destroyed the country like they did with Iraq.
I mean, their alternative justification for Iraq was, oh, it's a brutal dictator and we're freeing the Iraqi people.
And so you killed, I don't know, upwards of 100,000, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, destroyed the entire country, and now they're in the middle of a civil war.
I mean, who's, why does the U.S. government claim the authority to do this kind of, quote, good thing for people when, look, can we honestly say the Chinese people would have been better off if the United States had waged a full-scale war and invasion of China with nuclear weapons and stuff in order to liberate them from communist tyranny?
I don't think they would agree with that.
Yeah.
Or even continue the Cold War against them this whole time.
Right.
Or Eastern Europe.
You know, we never invaded Eastern Europe to save them from Soviet rule.
And nobody's going to sit here and say Soviet rule was a good thing.
But by the same token, sometimes it's better to live under tyranny than it is to die under an onslaught of bombs and missiles and invasions and occupations and so forth.
I mean, that, whether people, how people resist a tyrannical regime should really be left up to them rather than to the U.S. government.
Yeah.
And of course, the U.S. government doesn't mean well anyway.
All that is is a thin excuse for them to expand their power and influence and create their empire.
And so, of course, they're suffering everywhere they can point to as an excuse at any time.
Yeah, like, put their little Batistas in power all over the world.
I mean, that's their quest.
It doesn't have anything to do with freeing the people or liberating their democracy.
I mean, you can see that in Egypt today where they're supporting this horrifically tyrannical regime, just like they were supportive of the Pinochet regime.
Well, what does that have to do with democracy and freedom?
It doesn't.
Now, back to Cuba for a sec here.
You said now we have diplomatic recognition.
And I guess some of the travel restrictions have been lifted by executive order, but Congress is digging in their heels and they won't lift the embargo.
And it's up to them to lift the embargo, you said.
Is that right?
That's right.
The Helms Burden Act and the formal embargo itself, that can only be done by Congress.
And that's the last big thing that needs to be taken care of?
Or there's more still as far as travel restrictions and that kind of thing?
No, that's the big thing.
I mean, right now, what Obama's doing is clearly he's making inroads with executive order by saying, you see, it was always OK, legal to go to Cuba with a license.
That's how I got there.
The Treasury issued me a license to do research.
That was what I applied for a license to do research.
Well, what Obama's done is just expand the ambit and the liberality behind the licensure, the licenses that are given out.
But what the embargo would do is, OK, you don't need a license.
You don't need anybody's permission to travel and spend money.
You want to go to Cuba, you just travel there.
So Obama's making inroads in it, where I think what he's trying to do is finally make it sort of a fait accompli, like, hey, look, genie's out of the bottle.
Lift the embargo and make it formal.
Right.
All right.
Well, I'm sorry we're out of time, but thanks very much for coming on the show and talking with us about this.
It is an important milestone and real progress here.
So hope it gets better soon.
Always a pleasure and an honor, Scott.
Thanks for having me on.
Good to have you.
Thanks again.
All right.
So that's Jacob Hornberg.
He's at FFF dot org.
Hey, I'll Scott Horton here.
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