Sorry, I'm late.
I had to stop by the Wax Museum again and give the finger to FDR.
We know Al-Qaeda, Zawahiri, is supporting the opposition in Syria.
Are we supporting Al-Qaeda in Syria?
It's a proud day for America.
And by God, we've kicked Vietnam syndrome once and for all.
Thank you very, very much.
I say it, I say it again.
You've been hacked.
You've been took.
You've been hoodwinked.
These witnesses are trying to simply deny things that just about everybody else accepts as fact.
He came, he saw us, he died.
We ain't killing their army, but we killing them.
We be on CNN like, say our name, bitch, say it, say it three times.
The meeting of the largest armies in the history of the world.
Then there's going to be an invasion.
All right, you guys on the line.
I've got the great Pat Buchanan.
He is the author of Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War.
That's a quote of Churchill there, Unnecessary War.
Also, Republic, not Empire, and a lot of other great books.
And of course, 10 million articles, about 90% of which we republish at antiwar.com since Pat is so good on foreign policy.
Welcome back to the show, Pat.
How are you doing?
Good to talk to you, Scott.
I'm doing just fine.
Yeah, very happy to have you back on the show here.
Listen, so I have so much to talk to you about.
I'm not sure where to begin, but yeah, I am.
I was wondering if you could talk to the young people for a minute here about the end of the Cold War, fall of the Soviet Empire, but particularly the paleoconservative split away from the rest of the conservative movement, which was, I guess, led by the neoconservative movement.
And the rise of this antiwar right-wing, or the break-off of Jude Winonski and Scott McConnell and some of your friends from back then, and how all that developed through the 90s, and then your perspective then at the dawn of the terror war in the 21st century here.
Well, this was quite a turning point in American political history.
And I'd been a supporter of the Cold War and every American intervention and war in it, except for one, and that was when I urged Reagan not to send the troops into Lebanon, because I didn't see that as in our vital interest or part of this global confrontation with the Soviet Empire.
But when the Soviet Empire collapsed and the Warsaw Pact dissolved in Central and Eastern Europe and the Baltics, and the Red Army was pulled out of Germany and went home, and then the Russian Federation broke up into 15 countries, I said, look, the war is over, the war that defined my entire life from the time I went into journalism and politics in the early 60s and JFK's time.
I said, that's over.
And as Russians, if they've really gone home, we ought to go home and let the Europeans undertake their own defense and let them have NATO.
And the American troops can come out, we can make some kind of arrangements with them, but basically the defense of Europe will be up to Europe.
And Russia that is free and independent and has broken away from the Soviet Empire and given up communism is not an enemy of the United States.
We ought to try to make it a friend.
And so during the 90s and up until the first decade, into the first decade of the new century, one of the main things I did, and George Kennan was right there as well, was urge the United States not to bring Eastern Europe or any of those Warsaw Pact countries, and certainly not the Baltic states, much as we appreciated them being free, to not bring them into NATO, to not put our own military alliance on Russia's front porch, because the reaction is predictable.
They're going to see they've been treated as an individual recidivist, as someone who is going to be a real problem, until you took advantage of our victory in the Cold War or the triumph of the West and anti-communism and the capitalist West.
And then you're imposing our system or imposing our NATO alliance right there in Eastern Europe is going to bring real trouble.
And it has proceeded to do so, and I think we produced Putin.
And more than that, I think Putin's hostility to the West is not altogether unjustified, given what we did when they basically laid down their weaponry and went home.
So that was the break, and I can recall some meetings and gatherings of folks where, when I started talking about, let's go home, let's give NATO to the Europeans and bring the troops home, they were stunned, and many of them were neocons, and they said, we've got to keep troops in there, and we need them for the Middle East, we need them for this, we need them for that.
And so under Clinton and Bush 1 and even Obama, the whole interventionist foreign policy that has led to the tremendous disasters we've got now, that was adopted and embraced.
I mean, take a look at the wars in Iraq and Syria and Libya and Afghanistan and Yemen.
What are they, $6 or $7 trillion?
7,000 dead, scores of thousands of wounded and injured, total distraction from what we ought to be doing.
I mean, where are the fruits of this intervention, of this intervention uber alis, if you will?
They're really nonexistent.
But this is where, that was the break point.
I was very much a Cold Warrior.
The Cold War was what took me into journalism and then into politics and then into the White House and then to writing a column.
But I was a Cold Warrior because I felt it was my country and civilization that were under pressure and under threat and under peril.
As I say, when the communist empire collapsed and communism died and the Soviet empire disintegrated and the Soviet Union broke apart into 15 independent countries, that war was over.
And we should have come home.
And now we find ourselves drifting toward another conflict in the Middle East with Iran, which I trust the president can keep us out of.
Well, I'm glad to hear you say you can trust that.
But now, so I want to go back to that time for a second that by the time Bush Sr. wanted to go for Iraq War I, you were clearly against that.
In fact, there's a great video of you and my partner Sheldon Richman and a few others.
I'm trying to remember Joe Sobrin and a couple others, the Committee Against the Middle East Holocaust.
People can see that on YouTube.
San Francisco.
Well, you guys did great work in that one YouTube I saw.
We did great work.
It was great working with those guys.
And my friend Phil died soon after and Sam Francis died about 10 years later.
But they're a good group.
They're a very brave, gutsy group.
Yeah, and it's important for people to understand that, especially, you know, when you're young and you're raised in public school and everything is told as though it was all written in stone beforehand.
Or at least everything that did happen was inevitable.
It had to have happened or it wouldn't have happened kind of thing.
And here is told you so from the very beginning.
USSR is gone.
Why would we go on a new crusade in the Middle East?
That's nothing but trouble, said a bunch of people who knew better back before it started.
Sure, sure.
The Middle East, you know, and after the war, of course, it was George H.W. Bush.
He was indispensable.
He said this will not stand.
I knew we were going to go to war because I knew the former president very well.
And when he said this will not stand, I think in August of 1990, I knew he was going to war.
But I will say I think it was 52 to 48 in the Senate to authorize the war.
You can double check that.
But I think Sam Nunn, even who was a strong hawk Democrat, voted against authorization for the war.
The American people didn't want the war, really.
I mean, I know when the war started and all that new weaponry was seen on television, I think the American people, Bush rose to 90 percent.
People were talking about a great president for the United States, one of the greatest in our history.
And he was at 90 percent.
And I think around June of 1991, when I went down to that, it was quite something.
I went down to the parade on Constitution Avenue where all the military, 8,000 troops, they had stealth aircraft going overhead, they had the new Abrams tanks were coming up Constitution Avenue and all there.
What was then the Bradley fighting vehicles and things.
It was quite a parade, and I said to myself, you know, this is what it must have been like when the legions came home from Gaul and marched through the streets of Rome.
So that we are an empire, and Bush was at 90 percent.
Six months later, or five months later, I went into the primaries against him.
Yeah, and made a pretty good showing, too.
I think after 10 weeks, coming off a talk show at about 5 percent in the polls and getting 37 percent in New Hampshire.
Yeah, about 37 percent in Georgia.
You know what, I'm sorry to get diverted off into this, but I'm curious now.
At what point did Perot announce he was running as independent there?
Because that probably threw a big monkey wrench in your works, right?
Well, here's the, yeah.
New Hampshire was, I believe, was it February?
Anyhow, it was on a Tuesday, and it was on Thursday night on Larry King, I believe.
Two days after that primary that Perot said that he would be available to run for president if they put him on a national ticket.
And so there was no doubt that the country was really, there was a huge slice of the country that was tremendously underrepresented.
A huge slice of it in the Republican Party.
And eventually, I think a number of the Buchanan voters voted for Perot in the general election.
But the point is, the country, I mean, it was amazing that Bill Clinton, you know, that he won against someone that George Bush, with all the problems he had on the draft and things and personal behavior, that he defeated the president of the United States, who had been at 90%.
Yeah, as Bush Jr. learned the lesson that war ended too soon.
He should have gone all the way to Baghdad, and then that way we would have still been in the fight.
And you can't change horses in midstream, and then things would have been better.
Well, you know, I think I was really, we were really strong against going to war against Iraq with the WMD.
Matter of fact, that's the beginning of the American Conservative Magazine was set up.
Right.
As one of the major reasons was to stop the drive to war in Iraq.
And we failed to stop it, and look what's happened as a consequence.
Yeah.
Well, and so let me mention that article, whose war is a classic, and there's quite a few of them.
But whose war that you wrote in, I guess, early 2003, right before the war is extremely important there at the American Conservative Magazine.
And so now you mentioned Iran now and the danger of war.
But, you know, I've had a lot of people ask me, what's the problem?
What's happened recently that means that we have to go to war with them now?
I heard there was some kind of provocation with a ship or something.
You know, but it seems surprising, I think, to the average person to think that, well, geez, back in the Bush years, we talked about bombing Iran.
It never happened.
Why now?
What is the deal?
What's the problem?
Pat, can you explain it to us?
Well, I think part of it is the what was the initiative of the United States.
And I will say this, President Trump, whom I supported and still support.
He was determined and he was convinced that by folks near him and by his own looking at it, that the Iran nuclear deal was a disaster.
And he looked at it and said they got back somewhere between 50 and 150 billion.
But that was money that, as I recall, that the Shah had left behind.
And we kept and it built up a lot of interest on it.
And so he gave them back.
We gave him back the money and we got a deal.
And it was let me talk a little bit about the deal.
Wait, just stick with that point for a minute.
Isn't it funny?
You have to give even John Kerry credit for that, that that was our side of the deal was giving them their own money back that we already owed him.
Exactly.
We owed him the money.
And so we said, OK, we'll give you back your money.
But the interesting thing is the standpoint of the Iranians.
I'm convinced that the Iranians, they may have considered a nuclear weapon up until 2003, but it's clear from all the investigations we've done that there was no effort to really build a bomb through after 2003.
In American intelligence, I remember it was in December, I think, of 2007, when Bush was being pushed to go to war against Iran because of the nuclear weapons.
The American intelligence community, all 16 or 17 agencies said, quote, with high confidence, Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program.
It restated that again in 2011.
Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program.
My figuring was quite simple.
The Iranians said, look, we can probably build a bomb with a crash program and explode it.
And the Israelis have somewhere between 80 and 300 bombs.
And the Americans, as Ahmadinejad himself said, we build a bomb and the Americans got 5,000.
How does that help us?
So I think they decided that a nuclear weapon quite simply would not be in their interest because the Americans and Israelis already had it.
The Saudis would immediately get one.
The Turks would probably get one.
And the Egyptians would get one.
And the Israeli bomb would be put on a hair trigger.
And the Middle East would be far more dangerous to them.
And so they decided, look, we're better off not having a nuclear weapon because what can it do for us?
It's a suicidal weapon for us.
And so they decided not to build the bomb.
And all they had to do to get back their $150 billion was convince the Americans that they were not doing what they were not doing.
And so they brought in all these inspectors and cameras and things.
And it was a slam dunk for the Iranians.
You got a pretty good deal.
If I tell you I'm not going to buy an AK-47 to defend my house and I don't have one and you can come in and check it out and you're going to give me something to prove that, I mean, that's simple.
So that's how the Iranians, I think they very wisely.
And I don't think they want a weapon now.
And so I'm not sure why they would want one.
And I think that's how the whole deal came about.
But I don't know why we scrapped it.
I mean, OK, you could have improved upon it, make it last longer.
Sure.
Maybe more inspections, although I don't know what we're not seeing.
And also maybe bring the missiles in under the nuclear deal.
That's fine.
But I think it was a mistake to trash the deal and impose sanctions and then tell the Iranians, you know, you've got to come to the table.
And they've decided to resist.
Yeah, it seems like the maximum pressure campaign has made it where neither the Ayatollah or Trump have a way out of this with saving much face.
I think neither of us wants a war.
The Ayatollah doesn't want it.
They would simply, whatever they could do to us, they would sustain terrible losses if you had a major war.
Terrible setbacks.
And the United States, it could be a hellish mess in the Persian Gulf and affect the world economy and the American economy and our alliances.
And what is the purpose at the end of it?
It's to get them to give up the idea of having a nuclear weapon.
And, of course, I guess the new Pompeo demand is you stop the mischief in the Middle East.
In my judgment, Iran has never been really an aggressive power in that it has not started any of the wars in the Middle East.
They didn't invade Afghanistan.
They didn't invade Iraq.
They didn't knock over Qaddafi.
You know, they didn't go into Yemen.
And what happened was it was the Americans and the Arab Spring and all the rest of it that brought the changes.
And they've reacted and basically defended their friends and allies, which are primarily Shia.
Yeah, and all in circumstances that the Americans created for them, especially, as you say there.
And so, well, I don't know.
I guess as long as John Bolton there, there's a problem.
But what if he wasn't there?
You think anybody else in that position could find an easy way out of this?
Because, again, American demands are so maximalist that there should be plenty of room to climb down there, right?
I think so.
And I think the key point here is that Trump doesn't want a war, that he's never wanted a war, that he wants to get out of the Middle East, and that he's frustrated that he hasn't been able to move more expeditiously to take us out.
And I think he's totally resistant and he understands that it could be politically devastating.
If he got into another long war with Iran that did damage to both of us and settled nothing and left us sitting there in the Middle East where he had promised to make an effort to withdraw.
So I think that's the key, is Trump.
It's not Bolton.
I think if we're up to Bolton, as Trump—I mean, if we're up to Bolton and the Secretary of State, Mr. Pompeo, I think we'd already be a shooting war.
But I think the narrow issue is how they get these ships back.
And I think the way to do it is, frankly, they're going to have to let—the British are going to have to let that Iranian vessel go that they've got at Gibraltar.
And I think in return for the Iranians giving up the British vessel or whoever owns it, I guess there's a lot of question about who really owns it, who's leasing it, and who crews it.
Yeah.
Well, and that's low-level stuff that ought to be worked out.
It just depends if there's a will at the top to allow it to happen.
I think there is a will.
There certainly is one on the part of the Iranians.
I mean, it's quite obvious that they're willing to talk.
I mean, there is a division there, I think, between the Ayatollah and between the Rouhani and the foreign minister and the Ayatollah.
I think there's a divergence there.
But it's clear, it seems to me, that the Iranians are—what they're doing is very—I mean, it's in ways, you know, they're putting those limpid minds on those tankers.
I think they probably did that in capturing that ship and shooting down the American drone.
You know, it was $130 million.
But it still seems to be very—I mean, very programmed, if you will, or we go up thus far and no further, or response, retaliation only in kind, that suggests they do not want the war any more than we do.
But that also suggests that they're not going to allow us to basically starve their country to death or choke it to death with these sanctions.
So I think you've got to—and I think, again, I think Trump's willing to talk.
Well, you know, I guess the news was that he confirmed, after denying it at first, that he has appointed Rand Paul to some sort of position there to talk to Zarif.
So that's, I guess, the best shot we've got for right now.
We want Rand on the golf course and not the fellow from South Carolina.
Yeah.
Well, you know, I heard that they were—from a friend that Rand and Trump were making fun of Lindsey Graham the whole time out there golfing because of his hawkish attitude.
And I hope that Rand is really that good of an influence on Trump.
I don't know.
Can I ask you one more thing real quick?
Sure.
It's kind of a big one, though.
But I know you know a lot about this and care a lot about it, too.
I wonder what you think the Palestinians' best move is now that the two-state solution is, I think, essentially officially canceled.
And they face, I guess, recognition globally that—whether de facto or de jure—that the West Bank, if not Gaza, has already really been annexed.
I don't know what they mean.
You know, the Palestinians are caught in a very rough situation.
I think there have been offers in the past that I thought were pretty good.
I think Ehud Barak's offer around the year 2000, if they could have put that really deal together where the Palestinians would have gotten almost all of the West Bank, was not a bad deal.
But I think for the time being, there's really nothing that can be done.
I mean, the president is solidly with Bibi Netanyahu, and he's endorsed the annexation of the Golan Heights and the annexation of Jerusalem, East Jerusalem, and all of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
And they've cut off the Palestinians, I guess, from access to the American consul in Jerusalem or retired the consul.
And they've cut off aid.
And I think that the situation is such, I don't know that the Israelis can annex and hold the West Bank and annex the whole place and deny the Palestinians a right of self-determination without themselves having a terrible problem of creating a de facto apartheid state where the Palestinians are second- or third-class citizens.
And on the West Bank, they're really constricted.
So I don't know how that is a long-term proposition, and I think many Israelis believe that it is not.
But again, I think this is going to take a good while for this to sort itself out.
And right now, for the Palestinians, I'm not sure exactly what they would do.
My guess is what they'll try to do is go through the UN and get world opinion, at least, and as much of European and Western opinion as they can, united against what the United States is doing.
Yeah, and they really don't have any other cards to play than just sympathy.
I don't think they do.
Yeah.
All right, well, listen, it's been great to talk to you again.
Okay, you take it easy.
Really appreciate it.
All right, you guys, that's Pat Buchanan.
He wrote Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War, How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World, and Republic, Not Empire, and a bunch of other books like that.
And we run them all the time at antiwar.com.
You can find them in the right-hand margin there.
Here's a couple.
Russiagate is no Watergate, a great one.
Trump, war president or anti-interventionist, is a new U.S. Mideast war inevitable, and more like that all at antiwar.com.
All right, y'all, thanks.
Find me at libertarianinstitute.org, at scotthorton.org, antiwar.com, and reddit.com slash scotthortonshow.
Oh, yeah, and read my book, Fool's Errand, Timed and the War in Afghanistan, at foolserrand.us.
