For Pacifica Radio, January 26th, 2020.
I'm Scott Horton.
This is Anti-War Radio.
All right, y'all.
Welcome to the show.
It is Anti-War Radio.
I'm your host, Scott Horton.
I'm the editorial director of antiwar.com, and I'm the author of the book, Fool's Error, Time to End the War in Afghanistan.
You can find my full interview archive, more than 5,000 of them now, going back to 2003, at scotthorton.org.
Guys, on the line, I've got Daniel Lazar.
He's been writing for us at antiwar.com, and thank goodness for that.
I really like this stuff.
Democrats invoke Cold War narrative to push impeachment, and Adam Schiff's very scary, warmongering speech.
Welcome back to the show.
How are you doing, Dan?
I'm fine, Scott.
How are you?
I'm doing great.
Happy to have you back on the show here, man.
So what in the hell is going on with these Democrats?
I mean, they are impeaching Donald Trump, so I kind of like that, but seems like they're swinging and missing on the topic of his crimes here.
No, this whole thing, this whole episode just gets weirder and weirder.
I mean, first of all, the Democrats have been trying to throw out Trump since literally the moment he took office.
In fact, on January 20th, 2017, at 12.19pm, i.e.
19 minutes after the oath of office was administered, The Washington Post ran a story entitled, The Effort to Impeach Trump Has Begun.
And they have been trying this nonstop.
And the thing went on through Russiagate.
It hardly missed a beat, even when Mueller found there was no evidence of collusion.
And then, of course, when Eric Caramella, the CIA agent, whose name we aren't supposed to mention, sent his seven-page memo to the House Judiciary Committee, well, then the ancient machinery went into action and impeachment took off.
But impeachment is simply an occasion to resurrect and update this old and discredited Russiagate narrative.
So when we see Adam Schiff on the House floor talking for two and a half hours, what he is doing, he is engaging in a marathon, scaremongering rant in which the whole point is that Russia is going to invade, it's going to invade.
The only thing holding them off is little Ukraine.
But if it wasn't for the Ukraine, they'd be rampaging through the suburbs of Washington, D.C.
And therefore, Trump is clearly a Russian agent of some sort, because he tried to cut off military aid to brave little Ukraine, because essentially he absorbed Russian propaganda.
I mean, it is a deliriously paranoid fantasy that is now being pushed on the country by the Democrats.
And it is dangerous.
I mean, they are outharked.
Trump is the guy who has brought the Middle East to the verge of a 1914 style military blowout.
And yet the Democrats are actually outharking this guy.
It's amazing.
Well, and here's the thing of it too, man, is the level of belief in the narrative here.
You mentioned after the Mueller report came out and the whole thing was a big flop.
The media is so divided that the partisans of the Russiagate narrative, they never really had to deal with that, because there were enough of them twisting little scraps out of the thing to make it seem like they were right all along anyway.
And they just keep going anyway.
And so, you know, there are a few dissenting voices on the left, like yourself, saying that, hey, whatever, regardless of however much you don't like Trump, this is crazy.
But in terms of the left half of American political culture, they seem to, by and large, have gone for it hook, line, and sinker.
You know, I saw where Tulsi Gabbard, there was a tweet that someone sent me a link.
She did a pushup contest with some guy at some event.
And the first response of the tweet is, yeah, but she's a Russian agent.
And there's no sense of irony there whatsoever.
It's just, I heard that somewhere that, yeah, the Russians are running a Democrat in the primaries this year.
And I don't know why the FBI isn't keeping her off of the Armed Services Committee or anything.
But hey, there must be something to it, Dan, because I heard it on a tweet somewhere.
And they all retweet it.
They all believe in it.
And they will believe in it.
Just like, you know, your Uncle Bob, who still thinks Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction with.
They're never going to let this go.
Yes, you're absolutely correct.
And the way the logic works, the way the Adam Schiff logic works, is that if you deviate from orthodoxy, and if your arguments in any way parallel those of Russia, then that itself is strong evidence, if not outright proof, that you are somehow, you know, working at the behest of the Kremlin.
And whose arguments don't overlap at times with those of the Kremlin.
I mean, parallels like that can be drawn among anyone.
But essentially, it means that if you deviate from the Adam Schiff Democratic Party orthodoxy, then you are a Russian agent.
And this has been applied to Tulsi Gabbard.
It's been applied to Jill Stein.
It's been applied to Bernie Sanders.
And it will keep on going.
You know, it's interesting to me about the different incentives for this.
I mean, this is clearly just the military industrial complex national security state party line.
But what is it about a liberal Democrat that makes them so susceptible to this?
Now that the Russians aren't the Reds, it's because Vladimir Putin is essentially a white Christian Republican, and that's why they hate and fear him so much.
Is that it?
Well, the Democrats, first of all, are exploding at the moment.
I mean, you have the Hillary wing and the Sanders wing pulling apart.
And Sanders is pulling ahead in the polls, and the Hillary center is going nuts.
And Adam Schiff is a diehard neocon.
I mean, a man who is as every bit as bad as Hillary Clinton, if not even worse.
I mean, the guy who backed the authorization to use military force in 2001, the invasion of Afghanistan, the invasion of Iraq, the Obama's air war against Libya, he called for a no-fly zone in Syria, and he also backed the Saudi air war on Yemen.
So he is as bad as he comes, and he represents this incredibly bellicose, imperialistic, blindly pro-Israel Democratic center.
And this clique, this group, has been really more warlike than any other segment of the Washington political establishment.
I mean, even more than the GOP, and certainly more than the other, the isolationist, libertarian wing of the GOP.
Or on the other hand, the Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez, left wing of the Democrats.
But this is the wing which has now come back into power by virtue of impeachment, because Schiff is the guy who is leading the charge, and he's leading the charge in order to get this group's, this Democratic centrist message, of course, and make it into the reigning orthodoxy.
And if it's the reigning orthodoxy, then it's a very far-reaching orthodoxy, because it means you've got to be part of this anti-Russian military buildup, and that implies you've got to be pro-Israel and anti-Iran.
It's an attempt to reimpose this whole Cold War aggressive mindset, and give it a new burst of life.
And that's what he's doing, and that's what impeachment is doing.
Yeah.
It's really something to see about this, where they say it's about obstruction, and it's about this, you know, attempted, alleged attempted extortion of the Ukrainian president, but then they keep bringing up that, as Schiff put it, unbelievably kind of shocking, but not surprising sort of thing, that he actually said these words, that we're fighting them over there, so we don't have to fight them over here, which is the party line of what the W. Bush Republicans said about al-Qaeda.
We have to fight them over there, even if there were no terrorists in Iraq, and we just created 50,000 of them.
Well, at least we're fighting them over there, so we don't have to fight them over here.
That was the dumbest thing anybody ever said back then.
And now it's Tim Morrison, Pamela Carlin, both the State Department experts in their testimony, and now Adam Schiff have all three said that exact same, invoked that exact same reasoning.
I mean, could anybody really believe the Russian Navy's bringing troops to our East Coast, and what could they even possibly mean by that, man?
Well, how could they possibly believe that Saddam Hussein had WMDs and posed a direct threat?
Yeah, they were lying.
They were lying.
There was no evidence, and that lie led to an invasion which tore up the Middle East, whose effects are still being felt today.
So they are trying to lay the basis for some kind of new conflict, which we can't even be sure what it is, but we can be sure that it's coming down, because once this new mentality is in place, the basis for some kind of confrontation will be laid.
So when people wonder how wars get started, it's because these kinds of worldviews that Schiff is advancing are accepted.
They're not combated.
They're not challenged.
They're not refuted.
They're just simply accepted, you know, blandly, blindly, impassively, et cetera.
It's absolutely astonishing, and the fact that Democrats are the avenue for this.
Yeah, well, so really, you know, you got the word narrative right in the title of this thing.
The Democrats invoking this Cold War narrative, which raises the question of how can we defeat this?
I have a very bad, you know, kind of half measure sort of idea, which is to try to bring up W. Bush and really blame it on him.
If the whole narrative is everything going on here is Russian aggression, and we're all defending ourselves, and we have to disrupt that, then if there's somebody who can be blamed, because you're talking about the Democrats, there's no point in bringing up Bill Clinton to them or Barack Obama to them.
They're idols.
But so what about W. Bush?
He got us out of the anti-ballistic missile treaty, and he expanded NATO by like, what, eight or ten more countries, put our troops all the way into the Baltic states, and picked a fight, did a coup d'etat in Ukraine in 2004.
I mean, these things are all true.
They're just as true about Clinton and Obama, of course, but something, anything, what do we do, Dan, to get people to at least, you know, open their mind up to a little bit of a more accurate history of the post-Cold War world leading up to this current situation?
Because on the other side, they really make it sound like Putin's going to be in Portugal before the end of the week.
Right.
Exactly right.
Yes, I mean, it is just as ludicrous, but yes, this nonsense is going unchallenged.
In fact, everybody's applauding Schiff.
Everyone thinks that Schiff is doing a great job.
Schiff is flooded with campaign contributions.
He'll probably run for the Senate.
He's a rising star.
And the more his star rises, the more the Democratic Party in general, you know, sort of like, you know, adopts his outcome.
So it's astonishing.
And we have Sanders, and Sanders is trying to straddle both worlds.
I mean, Sanders, believe it or not, has also embraced this Russiagate narrative.
Sanders actually, in 2018, introduced a resolution into the Senate calling on senators to go on record as endorsing the intelligence community's findings about Russian interference.
Now, the resolution, thankfully, went nowhere because the Republicans wouldn't support it.
But here's a guy who calls himself a socialist, who essentially is forming an alliance, putting himself forward as the defender and even champion of the intelligence agencies.
It's just bonkers.
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Now we're in the middle of the Senate trial here, although I wouldn't know it.
I'll tell you when I read in your piece and your first sentence is that Schiff gave a two and a half hour long speech about Die Laf.
I'm so glad I'm stuck writing my stupid history book about 30 years ago because I am glad I missed that.
But it's all preordained that this is essentially going nowhere anyway.
Is it very important?
It does leave some kind of mark, right?
Oh, I think it's tremendously important.
Well, first of all, I think it's important for a thousand, a number of reasons, one of which is that I think it's going to wind up playing into Trump's hands.
So it'll strengthen Trump.
Now, I think Trump will benefit from this.
And also, as you may be aware, there are really interesting sort of talks going on.
It's not sure.
That's not certain how far they're advancing.
But there's talk about Democrats and Republicans doing a deal in which the Democrats get to subpoena John Bolton.
And in return, the Republicans get to subpoena the Bidens.
Now, that probably won't go anywhere.
But if it does go anywhere, I guarantee that Bolton will have nothing very important to say.
But I guarantee that putting the Bidens on the stand will be a first class, you know, first class entertainment.
And the Democrats, or the Republicans, I'm sorry, will have a ball, a ball cross examining them.
So if the Democrats do fall for that, then Trump will be, well, you know, will be overjoyed.
And this whole ridiculous impeachment fiasco will wind up working in his favor even more thoroughly than it already has.
As for longer range things, we'll see what happens with the nomination.
But it looks like Sanders is going to get it.
If Sanders gets it, and it's a Sanders versus Trump contest, that'll be the most fascinating U.S. presidential contest since at least 1912, if not 1860.
And Sanders will have to figure out what to do about this whole Russia gate question.
Because if he does embrace it, he'll get himself tangled up in a mess, which Trump will be able to exploit.
Yeah, well, I think they'll agree that nobody testifies instead of a compromise where Bolton and the Bidens have to come.
But I guess we'll see how that goes.
But you're right, that would be hilarious to see the Bidens explaining themselves, because there's a lot there.
Did you see, by the way, Schumer's resolution for witnesses he wanted to call and evidence he wanted to vacuum up?
No, go ahead.
I mean, Schumer essentially put forth this resolution, calling on the Trump White House to turn over everything, every document, every conversation, everything having to do with a whole long list of activities, Trump's relations with the Ukraine, this, that, this, that.
It was a vacuum cleaner approach in which the Democrats sought Senate authorization to vacuum up thousands and thousands of White House documents that essentially would have had the administration doing nothing else for the next four months, but emptying their file cabinets and turning them over to the Senate Democrats.
Needless to say, the Republicans crushed it immediately.
But if Schumer had gotten his way, what that would have meant is that the impeachment proceedings would have dragged on for months and months, well into the spring and summer, i.e. well into the height of the presidential campaign.
Eh, see, I don't know.
At the end of the day, I'm for this.
I want all presidents impeached, and I hope that every president has to face this kind of garbage.
But shouldn't the American people have an opportunity to actually vote?
Well, yeah, that too.
But the thing is, I mean, I don't want a strong any branch, but especially I don't want a strong executive branch.
I want them all hemmed in as many ways possible.
However, and it's so important to note, and I learned this when I was a kid about, wait, so Nixon launched a war against Cambodia that nobody gave him the say-so that he had the permission to, and that was all right.
But hush money for this burglary thing.
This is where we, you know, color outside the lines and get caught.
That's where the trouble is.
But a secret war, an illegal war, is never outside the lines.
Well, that's the same kind of thing here, as you mentioned, where this guy Schiff is almost uniquely bad as a Democrat.
I mean, Nancy Pelosi and the majority of the Democrats, to their credit, voted against Iraq War II, but he wasn't one of them.
And as you said here, and I saw, I think you had a link in your article, did the research to show that he's been supportive of the war in Yemen, which is about on the order of the war in Cambodia, you know, in terms of completely illegal, undeclared and actually genocidal in its strategy in targeting the civilian population there.
And this is the thing that Donald Trump should be impeached and removed and prosecuted for.
Above all the wars, you know, Congress sort of kind of authorized the war in Afghanistan, and there's some kind of memo to hide behind when it comes to what's going on in Western Iraq right now.
But not for Yemen, not one bit.
And they have no legal cover for what they're doing there.
And in fact, the House and the Senate invoked the War Powers Resolution to try to make him stop, and he's ignored it.
And yet the leader of his witch hunt trial is a guy who is probably as bad or worse on Yemen than he is and wouldn't dream, you know, the idea that they would go after him for crimes of state like that, for using the American people's military in such an infamous way would never cross his mind in a million years.
He's in trouble for holding up an arms deal, as Andrew Coburn put it.
That's what he's in trouble for.
So they just make a mockery of the whole thing.
It's like, yeah, I want to see this guy crucified, but what are the charges again?
What?
No, come on.
That's not right.
Well, yes.
I mean, first of all, Adam Schiff should be on trial for one thing.
He should be in the dock.
He should be made to answer for his crimes.
But also, you know, bear in mind what a disaster U.S.-Ukrainian policy has been.
I mean, it has been a disaster from day one.
The U.S. put, you know, injected $5 billion into Ukraine in order to get the Ukraine, you know, firmly in the pro-American orbit.
But all that money did was just contribute to and exacerbate this incredibly corrupt culture that we see taking shape in Iran and in Ukraine.
I'm sorry.
And also, which, by the way, you know, has driven Trump to distraction, which is why he's so skeptical of the Ukrainians in the first place.
I keep saying Iran.
I'm sorry.
And so the U.S., you know, and when the 2013 slash 14 Euromaidan uprising took place, the U.S. ignored and tried to distract attention from the leading role that was played by outright neo-Nazi elements in that coup d'état.
And in the war ever since, too.
Yeah.
And Trump, remember, Trump got in huge trouble with, you know, regard to the Charlottesville Nazi demonstration by saying there were good people on both sides.
But the media and the government and the liberal Obama administration essentially did the same thing by trying to cover up the neo-Nazi role in the Euromaidan uprising.
And in fact, in that Trump quote, he actually says before and after the good people on both sides thing.
He says, not the Nazis, not the Nazis.
Then he says, besides them, there were good people on both sides.
And then he says, not the Nazis, not the Nazis again.
But in here we're talking about actual Nazis and actually overthrowing a government and actually launching a war and killing a bunch of people.
So that's.
Yes.
And we're talking about the fact that the militias.
Not to defend Trump, but that's just the accurate quote.
Yes.
And the militias in the eastern Ukraine are dominated by neo-Nazi elements.
And the population, the Russian speaking population in the eastern Ukraine was understandably spooked and frightened by these people rushing to do battle against them.
And in the Crimea, for example, which historically was never part of the Ukraine, but people were appalled.
In fact, when when Crimeans went to Kiev to demonstrate against the Euromaidan uprising, their buses were intercepted the way back and they were beaten.
Their buses were tortured.
They were beaten by fascist elements.
This is this is not not a fantasy.
This is not this is not paranoia.
This is the hard cold truth.
But yet the press, the U.S. press out of loyalty to the Obama administration, tried to cover that up.
So that is the huge mess.
And by the way, you know, Obama supported these guys coup, but then he chickened out in arming them.
Trump's gone ahead and sent them all the Lockheed products that they were pushing for all this time under the cover of all this criticism that he's not, you know, in on this policy, that he's somehow, you know, Putin's puppet and all of this kind of stuff.
And I'm sorry, I cut this short, man.
I'm late for my next guy right now.
But great to talk to you.
And I'm so thrilled you're writing for us at Antiwar.com now, Dan.
It's Daniel Lazar, everybody.
Democrats invoke Cold War narrative to push impeachment and Adam Schiff's very scary warmongering speech.
Thanks again.
Thanks a lot, Scott.
All right, Sean, that has been Antiwar Radio for this morning.
I'm your host, Scott Horton, editorial director of Antiwar.com and author of the book Fool's Aaron, Time to End the War in Afghanistan.
Again, you can find my full interview archive, more than 5000 of them now going back to 2003 and sign up for the podcast feed at scotthorton.org.
And I'm here every Sunday morning on KPFK 90.7 FM in LA.
See you next week.
