All right, y'all, welcome to the Scott Horton Show.
I am the Director of the Libertarian Institute, Editorial Director of Antiwar.com, author of the book Fool's Errand, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, and I've recorded more than 5,000 interviews going back to 2003, all of which are available at scotthorton.org.
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All right, you guys, on the line, I've got Trita Parsi from the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.
Welcome back, Trita.
How you doing?
Doing well.
How are you?
I'm doing great.
I watched your first big event, most of it, last week, and I was going to have you on last Friday to do a little bit of an after-action sort of discussion there, because we had talked about it before and what it was going to be like and what y'all were going for and all this kind of thing, but unfortunately my dog was sick and I had to cancel on you.
Sorry about that.
No worries.
So happy to have you here today to talk about it, because it was definitely a thing, and I have to say I'm leaning more toward Hunter DeRentis than Gareth Porter on this.
He was a little harsh, but I did see, I guess, about two-thirds of the thing, and so I have my things that I think, too.
But I wanted to start, of course, with asking you about, you know, overall and in specific, what do you think about your first big event there that you guys did with ForeignPolicy.com?
I have to say I'm tremendously pleased, and I think the folks in the organization as well are, because our objective was to make sure that these ideas about restraint and non-interventionism that otherwise, unfortunately, has so often been on the fringes of the conversation is now finding itself at the center of the conversation.
And I don't know if you picked up on what John Tepperman of Foreign Policy said during the conversation he had with Will Ruger, in which he said, clearly, foreign policy is no longer a left-right issue.
It's an issue as to whether you want to go and, you know, be involved everywhere militarily, or if you want to have a more restrained foreign policy.
Because we had a representative from, you know, Congressman Andy Biggs, a very conservative member, and Congresswoman Jayapal on the stage together, both being part of the same War Caucus, War Powers Caucus, and speaking very much from the same talking points of what they would like to see foreign policy-wise.
And this is exactly one of the things we wanted to achieve with this, to show that this is where the new fault lines are, that restraint needs to be taken seriously, that it needs to be debated by many of the folks who just favor a continuation of what we've had, that they are no longer in the luxury of denying that debate.
They have to engage.
So in that sense, with that objective, we were quite content.
I'm sure there's plenty of things we can learn from this and do differently going forward.
But our expectations, and I hope the expectations of those who attended or some of those who wrote, have never been and should not be that one single conference will take care of everything.
That's obviously highly unrealistic and a very quick path to failure.
Sure.
Yeah.
I mean, what's important, right, is the narratives coming out of the thing.
And whether, you know, I mean, I think I agree with you overall that that's really the narrative, is that, well, even on Petraeus, and we can talk about that a little bit more, but just even him being there, there was kind of a question about whether it was going to look like you're kind of rehabilitating him or like you guys have to come to him for a little bit of legitimacy kind of thing.
But no, it really was more like you brought him in to be a piñata and to use as an example of the point of view that's really just no longer legitimate outside the very narrow confines in Washington, D.C., but that the country's no longer buying.
And I think overall, that narrative, you know, worked.
But, you know, there were critics who said, you know, the fact that Petraeus was afraid to debate Ro Khanna, and so they just had kind of a statement and then a competing statement and things like that, that that kind of compromised that message a little bit.
I don't know.
Well, on the first thing, you know, we didn't bring in Petraeus to be a piñata.
We brought him in because he made a piñata out of himself.
It wasn't your fault.
I didn't mean to say that.
We we had no intent to do so.
Our intent was to have someone who is not just someone who theoretically believes in the continuation of this foreign policy, but actually has been at the center of it, has implemented it, has been a driving force of it for someone like that to come there and defend it and debate it.
Now, would it have been better if they were on the stage at the same time?
I certainly believe so.
It ended up being the way it is right now.
And I think anyone who saw Ro Khanna's response would probably feel like that that was a very effective response.
And at the end of the day, rest assured, Petraeus didn't have to show up.
You know, no one forced him.
I think the reason why he felt compelled to show up when the invitation was sent was because he's recognizing that restraint is a major force now.
And even he started off saying that he too is in favor of restraint.
Of course, his definition of restraint was nowhere near our definition of restraint.
But I think people should see that as a welcome development in which the establishment and those who are favoring just continuing what we've been doing for the last 25 years are recognizing they're on shaky ground.
And that is one first necessary step towards change.
And I think it's very important for those who have been fighting for change for quite some time, long before Quincy came onto the scene, is to recognize that these things are going to take place in steps.
They're not going to be any magical moment in which everything is just fixed.
Yeah.
Well, so a couple of things about that.
As far as the piñata thing, really, he was only a piñata for Ro Khanna, who I was pleasantly surprised to see his response.
I thought that he did a good job.
And yeah, it's too bad he didn't get to say it to his face.
But still, you know, it really was a thing there.
But you know, really piñata wasn't the right word for it anyway.
I mean, the effect I'm really going for there is that it was kind of crickets at Petraeus's talk, right?
That people just didn't see it.
He kind of fell flat.
And the only writing that was done about it, like, for example, by Kelly Vallejos at TAC, was that he kind of made a fool out of himself up there.
His views are out of style, even in D.C., kind of, right?
Well, I certainly was a little bit surprised in the sense that when he accepted the invitation, I thought that he would come either with, you know, perhaps a slight opening towards restraint or that he actually would have new arguments as to why he believed that we should just stick with the current foreign policy.
That's my surprise.
I thought something new would come.
And I think most people walked away feeling that he actually didn't bring any new perspective or any new arguments.
And then that's, of course, up to him.
And if he believes that his arguments are solid the way they are, that's what he should do.
But I suspected that when he accepted the invitation that that was because he was going to bring something new there.
And that, I think, is probably something people were, whether they shared my expectation the way I articulated it or somewhat differently, I think there was a sense that they expected him to come in with something new.
Now, I was going to say, but now I forgot.
So let's talk about the greatness of Mark Perry.
Mark Perry, of course, he's a friend of the show and is a great reporter.
And he did a great job up there of making a few important points, including that at the Pentagon, where he spends his time, the officer corps doesn't believe in the war on terrorism anymore.
They want to come home from all these stupid things.
And that's how they view it, which is pretty big news, I think, huh?
I think so.
I think his most memorable line that got me really, really laughing and I tweeted it was when he referred to some folks as cruise missile liberals and was very frustrated with some of the folks that keep on pushing for military engagement.
And again, we wanted him to be on the stage together with someone like Ambassador Ferstein, who was very defensive of the policy, very defensive, even of Saudi Arabia's role in Yemen and have those things hashed out.
For us who are in Washington, I have to tell you, I'm pretty fatigued with so many conferences and events, oftentimes having a very, very narrow set of opinions.
And it's mostly about making sure that your own base gets some more input and some more talking points rather than really debating it.
Now, I'm not saying that this is the way Quincy always going to do it.
In fact, I'm sure we're going to do a lot of conferences and events that are going to be more in the vein of just bringing restrainers.
But we do also believe that we have sufficiently strong arguments, we have sufficiently strong backing from the public that we should be welcoming a debate.
And that's why I was very pleased to see Mark on that stage together with Ambassador Ferstein.
And Sarah Lee Whitson, I'm not familiar with her.
This is the first time I've seen her.
She was really great, too, with Mark.
She's from Human Rights Watch, is that right?
She was from Human Rights Watch.
She is currently Quincy's Managing Director for Policy and Research.
And one of the great things with her, except for the tremendous experience and everything she has, she has a very solid human rights background.
And she's coming to a position of restrainer non-interventionism from the perspective of human rights, which I think is quite valuable.
Now, HRW has a very mixed record, but she seemed like she probably doesn't have a very mixed one.
But do you know about that?
Because they sometimes say, oh, yeah, we got to do this to go save the people, you know.
Amnesty, too, has that problem sometimes.
And Human Rights Watch, at times, have institutionally taken those positions.
Ken Roth, who is the head of it, I think has done so perhaps a little bit more often.still solidly, you know, strong credentials on human rights, comes to a completely different perspective and conclusion, and believes that these interventions actually have been disastrous, not just from the perspective of Jewish national interest, but also from the perspective of human rights of the people that are being affected by them.
And I think that's a very welcome addition to the restrainer movement, that it's, you know, we're not going to concede to the primacists that, oh, they are the ones who actually care about those things, or they are the ones who actually have the answer for making sure that, you know, there's not more killings, etc. taking place.
On the contrary, their policies have been absolutely disastrous, not just from a human rights perspective, and sorry, from just from a national interest perspective of the US, but also from the perspective of human rights.
Yeah.
Well, now, so this kind of gets to the heart of a bit of the criticism and the problem here, too, though, right, is that there isn't, and I understand that, you know, this is part of the point of the way you guys are doing this in the first place, too, is it's, you're not calling for non-interventionism, it's realism and restraint, which is a more general term and is, I think, more interventionist than non-interventionist.
But it raises important questions, you know, in a way, like primacy can be a red herring, right?
You could listen to Joe Biden's advisor up there, and in fact, I think it might have been your guy questioning her, though, although I'm not sure about everybody's name and position or whatever in the video I watched, but about, well, yeah, like, you know, after the extremism of Trump, how can we work to restore the liberal, rules-based world order?
Well, that's just a euphemism for primacy, that's, although it's not just the neocons and the hawks who believe in that, it's just about everybody who believes in that, even supposed restrainers, apparently.
And that's the kind of gray area where, you know, things get kind of wishy-washy.
That comment, if I'm not mistaken, came from Julianne Smith, who is the foreign policy advisor to Biden.
Well, I think it was the question to her, too, was that I replay the tape.
Okay.
But what I think is, well, even if that's the case, what I thought was quite memorable, and it got some pickup, was the response from Matt Duss, who's Bernie's representative, who said that one of the most dangerous ideas in Washington right now is that Trump is some sort of a break from the status quo, whereas he's actually a product of the status quo.
That some of the continuation of the warfare, of course, we've seen that something very positive has happened on Afghanistan, and we're very hopeful that that will be sought through exactly the way it's supposed to be.
But nevertheless, we're continuing to sell arms to the Saudis, getting dragged into all kinds of different conflicts.
We're even more involved in Yemen now than under the Obama administration, who unfortunately green-lighted that war.
The idea that this is some sort of a massive break is wrong.
This is a continuation.
In my view, Trump's foreign policy is a bit of a caricature on our previous foreign policy.
It is not a break from it.
It's just exaggerated some of the worst aspects of it.
And at the same time, there is that little mix of using the talking points of ending endless war.
But when it comes to actually doing it, with the exception now and the last couple of weeks on Afghanistan, we haven't really seen much of that.
We've seen a lot of talking about it.
We haven't seen much of it.
We're very supportive of the idea of what he's doing in Afghanistan right now.
We want to see it through, but we're also a little bit worried because what he is calling a withdrawal is actually just reducing the troop levels to the point they were before he took office, because he actually surged troops in Afghanistan once he got into office.
Yeah.
Well, we've already done a couple of interviews about the Afghan deal today, but I definitely feel you on that, the support, but with trepidation about the form of the thing and the way it looks.
Support it, but don't believe in it.
That'd be foolish.
Yeah.
And so, got to say, this Julianne Smith that works for Biden, oh, is she horrible.
I thought maybe it was Liz Cheney dressed up as somebody else a little bit up there, but I guess this is the liberal center.
I think this is part of the criticism, was a new vision for America's role in the world, and between her, Julianne Smith, and Matt Duss, we didn't hear very much.
I think we might have heard better from Bernie than his front man here.
I don't know if I fully agree with you on that.
Although maybe that was just because I couldn't hear a word the man was saying, because you got to get a new audio guy, man.
His mic was terrible.
Right.
You know, this is taking place in the Congressional Visitor's Center and their big auditorium, so that's taxpayers' money not being spent on audio, but instead spending on endless war, and that's what you end up getting.
But I thought it was actually quite interesting, because again, what we wanted to highlight was the fault lines within the Democratic Party, in which there is a very significant difference between, and even though it was a very respectful conversation they had, there's nevertheless a significant difference between the way Bernie looks at foreign policy and the way that Biden looks at foreign policy.
And again, it's about emphasizing this is no longer left and right.
It's not Democrat-Republican.
Nothing massive has changed, and the first step of making sure that that moves forward or further is to make sure that the establishment itself recognizes it.
Yeah.
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Well now, I'm not very good at articulating this kind of stuff, man.
I'm more just a names and dates guy.
But you know, I think what Gareth Porter's worried about in his article, which I think it may as well could have been a little nicer, but is that, you know, what's happening here essentially is that we're defining anti-war down.
And that in order to get them to get close enough to them where we can make them listen to us in this case, that we're coming with a message that's not radical enough to really move the margin.
And that we'd be better off on the outside of power supporting radical politics and scaring the hell out of these guys in another way where this is, you know, more likely to kind of smuggle a little, in effect, not that you're trying to do this, but that in effect it'll sort of smuggle a little bit of anti-war veneer onto a bunch of people who really don't deserve it.
You know, on the left of Richard, if you call it that, anyone less interventionist than Richard Perle is some kind of restrainer now, as he said, Petraeus can claim to be a restrainer.
A realist says that, hey, we might have to invade Europe again someday, right?
Like a non-interventionist doesn't say that.
It's a different kind of position that we got to knock this stuff off and that, you know, maybe we're given more than we're taking here.
Hmm.
I'll be frank.
I just glanced at Garrett's piece and, you know, he's a friend, but I do not really see where he's coming from on this one, because there becomes a bit of a sense that there should only be an outside game.
And if you expect the outside game to look like the inside game, and if the inside game doesn't look like the outside game, then that's a bad thing.
And I think we may have misunderstood the difference between an inside and outside game.
Anyone who watched Ro Khanna responding to Petraeus and thinking, oh, my God, we're really selling out now, yeah, I would like to have a deeper conversation with that person if that's the impression that they're left with.
I really have a hard time seeing anyone being left with that impression if they're looking at it honestly.
But obviously, it is very different to sit on the outside and push.
And I think that's a very important element.
I don't think restraint and these sentiments would have become as big as they are had it not been for folks on the outside doing what they've been doing.
But ultimately, to be able to get real change, I believe you need to also have an inside game.
Now, for some folks who may have been on the outside for a very long time, that may not be their comfort level, that may not be what they like.
That's totally fine.
I think the problem is when they start making arguments based on one conference that, oh, this is actually undermining their outside game.
That I have a really hard time understanding.
Yeah.
Well, I missed the end, although I have a lot of confidence in Emma Ashford.
I'm sure she did a great job up against the horrible Rosa Brooks.
And I'm not sure about Stephen Wertheim there.
I didn't see that part and I'm not familiar with him.
We should take a look at it.
I think it was a very good conversation.
I will.
I'll see if I can find some time to watch the end of it.
And I like Peter Beinart.
You know, he is what he is, but I appreciate him.
I'm sure he made some decent points.
I don't know how the rest of that went.
But I guess, you know, you got to admit that it does feel a little bit right, like Perry and Whitson and Khanna were really the highlights.
They really did a great job up there standing up for peace and against, you know, the kind of common consensus.
But weren't they the only three that really kind of knocked it out of the park there?
I mean, that seemed to be the impression that people got.
No, that's not my impression.
I think Emma did a fantastic job.
I think Stephen Wertheim did a fantastic job.
I thought the exchange with Tom Wright was actually a very, very good one.
And ultimately, we do want to have a constructive debate.
Just sitting and shouting at people and you're disagreeing with them by insulting me is ultimately not what we're about.
We don't think that's going to be effective.
I think actually it was very good.
And I guess people are just people feel like maybe the bad guys got the better of the good guys at the end of the thing, maybe, you know?
I'm not left with that impression at all.
And I think I've only seen one or some piece saying that.
By the way, I'm just being hard on you because the reality is, I agree with you.
I think that ultimately, as you said at the beginning, that overall, you succeeded in forcing them to confront, really changing the narrative to one where they have to deal with us, that this is part of the thing that wasn't before and now that it is.
I think you achieved that, honestly.
You know, I just...
I think so, too.
And I think if, look, people may be used to having, you know, knockouts all the time because the other side doesn't show up.
It's really easy to win the debate when there's no one else on the other side, right?
When you actually have the other side, you have to do an exchange.
I personally think it was a very good conversation.
And I think the arguments of restraint and reading the reaction from the audience as well were the ones that were winning out.
Some may have had a little bit more spark, like Ro Khanna's conversation.
But overall, I think that was the case.
And I'm sure in the future, if we do other events of this kind, obviously, we'll be doing tons of events.
But if we do another one of this kind and we were to invite some of the folks who may have been a little bit critical, I'm sure they would be delighted to participate.
And we would be delighted to have them if we thought that that was the right fit for that time.
Yeah.
Well, you know, I understand the dilemma, too, because you may have heard that I'm scheduled to debate Bill Kristol in New York in May.
And part of what I have to figure out is just...
Scott, if you're just agreeing to debate him, clearly you're selling out.
Well, that's the thing is I have to decide just how badly to barbecue him.
We all know what he deserves, but also there's the whole kind of circumstance of wearing suits and ties and debating on a stage in the first place.
I can only go so far, right?
I don't know.
I'm not sure how to handle it, honestly.
So I get the dilemma.
And just give you my perspective.
Rest assured, Bill Kristol has a platform, whether you debate him or not.
You're not legitimizing him.
You're not giving him a platform.
He has a platform.
The question is, will your arguments be heard if you're not there?
Yeah.
And my suspicion is not.
I don't know if you saw my clip with Bill Kristol when we were on MSNBC together, and we duked it out.
I don't know if you remember that clip from two years or so ago.
It does ring a bell vaguely, but I'll have to go back and look.
Well, take a look at it.
I had the same questions going into it.
I don't regret it at all.
I think it was absolutely the right thing to do.
I don't think we are signaling confidence in our own position if we're not willing to take the debate.
And at the end of the day, they're the ones who have the platforms that are a hundred times bigger than ours.
We're not losing anything by going into those platforms.
I'm not really worried about, like they say, if you meet with Kim Jong-un, you bestow legitimacy on him.
I'm not so worried about doing that for Bill Kristol.
Like you said, he's got access to TV cameras every week, so that certainly is not the problem.
My worry is really how badly to destroy him.
I don't want to pull punches and let people down if everyone's there to see me hoist him on a spit.
But on the other hand, I kind of can't, right?
Like I can only go so far.
I mean, I think what you just said, just state your case, let the facts fall where they may and that kind of thing is the best I can do.
I mean, the audience have to ask themselves, ultimately, what do we want?
Because if some people only have some sort of a desire for revenge, that I don't think is something that should be the objective.
That is how I feel about it, right?
Yeah.
Here's the thing.
At least I'm speaking from Quincy and an organization in Washington, D.C.
We want to move the conversation and move the policy so that we don't have these endless wars.
Yeah.
That's the objective.
It's not about fixing the past.
It's about fixing the future.
And if people are just focused on the past, then yes, perhaps Quincy is not the right thing for them.
But we believe that if we can fix the future, that in and of itself is going to bring about accountability for the past as well.
What's the purpose of just going there and doing it that way, as you suggested, if it doesn't actually lead to something that can enable us to have a better foreign policy in the future?
Yeah.
Well, and so speaking of which, next time, if you need anybody to really explain David Petraeus' career to a crowd, you got my number, Gareth Porter's number.
We'd both be happy to explain.
In fact, name your topic and I'll show up and take the case for you, bud.
I'll take you up on that.
Thank you so much.
All right.
Thank you, Trita.
I really appreciate it.
Talk to you soon.
You too.
Bye.
All right, you guys.
That's Trita Parsi.
And they're at the Quincy Institute there.
And that's, of course, the heroic Eli Clifton and Andrew Bacevich as well.
And that's really the main thing about that conference, is that Bacevich was unable to attend.
And if he had been able to really get up there and give a kind of keynote and lay down the law about what Quincy is and what they don't believe in, that might've really been something.
But we'll have to wait.
But I stand by my original article, which is two and three quarters cheers for the Quincy Institute there.
The Scott Horton Show, Anti-War Radio, can be heard on KPFK 90.7 FM in L.A., APSradio.com, AntiWar.com, ScottHorton.org, and LibertarianInstitute.org.
