Welcome back to the show.
This is Anti-War Radio.
It's my pleasure to welcome back to the show Representative Walter Jones.
He represents North Carolina's 3rd District in the U.S. House of Representatives.
How's it going?
Scott, thank you very much.
It's always a pleasure to be on your show, and let me remind your listeners that I have in my district Camp Lejeune Marine Base, Cherry Point Marine Air Station, and I have a great working relationship with the Marines down in my district, and I listen to them on a regular basis.
Yeah, well, it does seem like you must have a pretty good relationship with the people in your community because it's been quite a few years now since you changed your mind about America's foreign policy, and I know that you've had some primary challenges and have taken a lot of heat, and yet you've been reelected.
Can you tell us about your relationship, actually meeting with these people and explaining to them your now at least much less interventionist position, and do they accept that?
Or do they disagree with you on that, but they still like you anyway, or how does that work?
Scott, it's changing, and really I admitted I made a mistake.
Should have never voted to give President Bush the authority to go into Iraq.
It was an unnecessary war, and I've seen the devastation to our men and women in uniform from lost legs to being paralyzed.
And back home, let me tell you something to your listeners.
Eleven months ago, I cannot give the name of this general because I gave him my word I would not use it in the press or public, but I called a retired military general that I've known for a long time.
I've had great respect for him.
The nation would know him if I could use his name, but I can't.
And I said, will you advise me on Afghanistan?
I made a horrible mistake in voting against my conscience, talking about my own conscience, and sending our kids into Iraq for a war that was unnecessary.
He agreed to advise me if I didn't use his name publicly, which I have not done, in debates on the floor of the House and now right on your radio show.
And I read just a couple things from his latest e-mails in response to mine.
One, this is November the 12th, after McCain and Lieberman came out and said, well, we need to be there four more years, I e-mailed him.
I said, what do you think about four more years in Afghanistan?
He e-mailed back.
He said, I do not believe that 40 more years will guarantee victory, whatever that is.
So four would do nothing.
As recently as December the 16th, I e-mailed him again.
He's agreed again to advise me.
Just a couple points from an e-mail that's got six points to it, but let me read two.
Continued belief that we can train the Afghan army to be effective in the time we have is nonsense.
The vast majority cannot read.
There are people from the villages hooked on drugs, illiterate, undisciplined.
The same thing happened in South Vietnam.
Soldiers were much better, and they couldn't stand the tide.
And then the last point on this December the 16th e-mail, Scott, is this.
What do we say to the mother and father, the wife of the last Marine killed, to support a corrupt government and corrupt leader in a war that can't be won?
I don't know why this administration does not understand history.
History says that Afghanistan will never be a nation, a national government.
It is a vast country.
Every nation that's tried to conquer it has failed.
And we're burning out our military, and it's not fair to our military, to families.
And the astronomical cost, excuse me, of between $7 and $8 billion a month, that's barred money.
And we can't even fix the streets in America.
Well, and I wonder what you think of the theory of blowback driving terrorism against the United States.
It seems like Pakistan has long had a population and a government friendly to the United States.
And more and more it seems like not just the so-called Taliban or tribal people in Waziristan or something, but more and more the population of Pakistan seems to hate us.
And you look at the attempted Times Square bomber.
When he pled guilty, he explained to the judge that basically here was a guy who had lived in the United States, had a successful career and a wife and a happy life.
And he went to Pakistan, and he saw people getting killed in drone strikes, and he decided to join up as a soldier on their side of the war.
And now luckily nothing bad happened in that attack, but it seems like maybe our policy is actually putting the American people in more danger.
Scott, I think that's true to a point.
I mean, blowback is a fact.
It is one of these issues where the larger our footprint, the more damage it does to our reputation.
And that's why a group of us, both in many Republicans, are beginning to see the same position that Ron Paul, Jimmy Duncan, and I share along with Tim Johnson.
They're beginning to see that this counterinsurgency strategy is not working.
We've got problems for our own troops who are over that with what they call rules of engagement.
And then we've got this whole issue of America trying to police the world.
You get to a point that you can't police the world when you can't even pay your own bills.
Now, on Iraq, you said that you voted against your own conscience when you voted for it.
You knew better even then?
Yes.
I guess I was under the impression that you sort of saw the light, that you'd made a mistake later on.
Well, I walked to the floor with very, very mixed feelings.
My conscience said, you have not heard the truth.
And yet, I think because I don't have a military background, and I have a large number of retired military plus the active duty, so I think that I was not as strong as I should have been in voting my conscience.
But since that time, and since I've gone public a few years ago about Iraq, I vote my conscience on everything.
Yep.
I happen to be the only Republican to vote for the small business loan program that Mr. Obama initiated.
And when it came to the floor, after going to the Senate and it came to the floor, I ended up being the only Republican to vote for it.
Well, the reason I did that was because I listened to the people in my district, small businesses, having a tough time getting loans from banks.
All right.
Well, without going too far into that topic, I'd like to ask you about the more JSOC war, I guess, the Joint Special Operations Command, the CIA.
They have their own wars in Yemen and in Somalia, more and more inside Pakistan, as we talked about.
And, in fact, according to the WikiLeaks, as written up in the New York Times, the war extends from Morocco to the Philippines, I guess.
And that's aside from the full-scale occupations, well, one that remains in Iraq, at least for now, and the one in Afghanistan.
And I wonder what you make of all that.
Can we just call that off?
Because, of course, critics, especially from your right, and I guess Obama's defenders, would say, yeah, but terrorism.
Well, I'm going to give you a very generic answer.
I think our whole foreign policy needs to be revamped and reviewed.
You've got to take into the fact, I know we're talking about terrorism, but you're taking in the fact that we're a country that has to borrow money every day to pay our bills.
That impacts every aspect of America, whether it's foreign policy or not foreign policy.
When you are a debtor nation, you are losing your influence and your power to even have respect from other countries.
I was amazed when I read articles recently about Secretary Gates going to meet with the Chinese, and the Chinese just basically said, well, you know, you're welcome to come over here and have tea, but you're not going to influence us.
Well, you know, part of the reason for that, we owe over $900 billion.
How can anyone see you as an equal when that person you're meeting with, you owe $900 billion, and every day you keep borrowing money, hoping they'll buy your debt?
Well, now, do you have a vision for how to call this off?
You know, getting out of Afghanistan, you want to just pack them up and go, or you think we've got to negotiate with the Russians over it or whatever?
I think when Karzai was in the Washington Post recently and he talked about the Americans, he talked about the international community, he talked about the Taliban, and he said of the three, who would he choose as his friend?
He said the Taliban.
We need to understand.
I'm sorry, I'm sorry, Rep.
Jones.
Hold on right there.
It's Rep.
Walter Jones.
We'll be right back, Antiwar Radio.
All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's Antiwar Radio.
I'm Scott Horton.
I'm talking with Congressman Walter B. Jones.
He represents North Carolina's 3rd District in the U.S. House of Representatives, and when we were so rudely interrupted by the commercial break there, Congressman, you were talking about how Hamid Karzai says he would prefer the Taliban at this point.
I might mention that the reason he says that is because he's complained consistently about the night raids and the massacres of innocent people all across that country and said if we keep it up, he'll just go ahead and join the Taliban, I think is what you're referring to.
But then the question is, why would we support a guy who would rather be with the Taliban than with us?
What's to do now?
That's the question.
What's to do now?
You know, I wish the American people, that was one reason I was glad and delighted to be on your show.
If one thing has disappointed me, it's the lack of interest by the American people as it relates to the war in Afghanistan and what it's doing to our military, what it's doing to our nation, and I wish the American people would get engaged and make sure that Mr. Obama starts bringing our troops home in June of 2011 and not buy into this idea of staying there four more years.
I just hope the American people, and that's why I'm glad to be on your show, will get engaged because I will tell you one sad story.
I go to Walter Reed.
I went two weeks ago.
I'm going to Bethesda this coming Tuesday after this show.
Last two weeks ago at Walter Reed, I saw something that I know has happened many times, but I was not made aware of it until I got into this kid's room.
He has no body below his waist.
It's been blown away.
We've got so many of our young men and women that have been so severely wounded that years ago they would have died on the battlefield, but because of new medical techniques, they now can be saved.
But you know what?
Scott, Uncle Sam's going to have to pay for these young men and women for the next 50 years in many cases.
It seems like a real corruption of society, too, where TV just won't show the dead in Afghanistan from either side or the Iraq War either.
So not only do we have these young men laying in hospital rooms with nothing left below their waist, but the rest of us can get away with completely ignoring it.
They're completely hidden away.
Scott, that's the reason I made a decision right after Christmas when I go back.
I intend to talk about Afghanistan at least two to three nights a week, and it's just little five-minute speeches, but I'm going to take a picture of a flag-draped coffin that's blown up.
I'm going to take the picture of all these Marines whose faces I put on my wall in the Raven Building.
I'm going to take the photograph of a young kid holding a folded flag under his arm as he's standing beside his deadest casket who was killed in Iraq.
You're right.
This whole issue has been taken off the front pages.
I thought Mr. Obama would be different than Mr. Bush.
Mr. Bush and Secretary Rumsfeld intentionally did not want there to be any photographs of flag-draped coffins.
Mr. Obama has made a little change, but I still don't think that the American people are engaged, and maybe that is the fault, which you just made reference to, of the media.
Somebody's got to be knocking on this door.
As you know, I've signed close to 10,000 letters to families and extended families in this country who have lost loved ones in Afghanistan and Iraq, and I've done this every weekend for almost 10 years.
That's because I did not vote my conscience.
This is my retribution to God.
But I'm aware of this war every day, every weekend.
The July 2011 deadline this summer, that's the fight to be had right there, and it's your party now controls the House of Representatives, so it's up to the few anti-war Republicans like you to really make a fight out of this, especially because you're attacking from the right.
Like Ron Paul, you can serve as an example to people that they don't have to be liberals to be against war.
They can be the most military-supporting individual like you and still be against the mission that the military's been sent on.
Well, you're absolutely right, Scott, and our numbers are slowly, slowly increasing.
We have identified, and I won't say their names on the show, and you understand that, and I'm sure you respect that, but we've identified about 10 or 11 Tea Party Republicans who won office in the House.
Now, how did we identify them?
Well, I had help, and we were able to identify them for this reason.
During their campaign, they made comments in opposition to Afghanistan, either policy or financial costs of Afghanistan.
So if you take about seven or eight of us in the House who are Republicans, and you mentioned Ron Paul, myself, and Jimmy Duncan, and you add 10 to it, then all of a sudden we go from about six or seven to about 16 or 17.
But the American people and conservatives are opposed to this.
Every poll has shown that the majority, not all, but the majority of conservatives are opposed to staying in Afghanistan.
And I'm going to do everything, and everybody I just named is going to do everything we can.
We need, really what we really need is to have rallies across this nation, even if they're small rallies.
Whether they don't like the policy, have a rally, and let's say get out, whether they are concerned about the cost and have a rally and get out.
It doesn't matter, but I have seen the broken bodies and will continue to look at the broken bodies and just ask God to help us to bring this thing to an end because there is no win.
History says you will not conquer Afghanistan.
All right, now you mentioned at the top of the show that you represent the district where Camp Lejeune is based.
Senator Obama gave his speech upon becoming president saying that we're going to get out of Iraq.
He actually backed down from his own timetable, but said he's going to go by the status of forces agreement negotiated under George Bush in 2008 that said that the last combat forces will be out of the country by December 31st of this year.
There will be no more on January 1, 2012.
And there's been a lot of leaks in the press.
Biden's been double-talking the vice president, but it's pretty clear that there are many people in the Pentagon who want to stay.
And I wonder, you know, if McDonnell Sauter doesn't insist that America stick by this timetable and leave, can you guys in the House of Representatives insist that we are done with occupying Iraq?
Scott, I think there is more interest in trying to bring to the forefront the fact that how in the world can we continue to afford to stay in these foreign countries, and especially Iraq?
I agree with you.
I hope I'm wrong.
I hope you're wrong.
I think it's going to go right back to a Civil War-type situation in the next two or three years because, again, the Sunnis and the Shiites are not going to ever be friendly to each other.
Maybe we can dream and wish that they would, but history speaks louder than those of us here.
Well, you know, one thing, though, is that we've intervened on the side of the majority Shia Arabs there, and they've successfully taken Baghdad with our help, and that includes McDonnell Sauter's guys.
So it seems like, really, they don't need us.
They're in a position to kick us out if they're determined to.
But, you know, Hillary Clinton, especially, I remember in the primaries, talked about, well, maybe we can just keep bases in Kurdistan, and, of course, there's still the giant embassy in the heart of Baghdad.
Yeah, absolutely.
So there's going to have to be a real policy change, probably one mandated by Congress to get the President and the Pentagon to really get out, don't you think?
Well, I think so.
We're working, obviously, the President, Mr. Obama, is a Democrat, and we're working with Democrats in the House, Dennis Kucinich and others, that feel the way we do, meaning the Republicans, the few that are named, and then the additions that we hope to pick up.
I really believe, sincerely, again, I want to thank you for this show, and thank you for the opportunity of me being on this show, but we need to awaken America.
We need to awaken America.
I wish we could show the broken bodies, but that's not going to happen.
But somebody in the media has got to take this call and start moving the American people to know just the damage that's being done to our youth and how this is going to impact from the standpoint of these veterans who are severely wounded are going to have to be taken care of by Uncle Sam for the next 25, 30, 50 years.
Well, you know, as far as those ten new possible recruits in the House of Representatives go, I think it might be helpful to just give them copies of Ron Paul's book, A Foreign Policy of Freedom, 30 years' worth of collected speeches by Ron Paul on foreign policy, and that thing will win over Dick Cheney, anybody.
Well, Scott, we're going to do a launch.
We've already got it planned.
I can't go into details, but you just type my word.
I'm sure you will.
You wouldn't have me on the show.
We're putting together a launch that we've got a retired general who has been to Afghanistan, a diplomat that have agreed to appear at a launch, and we intend to next week get letters off to the 10 and maybe add two or three more to that and have a lunch in one of the Capitol buildings, House buildings, and get these two experts to speak to these 10 or 12 and see if we can't keep reaching out and building the numbers.
Okay, right on.
Well, it's a pleasure to talk to you.
I really appreciate your time on the show today, Rep.
Jones.
Scott, thank you so much, and God bless America.
Thank you.
All right, everybody, that was Walter B. Jones.
He represents North Carolina's 3rd District in the House of Representatives, leader of the small but growing antiwar Republican caucus there.
See you on Monday.
