03/25/11 – Sheldon Richman – The Scott Horton Show

All right, welcome back to the show.
It's anti-war radio.
Next is Sheldon Richman, senior fellow at the Future Freedom Foundation.
He's also the editor of the Freeman, the Journal of the Foundation for Economic Education.
He's the author of the book Tethered Citizens, Time to Repeal the Welfare State.
He keeps the blog Free Association at Sheldon Richman dot com.
Sheldon, welcome back to the show.
Well, thanks for having me again.
I always love being with you.
Well, I love having you here.
Also, I like reading the things that you write.
Obama's imperial adventure over at the Future of Freedom Foundation, as much as, you know, digital representations of inked letters can drip with fury.
This thing is dripping with it.
Go ahead and tell us what's got you so upset about this war going on now.
The latest one.
I think the Nobel Peace Prize committee needs to be doing some reconsideration.
That's how I would sum it up.
This is just outrageous.
And, you know, what makes it even more outrageous are the contortions that the Obama defenders are going through to make this seem like a reasonable thing to do and not anything like George W.
Bush would do.
I mean, I was watching MSNBC last night and it's unbelievable the way they are defending Obama and the way it had been for the last week, of course, on this.
Well, you know, I hadn't seen Rachel Maddow on it, but I saw that guy Cenk Younger and his whole thing was that the Republicans are hypocrites for supporting the last wars, but not this one.
And his point was not that he's a hypocrite for not supporting the Republicans wars and supporting this one.
What the hell?
Well, I know.
And I realize we probably shouldn't spend a lot of time on this because we're not talking about Obama's policy so much.
But but when people do that, what you just said, they're just taking the easy way out and being easy on themselves because you're not contending with the tough, you know, the tough questions being asked about this intervention in a Libyan civil war when all you do is talk about Republican hypocrisy.
That doesn't respond to the objections.
What about Ron Paul?
Ron Paul wasn't a hypocrite.
He's taken the same line right along.
So why don't they address the real objections to this intervention instead of talking about Newt Gingrich flip flopping?
That's what they spent a half an hour on that.
But how is that relevant to anything?
Who cares about Newt Gingrich?
He's not going to be a goal catcher anywhere.
I know.
I wish somebody would tell him that.
Actually, I'm kind of glad they don't, because it's fun watching him flop around out there trying so hard to get people to like him.
And Rachel Maddow was, you know, Rachel Maddow was praising Obama precisely because he did not hold an Oval Office address and explain to the American people about this mission.
This was to show how reluctant, you know, she thought the greatest thing about this is how reluctant Obama is.
And as she put it, the White House keeps telling us how reluctant he was to do this.
And she thought it was a virtue that he didn't go on TV and explain it because that's what all the predecessors have done.
And we know what kind of mess that led to.
I mean, what are these people thinking?
This is an absurd, you know, from their point of view may not be absurd, but from the American people's point of view, a totally absurd act of militarism, act of imperialism.
And this idea that this is humanitarian, you know, falls the moment you have any knowledge of the long sweep of American foreign policy.
It's got nothing to do with humanitarianism.
I thought the best answer to this was Jacob Solom's, the syndicated columnist and reason editor, who said he quoted Obama saying we can't stand idly by while while tyrants threaten their people.
And he said, yes, we can.
And we do all the time.
And I would add to that, and I'm using we and us, of course, metaphorically, I mean, the power elite, some of our best friends are tyrants who constantly threaten their own people in the coalition as well, especially the Arab League.
So what the heck are they talking about that we can't stand idly by?
I mean, it's it's it's sheer it's just dishonest.
And they think the American people are morons because it's the only way you can explain the statements that they make publicly.
You have to understand that they assume we're morons.
Then you can see why they say that.
Otherwise, if you have the mistaken premise that they think we're intelligent human beings, you know, you say to yourself, how can they say that?
But just just change your premise.
They think we're morons.
Now, it makes total sense that they would say that they think we're blithering idiots.
Well, now the question is whether they're morons, because, you know, Robert Gates said, as you note in your article that, hey, look, there ain't no such thing as just a no fly zone.
This is going to be, you know, a major thing.
We're going to have to bomb all kinds of things.
And then we're going to have the repercussions of that and this and that.
And so, you know, it's pretty hard to believe that they just didn't hear him.
Of course, he clicked his heels and saluted and ordered the troops in rather than resign and protest or anything like that.
It's not like he's that against it, even though he just said two weeks ago that you'd have to be crazy that any secretary of defense who told his president to go ahead and put troops in Africa or Asia or the Middle East ought to have his head examined.
And yet here he is.
He's led us into this war.
And I'm thinking, so does that mean then if they assume that we're idiots, can we safely assume that they're smart and that they mean to have a full scale at some point invasion and occupation and and Iraqization of the state of Libya?
Sheldon, you think?
I think they know what they're doing.
They're pursuing the policy elite, the ruling elite interests.
They need to do this.
It's an oil rich country.
It's in the hands of, you know, an unreliable ally, as you pointed out many days now in your program, ally, at least for the last five or six years, thanks to George W.
Bush.
But he's erratic and the Arab leaders never liked him.
He insults them.
And so he's not reliable.
And with things breaking down there, the US elite felt they had to act to protect their own interests.
However, the reason they make the stupid statements they're making is they realize the American people are suffering war fatigue.
They wouldn't go for an honest description of what we're up to.
And so they had to put it in this very modest sounding terms, which, of course, you know, it doesn't make sense.
They don't make sense once you start to examine them.
But, you know, Gaddafi has to go.
Baroni setting up a no fly zone and regime change is not the objective.
You can't put those statements together.
But again, they think the American people are morons and they'll just say, oh, OK, we're not going to bring a war.
It's just this modest thing.
We're not trying to, you know, they think that then we'll change the channel and go over to the, you know, the the basketball games.
Right.
But they can't back down now.
I mean, they leave him in power.
Then he goes and kills those same rebels that they're calling civilians that they have to protect.
They have to get a regime change at this point.
But they assume the American people are going to.
And unfortunately, maybe a lot of American people won't do this, but they won't trace it out logically and say, hang on, that makes no sense whatsoever.
But first of all, why is it in the media?
I was going to say why.
We know the answer.
The media, which are really just stenographers, keep calling this a no fly zone.
And yet it was clear from day one, it was more than a no fly zone.
You know, a no fly zone means that most you hit air defenses.
Right.
So that you can fly and command the skies and not let the other, you know, the home team fly.
That's a no fly zone.
That's what that term means.
But from the first day, they were doing more than that.
They were hitting ground troops.
They were hitting ammunition dumps.
They were hitting his compound.
But do tanks fly in Libya?
Maybe they have some secrets we don't know.
Yeah, they're in blasted infantry.
They turn in a no walk zone.
Well, I guess they fly.
I guess they're like the monkeys in The Wizard of Oz.
And so it's a serious no fly zone.
Nothing's allowed to fly, even if it's physically incapable of flying.
So it was never a no fly zone.
And yet the papers still call it a no fly zone.
This is what happens when you don't want to tell the truth.
You have to say really, really stupid things and pray that people won't apply some logic to it to see that they're being totally gold.
Well, and it's Hillary Clinton up there in the State Department.
Of course, I'm sure she probably just told Obama, look, we'll sell this like a Clinton style Democrat war, a no fly zone, a limited number of airstrikes, the kind of wars that Americans are going to really like in the 1990s, where none of our guys get killed and they don't show us any footage of the children and women and elderly people killed on the other side.
And and, you know, like Clinton's war in Kosovo in 99, like Homer Simpson said, you know, war these days is just like turning on a light and claps his hands.
Well, that's right.
And of course, you know, any civilian casualties which are alleged by Qaddafi's government can easily be parried by saying that the press will say we can't confirm that.
And, you know, who would believe him anyway?
And so, you know, they're immune.
They're immune from the objection.
And, you know, Sheldon, you talk about them playing us like we're stupid.
I think we being the American people just might be.
I mean, here America supports every dictatorship in the region.
Hillary Clinton says that Hosni Mubarak and his wife are considered close personal friends of her and Bill.
And and we support the Saudis invading Bahrain to help put down the rebellion there.
At the same time, we have them voting to support our action invasion bombing in Libya.
And then today in Israel, Bob Gates says, oh, yeah, you know, these revolutionaries in Syria, they really got right on their side.
Their military should stand back and let them overthrow Assad as though we can't tell the agenda here.
You know where Qaddafi, as you said, yeah, he was like kind of brought in from the cold, but they never really liked him.
Not anything like they love the Kings Abdullah in Jordan and Saudi Arabia and Saleh in Yemen who they've attempted to prevent from being overthrown for the last couple of months to apparently no avail as he's about to see the exit door looks like.
But, you know, talk about stupid.
We're on the side of the Libyan revolutionaries when America supports every America is the cause of Islamo fascism in the Middle East, you know.
Well, and Salah, you know, Salah may be on the way out because he may be the man who knows too much.
I saw a quote from him in The New York Times.
It says he's saying to the president of the United States, are you saying to Obama, are you the president of the United States or are you the president of the world?
Now, when you start asking questions like that in public, I think your days are numbered.
Who was it that asked him that?
Salah.
Oh, really?
President Salah in Yemen.
But of course, we'll need a strong man in Yemen.
Again, when I say we, you know what I mean?
I don't mean you and the empire.
Yeah, the empire will need a Darth Vader will need a strong man in Yemen because, you know, they've got to get that al-Awlaki guy, that sheik who, you know, that American citizen who they want to be free to murder.
And you can't murder him if you don't know where he is.
So we've got to have a cooperative guy running things.
And that means Yemen is going to need a new dictator.
So maybe, I don't know if Suleiman from Egypt is available, but they need somebody like that over there.
I'm sure they're hunting around for him and they probably already have him in mind.
Yeah, well, the battle to keep him available still rages in Egypt.
You know, those people still have uphill battle for sure.
That's true.
That's true.
In Egypt, of course, all the story we can talk about, talk about that another time.
I wanted to mention quickly, NATO, the you know, the latest game they're playing is that, well, the U.S. is backing out of this because we're turning it over to NATO.
Although I heard today on what's her name, Angela Greenspan, what's her name, Mrs.
Greenspan.
Oh, yeah, Angela Greenspan, the chief stenographer of the American press corps, that NATO was quite a little bit surprised by this.
And I'm not sure they haven't they said they haven't agreed to take it over.
But what does it really matter?
The commander of NATO is an American admiral.
NATO has always been an American tool.
And so it's a game.
It's a charade anyway to say we're turning it over to NATO is if this is to tell the American people, look, it's really not our operation anymore.
That was the whole point of that press conference last night.
That was being lapped up by by Cenk Uygur and the MSNBC crowd.
It's a joke.
It's a joke.
NATO is us and we you know, we run NATO.
And of course, the other enthusiast in NATO for this operation is Tarkozy, who's got his own political problems at home.
And plus, they're afraid of Libyans, Libyan refugees coming to France.
I mean, they have a vested interest in all this.
It's not humanitarian.
Yeah, well, all that propaganda.
We'll see what happens when it comes time for the beachhead and the invasion to take Tripoli, which they're going to have to do.
It looks like unless somebody gets really lucky with a laser pointer down there.
Well, I don't see how you can have the objective that Obama has set, which is that he's got to go right, he's got to go and not do that.
And yet I think they're afraid on the other side, the American people just have had a bit much of this.
So they are in a bind.
They've gotten themselves in a bind.
The empire, the imperial overlords, I think, are probably, you know, pacing the floor saying, how do we how are we going to finesse this?
We're really a walk on a tightrope here.
And so I don't know how they're going to I don't know what they're going to do, but I don't I don't you know, I agree with the people who say, well, now that we I mean, the analysis is correct.
Now that we, you know, have our money on the table, we certainly can't leave Gaddafi in power because that's that's the plumbing.
I know we will lose our credibility.
You know, they are in a bind now.
They're going to have to see it through.
But they're afraid that the American people are going to be totally disgusted by it.
Let's hope they are.
They are disgusted by it.
Well, you know, I kind of think that really they've been planning this for a long time, looking for the excuse to pick, you know, if they can't make it Somalia, figure out another place where they can make their first big beach head in Africa and prepare for the full scale invasion of the whole continent.
Well, yeah, I mean, I and I heard you go through that the other day, it's a new American century.
Yeah.
And your other analysis, which I thought was was persuasive, is that they wanted to make an example to show they really are on the side of the people because they're backing all these dictators everywhere else.
They want to pick one example, say war with the people.
And so they picked the they picked an easy one.
But the point is, it's not easy because if the American people aren't up for another invasion and the committing of troops because they don't even have troops, are there any troops to spare?
The question is, though, too, is that, you know, at this point, does it matter at all what the American people want?
Well, I hope I hope it does matter.
They may think it doesn't matter.
I hope there's it's just, you know, it's just one step too many or it's the straw and that something will happen.
Now, you know, you could take the more pessimistic side and say, now, as long as there's no draft, then the people aren't going to be aroused.
And unfortunately, that may be true.
I'm just hoping for the best and that people, you know, enough people are going to say this is not now, you know, we're trying to get out of two wars.
We're told we're getting out of two and now we're starting a new one.
Yeah.
Well, and, you know, I think I mean, I don't know.
I was a kid in Operation Yellow Ribbon in 1991.
So I don't I wasn't really exposed to most of the debate, although I was trying to watch a lot of CNN and whatever at the time.
And I remember it being explained to me then that, well, since World War Two, the United Nations Security Council holds the war power and and they can declare war.
Congress doesn't have to declare war, even though it says that in the Constitution.
And that was all I heard about.
It was my own question about it.
And it's short answer that was apparently commonly accepted.
And I'm not sure if you could compare and contrast then and now, 1991, 1990, 1991 with today.
But it seems like a lot of people are questioning the right of the U.N. Security Council to commit the United States to war with or without the U.S. Congress involved.
Well, and there was a you know, there was a report just put out or a quick analysis or something by the Congressional Research Service that challenges whole idea that just because the resolutions passed by the Security Council, we all have to hop to it.
As he put it, and it makes sense to me, this is a principle I've always heard.
Congress cannot give away a power.
It can't delegate a power.
So I can't say to the U.N., OK, from now on, you get to make declarations of war.
We relinquish that.
They're not allowed to relinquish the constitutional power.
So.
Right.
And, you know, the other Scott Horton, the international law expert explained on the show, Professor Columbia, explained on the show that any treaty that changes in American law, that's binding.
But a treaty cannot change the Constitution.
There's part of the Constitution that liberals always cite that says, well, the treaty is the Supreme Law.
But it doesn't say it can rewrite the Constitution with a majority of just the Senate, a supermajority of just the Senate.
And the president in conspiracy together can change the entire Constitution.
You're right.
That's right.
I have one modest suggestion.
I want a constitutional amendment that says no war until we have a public referendum on the name of the operation.
Yeah.
Dawn is totally idiotic.
Somebody says the name of a stripper.
Thanks, Sheldon.
Sheldon Richman dot com.
FFF dot org.