All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's anti-war radio.
I'm Scott Horton, and our first guest on the show today is Matt Southworth.
He is a legislative aide on foreign policy with the Quaker Public Interest Group, the Friends Committee on National Legislation.
He's currently working on Afghanistan policy and greater Middle East issues on Capitol Hill.
Boy, that sounds like a lot of fun.
Welcome to the show, Matt.
How's it going?
It's going pretty well.
How are you doing, Scott?
I'm doing great.
So tell me, when you're on Capitol Hill, do you just have to wear nose plugs to try to keep the stench of death out of your senses there, or how do you just get used to it, like spending time at the garbage dump or something?
Yeah, it takes an adjustment.
I'm a veteran of the Iraq War, so I'm very much opposed to what we're doing in Iraq and Afghanistan.
And sometimes it's really hard to sit through some of the conversations with 20, 25-year-old kids who haven't really done much around the world except for travel with their school friends and all of that.
Well, I was thinking more of like the congressmen.
How hard is it dealing with them?
Well, most of the time when you meet with a member of Congress, those meetings are rare.
But they do happen, and they give you the party line.
They don't always give you their straightforward answer.
They tell you what they think you want to hear.
And quite frankly, that's how they get re-elected, being likable and telling people what they want to hear.
Well, the kids you're referring to, then, are the legislative aides?
Yeah, the staff.
You know, there's some really great staff, and there's some really bad staff.
They run the gambit.
But sometimes it's a little rough sitting to the meeting.
Well, now, so I want to ask you all about the Friends Committee because I want the audience to know about it, I think.
It's such an important group, and people really don't know.
Well, a lot of people maybe never even heard of it, don't know that much about it.
So I wanted to give you a chance to talk about that.
But actually, first, I want to ask you about your experience in Iraq.
Was it when you were in Iraq that you changed your mind about what was going on over there?
Can you tell me about your evolution from soldier to Quaker?
Yeah, well, you know, I was there in 2004 in northern Iraq, Mosul, Tal Afar area.
And I didn't really necessarily have an aha moment.
It took a lot of reflection and processing, most of which took place after I was back.
But I did start to question what the real purpose of our presence in Iraq was while I was there.
We went, in 2004, it was to transition authority to the Iraqi government under the guise of freedom and democracy.
And then breaking down people's homes, breaking down people's doors at their home in the middle of the night, and taking them out of the house, and taking them for interrogations on the base, and running people over in front of convoys, and doing all kinds of other crazy stuff just as a symptom of the war itself.
It really made me question exactly what kind of freedom we are bringing to Iraq.
So that's kind of how it all started for me.
And then developing a level of empathy with the suffering of the Iraqi people, particularly the men and women who had to watch their siblings, their aunts, their uncles, their friends die as a result of our occupation there, really had a profound effect on me.
And then maybe this part of it's too personal.
It's perfectly fine if we skip it.
But were you already a Quaker?
You became a Quaker?
Or do you even have to be a Quaker to be part of the Friends Committee?
Yeah, actually, I'm not a Quaker.
And I didn't know what Quakers were before I actually started with, actually, before I went to college.
I went to a Quaker college.
That's how I kind of got hooked up with FCNL.
I thought the Quakers made oats and granola bars, you know?
I didn't realize there was a whole religious society of Friends.
When I grew up down in Florida, it was Southern Baptist.
There wasn't a whole lot of Quaker present.
So I really, the first time I was around a large group of Quakers, and discovered that they were working to end the wars and working for peace, I was astonished, because I thought it ended in the 60s, you know?
It wasn't something that I was at all familiar with.
Very foreign to me.
And over this movement at all, you mean?
Yeah, I mean, honestly, as a soldier, even growing up, the peace movement was, to me, something that happened in the 60s.
And you know, the peace signs, and hippies, and all that stereotypical stuff.
I didn't have an understanding that people were still doing those sorts of things until I started to get involved with FCNL back in about 2005, 2006.
Wow.
You know, I think that is just so important.
And you know, it's hard sometimes for me to kind of see it that way.
But I've just got to remember back in my own life when I was in ninth grade, and they did the first Gulf War, Operation Yellow Ribbon over there.
I had no idea that there were peace protests.
I thought, you know, maybe some people weren't really gung-ho about it in Florida or whatever.
But I had no idea that anyone was trying to organize to stop the thing.
I didn't find that out until years later.
Yeah, it's pretty crazy, pretty wild.
So you really can live your life up to, you know, join the Army age, and not even know that there's really anyone in this society who's against it all.
Or maybe if you do think there are people who are against it all, they're just patchouli-stinking hippies who don't really know anything about it.
Yeah, absolutely.
That happens.
You know, that's why a lot of the outreach that I do in kind of my off time as a part of FCNL, and partially as a part of FCNL, is to high schoolers and college kids about being a soldier and now being anti-war.
A lot of folks don't really realize that there's a contingent of us out there.
And the majority of people aren't directly affected by war or conflict.
So it's easy for them to kind of forget that we're at war.
I mean, right now we're in three wars, involved in three wars, if you can believe that.
And most people probably couldn't point out Iraq, Afghanistan, or Libya on a map.
Right.
Yeah, that's the sad part.
I'm not sure they can point out Mexico on a map.
Yeah, right.
All right.
Well, now, so tell us a little bit more about the Friends Committee, because I've been surprised, actually, as some people who had never heard of it before.
And I think it's a really important group.
Yeah, FCNL, the Friends Committee on National Legislation, FCNL.org.
We've been around for a little over 65 years.
We are a Quaker lobby in the public interest.
We are governed by about 250 Quakers from around the country who come to Washington, DC every year.
And every other year in the election cycle, they set our priorities for the next Congress.
So we're really, it's a very diplomatic, very good organization in that we really rely on the people who live around the country who are Quaker to guide the organization.
We work on all kinds of issues.
We're the only non-native group working on Native American rights.
We work on nuclear disarmament, work on domestic spending.
We work on environment and war.
I work on Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel, Palestine, and Iran, especially focusing on Afghanistan and now Libya.
So we have a variety of issues that we cover.
We're a lobbying organization, first and foremost.
So we have lobbyists.
We're a registered lobby group on Capitol Hill.
And we spend a lot of time on the Hill lobbying members of Congress and bringing that Friends point of view to the halls of Congress in a way that without an organization like us here, it wouldn't actually happen.
All right, and now the website is fcnl.org, correct?
Yes, sir.
Right.
So that's the Friends Committee on National Legislation.
I urge everybody, spend some time there.
Look it up and perhaps see if it's something you might want to participate in.
As Matt was saying, you don't have to be a Quaker to be part of the Friends Committee.
I didn't realize that.
Yeah, we are a very diverse group and a very accepting group.
So definitely check us out.
OK, now Matt, I guess one of the benefits of working up there on Capitol Hill doing the lobbying that you do is that you get your hands on hot little documents like this one from the Congressional Research Service, which my friend Michael Osterling sent to me, the cost of Iraq, Afghanistan, and other global war on terror operations since 9-11.
It's by Amy Velasco, specialist in US defense policy and budget, again, from the Congressional Research Service.
And we only really have like 30 seconds or a minute or something before the break here.
But I was wondering if you could basically introduce us to this document and give us a little thumbnail.
Then we'll discuss a little more detail when we get back from the break.
Yeah, let me give you the down and dirty.
We're talking about $1.283 trillion of appropriated funds since 9-11 for Iraq and Afghanistan.
If the funding for 2012 is approved, $1.415 trillion since 9-11.
We're talking about deficits.
And we're getting ready to hand senior citizens vouchers for their health care when we're spending literally trillions of dollars over the course of a decade in foreign countries who don't want to be occupied.
It's really unbelievable.
And this report just really goes through that step by step and explains where this money's going and what it's being used for.
Right.
And now the Congressional Research Service, that's not the same thing as the lobby.
Congressional Budget Office.
Right, which they always change the names of all these things.
I can't keep them straight anymore.
Yeah, they're different, but they're similar.
OK, but this is sort of a little group of bean counters that work directly for the Congress, not for the executive branch.
Correct.
They're a research arm of Congress.
OK, hold it right there.
We'll be right back, everybody, with Matt Southworth from the Friends Committee on National Legislation.
That's fcnl.org.
We're talking about the cost of war in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the rest of the war on terror.
All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
It's Anti-War Radio.
I'm Scott Horton.
I'm talking with Matt Southworth.
He's a legislative aide on foreign policy with the Friends Committee on National Legislation working on Afghanistan and Middle Eastern issues up there.
And we've got this report here.
I don't think this is online anywhere.
The cost of Iraq, Afghanistan, and other global war on terror operations since 9-11.
And you say this is direct appropriations for the wars since 9-11, $1.415 trillion if we assume the next budget going through.
Correct, yeah.
And the CRS is the research arm of Congress.
Their documents aren't available to the public, but a lot of times they do get posted on the internet.
So you can actually Google the title that you just read, and you should be able to pull it up, pull up the newest version in the PDF format.
And the importance of this document really, what it really comes down to, is it informs us on where we're spending all this money.
Like you said, through fiscal year 2012, $1.415 trillion.
Just to put that in perspective, everyone talks about the state deficit crisis.
All these states who are running in the negative and how that's going to be the next big bubble that breaks America, all that.
We're talking about a deficit, cumulative deficit, of all the states of between $125 and $150 billion.
So we've spent considerably more.
In fact, we spend about that much every year fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
So in essence, we're choosing to fund these wars when we could do something like wipe out the state deficit.
Wow, all the state deficits, basically.
Yeah, $125 to $150 billion, cumulative.
And it depends on which source you look at.
If you look at The Economist, it'll give you something different than The Wall Street Journal.
That really depends on how the states count and report their deficits.
But it's safe to assume that they're all cumulatively under about $150 billion, which our funding for last year's operations in Iraq and Afghanistan were about $168 billion.
Now, you're absolutely right that people can Google this report.
But they'll find 10 different versions of it throughout the years or so.
So I would suggest adding March 29, 2011 to your search terms there.
The cost of Iraq, Afghanistan, and other global war and terror operations since 9-11.
Of course, the archive of this interview and a little summary there will have a direct link to it.
So this does not include the half a trillion a year or more that we spend just on what they call the defense budget, the military budget.
This is separate.
This is just the war appropriations.
Correct, correct.
That budget is called the base budget.
And the funding request that the Congress is considering this week as a part of the continuing resolutions for the rest of this fiscal year is about $513 to $516 billion.
That's the base budget.
All spending on Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya, and wherever else is in addition to that base budget.
So we're talking about $100 billion plus over the base budget that the Pentagon's getting.
And not all of that is used directly for the war.
Some of it is weapons procurement.
Some of it is purchasing equipment, purchasing uniforms, stuff like that that's related to the war.
They can spend a lot of that money doing those sorts of things.
And also building what could be viewed as permanent bases in some of these countries.
Oh yeah, well, there's plenty of that.
Whenever the politicians talk about the military budget at all, Ron Paul excluded, of course, Dennis Kucinich and a couple of others.
But for the rest of them, they'll say, well, there's some waste, and we need to cut some waste.
So I wonder, never mind the cost of the empire, the wars, and the regular defense appropriation in general, and all that.
But just in terms of the fraud, and abuse, and the kind of outright theft inside the Pentagon budget, do you guys at the Friends Committee have an estimate?
Or maybe the Congressional Research Service, do they estimate how much of this is simple Lockheed getting over on the taxpayer?
Yeah, actually, it's very hard to follow.
Because the Pentagon is the only department within the government that doesn't have an audit.
The Pentagon does not get audited.
Every other agency in the government gets an audit, except for the Pentagon.
What we do know is that a lot of money goes missing, particularly in Iraq and Afghanistan.
I think the figure I hear most commonly is $25 billion was lost in Iraq.
The DOD just doesn't know where it went.
And remember, a lot of the contracts that Halliburton, Kellogg, Brown, and Root, some of these other subsidiaries are getting in these countries are cost plus.
So the Pentagon will pay what it costs them to operate, then pay a profit over that.
That'd be pretty nice if I could get my work to cover what it costs me to get here and all that other stuff, and then give me a profit over that.
That'd be pretty super.
So it's a pretty exceptional way that the Defense Department operates.
In addition to all of that, I'd also say that the procurement process, and this isn't just the Quakers who say this.
This is people within the Pentagon will say there are two kinds of armies.
There is the army that believes in strategy and believes in making sure that threats are contained, et cetera, et cetera.
And then there's the big army who wants to drop in tanks and joint strike fighters and stuff like that in places like Afghanistan, where those kinds of major equipment just make no sense for that battlefield.
So there are definitely multiple kinds of waste within the Pentagon.
And again, this isn't just the Quakers saying this.
It's people who work within the system.
Sure.
Well, we've seen, I remember a Washington Post story from just a few months ago about how that's exactly what they're doing, is sending a bunch of Abrams tanks to Afghanistan.
And hell, even Robert Gates challenged the Air Force and said, listen, enough about the F-22.
We need F-35s for bombing people on the ground.
There's no Afghan Air Force to fight with an F-22.
We need ground attack planes.
But they don't care.
They'll send a bunch of F-22s to Afghanistan if they can.
Yeah, that's absolutely true.
One component of this that doesn't often get talked about is just the ego bravado, call it what you will, within the Pentagon.
In World War II, for the entire European theater, there were about 37 generals operating in that entire theater.
For Afghanistan alone, we've got over 100 flagstaff generals and high-level officers operating in the country.
And you've got to remember that the military, it's not like they're really all that cohesive, speaking as a former soldier.
People compete.
You compete to see how many rounds you shoot, and you compete to see which your numbers are, how much you're spending, all this kind of stuff.
And there's this level of competition that goes on which breeds this waste and breeds this kind of contempt.
And I think it is really important that we start to look at the Pentagon and not just, hey, let's cut waste, but let's make sizable, sizable reductions in the amount the Pentagon's spending, because there is so much room to cut that waste.
And it starts with an audit.
We've got to know where some of this money's going.
Well, yeah, I guess we could try.
But it seems like, at this point, the Congress really isn't a Congress.
It's just where the front men for the generals and the companies that they do business with meet to steal our money.
Yeah, that's a pretty common perception.
Although, from my perspective working on the Hill, I think it's best that we stay engaged in the process, because I think you're right, in part.
If we're not on the Hill, all of these other places are.
You know, the Lockheed Martins and all that kind of stuff, the defense industry, the credit card industry, the pharmaceutical industry, the agriculture industry, you know, it goes on and on, the list goes on and on.
And they're not necessarily representing our interests.
So in our absence, they will be there.
And if we are there, it makes it a lot harder for them to operate.
And some of it is tied into the money.
But, you know, we've got that power of the vote.
And I don't think we use it very effectively, speaking of the American public.
But I think we could do a better job of that.
Yeah, well, I mean, it's true that, you know, at the end of the day, each of these congressmen are individuals and they want to keep their job, if only so they can make more money later or whatever.
Every one of these guys wants their power.
And if what they have to do in order to satisfy their constituents is end the war, then that's what they'll do.
But it really is up to us to demand.
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, especially, you know, at this point, it's pretty easy to see how little power the American people have over the national government compared to maybe some days gone by anyway.
But still, ultimately, the people get what they want.
And if we've had enough, then it'll end, it seems to me.
Yeah, it's true.
I sometimes do wonder what will change the system short of just all-out revolution.
But, you know, we hope that there are ways in which we can stay in some kind of cohesive form as we do make the country better for the long term.
Hey, by the way, do you know how many military bases there are inside the United States?
Inside the United States, there are several hundred.
Some of it, and it depends on how you count actual bases where divisions are stationed and whether or not you count the National Guard depots and stuff like that.
But depending on how you count it, it's hundreds, 2,000s.
Yeah, I mean, that's one problem now is that the economy of the society is so distortive.
We really did abolish the empire.
I mean, you think of a town like Killeen would just cease to exist.
Yeah, down for it, yeah.
You know, and there's gotta be, I guess, hundreds of towns like that, and that's a lot of political pressure.
Even though people don't understand it, that's all money really just being destroyed.
They think, oh no, the poor diner across the street from the base is being destroyed without seeing where that cost is coming from in the first place.
Yeah, we have that conversation all the time, and what we always say is an economy based on war is not a sustainable economy, and it is inevitable that this industry will collapse on itself.
All right, everybody, that's Matt Southworth from the Friends Committee on National Legislation, fcnl.org.
Thanks very much for your time, Matt.
Sure, anytime.
Really appreciate it.
Bye.
