06/22/11 – Sheldon Richman – The Scott Horton Show

All right y'all, welcome back.
It's Anti-War Radio.
I'm Scott Horton.
I'm happy to welcome Sheldon Richman back to the show.
He's the editor of The Freeman, the journal published by the Foundation for Economic Education in Irvington, New York, and serves as senior fellow at the Future of Freedom Foundation.
The website there is fff.org.
And then you want to click on commentaries, I think, is how to get the most recent stuff.
Somebody's got to redo that site, man.
Sheldon also is the author of Separating School and State, How to Liberate America's Families, Your Money or Your Life, Why We Must Abolish the Income Tax, and FFF's newest book, Tethered Citizens, Time to Repeal the Welfare State.
Welcome back to the show, Sheldon.
How are you doing?
I'm doing great and I'm happy to be with you as always.
So you must be really excited tonight.
Barack Obama is going to announce the beginning of the end of the Afghan war, Sheldon.
Yeah, I just wish I could be embedded, you know, just like MSNBC was with Iraq and be riding on those jeeps out of town, celebrating this great triumph for the peace movement.
Yes, I'm being highly sarcastic.
I hope it's coming through.
Yeah, typical hype, huh?
Yeah, well, take us through the math.
I think he started out with, what, 30,000, then he added 60 or 70,000 on top of that, and now they're withdrawing five, so that's pretty good.
We'll be down to 95,000 troops.
Yeah, I think he was, I think it was 70 when he came in, he added 30, so that brought him up to about 100,000.
Now, if the reports are right, that are coming out, leaking out about what he's going to say, by the end of next year, he'll be back to the number that were there when he came into office.
That's how I read it, because it's going to be, I think, five, and five immediately, five by the end of the year, that's 10, and another 20 at the end of 2012.
Well, that's the 30, assuming he sticks to that, and that leaves, then, the original number when he came in.
So he's just undone the highly successful, quote-unquote, surge.
We've heard that before.
Yeah, well, surges always work, because the surge worked is a memorable slogan, and so that's how we know it's true.
So we haven't, he'll be saying that tonight, I'm sure.
Yeah, well, and you know, the other thing is here, too, it's kind of a riddle.
The truth is, best I can tell, they haven't done anything as far as weakening the Taliban and strengthening their position to force the Taliban to negotiate, which was supposedly the policy here.
All they've done is, as they escalate, they make the resistance against them stronger and stronger, like one of them laws of physics or something like that, and so I don't see why the Taliban should negotiate anything with them, you know, whatsoever.
Yeah, but you're one of those half-empty guys, right?
Glasses half-empty.
Yeah, when it comes to American foreign policy, I certainly am.
You're missing one of the most dramatic signs of progress that occurred over the last 10 years, namely somebody pretended to be a Taliban spokesman and negotiated with us for six months.
You don't call that progress?
And ran off with a truck full of cash, too.
Well, okay, so there's a little bit, you know, the glitches here and there, but come on, you know, it's two steps forward, one step back, and it's one terrorist down and ten pop up to take his place, as you're very fond of quoting General McChrystal.
No, you're absolutely right, but that's not what we're going to hear.
We're going to hear that there's been a lot of progress and we need to hold on to the gains, you know, this is the McCain line, too, and so therefore we can't be precipitous and take everybody out, but on the other hand, you know, this is substantial.
This 5,000 is going to be very substantial.
It's all hype, and besides, it's all without context.
I mean, look, even if he took everybody out today, today, if he took all 100,000 troops out today, it wouldn't change the imperial framework they're all operating within.
So we're all, everybody's fixed on the trees and not looking at the forest.
The fact that they even decide they need to get out of Afghanistan because of politics or the budget at the moment or whatever doesn't change the general framework they're still working in, that we have a right, we, meaning the U.S. government has a right to police the world, be anywhere they think they need to be.
Libya being the latest example, and in other words, they haven't changed the paradigm.
Even if they decide they need to shift forces and, you know, cut back a little bit here because, though, the budget's in a crunch at the moment and they gotta look like they're actually serious about that.
There's been no paradigm change.
Nobody has, and look at what's considered the spectrum here now.
Obviously, Ron Paul and the people that actually do want to get out are basically ignored in the media.
So the spectrum is McCain saying, you know, basically don't take anybody out because we can't lose the gains.
And on the the Dover side, and I'm putting quotes around that word, the Dover side is Romney saying we should bring him out as soon as possible.
As soon as possible is considered the Dover's position.
That doesn't mean right away.
As soon as possible could be 100 years from now.
So why is that being regarded as, you know, the Dove position?
I don't get that.
Well, it's, you know, this is something I guess, especially over the last couple of weeks, I keep harping on is just the ridiculously thin, you know, if not completely transparent, at least translucent excuses and ridiculous slogans and things, you know, to say as soon as possible doesn't say anything.
As soon as possible, what?
As soon as we make sure that the Karzai government will be able to rule all of Afghanistan without any remnants of the Taliban left anymore?
Or as soon as possible, what, man?
That's right, but that has been put forth as the Dove position.
It's hilarious, and this is what Palenty is now attacking.
Palenty has to, you know, have to differentiate himself because he's not making any headway.
So now he's attacking this Dover's position of Romney's, because Romney's, you know, the so-called front runner, and so that's being portrayed as the peacenik position, as soon as possible.
You can, I can imagine during Vietnam, all those people marching with signs saying bring the troops out as soon as possible.
That would have been a heck of a peace movement back then, wouldn't it?
Yes.
Well, that's the peace movement today.
As soon as possible.
That's our slogan now.
Can you make, you're a bumper sticker guy.
Can you get that made real fast?
As soon as possible.
That's my bumper sticker.
I want that.
And of course Romney built in there.
As determined by the generals, you know, whatever they say.
Well, that's the fine print, but I want, I'm going to the barricades over as soon as possible.
I want battle cry.
Yeah, there you go.
Well.
That's the joke.
That's the joke.
Yeah, well, and that's the policy.
I mean, right?
That's, that's right.
Right.
And, you know, as long as we're talking about Romney for a second, he made some kind of idiotic remark about how we should know better than to, than to go into a war of independence or we should think twice.
Oh, right.
Yeah.
We shouldn't.
What war of independence?
There's no war of independence.
Well, yeah, of course there is.
The Taliban are fighting for independence from the American empire.
Simple as that.
We're the redcoats and, and, uh, well, they're the colonials.
I don't know.
I'm not sure that's what he meant by it.
Maybe they're the Indians and we're the colonials.
I'm not sure what he, he must've thought we got into, he's probably thinking we got into it.
You know, when the Russians, you know, obviously were, they were given arms and stuff during, during the Russian invasion, maybe that's what he's thinking of, but I don't know.
Then the other great myth, and you and I actually had some exchange by email today about this, is that, is that we pulled out of, you know, we irresponsibly turned our backs on Afghanistan when the Russians pulled out.
McCain is saying this now on the floor of the Senate, and he was lecturing Joe Manchin of West Virginia yesterday saying, perhaps he doesn't know that we pulled out of Afghanistan once before.
And what happened?
The Taliban came and then Al Qaeda came, and before you know it, we got attacked.
Well, you know, that is, that is so full of it from, you know, every point of view, every level.
First of all, we never, we never did, uh, get out.
We kept aiding the Mujahideen, even when there were offers by the Russians to have every, all those parties sit down and kind of come to some accommodation.
We discouraged that.
We opposed it and kept sending aid and guns, I imagine, to the Mujahideen for for years, for at least three more years after the Russians were gone.
So we didn't turn our back on Afghanistan, unfortunately.
We didn't turn our back out on Afghanistan.
The other thing is, even if that, even if the first part of that narrative is true, that's not the reason we got attacked on 9-11.
I mean, that, again, that's dropping the whole imperial context.
I mean, we were meddling all over the place for years and years and years.
Well, and they had agreement from Clinton to, uh, with the Pakistanis to put the Taliban in, too, in the first place.
So, yeah, you're right.
On every level, it ain't right.
No, that, that's one of the big myths, is like, you know, the surge works.
It's one of the big lies that doesn't have a shred of truth in it, but they'll just say it over and over again, and you'll never see it questioned on MSNBC or any, any, you know, you won't see it on Fox or MSNBC.
Everybody's invested in this.
You have to really go searching on the, uh, the alternative media, listening to your program, because you have guests on who have challenged this, but you have to go find that, because it's not prominently, uh, you know, talked about in any of the, uh, you know, general media outlets.
Well, and as, uh, Michael Shore talked about in his article on antiwar.com that you sent me about Obama's, uh, Afghan ignorant policy guide, uh, he points out they backed only the commies, and KGB guys like Massoud, they refused to back anyone who were their friends during the 80s, in the 1990s, too.
Uh, but anyway, that's just one more wrinkle to it.
We'll be right back, everybody, with Sheldon Richman on Antiwar Radio.
All right, y'all, welcome back.
It's Antiwar Radio.
I'm Scott Horton, and I'm talking with Sheldon Richman, editor of the Freeman from the Foundation for Economic Education, and, uh, also the Future Freedom Foundation, fff.org.
We're talking about bogus withdrawals from bogus American wars.
Uh, first, we just handled Afghanistan, the long war, and, uh, now to Iraq.
You've got this great piece, uh, Sheldon, the media distract the public from war about the, uh, ridiculous scandals, um, that, uh, TV news wants us to pay attention to, while all these other important things are going on, and you focus specifically on, uh, assertions by, uh, high-level players in the American government that they're going to do everything they can to stay in Iraq.
Well, that's right, uh, you know, what, uh, what caused me to write this article, it prompted it, was all of the attention on television, especially cable, cable news, on the, on the Anthony Weiner case, and, uh, you know, I thought that was somewhat newsworthy, but, but, you know, it was overshadowing the continuing war in Iraq, which, of course, was declared over last year, and isn't over around that, around the same time as the, as the, the week of, the week of Weiner, uh, five, uh, American, uh, U.S., uh, uh, soldiers were killed in, uh, in Iraq.
That sounds like war to me, even they were attacked in what, East Baghdad, I think, uh, so, uh, it sounded like there was a war going on.
Meanwhile, and, of course, under the agreement that Bush signed with the Iraqi government, uh, the troops are supposed to come out at the, uh, at the end of this year, but, uh, when Leon Panetta was being, uh, uh, having hearings on his, uh, nomination to be Secretary of Defense, which, of course, he, uh, is now, uh, he said it was very likely that, uh, that, that the Iraqi government was going to ask that we leave some troops there, an unspecified number of troops, and, um, it seems to me that that should have gotten a heck of a lot more attention than Anthony Weiner.
I thought it was all coming.
I thought all those troops were coming out.
There's an agreement that says they'll come out.
Uh, I wonder why the government of, uh, Nouri al-Maliki would be asking for troops to remain.
It seems to me that would, I mean, there's a hundred questions there, which you've explored.
I mean, you've had Patrick O'Byrne on and other experts on that area, uh, discussing this stuff, but, uh, it's, you know, it's not important enough for television news.
People, uh, companies that pride themselves as being crack news operations, they'd rather talk about, you know, Weiner, uh, sending pictures of himself over the internet to, to, to women.
So, uh, it's insulting.
There's a, there's a war going on, and it didn't end in 2010, and, uh, they should be telling us about it.
All right, yeah, so, uh, you know, it's amazing.
It really is.
Uh, I'm not sure for all the exploration of it exactly what the thinking is.
I mean, I know they figure that they stole it fair and square, and they mean to keep it, Sheldon, but, you know, and hey, I guess I don't really know how to judge whether Muqtada al-Assad or the, uh, Shiite cleric there.
Oh, he's just some minor cleric.
Don't worry about him.
The, uh, daughter of a Republican donor in charge told, uh, Paul Bremer back in 2003.
Uh, I don't know whether, uh, whether, you know, he's really willing to start the war all over again to, uh, to force this deadline or what.
I mean, legally, they don't have a UN resolution authorizing the thing.
I mean, I don't, I know the law doesn't mean anything, but that's why Bush had to sign the Status of Forces Agreement.
He thought, anyway, was that at the end of 2008, the UN resolution was going to expire, and he had to have an agreement with the Iraqi government to stay there.
That's why they're trying so hard to get Maliki to, quote-unquote, invite us.
Certainly, they've written up the confession.
They just want him to sign it.
But, uh, you know, whether he needs us more or whether he needs, uh, Muqtada al-Assad or more, I thought was already determined.
And so, uh, you know, I don't know if the guys in the Pentagon think Sauder's bluffing or whether they want to start the war all over again.
Why not?
Or what's going on there?
Well, and I can't make that call either.
I mean, I am happy to defer to people like Leon, uh, to, to, uh, uh, Patrick Coburn and the others who actually spend time there and know people.
Uh, and that's why I look to your program to get the better information than I can certainly get.
I will note, and it's in the article, that Gates himself, Defense Secretary, outgoing, well, he's now gone, I guess, Defense Secretary Gates, uh, I quote him in that article, and this was in the newspapers.
I mean, I don't have any, uh, you know, private, uh, channel.
He said, uh, we're not very popular there, meaning the U.S. government.
So he, he wasn't, he, he didn't seem, uh, to think, uh, Maliki was going to ask that the troops remain.
And, and he wasn't so sure it was a great idea even if Maliki asked him.
Now, maybe he wants the, he wants troops to remain there, but he was willing to say pretty frank, pretty frankly, I thought, whether we like it or not, we're not very popular there.
I thought that was a pretty big concession on the Gates's part.
Yeah.
Well, yeah, indeed.
He kind of thought, uh, I guess the last week in power, he'd say a couple of things like, uh, how does NATO expect to wage war all over the world if we got to pay for every bit of it?
It was kind of a specific complaint from a U.S. Defense Secretary, but there's meaning there.
Yeah, absolutely.
So, you know, I don't know what's going to happen.
I mean, there is this agreement that we're supposed to be out now.
We're not, no, we're not counting, of course, Hillary's, uh, private mercenary army.
Uh, so that's, uh, when we say out, we don't mean, we don't mean that because after all that Vatican-sized embassy has to be guarded, doesn't it?
So, uh, the former Blackwater, the company formerly known as Blackwater, uh, can, uh, you know, we'll be doing all right because they'll have, uh, private troops for Hillary to, uh, take care of things with.
Yeah, that's going to be problematic.
I can see a Saigon, uh, you know, uh, embassy roof, uh, helicopter narrow escape type ending going on right there with just mercs that, you know, what are they going to do?
They're going to turn around and run if they get shot at.
They already got their money.
Right.
Another possible strategy is for Obama to say there's no hostilities in Iraq.
They're not hostilities.
Therefore, we can leave the troops because, uh, when, when we wrote, when we signed the status of forces agreement, we were presuming hostilities.
Now there are no hostilities and therefore the agreement doesn't apply.
I got, you know, this precedent, which runs counter to their argument that, oh, we might have to stay because five guys got killed.
Well, yeah, that's right.
That's right.
And then that, that argument was made.
I mean, that's what the Panetta was saying.
Panetta was saying that maybe this means, uh, uh, that the things are too dangerous.
But of course, you know, you had Patrick Coburn on last week and he said, uh, he had the opposite interpretation.
No, maybe, maybe they were killed because there's suspicion that the U S is going to stay.
And that might be a good reason to get them out.
And that way troops won't be killed.
But, you know, well, that's certainly what the people are rallying about.
And, you know, something that maybe this should just, you know, remain unmentioned cause why bother?
But then again, I kind of like it is that Barack Obama is a dirty stinking liar, man.
He said that all of the soldiers would be out within 16 months.
Then we can take that to the bank.
I don't know if he meant, you know, Lehman brothers or what?
Well, or the, or the federal reserve.
Yeah.
So, uh, you look, I look, I'll be honest.
I don't support the troops.
And you can, you can tell that by the fact that I want to follow policies that would remove them from harm's way.
Yeah.
That's how you know, that's how, you know, I don't support the troops.
Why do you hate America so much?
Take them out of harm's way is apparently not supporting the troops.
Yeah.
Everybody knows that the support, the troops means you let a bunch of politicians send them to a desert to die so that McTotter can be the Ayatollah of Iraq.
Besides, I mean, we need troops for Libya, so we got to take them out of somewhere, don't we?
Yeah, that's true.
Uh, they'll have five whole thousand coming out of Afghanistan.
Uh, that's pretty good.
And, you know, I don't know how many Marines it really takes to sack Tripoli, but I guess we're going to find out, aren't we?
Well, maybe, you know, I think the resolution that's in the works that what McCain and Curry and those guys are working on would say no ground troops, but, you know, there's always ways of construing those provisions as we know.
So I wouldn't put a whole lot of faith in whatever Curry and McCain come up with.
I'm glad Curry has remained such a pro-peace advocate, too.
Yeah.
Well, I like these two presidential losers are behind this and the Senate makes it extra funny, but and I haven't seen the language of the thing, but I know the UN resolution said no occupation forces, which sounds to me like Bill Clinton wrote that thing.
Man, we can have any kind of force in the world as long as we don't call it an occupation force.
In fact, Ike and Barry just dressed down Karzai for calling the force in Afghanistan an occupation force the other day.
Everybody knows it's not.
I was just going to point that out.
I think what they're saying about Karzai and to Karzai is absolutely hilarious.
Uh, you know, they can't make up their mind.
Are we there?
Are we in it?
Getting back to Afghanistan for a second.
And it comes out when they dress him down, when they just Karzai is down.
Are we there for our benefit, which is what they say?
Sometimes Monday, Wednesdays and Fridays, but Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays were there for the Afghan people.
Afghan people's benefit.
The kids, those little girls gotta go to school somewhere, man.
Yeah, but I wish they'd get the story straight.
Because when, when, when Karzai gets mad about the civilians getting bombed, you imagine him getting touchy about that and then calling the forces occupation forces, we then say, oh, yeah, well, we've been doing you this big favor all this time.
That's a nice thing to say.
On the other hand, if we say, if we, you and I say, let's get the troops out, we're told this is in the, we're there in our national security.
Don't you care about American national security?
Well, which is it?
Whose benefit is it?
Is it, you know, that, that's a sign of a liar when, you know, they're all alternate days are saying you have different stories justifying their actions.
Yeah, absolutely.
Well, and you know, that's the thing about all these.
I mean, I guess Iraq there's, if, if anybody wanted, there's light at the end of that tunnel to get out, but the rest of these just seem like, you know, short of Ron Paul, we're going to be in North Africa and Central Asia for decades and decades.
Remember the paradigm.
I mean, don't, we can't let these little, these details overshadow the bigger picture.
Yeah.
All right, everybody.
That's the great Sheldon Richman on the American empire at war forever.
Find him at FFF.org.
Thanks, Sheldon.
Thank you.
See y'all tomorrow.