09/16/11 – James Bovard – The Scott Horton Show

All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
It's anti-war radio.
I'm Scott Horton.
And first up on the show today is Jim Bovard.
He's the author of, well, probably the majority of books that have ever been published, uh, something like that.
Uh, feeling your pain, the explosion and abuse of government power in the Clinton Gore years, freedom in chains, the rise of the state and demise of the citizen, the farm fiasco shakedown, how government screws you from a to Z lost rights, the destruction of American liberty, the fair trade fraud, and then most importantly, terrorism and tyranny trampling, freedom, justice, and peace to rid the world of evil, the Bush betrayal.
And the greatest book ever written, at least about, you know, current public affairs, attention deficit democracy.
If you have not read attention deficit democracy, run right out to your local library or bookstore and get your grubby little hands on that one.
Uh, Jim is also a fellow at the future of freedom foundation where he writes.
The website is FFF.org.
Welcome back to the show, Jim.
How are you doing?
Hey, Scott.
Thanks for having me on.
Thanks for your kind words.
My goodness.
That's very generous.
Well, your books are awesome.
And especially the last one.
And I really mean that it's the kind of book where as I'm reading it, I'm going, man, this is, I wish everybody would read this.
If they knew this, then things might be different, you know?
Well, uh, that's well, thanks.
Yeah.
I mean, um, that's, that's the hope authors often have when they're writing this, they, well, you know, this will wake folks up and then it's onto the next beer.
Yeah.
Well, and so it goes, but then again, you know, ideas do have consequences.
So it's not all for nothing.
Yeah.
You know, I've been hearing that for about, uh, quite a few years and I, and, uh, some ideas do have, uh, uh, consequence like George Bush promising to rid the world of evil that had consequences, uh, hope and reform by president Obama that's having consequences.
Um, let me think.
I'm looking for a third one.
Uh, peace through strength.
No, that didn't work.
Okay.
Well, anyhow, I'll, I'll draw the curtain of mercy on that riff.
All right.
Well, look, uh, everybody, the new piece is in the viewpoint section today at antiwar.com.
It's running at FFF.org America's sham war on terrorism.
And, um, when you start here with the different definitions of terrorism, how different are they?
The, the, you name, uh, three different, uh, departments of the government and they have their own like explicit separate definition from each other.
Uh, each of them do the defense FBI and state department.
And it's funny how it kind of, uh, it basically means that they probably have different enemies list.
And, and it's also possible that antiwar.com is not yet on all those lists.
So you guys have got something to work for.
Yeah.
Well, we're on at least one of them.
It seems like, well, uh, that's true.
Was that the one time I pissed off the defense department?
They thought I was the other Scott Horton.
So, well, you know, what the heck, you know, I mean, it's, it's too bad.
You're on another three or four Scott Horton's out there raising hell.
Yeah, actually, you know what?
There's like a, uh, I guess, leading champion loot player.
And there's a wheelchair skater.
A guy rides pools in his wheelchair, paraplegic.
There's a professional BMX biker and, uh, all kinds of great Scott Horton's across the society.
Well, you know, it's just, uh, there's two or three jokes that come to mind, but, but I think I'd better keep this family friendly.
Yeah.
Well, okay.
You should, uh, if it was just chaos, it'd be fine, but that's true.
That's true.
Damn it.
Well, I, well, I'll save that for a post show email.
All right.
Well, so now, uh, the state department, you say here defines terrorism as the use or threat of the use of force for political purposes.
Oh, but in violation of domestic or international law.
So does that, but that would still include everything that the U S government does, doesn't it?
Well, no, uh, the, the whole problem, the definition of terrorism is that it almost always exempt government action.
So it doesn't matter.
Um, doesn't matter what a government does.
It's not a terrorist entity by definition.
Every now and then the U S government makes, makes exception.
If there is a foreign government, it really dislikes, but by and large, it's almost as if there's a, a club, a club of government and governments have the right to terrorize people and not be terrorist, uh, this is a paradox that goes a long ways back to the definition of terrorism.
Even in the 1930s, it's something that the, the definition of league of nations was using.
Again, it was focusing on private action.
And this was at a time when Mussolini and Hitler were rising and abusing their power is stolen even worse.
Uh, so, um, it seems as if that the, uh, that the whole purpose of a definition of terrorism is to sanctify government action and also to absolve governments.
And as long as the government is doing something, which is anti-terrorist, then there was supposedly a halo over the entire activity.
And, and we're not supposed to ask too many questions because it's by definition, the triumph of good over evil.
Right?
Well, and the thing is too, is it doesn't matter whether it's been 10 years of the so-called good acting as evil as they possibly could in front of everybody in broad daylight.
And yet somehow they still are on the side of the angels every single time.
No matter what, you know, I went to, uh, to, uh, New York to give a speech over the last weekend and, uh, flew in from JFK.
I was the only person who chose the pat down over the X-ray porno scanner.
Well, out of, you know, I don't know, at least hundreds and hundreds of people within my line of sight going through security at JFK on the way back.
And then also when I was in the little trolley thing from the airport to my truck in the parking lot, uh, one of the guys was talking about how wonderful it is that they had a 10 million percent increase in calls on the, if you see something, say something line in New York where people were calling to report every box on the side of the road.
Uh, every mysterious car in the neighborhood, which, you know, I don't know exactly how that works in New York city, but anyway, uh, and, uh, you know, people are still think that they're safer bringing the cops nearer to them deliberately.
Well, yeah.
I mean, uh, the thing that would be great if we could have access to confidential files is to know how many people in New York called, called the cops about you.
Yeah.
Or on their next door neighbor that they have a grievance against that has nothing to do with terrorism or anything else.
Well, it's hard to imagine people in New York doing that.
No, no, definitely not.
Uh, but you know, it's interesting on this stuff on these definitions of terror, that's something which really caught my curiosity right after nine 11.
So I started doing some reading on that and, um, there were a number of leftists who had written excellent books in the eighties and nineties on this and, uh, you know, basically laid it out for anybody to see.
And yet they'd, they'd gotten almost zero attention on that.
Um, and unfortunately last 10 years, there's still very few people asking questions about the fundamental definition, which is driving our, uh, global war on terrorism, uh, which is, I mean, the whole concept of just to see how that, you know, this is, uh, this is a recipe for endless war because the U S government can always find new enemies.
And all it needs to do to create new terrorists is to, uh, have an intervention in some country where all of a sudden, uh, people, uh, get angry and start shooting.
And, uh, then as long as they aren't wearing government uniforms, then they're terrorists.
Uh, this is something which resonates with me because I was raised in the Shenandoah Valley in an area that was famous for the, um, fighters of John S Mosby during the civil war.
And, uh, in the fall of 1864, in the last full year of the war, the Yankees decided to burn down the entire Valley to destroy all the crops, the barn.
They also burnt down a lot of houses.
And the whole purpose was to practically star people in the submission, which to a certain degree worked, uh, and John S Mosby's, uh, uh, fighters fought against that and shot a number of the Yankees were burning down barns and things like that.
And then what happened was, uh, a Custer and general Sheridan, uh, decided and grant decided that all of Mosby's fighters were, uh, were, um, uh, basically fit to be hanged and they, and they captured five or six of them and they hang them in my hometown.
And it was one of the most, um, telling examples, uh, events of the civil war.
And it always fascinated me that it was possible to say that, that those soldiers were the war criminals, not the people burning down the barns and the crop.
Yeah.
And they didn't raise you to believe it was a good thing that those men were hanged.
Um, that's how I learned in high school.
When I was a kid, we all celebrated that Texas got beat down in the civil war and the schools I went to.
Anyway, hold it right there, Jim.
We'll be right back after this, everybody.
Jim Bovard, FFF.org, jimbovard.com.
All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
It's anti-war radio.
I'm Scott Horton.
I'm online with my friend, Jim Bovard.
He's a fellow at the future freedom foundation, FFF.org, where he's got a new piece called America's sham war on terrorism.
And in case you missed me plugging it earlier, uh, you really need to know that there is such a thing as Jim Bovard's book, attention deficit democracy.
I beg you, I'd be seat you.
And you know what?
I never do the call to action thing, telling you people what to do on the show.
It's not my style.
Read this book.
I mean it.
It's very important and good.
All right.
Now we're talking about terrorism and what it all means.
And, uh, uh, before the break, Jim was talking about how, you know, anybody who resisted, uh, the Yankees reign of terror in the Shenandoah Valley back in the civil war was considered a terrorist and whatever, how in his very town, the heroes were, you know, these martyrs who basically were hanged for defending the town.
And now somehow, uh, America, instead of being on the side of the rebels protecting their own land from Imperial invading armies, we're the Imperial invading armies.
We've internalized this way of life.
Basically, this is who we are and what we do.
And you know, uh, Jim, I'm sure you saw this probably a year or so ago, uh, where Bill Clinton, uh, nailed as, uh, uh, Chris Floyd's called it nails the truth about terrorism.
When he explained to foreign policy that quote, terror means killing and robbery and coercion by people who do not have state authority.
Yeah.
I mean, this is the, uh, this is an anti-war did a very nice job of highlighting that story in a quote a year ago.
And it's fascinating.
I made a bumper sticker out of it.
It's so good.
Oh, really?
Well, see, there you go.
Uh, going back to Bill Clinton, it's, it's fascinating that, that, uh, that was such a lucid statement and yet aside from anti-war and a few other places, it got no attention.
Again, it's things like this make it obvious that, uh, that the war on terrorism, uh, is simply, is a fraud at several different levels.
There was a wonderful, um, quote that George W Bush had about a month after nine 11, which he said that as long as anybody's attacking established government, there needs to be a war on terror.
That's the gist of it.
I might have a word or two wrong.
Right.
So anybody trying to overthrow Robert Mugabe is a terrorist too, then?
Well, that's the thing that's, uh, you know, most of the government in this world deserve to be overthrown.
How about the, uh, junta over there in Burma?
Um, yeah, I, it just, I mean, it is a club of governments and, uh, governments claim, uh, governments claim a right to treat people in ways that would be a criminal if people treated government that way.
Well, you know, back to the whole thing, uh, what you explained earlier about how, you know, we get to start each and every one of these conflicts, everywhere we go, anyone who resists us becomes a terrorist and a self justifying, uh, reason for being there kind of after the fact and all that.
Um, and it reminded me of, uh, especially I think in the first year and two years of the Iraq war, um, the, the officers clearly instructed the enlisted men that you are here because of September 11th and that this land Iraq is full of terrorists.
It was sort of, um, kind of a leftover, like wildly kind of extrapolated thread from Osama is friends with Saddam or Saddam is friends with Osama.
And then, so, uh, I remember there are just so many reports of soldiers saying that, well, you know, they're terrorists everywhere.
So we got to be on the lookout, whatever.
They're basically treating every Iraqi as a terrorist in the first place.
And then as soon as there are a few attacks, they clamped down like crazy because in their imagination, they're surrounded on all sides by, I don't know, millions and millions of Al Qaeda guys in Iraq.
And it wasn't really until 2005 or so, if I remember it right, that they sort of finally said, okay, well, they're insurgents.
They're rebels against our government that we're installing there, at least admit that much.
And of course, you know, they emphasize Zarqawi as much as they possibly could.
But, um, there were severe consequences for the civilians of Iraq.
I guess is the point I'm trying to get to that the average infantry man or infantry kid, you know, compared to me now, I guess is the way I think of it was made to believe that this is a land of terrorists and terrorism and that anyone who resists as part of this, you know, jihadi front to conquer America and all that.
And wasn't there a poll that showed that sometime a year or two or three after the invasion, something like 85% of the U.S. soldiers thought it was a vengeance that the U.S. was going there partly out of the vengeance for 9-11.
Yep.
Um, yeah, it was at the end of 05 because it was the same poll that said they all thought we should leave in a year within a year anyway.
There you go.
Yeah.
That's, you know, something which fascinated me when I was doing some reading on the history of terrorism was to see how much that the U.S. escalation in Vietnam in the early, mid 1960s was justified to respond to the terrorist threat from the Viet Cong.
And, uh, the, uh, South Vietnamese government was quite corrupt at that point.
Uh, it was doing a lot of things that people obviously, you know, did not want to support the Vietnamese people.
And yet, uh, it was very easy for the U.S. and, uh, just, uh, put on that terrorist label on almost anybody who was, uh, fighting the, uh, fighting either the, either the U.S. troops or the South Vietnamese troops or government.
And that was, uh, you know, that did so much to morally cloud the U.S. perspective on Vietnam.
I would have thought just calling them commies was enough, but they called them terrorists.
Terrorists.
Yep.
And it was, uh, Ellsberg talks about that briefly, I think in his book, his memoir, Secrets, uh, but it's something which is, it was a common thread and, um, all sorts of tactics that were justified to Vietnam as a way of anti-terrorism or counter-terrorism.
Wow.
That's really interesting.
I did not know that about the Vietnam war.
Now you mentioned the corruption of the South Vietnamese government, and then that reminded me of Washington, DC.
Uh, this is part of the terror war sham is that, uh, you know, I don't know, you, you, uh, spin your own proportional, uh, kind of explanation of how much this thing has grown in the last 10 years, or, you know, you explain it, how you see it.
But from where I'm sitting, it seems like this is, uh, you know, free fall off the edge of the cliff.
Now that so much, uh, has been built up in the homeland security industrial complex and built up even more in the military industrial complex than it was before September 11th.
That at this point, just forget about a Republican form of government.
It cannot be achieved, even though they still let us have house elections every two years and whatever that it's we're just beyond.
Any hope of, you know, winning back our constitution by way of the ballot box at this point, the whole thing is way too far gone.
Yeah.
I, um, I'm, I'm not quite that pessimistic.
Um, I think it's possible that there could be some candidate who could wake some folks up.
And if there's a cadre of 15 or 20% of the people who understand what's going on and what's at stake, uh, that could have a huge political impact.
So it certainly could not roll back big government overnight, but it could put a den in the onslaught.
Maybe, maybe that would buy some time for more people to learn or for more young people who might put a higher value on freedom than a lot of middle age geezers, um, pre geezers.
Um, that might change.
I don't know.
I mean, uh, I don't want to discourage anybody from trying.
I wouldn't say that, you know?
Yeah.
But, uh, but I mean, certainly, um, it's funny that people have labeled me a cynical for decades, but, uh, in the years after nine 11, the times I was most wrong in my judgment.
And what I expected was when I was, uh, put, uh, high hopes and that people would finally wake up and there'd be a backlash, uh, back in May of 2004, when the torture photos and the torture memos came out, I said, okay, now the Bush team has gone too far.
I was wrong.
I was dead wrong on that.
I was on the same with the warrantless wiretapping that came out in late 2005.
I said, boy, this is going to cause a backlash.
You know, five weeks later, Bush was bragging about the, uh, the, the illegal wiretapping in the state union address, and he got a standing ovation from most of the, uh, JLP.
Well, and that's, it's part of the same effect, right?
Is that the more corrupt it gets and the more of these special interests, these criminal imperialist interests control Washington, DC, the more the average Joe who's got a job and a wife and a kid and, and all these things he's got to take care of anyway, decides like, why would he even pay attention to the news at all?
What's going on in the world at all?
He can't do anything about it and he knows it.
So he just doesn't even try.
Yeah.
There's a vicious circle at work here and there's so much, uh, that the government's on so much fear mongering and it's worked, there was a poll that showed that in the, uh, three years after nine 11, that every time the government issued a terror warning, Bush's approval rating rose 3%.
Right.
It was amazing how they got away with that.
And they, that's how they got away with Abu Ghraib too, by the way, you go back to 2004 and look at all the, uh, terror alerts and, and, uh, I think one of those bogus terrorism cases was announced right then and there.
All right.
We're out of time.
Thanks very much for yours.
Jim Bovard, everybody.
FFF.org Jim Bovard.com.
Hey, thanks, Scott.