All right, y'all, welcome back.
It's anti-war radio.
I'm Scott Horton and our next guest today is Dr.
Brian Phillips.
He's a history, philosophy, and rhetoric teacher and a pastor as well in Concord, North Carolina.
His website is truthandcultureattruthandculture.wordpress.com.
And we've been running some essays here at antiwar.com lately, about a half dozen or more now, at least, uh, the latest it's our spotlight today.
On antiwar.com Saturday night frights.
You must have tuned into the same Republican debate as me.
Hey, yes, I did.
Yes.
Welcome back to the show.
How are you doing, Brian?
Thank you.
Doing very well.
Thank you for having me.
So that was really a heck of a thing.
And I'm trying to remember back to how angry and shocked and dismayed and spun about I was after the debates back in 2007 and eight and how horrible they were.
There was a extra little something about this thing that took place on Saturday night, if I don't have the right vocabulary for it or something, maybe I need to know German to say it or something, but, uh, it was so, it was.
You know, as, as blatant as before, but it seemed like maybe it w maybe it was just that it was so dumbed down.
Like hearing Cain say I'm totally against torture, except if the military wants to torture somebody, that's fine.
And Oh, by the way, waterboarding is fine too, because what I mean, just, it seems so dumb at the same time that it was so bloodthirsty and reckless, you know what I mean?
It was different in that way, a little kind of McCain was smart, but I don't know if you know what I mean.
Yeah.
Well, you know, Herman Cain, um, he's kind of continued his, his tradition now of, uh, contradicting himself.
Um, he's gotten a little quicker about it now.
It used to be that it would take him a few hours or maybe even a few days.
Um, but in, in that debate, yeah.
Uh, particularly the waterboarding question, he said, you know, I would leave it up to our military commanders to determine what is torture and what's not and, and what methods could be used and which ones couldn't.
And then he, he turned around and just a few moments later says, Oh, you know, but waterboarding is not torture.
Uh, it's an enhanced interrogation technique, which really goes back to, you remember the, um, the last time I was on with you, I talked about this problem.
Uh, redefining things so that we're more comfortable with it.
You know how we use the term insurgent and terrorist to make us feel better about the 11th edition of the new speak dictionary.
It's got fewer words than ever before.
Yeah.
Yeah.
We're really perfecting this whole Orwell new speak here.
Um, but yeah, that, uh, there were several things in the debate Saturday night that were just really, really, um, disturbing.
And of course the waterboarding question was one of them.
Um, and what was, what was strange to me was not just Herman Cain's, uh, very quick flip flop on that because frankly, you know, he, he does that.
And, um, if, if you're not familiar with how he has just changed his mind on issue after issue after issue, then you really just haven't been keeping up, um, with, with the whole, um, presidential race, but, uh, Rick Perry, you know, was another one who, um, and I was very proud of Ron Paul, you know, I'm a big supporter of his, he, uh, spoke out about this very quickly, um, and said, you know, waterboarding torture of any kind is it's illegal.
It's immoral.
It's a violation of our laws.
It's a violation of international law.
Um, and then Rick Perry chimes in and talking about the dumbing down of this whole discussion, this whole debate, Rick Perry chimes in and says, well, this is war that these things happen in war.
And then of course he goes on to call it just a technique, but we have laws that govern war.
We have laws that govern what you can do in war.
And they, they act as if, um, you know, if you, if you really get mad enough, if you really get a bloodthirsty enough, if you really want to go after somebody, then, then laws don't apply.
Um, and it was, um, yeah, I agree.
I mean, it was, it was really, um, a dumped down kind of debate.
Um, there was a, you know, at one point where, um, uh, I don't know if I'm jumping ahead of where you want the discussion to go here, but, um, coming back to the drone attacks and the, the assassination of American citizens with, without trial, without charge, without, uh, without even attempt to arrest them going back to Anwar al-Awlaki and his son and Samir Khan.
Um, and, and, and Gingrich, um, new Gingrich replied, you know, jumped in saying that, well, they, they're not subject to the rule of law because they've declared war against our country.
And he couldn't be more wrong.
I mean, it was just a blatant lie.
And it's either at, at best, new Gingrich is ignorant of the constitution, just like president Obama on this matter.
Yeah.
Which isn't true.
Cause I've seen those old PBS round table things they used to do in the eighties where they have all the lawyers and generals and politicians debating ethics and whatever.
He knows what the constitution says about treason.
It's the only crime defined in the constitution and new Gingrich might be ignorant in some ways, but he's not that ignorant.
Well, yeah.
I mean, it's either, you know, even, even if you give him the benefit of the doubt and, and I'm, I'm with you on that one, but even if you were to give him the benefit of the doubt, all it gets him is ignorant, you know, ignorant of the constitution and you want to be president.
And Bachman comes out, you know, arguing with Paul saying, basically arguing, I guess that Osama bin Laden was an American citizen when the question was about the assassination of American citizens.
And, uh, she says, well, if you don't want to kill Anwar al-Awlaki's kid, then you don't want to kill Osama bin Laden.
That was her rationale.
Again, these people could be maybe teaching gym in sixth grade or something like that, but, but being the leaders of the country is amazing.
The most powerful country ever.
It's like, really?
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, it's, it's clearly stated in the constitution, you know, the, the crime of treason is there.
There's the treason clause in article three, section three of the constitution.
You know, there, it, it specifies what is considered treason.
It specifies that it has to be a charge that is made and that a person has to be convicted.
Um, and, and there have to be multiple witnesses that will testify to that, to their treason, uh, or they have to confess in open court.
And so, um, it's, it's really frightening to me to find that, you know, and I'm, I'm just as, just as irate about president Obama doing this.
Uh, but then to find that, um, what, you know, seven out of the eight that, that I know of anyway, uh, everyone except for Ron Paul on this matter has, um, has really signed off on it.
Yeah.
A president can kill an American citizen without a charge or without a trial.
They didn't even, you know, not even attempt to arrest the guy.
Um, even though they knew his exact location.
Um, and so that, you know, that was a, that was a frightening part of the debate too.
To hear that, uh, you know, basically on this matter, and I would, I would probably go further than this.
And in, in a lot of ways, we've got one political party now.
Yeah, it does seem like that.
I can't wait till, uh, the debates with Obama, you know, without a primary challenger, he gets to just kind of sit this out, but I think it would just be amazing to see, uh, Romney and Obama running against each other talking about, well, I agree completely with Mr.
Obama about that.
Well, I agree completely with Mr.
Romney about that and just have a great old debate.
Maybe they could run together, you know, they won't even need to rig the voting machines or anything, you know, yeah.
Well, black people for trying to show up at the polls.
Right, right.
Well, I think that, um, I hope you're wrong about Romney and Obama.
I'm still, I'm still holding out hope, um, that we get Ron Paul on the ticket there, but, um, uh, or at least have the chance to write him in.
But, you know, I, I think that, uh, what they would do in a debate like that, if it was somebody like Romney, you know, you've got this establishment Republican.
Um, um, if you have someone like him running against Obama, then they just find the stupid things to disagree on.
You know, the few things that really come down to semantics, you know, uh, I don't know what would they do to, um, you know, whether or not we need a fence and whether or not that fence should be electric.
Um, I can't, I can't really, uh, I don't really know what they would disagree about, but they'd find some small thing to make it look like the American people are actually being, being given a choice between two very different candidates.
Yeah.
When in reality, Obama is soft on the Central African Republic.
He's only sent a hundred JSOC guys there and it should have been 10,000.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's, um, that's true.
I mean, uh, Obama, in my opinion, has, has kind of shown, um, George W.
Bush to be a bit of a pacifist, um, with, with the number of, of, uh, countries he has us involved in now.
And the only difference I found in Saturday's debate was that a lot of the GOP candidates made it clear that they would have us at war with a lot more countries, you know?
Yeah.
Well, even more than that, and perhaps even including Russia, China, Pakistan, your, your neighborhood.
And by the way, this is the best work that, uh, Andrew Sullivan has ever done his life by far.
It's at the Atlantic.com.
Verschaft.
Vernhamung.
That's a German for what the Gestapo called enhanced interrogation.
We'll be right back after this.
Y'all.
All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
It's anti-war radio.
I'm Scott Horton.
I'm talking with Dr.
Brian Phillips.
He's a history teacher and a new writer for antiwar.com.
Pretty new.
And we're talking about the debate, the foreign policy debate between the Republicans, uh, on Saturday night.
Boy, it was a funny thing to watch in a couple of different ways.
I think my favorite moment, Brian was when, uh, and you know, the moderator was just messing with him, which is fine with me because I thought it was, you know, it came out pretty funny.
He said, so, uh, Rick Perry, tell us what is going on inside Pakistan that makes it so complicated and difficult to manage over there.
And everybody said later, yeah, Rick Perry didn't have any dumb moments at all.
He did great for change and all this stuff.
As I said, that was a cover of the newspaper in Austin and Rick Perry does better this time.
Really?
Because his answer to what's going on inside Pakistan was, let me not answer that at all, but instead say we ought to just be against foreign aid, blah, blah, blah.
Yeah.
Right.
Like a Perry presidency would see an end to foreign aid in any way whatsoever.
He's just got a talking point.
And is this the, between the lines obviously was he doesn't know the first thing about who to kill or who not to kill in Pakistan, not the first thing.
Isn't that amazing that, you know, the average guy who just sits in his cubicle and listens to this show every once in a while knows so much more quantitatively and qualitatively than the people who are running for president.
It's crazy.
It's just because I have Gareth Porter on stuff like that, you know?
Well, yeah.
And then, um, of course it, I mean, Rick Perry's, um, he, I guess he set the bar so low for himself that as long as he can actually say words in response to a question, it's better to step up.
They are calling them dumber than Palin and horrible things like that.
Oh yeah.
I mean, that's wow.
That is, that is bad.
Um, but now, um, you know, what, what scared me though, in relation to Pakistan though, was, um, or, or not really scared me, but the, the weirdest thing was Santorum's comment about Pakistan when, when he pointed out, you know, that, uh, people were talking about, uh, you know, and, and this was one of the things that, that we have to keep in mind with our foreign policy is that whenever we are, whenever we have gone to war against an idea, or we've gone to war against, as they said in, in the debate against the tactic, I think Ron Paul used that, that term, and it's a good way to put it.
The wars don't end.
And what we found is, you know, you go into Afghanistan and you go, oh, well, we didn't find bin Laden there, but let's go ahead and build this nation the way that we want.
And no one talks about the contradiction that, you know, Bush said that they attacked us because they hate freedom.
You know, we're the brightest beacon of freedom in the world.
And, and so we imply that this, um, that they don't want freedom.
So we go and we nation build to cram freedom down their throats, apparently.
Um, or, you know, we indulge in that kind of contradiction.
And then we find that bin Laden's escaped over to Pakistan.
So then we, we go into Pakistan and then we're upset with them going, oh, well, you must've helped him.
So now, you know, they got the ball rolling in this debate about, well, what do we do about Pakistan?
And there was a lot of real big talk there for a while.
And then Sandorum steps in and says, no, Pakistan must be our friend.
Didn't, didn't you find that creepy?
Pakistan must be our friend like this, you know, like a very strange, uh, deranged kind of schoolyard bully.
Yeah.
I mean, well, and this is how ridiculous the whole thing was.
Yeah.
I mean, uh, Bachman came out and said, look, you know, they have nukes and we have to treat this as a very delicate thing where the rest of the guys were just saying, Hey, we ought to just tell them friend or foe, pal, what you're going to do and all this.
And, and Gingrich came out and accused the entire Pakistani state of hiding Osama bin Laden, which is obviously the worst lie in the whole world when their entire military works for our CIA.
And now maybe someone in their ISI was hiding them, but there's no proof of either hiding in plain sight worked for Muhammad Attah.
So, uh, anyway, um, well, and that, that connects back to the whole discussion of Iran too, because they never asked the question, you know, um, well, I mean, there's, there's been no proof really offered that Iran is actually producing a nuclear warhead.
Nope.
There's, there's the supposition that they are because we don't like Iran, but no one has, has asked, or no one seems to put together that, okay, Pakistan has a nuclear weapon.
So now we have to be friendly with them.
You know, there's, I mean, when Santorum is calling back the dogs, you know, it's bad, right?
But Santorum's saying, no, that, you know, they, we have to be friends with Pakistan because they have a nuclear weapon.
Well, does anyone connect the dots that if Iran is producing a nuclear weapon, maybe that's their motivation for it.
Maybe they know that we'll leave them alone.
Yeah.
And also the flip side of that is if they didn't have a nuke, we'd nuke the hell out of them.
Why not?
Well, yeah, I mean, probably so.
If that, I mean, obviously that's the only thing that's holding them back, right?
Yeah, it sure seems to be.
Yeah.
So, I mean, that was a, that was another side of this that, um, you know, you, you go from Afghanistan and then you pick a fight with Pakistan and then, um, related to that, you know, you've got the drone strikes that have gone on in Yemen and, and the people of Yemen are protesting as a result.
So we're basically causing a civil war there.
So where does the war, where does it ever stop?
You know, with this kind of system, um, that was what was frightening.
I kind of kept a running tally of where the candidates would have us at war next.
And, you know, they were adding three, four countries in that one, two hour debate, um, to the list of, of where we already are.
Hey, and the, uh, the Russians got thousands of H bombs and submarines and nuclear missiles, intercontinental ballistic missiles and all that, as they always have.
And, uh, the Chinese got at least a couple of dozen of them on the ready, which is about all they need to destroy all of America forever and ever and ever.
And, and, you know, uh, fight back in such a way that it would guarantee the Americans would end up obliterating all life on earth.
Uh, here's a fight we cannot pick under any circumstances.
And here is Rick Perry trying to, oh, and it was so bad the way he did it too.
Trying to, uh, dig up Ronald Reagan and, and throw the, uh, you know, communism in China on the ash heap of history as though Deng Xiaoping didn't do that in 1975.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, what we, you know, he doesn't even know probably Rick Perry probably doesn't even know the story about how Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger went over there and shook hands with Mao Zedong and said, you know what, it'd be smart if we could split them off of the Russians and, and, uh, you know, strengthen that, uh, Sino-Soviet split and make friends with them and trade with them and all the billionaires can make money off of their slave labor and it'll all be great for us and them.
Uh, Rick Perry's probably never even heard of this legend, you know, Richard Nixon, who's he?
Well, um, yeah, Perry, Perry is very good at selectively, um, forgetting and remembering Reagan.
Um, there was an, an article I was reading yesterday, um, that pointed out that, uh, the department of justice under, and this is going back to the previous topic of, of waterboarding.
Um, the department of justice under Reagan charged a Texas sheriff and three deputies for, uh, for using waterboarding and, and they regarded it as torture.
Um, and then of course, you know, Perry, Perry conveniently forgot that.
I mean, it happened in his state, right?
It happened in his state under, um, under Reagan's department of justice.
But then he says, you know, that it's not torture.
It's just a, a technique to get information.
Well, sure.
And of course, uh, Japanese war criminals were hanged from the neck for it after world war two for the exact same technique.
Yeah.
It was a, and you know, I really wish that, uh, Paul had thought to say, you know, George Washington made torture death penalty offense on the battlefield during the revolutionary war.
He said, and look, they were fighting for their lives for real, you know, not against some, you know, a little band of pirates in Baluchistan or in Waziristan somewhere or something, they were fighting against the red coat occupation of their country and losing.
And he said, if you torture a British soldier or a German Hessian, I'll put you up against a tree and kill you.
That is against the rules.
And it's a death penalty offense.
Yeah.
It's been against the law in America ever since George Washington banned it.
You know, I mean, wow, that would have been a good one.
See what, um, Michelle Botman is going to stutter after that, you know?
Well, you know, of course that's, that's assuming that they give him more than, you know, 90 seconds in the first hour to talk.
Right.
Um, and, um, you know, that's a lot easier to sit and watch it on TV than it is to be the guy up there.
I'll bet you that.
Oh, absolutely.
Absolutely.
But, you know, I, I was really shocked.
Um, I mean, of course the, the disparity in, in time given to the candidates in these debates, that's been proven, um, you know, they've, they've documented all that.
And I was actually kind of glad of it.
I'm hoping that it's going to create enough of a backlash where regular people who don't even really know about Ron Paul notice that like, isn't really right.
Who is this guy?
And why are they so against him on TV?
They pretend they're just a mirror of the public, but they're trying to dictate to us our priorities in such a blatant and obvious way here.
It's not supposed to be an election by the people of DC and New York city.
It's supposed to be an election by the people of this country and their states and their electoral college appointees and all that.
That's how it works.
Well, and there's good news.
There's good news related to that, though.
Even Fox news, uh, I think it was their, um, the, the weekend, probably Sunday morning, uh, they even ran a piece, uh, talking about that very thing about how, um, you know, here's Ron Paul and, and they even acknowledged, you know, look, he's, he's in double digits in all of the polls and all the early primary states.
He's in double D double digits in the national polls.
Yeah.
Well, and it just seemed like so obvious that they should have had to ask him, okay, you've been against all of America's foreign policies for 30 years.
What is it that you're so smart, makes you so smart or whatever, and let him go for a minute.
Come on.
Exactly.
Exactly.
All right.
Anyway, we're out of time, but thank you so much for using your great articles for antiwar.com as well.
All right.
That's Brian Phillips.
He's the spotlight on antiwar.com today.
