All right y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's Anti-War Radio.
Our guest today is Jacob Hornberger.
He is the founder and president of the Future of Freedom Foundation at FFF.org.
FFF.org/blog for his great blog.
And his most recent piece is called Needed, A National Debate on U.S. Support of Dictatorships.
Welcome back to the show, Jacob.
How are you doing?
Hey, it's always nice to be on the show.
Thank you.
Well, good.
I'm very happy to have you here, and I'm very happy to have you write this article, too.
I kind of spaced out earlier, and I don't know if I ever really finished my point well, but this article got me talking earlier on the show about how it used to be such kind of a fringe thing.
You would have had to really look for an argument like this, you know, back in, say, the early 90s or whatever, pre-internet days, when all we had was the Associated Press and, you know, books, I guess, and, you know, fringe magazines or something like that.
But for the mainstream of American society, there was just no real access to arguments like this, and yet now there's no excuse anymore with the internet.
There's no reason why every single person in this society can't, in the same way that mainstream society adopts every counterculture thing, there's no reason the entire society shouldn't go ahead and adopt this principle that, like, hey, wait a minute, the American empire is way out of control and needs to be completely, you know, scaled back, abolished immediately.
Well, that's right.
I mean, you make a good point that before the internet, you know, you had the official gatekeepers in the mainstream press, and all they would make sure was that the standard story that we're all inculcated with in public schools was sold in the mainstream press, and that is that the U.S. government is the purveyor of freedom and democracy around the world.
I mean, we're all brought up with that notion.
And then the internet comes along, and people are struck by reality.
The reality is the U.S. government is one of the biggest supporters of dictatorships in the world.
And you can look at the history of the United States with support of, like, the dictatorship in Iran under the Shah, which the CIA installed, and which later the Iranian people revolted against.
And then you got Pinochet, you got a host of Latin American dictators, but more recently in the Middle East.
So you got the Egyptian military dictatorship, the dictatorship in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Yemen, Bahrain.
The U.S. government loves these dictatorships.
It plows billions of dollars of U.S. taxpayer money.
That's the reality, Scott.
Yeah, well, and so there's so many different examples, we couldn't even get to them all by a long shot.
But you mentioned Iran there, and the support of the Shah, and in a way that's, as Jimmy Carter said, even back in the 70s, ancient history.
But on the other hand, it's really so much of the keystone for all this, really.
It's one of these, one of those big interventions that became the excuse for so many more on down the chain.
Can you give the people, maybe who don't know, a thumbnail sketch of the coup of 1953, and then, as you mentioned there, the counter-revolution of 79?
Yeah, this was the first regime change operation by the national security state.
And by that term, I mean the massive permanent military establishment, what President Eisenhower would call the military industrial complex, which sometimes libertarians call the military empire, that the United States became after World War II, along with the CIA.
So you had this gigantic national security state coming into existence, telling the American people that the Soviet Union, which had been America's partner in World War II and ally, was now being converted into an official enemy, and the Soviet Union was dead set on coming over to the United States and conquering, and to a large extent, the communist threat.
And so in 1953, the CIA decides that it's simply going to go into Iran and instigate a coup, secretly and surreptitiously, that ousts the democratically elected prime minister of the country.
Now, why did the CIA want to do this?
Well, because Mossadegh, Mohammad Mossadegh, the prime minister, had decided to nationalize the oil industry in Iraq, I mean in Iran.
And something that we would never support as libertarians, but something that is certainly the business of the Iranians and nobody else.
Well, the British officials were outraged, at least the oil industry, because they owned a lot of the British, the Iranian oil concessions there, and but they lacked the means to instigate a coup there.
So they got the CIA involved in this, and U.S. officials said, well, national security's at stake, because Mossadegh could be a communist, that means nationalizing the oil industry.
So the CIA installed this brutal dictator, the Shah of Iran.
So they destroyed Iran's experiment with democracy.
I mean, if that had never happened, there is a good likelihood that we would have a nice democratic regime in Iran today.
But instead, the U.S., through the CIA, destroys it with this coup and installs a brutal dictator, a dictator they loved, the U.S. officials loved.
They trained his forces to brutalize the Iranian people, they helped them do it, torture them, incarcerate them in dungeons, you know, all the standard stuff, you know, fight terrorism and communism and stuff.
Well, the Iranian people were outraged over this when they finally figured out what had happened, and here they are suffering under tyranny for some 25 years, until they finally have their revolution.
And that's why they took the American diplomats hostage, because they were so angry over what the U.S. government had done.
And then, of course, we have the aftermath of that.
You had this huge shift in the opposite direction into this religious theocracy.
You've got the hatred that has never been lost toward the United States because of that coup.
And, of course, the bad relations that exist even to this day.
Yeah, and then, of course, all our support for Saddam Hussein and his invasion of their country, which, of course, put him in debt.
When you read the April Glassby transcripts there, Saddam's discussion about whether he's going to invade, he's complaining that he borrowed all this money from the Kuwaitis and the Saudis to protect them from Iran, and then they are producing so much oil he can't make a dime to pay them back, which, of course, I guess the Americans were, you know, orchestrating this with the Saudis and the Kuwaitis in the first place and, you know, drove him to desperation and to go ahead.
And for whatever reason, Glassby apparently, you know, gave him the green light and said, you know what, we wouldn't really mind too much if you went ahead and took the northern oil fields, at least, that kind of response.
And so that was what got us into the Gulf War and then the permanent blockade to enforce all the UN resolutions and then the war on terror coming up next.
Well, it's a classic example of where one intervention leads to another.
I mean, here's a, so, you know, here in Iran they love this dictator, the Shah, the Iranian people revolt, and so, yes, you're right, the U.S. starts embracing and loving another dictatorship, and that's the Saddam Hussein dictatorship.
You know, the interventionists think that history with Iraq begins with the Persian Gulf intervention, you know, 1990 or so, when actually the relationship with Saddam Hussein began many years before that, when the U.S. decided to embrace this dictator and actually furnished him with those infamous weapons of mass destruction that they later were looking for.
Now, we've got a page on our website, you know, all you got to do is go to our website at www.fff.org, put in the search engine, where did Iraq get its weapons of mass destruction, or just put where did Iraq, and you'll see all the articles there that they got their weapons of mass destruction in the 80s from the United States.
That's right, I've seen that page, I've forgotten about that, but yeah, that's true, at www.fff.org there is a great resource on that subject.
Yeah, all the articles, New York Times, the mainstream press was saying, yeah, this is where Saddam Hussein got those weapons of mass destruction, and why?
Because the U.S. government wanted Saddam to use these weapons to kill Iranians, and why they wanted to kill Iranians?
Because the Iranian people had the audacity to oust the pro-U.S. dictator that the U.S. had installed in 1953.
So here's another dictatorship that the U.S. just loves and embraces and does all sorts of horrible things in the name of national security and that sort of thing.
Yeah, all right, we got to leave it right here and go out to this break, we'll be back with Jacob Horenberger from the Future Freedom Foundation right after this, www.fff.org for his work there.
All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's Anti-War Radio.
I'm Scott Horton, I'm talking with Jacob Horenberger, founder and president of the Future Freedom Foundation, www.fff.org, Anthony Gregory, Sheldon Richman, James Bovard, Richard Ebling, and Bart Fraser, and other great writers there at www.fff.org.
This one is by Jacob, it's called Needed a National Debate on U.S. Support of Dictatorships.
And I want to know what you think of my theory, Jacob, that I have, that the whole reason for the war in Libya, the overriding reason was simply for public relations, because when the Arab Spring broke out in Tunisia and Egypt early last year, it was immediately apparent, at least in the world media, and I think creeping into the American media, that Uncle Sam is really the bad guy in all of these.
If there's a monarch or a sultan or an emir or a pretended president who's really just some military dictator anywhere in the region, less Syria and Iran, it's our puppet.
The king, whatever, whatever, is our guy in all of these cases.
And so they said, well, you know what, Gaddafi, we only just barely let him in from the cold back in 2003, and we never really did like him, and he's hemming and hawing about buying attack helicopters from us and stuff like that, instead of just coughing up the dough.
And so let's go ahead and we'll just wage this one, take the side of the rebels in this one, and try to, if only for the American population's consumption, confuse the issue about who's on whose side.
And then, of course, they want a regime change in Syria, so they get to pretend like they're on the side of the little guy in that one, too.
Where at the very beginning, and in other words, I think it worked, but at the beginning of this thing, Uncle Sam backs every dictator in the region, and now, oh, well, gee, I don't know, apparently America's involved in a couple of revolutions over there and helping out the poor people.
If only they would help more.
Well, yeah, I think it goes even deeper than that.
I think that they, this is a battle over who's going to own the dictators.
And when the dictator is not a pro-U.S. dictator, their quest is to get him out of office and put in a pro-U.S. dictator.
This is one of the main philosophical directions that the national security state has led our country.
They've convinced Americans that the safety of the United States depends on having pro-U.S. dictators all over the world, where we've got to put our man in office just like, you know, Democrats and Republicans try to put their people in office here in the United States.
And so Qaddafi wasn't our dictator.
Assad isn't our dictator, except for when they sent that guy from Canada over, the CIA did, to Syria to be tortured.
He was our man.
Now, we don't know all the details of how that got arranged, but some of these dictators go from hot and cold in the U.S. book of approval.
But when you look at, like, the Egyptian dictatorship with Mubarak in charge, a brutal dictatorship, I mean, that's why all those people are protesting.
The U.S. government has been the funder of that dictatorship.
In fact, they just authorized another 1.3 billion dollars to be sent to the dictatorship.
Now, no one knows how the check's going to be made out, whether it's going to be made out to the military or to the president or to the dissolved parliament, because the military just dissolved the parliament.
So nobody knows.
But look at the dictatorship in Bahrain.
I mean, they've been brutalizing their people just like Assad is in Syria.
And the U.S. has been there funneling arms, cash, and so forth, fully supporting that dictatorship.
So that's really what this foreign policy is all about.
Compare it, Scott, to, like, the Swiss government, which pretty much has a foreign policy envisioned by our founding fathers here in the United States.
They don't sit there and worry about who's going to be elected president of Egypt, who's going to hate them after the election.
They don't get involved trying to manipulate the events in Egypt.
They just sit there and mind their own business.
So when there's an election in Egypt, there may be battles within the country, but those people are not angry at the Swiss.
Right now, there's a lot of Egyptians that are angry at the United States, because they're figuring out that the U.S. has been one of the principal enablers of their suppression, of the tyranny under which they've been suffering under this military dictatorship.
Well, I wonder if you think, kind of back where we started about the American people's views of this in large numbers, just how obvious this is becoming.
Are people really getting it?
I mean, when I hear that, oh yeah, by the way, it looks like for some reason the jihadists have free reign in Libya now, and so we might have to begin to intervene there and stuff like that.
I think, okay, this war on terrorism excuse has got to be really wearing thin to the average guy, but am I too hopeful there?
I don't think so.
I think people are finally starting to wake up and realize that we libertarians have been as right about foreign policy as we have been about the drug war and the out-of-control spending in the Federal Reserve and all the rest of this junk.
Look at Iraq.
You know, U.S. officials keep telling Americans this is a freedom paradise.
It's wonderful, you know, take your families on vacation to this freedom paradise in Iraq.
Well, it's nothing of the sort.
It's as brutal a regime as the Saddam Hussein regime.
It's exercising dictatorial powers, torturing people, incarcerating people without trial, suppressing free speech.
Well, and they just closed almost every newspaper in the country the other day.
Yeah, because they didn't get their license, you see.
And then look at Afghanistan.
People are finally saying, okay, this didn't work.
This is a huge mess.
Soldiers are dying and killing for nothing.
And so I think Americans are starting to get that this is a much bigger picture.
It's not just Iraq and Afghanistan.
It's the whole national security establishment that was brought into existence for the so-called Cold War, which supposedly ended back in 1989 or 90, and yet stayed in existence.
The whole establishment, CIA, military-industrial complex.
And I think Americans are starting to realize this is a much bigger problem than just intervening in this country, intervening in that country.
That it's a problem of empire, partnerships with dictatorships, foreign aid into dictatorships.
And it's a principal reason why so many people around the world hate the United States so much.
And so that's what we've got to keep doing, is raising people's vision to a higher level.
And that's why I call for this national debate.
You know, we're going broke in this country here because of out-of-control federal spending.
What better place to start cutting than to cut off the aid to foreign dictatorships?
Right.
Well, and you know, especially, I think, it's valuable that libertarians always are best at making the case that, you know, how unnecessary it is, economically speaking.
That it's a waste economically, rather than war is good for the economy.
We know how to shoot that right down.
And we have to do this because we need that oil.
We know how to shoot that one right down, too.
And those are the kinds of arguments that, you know, regular folks really internalize.
They don't really believe in Paul Wolfowitz's dream for a new Middle East, or whatever.
But if it's implied that, hey, we have to do this so that we can get to work, the average guy will support that a lot of times.
At least, you know, in the fever pitch of it.
That's an absolutely great point.
Because that's one of their principal weapons.
That they've convinced, the statists have convinced the American people, that this whole empire business, the whole national security state, is absolutely essential to their safety and to their economic well-being.
When actually, it's the exact opposite.
It's taking our country down, financially and economically, with these out-of-control military budgets.
And it's making us less safe.
Not only because so many foreigners are angry over what the U.S. is doing in the drug war overseas, and foreign interventionism, and foreign aid overseas.
But then the government uses those, that threat of retaliation, terrorism, or whatever, to take away our freedoms here at home.
So if you dismantle all this stuff, you get rid of the financial problems, because you're saving all the taxpayer that money that's going to the military and the CIA.
You save, you disintegrate the terrorist threat, and then you eliminate all the excuses that they have for violating our freedom here at home, the civil liberties, the privacy, the financial privacy, and so forth.
Yeah, you know, there's that famous ratchet effect that Bob Higgs talks about, where in every crisis, the government gains in authority, and then when the crisis is over, it never quite gets back.
Sometimes, some things will be repealed, but it never quite gets back to the way it was before.
It seems like we at least need to stop turning the ratchet to the right, now.
If we can only get back to 2005 and never back to before 2001 again with these laws, you know, we'd be lucky.
Maybe we really need to knock this off before we have no semblance of the Bill of Rights left at all.
Well, that's right.
But we libertarians got to keep pushing for the whole shebang, where we restore a constitutional republic, or we dismantle all this whole military empire business, dismantle the CIA, cold war's over, get rid of this stuff, restore a constitutional republic, a free market society to our land, and that's what we got to keep doing as libertarians, is raising people's vision to what the ideal is, and build on the principles on which this country was founded.
Yeah, demand total liberty.
You might get to keep some.
That'd be a good start.
Okay, thank you very much.
Appreciate it, Jacob.
Oh, it's great to be with you, Scott.
Thank you.
Jacob Hornberger, everybody.
FFF.org, the Future Freedom Foundation.
