Danny Sjursen explains why staying in Afghanistan, even indefinitely, won’t make any difference in its eventual outcome. Right now the U.S. military is only enforcing the Kabul government’s grip on a small part of the country, and if they leave, either the Taliban will take over the country, or Kabul will hang on to an even smaller sliver. These are the two possible outcomes, says Sjursen, and it doesn’t make a difference if America withdraws today, next year, or in another twenty years. The...

Scott interviews Jim Bronke about Joe Biden’s role, as chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in militating for the invasion of Iraq in 2002. He deliberately stacked hearings meant to examine the potential threat of Iraqi WMD with war hawks that he knew would support the conclusions he wanted them to. Today, most democratic politicians and voters don’t seem to care at all about Biden’s worst crimes, and instead like to focus on comparatively trivial issues like his stance on busing...

Historian Gar Alperovitz shares the history of America’s use of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Contrary to what most of us learned in school, many of the top military officers and intelligence officials were adamant at the time that use of the bombs was unnecessary to get the Japanese to surrender, which they expected to happen as soon as the Soviet Union invaded. The bombs were used instead as a political maneuver to intimidate the Russians, but which of course only led to the...

Scott interviews Philip Weiss about Israel’s occupation of Palestine and the way the Palestinian people have been completely deprived of their rights there. Weiss is glad that the recent fiasco around Rashida Tlaib’s and Ilhan Omar’s visit to Israel has brought publicity to the BDS movement, but is baffled that most Americans are either unaware of Israel’s gross abuses, or simply don’t care. Discussed on the show: “Trump is parroting Zionist doctrine: U.S. Jews must be loyal to Israel”...

Jacob Hornberger explains why the American president has become a democratically elected dictator, largely through the president’s power to manage the economy by threatening businesses, negotiating trade agreements with foreign countries, and issuing executive orders that impact the way private companies run their businesses. Donald Trump has put this on display the way few previous presidents ever have, but his protectionist policies are also a big part of what got him elected by...

Scott talks to Peter Van Buren about the effects of war on American culture. They discuss the fact that America has been at war almost constantly for its entire history, ever since the nation was formed by overthrowing the British. Having an external enemy supposedly allows people to put their differences aside and feel unity as a country, but it comes at the cost of money, lives, and an ever-increasing encroachment of government power into the private sphere. Van Buren also discusses his...

The Intercept’s Trevor Aaronson joins the show to talk about the travesty of justice in the trial of Hamid Hayat, who has finally been released after nearly 15 years in prison. Hayat was an alleged terrorist, convicted based on a coerced confession he gave to FBI agents under duress, as well as recordings from his conversations with an FBI informant who had pretended to befriend Hayat’s family. Hayat is just one of many such cases of U.S. government entrapment, which make up the majority of...

Gareth Porter explains why the claim that the Russian government “hacked all 50 U.S. states” is false—namely, the states themselves know that their systems were intact! The narrative has nonetheless been pushed continuously, as democrats try to justify Hillary Clinton’s 2016 loss by any means necessary. Discussed on the show: “U.S. States: We Weren’t Hacked by Russians in 2016” (The American Conservative)“Russia Targeted Election Systems in All 50 States, Report Finds” (The New York Times)...

Scott interviews Cato’s John Mueller about why it’s time to leave Afghanistan. Fundamentally, the Taliban cannot be defeated at any remotely acceptable cost of American lives and U.S. dollars, says Mueller, and at the same time military interventions has only made the Al-Qaeda problem—America’s original enemies—even worse. Fortunately, it seems like President Trump might see ending the war in Afghanistan as a possible path to reelection. Discussed on the show: “Overcoming Inertia: Why It’s...

Alan Kuperman explains the true story of the 2011 civil war in Libya, which the United States famously and disastrously supported. Contrary to the narrative that this uprising was started by regular, educated citizens like doctors and lawyers, Kuperman and his research assistants discovered that the key actors fomenting revolution were actually Al-Qaeda veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan. Kuperman reflects on the dangers of reckless use of American military force throughout the years. Discussed...

Max Blumenthal explains how the policies of the Obama administration, pushed by Joe Biden in particular, have fueled the migration crisis in Latin America we see today. Notably, America gave material support to the Colombian regime that massacred thousands of innocent civilians and dressed them as guerrilla revolutionaries in order to claim they were winning the war, and thereby get more aid from the U.S. Biden also supported brutal regimes in Honduras, El Salvador, and other countries, whose...

Scott talks to Jim Bovard about Bill Clinton’s bombing campaign in Serbia twenty years ago, which at the time was widely heralded as a triumph of the “forces of good.” It was also, apparently, something that Bill Clinton did as a way to appease Hillary after the fallout from the Monica Lewinsky scandal. The entire narrative of “ethnic cleansing” that was put forth as justification for American intervention turned out later to have been overblown, with, in actual fact, casualties (and some...

Nasser Arrabyee discusses the latest Saudi war crime against Yemeni civilians, the bombing of a family on the first day of Eid al-Adha. He also gives a summary of the last few months of the horrific war there, replete with complex political nuances that will not be resolved by a simple and total military victory. The war goes on only because the United States government continues to lend material support to the Saudis and will not openly condemn the conflict. Discussed on the show: Nasser...