Scott interviews Professor Alfred McCoy about the history of the drug trade during America’s decades-long involvement in Afghanistan. Before the 1980s, McCoy explains, drugs were not a significant part of the Afghan economy—but that all changed when President Bush’s CIA began arming a resistance against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. These Mujahideen fighters turned to opium for their funding, quickly growing Afghanistan’s opium trade to thousands of tons a year, and accounting for 70% of the world’s heroin trade. When the Taliban wiped out the drug trade in the late 90s, the resulting economic devastation was part of what allowed the U.S. to achieve such a swift military victory. And throughout the U.S. occupation, drugs have once again become by far the biggest part of Afghanistan’s economy. Opium, McCoy concludes, has been an inextricable part of nearly every significant event in Afghan history for the last 40 years, and it is impossible to adequately understand the issues facing Afghanistan without understanding the drug trade. In general, McCoy fears that U.S. withdrawal—which is virtually inevitable at this point—will trigger serious chaos, and may present another “fall of Saigon” moment. If this should occur, it may give war hawks an argument against pulling out of any protracted conflict like Afghanistan in the future.

Discussed on the show:

• “The True Meaning of the Afghan “Withdrawal”” (TomDispatch.com)
• “President Ashraf Ghani on What U.S. Withdrawal Means for Afghanistan” (Foreign Affairs)

Alfred W. McCoy is the Harrington professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His many books include The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade, A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror and In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of US Global Power. Read his work at tomdispatch.com.

This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: The War State, by Mike Swanson; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott; Photo IQ; Green Mill Supercritical; Zippix Toothpicks; and Listen and Think Audio.

Shop Libertarian Institute merch or donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal or Bitcoin: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRjYu5tZiG.

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Aaron Glantz, unembedded reporter for InterPress Service and Antiwar.com and author of the House Speaker-praised book How America Lost Iraq, talks about why America’s presence in Iraq is making things worse for Iraqis rather than staving off disaster, antiwar active-duty G.I.’s who are petitioning congress to bring them home and the devastating consequences this war has had for America’s physically and mentally wounded soldiers.

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LewRockwell.com‘s Charles Featherstone explains that humans are born free and allow governments to exist to protect their natural rights rather than existing at the pleasure of the state as attorney general Alberto Gonzales thinks and ponders the consequences of the behavior of the Bush/Cheney crew for the rest of the establishment and their projects.

MP3 here.

For the last decade, Charles Featherstone has worked as a reporter and editor at a couple of wire services and daily newspapers in the United States, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. Right now, he works as a part-time editor for the Saudi Gazette and studying under a Masters of Divinity program at the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago. Journalism is no longer his calling, if it ever was.

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Investigative reporter and Armed Madhouse author Greg Palast discusses the new Iraqi oil law, the fight inside the American government over what that law should be, “the surge” and what he describes as a proxy war in Iraq between Iran and Saudi Arabia over the control over the price of oil.

MP3 here.

Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times bestseller, Armed Madhouse (Penguin 2006). His first reports appeared on BBC television and in the Guardian newspapers. Author of another New York Times bestseller, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, Palast is best known in his native USA as the journalist who, for the Observer (UK), broke the story of how Jeb Bush purged thousands of Black Florida citizens from voter rolls before the 2000 election, thereby handing the White House to his brother George. His reports on the theft of election 2004, the spike of the FBI investigations of the bin Ladens before September 11, the secret State Department documents planning the seizure of Iraq

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For Monday January 22, 2007, Antiwar Radio features Frida Berrigan, senior research associate at the World Policy Institute and member of the National Committee of the War Resisters League about her great article “Raptors, Robots and Rods from God,” on the subject of the U.S. military’s plans for the future technology of mass murder.

MP3 here.

Frida Berrigan is a Senior Research Associate with the Arms Trade Resource Center of the World Policy Institute. A graduate of Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, Frida worked with a Central America solidarity organization for two years before coming to the World Policy Institute. Maintaining an interest in U.S. foreign policy towards Latin America, she also focuses on nuclear weapons policy, weapons sales to areas of conflict particularly in SE Asia, and military training programs. Most recently she has published articles in the Providence Journal, the Nonviolent Activist and the Hartford Courant.

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The guest on Antiwar Radio for January 17, 2007 is Chris Floyd, author of Empire Burlesque: High Crimes and Low Comedy in the Bush Imperium, on the subject of the tension between the Cheney-neocon cabal and the traditional American Establishment.

Mp3 here.

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My guest on Antiwar Radio for January 16, 2007 is historian and analyst Gareth Porter from IPS News on why America’s policy toward Iran has not really changed despite the Bush administration’s recent seemingly more aggressive pronouncements and actions, their policy of backing the Iran parties in Iraq and Iran’s spurned attempts to make peace with the U.S.

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The second guest on Antiwar Radio for Monday, January 15, 2007 is Becky Akers from LewRockwell.com on the subject of the NYPD’s entrapment and conviction on terrorism charges of a young New Yorker named Shahawar Matin Siraj and the persecution of his family for his supposed crimes.

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The first guest on Antiwar Radio for January 15, 2007 is Sebastian Junger of Vanity Fair about the Ijaw tribesmen who are causing trouble for the oil companies operating in Nigeria’s Niger Delta region.

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