Hey y'all, Scott here.
I wrote a book.
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Time to end the war in Afghanistan.
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Taking out Saddam Hussein turned out to be a pretty good deal.
They hate our freedoms.
We're dealing with Hitler revisited.
We couldn't wait for that Cold War to be over, could we?
So we can go and play with our toys in the sand, go and play with our toys in the sand.
No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.
Today, I authorize the armed forces of the United States to begin military action in Libya.
That action has now begun.
When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.
I cannot be silent in the face of the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today, my own government.
All right, you guys on the line.
I've got Dr. Ron Paul, the greatest American hero ever.
And he's the author of Swords into Plowshares, and also a Foreign Policy of Freedom, End the Fed, and Liberty Defined, and the Revolution Manifesto, and many other great books.
Welcome back to the show, Dr. Paul.
How are you doing, sir?
Good, Scott.
Nice to be with you.
And congratulations on your book, Fool's Errand.
It's great.
And one thing on your subtitle, it's an understatement, time to end the war in Afghanistan.
I mean, that needs so, it's so necessary, but it's such an understatement.
It's been a long time that it's time to end this war.
Never should have started, but congratulations.
Well, thank you very much, Dr. Paul.
Really appreciate that a lot, and your great blurb.
And of course, you're in it.
If you want, we could talk about it.
You did vote for the AUMF, but at the same time, you recommended against it.
You want to go back to 2001 with us a little bit there?
Yeah, and it does raise questions, because I did vote for it, because of the obvious problem that we were facing, and I wasn't very happy with it, but I didn't think that you could do nothing and I think the way it was written wasn't too bad.
It was to address the subject of those people who participated in 9-11.
The disaster is, and should have been, the reason that you can't condone it or think it's a solution, is that they abuse it.
I mean, they're still using that authority, use military force, even today.
In any place they go, I mean, it's being used and they argue about that.
Some of the more libertarian members are trying to force them into another vote and remove those things, but it's the abuse of the rules.
It's sort of the abuse of the Constitution.
It's abuse of the legislation and Congress doesn't do anything about it, but obviously, those were very difficult times, but if they would have used that authority to deal with the people who participated in the attack, it would have been a lot different.
Well, in fact, the Democrats did take out a lot of the worst language that Cheney wanted to include.
It's just, in the end, it didn't matter anyway.
Right.
Well, and now, the quote in the book on this subject is, there's a nice block quote from you as you were introducing your mark in Reprisal Act where you emphasize that what we have to do here is get the guys who did this, sure, but do it in such a way as to prove them wrong about us and to prove that we don't have a quarrel with Muslim people or Arab people in general and that there's no reason for this war to escalate into some kind of stupid clash of civilizations that we don't need to have here and that's, of course, exactly what they did instead.
Yeah, and we got a little attention on that little discussion, but that would have been the last thing the neocons wanted.
They wanted escalation.
They wanted to remake the Middle East.
As soon as it happened, they immediately invaded Afghanistan and, of course, ignored Bin Laden and different things.
So the mark in reprisal was written into the Constitution early on by the founders to try to limit the need or the use of military force rather than declaring war.
It was an in-between, but it permitted people to take it upon themselves.
It was certainly used in the war on piracy to actually, it was a legal document.
They actually carried something on the vessels and other countries recognized it.
It wasn't just somebody trying to start a battle with somebody, but they were acting under the authority of the government, but it was a letter designed to do very limited things.
And at the time, I was desperate to look for something other than what we ended up with because I knew it wouldn't be good on what the consequence would be and this was just an excuse.
And that was my immediate reaction on 9-11.
We as libertarians and non-interventionists have now been given a much more difficult job presenting our case.
All right, well, listen, so I brought you on to talk about the problems with North Korea.
And, you know, I keep thinking, I saw your most recent episode of Liberty Report.
I'm sorry I left that out of the introduction.
The Liberty Report, it's the greatest show.
I mean, it's the wonderful and heroic Dan McAdams and Dr. Paul every day on YouTube or four or five days a week, something on YouTube and at libertyreport.com.
And it's really, really great.
And I saw a bit of the latest one here where you guys were talking about the North Korea thing.
And as you say, well, geez, I mean, it seems like it would be such a bad war that's probably not gonna happen, right?
Or at least they would need a real excuse, something new to happen rather than just, you know, go ahead and start the war as they are now.
And it seems like, in fact, James Mattis had said before that if we had a real war in Korea, this would be the most bitter fighting of our lifetimes.
And he obviously meant to include Vietnam in that and maybe even the first Korean war in that, depending on whose lifetime we're talking about, right?
So, but then we see the Twitter wars and I'm actually, you know, my confidence that don't be an alarmist, Scott, it's probably gonna work out is starting to recede here.
And I'm beginning to worry that this idiot president could really get us into a war with North Korea here.
What do you think?
Well, I think that is the great danger.
And interestingly enough, I just did the Today's program, you know, for the Liberty Report and is on this subject and had to do with Trump versus Tillerson.
You know, Tillerson actually was pursuing this without talking to the North Koreans.
And it leaked out, I don't know, maybe the neocons leaked it out that he was just because they wanted to undermine it.
And so here he is practicing some diplomacy and then Trump goes nothing, publicly, he goes after Tillerson.
It's a waste of time, save your energy.
We'll do whatever has to be done.
You know, and nothing is off the table.
They always say that, which really bugs me because there is something that's off the table.
Common sense and diplomacy, they will not consider it.
They won't even allow the Secretary of State to talk to somebody.
And yet, of course, a nuclear first strike is not off the table.
They always, you know, infer that that is.
So it's a foolish policy.
And this confrontation in open public, you know, it's hard to believe how much can Tillerson put up with this insulting in public.
So Tillerson, you know, is a long way from where we are, but at least he is sensitive about maybe not starting this war.
And now I don't know what's gonna happen.
Trump is unpredictable.
Is he gonna get rid of Tillerson now?
And this is, it gets to be a real mess.
And it comes from the top down.
So that's too bad.
But right now, this little episode with Tillerson, I sort of like the idea that he at least talked to them.
Why shouldn't he talk to them?
Yeah.
Well, I wonder, do you think it's a possibility, not that this is a good excuse for it or anything, but do you think it's a possibility that it's quite deliberate and that they're playing good cop, bad cop in a, you know, Richard Nixon saying, Henry, tell them I'm drunk and crazy and I might nuke them kind of thing to try to coerce the North Vietnamese and that kind of deal?
Yeah, that's always possible, but it sure is, Tillerson's exposing himself.
Not too much ridicule, you know, he puts up with all this.
So it's hard to say, I imagine we'll find out, you know, if this sort of fades away and Tillerson wins the argument and Trump backs off, that's one thing, but what if Tillerson gets kicked out, you know, which is always possible once he starts talking this way, he does that for a while and then he either backs off and lets it go or then he gets rid of the person.
But that wouldn't be good for the little bit of hope that we have that we will come around to some common sense.
Well, and you know, it was also really a problem, I thought Trump's tweet where he says, you know, Bill, you know, we've been trying to deal with Rocket Man for 25 years and it didn't work for Clinton or for Bush or for Obama and this and that, and you know, maybe it's just a Twitter character limit problem and we all know that he knows that that was Kim Jong-il and that he's dead and that this is the son.
So like, if we're trying to be charitable, let's be charitable and say that Trump knows that it's really not the same guy for the last 25 years, but that that's more or less what he meant because it was a Twitter miscommunication thing there.
But even then, assuming he understands, it seems like such a poor way to frame it because of course, the son is not the father, the father is dead.
And you know, he came in saying, oh, the new guy, the son here, Jong-un, he's a smart cookie, maybe we can deal with him.
This guy got roundly criticized for being naive and saying we can deal and paying a compliment to this guy.
So it just seems like such a poor way to frame it that there's no point in making a deal with this guy or talking with this guy because the deal with Bill Clinton fell apart when we all know that was George W. Bush's fault, not even Kim Jong-il's fault in the first place.
But nobody wants to look at our own policy as being part of the problem.
But you know, even in 94, under Clinton, Clinton did have some agreements which he's being ridiculed for now.
And Trump says he caused all the trouble because he gave them nuclear weapons and all these things.
But the agreement was broken by the United States.
There were a couple of things we promised to do and they would back off and the door was open and we would recognize certain things.
And the neocons went nuts.
They started immediately undermining that.
And then when Bush got in, they really totally destroyed it and they wouldn't have anything to do with the agreement that the North Koreans had agreed to.
They said, well, they wouldn't have listened to them.
Well, that's what they're saying, but is that true?
Is it always just the other side's fault or is it our fault that we back off on some of these agreements?
Just like they're, you know, tempting to do, at least talk about backing off on the agreement with Iran.
So this is not all just Owen's problem.
It's all of our problems because of, you know, the aggressiveness of our government.
And besides, you know, no matter how bad this guy has to be, I compare it to what it was like in the real Cold War when I was in the military in the 60s and missiles were in Cuba and we didn't have to confront or badger or claim or fight or drop bombs and the whole thing just dissipated.
But now I say we spend more time worrying about bombs that don't exist, whether they're in Iran or North Korea, than we worried about 30,000 of them when they was held by a ruthless nation, like, you know, like the Soviet system.
So it's just people that are agitating for more warmongering and more profiteering and all those things.
And people who do believe in a global system as long as it's run by the United States and they're in charge.
And this is all about the empire, I think.
All right, hang on just one second.
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Well, you know, people keep asking me whether it's about Afghanistan or the Islamic State or Russia relations or Korea or whatever.
What should we do?
Somebody asked me and I gave a talk in LA about the book the other day.
And he asked me, what can we do?
And I said, go back to 2008 and elect Ron Paul.
Otherwise, I really don't know.
But then, so the thing is, I could sort of see the criticism that maybe I'm kind of utopian.
That I think, well, you know, if Ron Paul was here he would have ordered every admiral in the world, sail home, that's it, it's over.
But that sounds too utopian and too perfect.
So maybe, Dr. Paul, you wouldn't have been able to do that or maybe you would.
What would things look like with Korea now if you really had been the President of the United States to handle this?
Well, it would have been difficult because if you're too blatant and too blunt and start moving, you know what happens to people that would do that.
Well, I know you'd have brought your own private security with you.
But if you could do it, I would do it much quieter and not just antagonize all your political enemies which are most of the Democrats and most of the Republicans.
You'd have to find a nucleus in each party to work with and then quietly just back off.
You know, just start coming home.
You're the Commander-in-Chief.
You don't have to do that.
But the power of the military-industrial complex, the deep state is pretty powerful.
So I think we have a ways to go changing people's ideas.
And that's what you work on every single day, trying to change people's minds about this and the time will come.
Because I think the majority is still with us on this.
They get their minds changed with the propaganda before we went into Iraq when I was giving a lot of speeches on that.
The people, you did polling and the people, no, we don't need this war.
We don't need this war.
But then after a while, you know, right now, I think there's been so much anti-North Korea scaremongering going on.
I think the majority of people think we ought to attack them.
I mean, they can be influenced, but they also can be influenced with ideas.
That's why I think, you know, us speaking out and talking to young people, maybe a few of them will find their way up to be an influence on policy.
And I think we have to remember, as much as we fear their guns even coming after us, we also have to remember that ideas are more powerful than the guns and ideas have consequences.
And ideas are alive and well right now.
I'm making the argument that some people are writing quite frequently about the libertarian movement and the early stages of the Tea Party movement from 2008.
It's all over.
It's done with.
They don't exist.
But the fact that they're attacking some of us, I think is showing that we're alive and well.
And so I think that that's the only thing I know to do is keep pursuing it.
That's why I'm delighted to see you on the air and talking and writing books because we need you, but we need thousands more people out there.
And that's how the large majority's minds finally get changed.
And I lived through those days of the Vietnam War.
What a tragedy that was.
And it took a decade of the demonstrations in the streets to finally say to the government, enough is enough.
You've done all this killing.
Quit, quit, quit.
It's never fast enough, but when we have victory, it'll be that we'll prevent them from getting involved.
They won't be getting using and abusing the authority to use military force and never going deliberately to the Congress and finding the proper way of doing that, which would be declare war, which they have no interest in doing.
All right, now, I'm sorry, do you have to go or do you have time for one more?
One more, one more, and then I gotta go.
And on Korea here.
So the great Peter Lee, the China hand on Twitter, he pointed out this article in the Los Angeles Times.
It was quite cynical.
He said, listen, we could make peace with North Korea.
We could have an end to the Korean War, real deal, and have a sound agreement and back down on all this brinksmanship.
But that if we didn't have North Korea to hold over the head of South Korea and Japan and threaten them with and protect them from, then they could spin off away from our orbit, imperial orbit, quite frankly.
And then, God forbid, they could not just declare independence, but maybe even fall under the dominion of the Chinese.
And so, I mean, I know it just sounds to me crazy in the first place.
I know you disapprove.
I can hear you scoffing right now.
But wait, all morality and ideology and everything aside, maybe in terms of real politic, America really has something to lose if we don't have something to threaten Korea and Japan with to keep them in our orbit, whatever all exactly that means.
What do you think, sir?
And I think South Korea is in a box.
I think basically, they would like to do a lot more with North Korea.
Just that simple token effort of sending a couple dollars up to North Korea, maybe a couple million dollars to help the people suffering from our sanctions.
And yet at the same time, they have to say what the American government wants as far as the exercises go.
And we have to show strength.
And it's sort of a conflict.
And even the new president, I think is more sympathetic to negotiation.
But I think the best thing that could happen would be for us to just get out of the way and let them deal with it, let the South Koreans deal with it.
And I think the Japanese would be better off.
But I think our goal of maintaining our sphere of influence and our empire is a driving force.
And unfortunately, they have the bully pulpit more than we do.
Well, do they have a point at all, though, that we would, what, lose out on some trade deal or some kind of thing would hurt our economy or hurt anything but the power and influence of those in D.C.?
If we had more of a better relationship with North Korea?
Yeah, yeah.
And if Japan and South Korea then felt more independent from the Americans without that threat over the long term, that's the so-called concern in this article, that this would hurt us somehow.
Yeah, I mean, some people may say that and who knows exactly, but no, I think things would be better.
I mean, how much trade do we do with China now?
They're just not gonna change that.
I think the results would be a lot more.
That would be sort of like the saying, well, we have to, you know, make Vietnam, you know, pro-West, because if not, they're gonna be part of the domino theory and they're gonna be locked in with communist China and communist Russia.
But lo and behold, we finally lose.
We walk, go home with tail between our legs and what are we doing?
Trading more with them now than ever before.
So I don't think they can make these predictions and saying that, you know, if we get out of the way, and I always make this statement, we win a lot more in peace than we do in war.
This idea that we use our military to protect our interests and our trading, I just don't think that's true.
What we have to do is emphasize the benefit that free trade is a benefit to both sides.
All right, well, thank you so much again for your time, Dr. Paul, I appreciate it so much.
Good to be with you, Scott.
All right, you guys, that is the greatest American hero ever, Dr. Ron Paul.
I mean that, seriously, who has ever done more in the history of mankind to spread the ideas of individual liberty?
And for that matter, peace and sound economics and on and on and on.
Dr. Ron Paul, the author of a bunch of great books and our good friend.
Okay, there you go.
I'm blurber of my book, Fool's Errand.
How do you like that?
Okay, thanks again.
You guys can find all my stuff at scotthorton.org and at libertarianinstitute.org and foolserrand.us and follow me on Twitter at Scott Horton Show.
Thanks again, y'all.
