All right, y'all, welcome to the Scott Horton Show.
I am the Director of the Libertarian Institute, Editorial Director of Antiwar.com, author of the book Fool's Errand, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, and I've recorded more than 5,000 interviews going back to 2003, all of which are available at scotthorton.org.
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The full archive is also available at youtube.com slash scotthorton show.
All right, you guys, I got on the line, the great Danny Sherson, of course, a retired major in the US Army, a veteran of Iraq War II and Afghanistan, regular writer for Truth Dig and Antiwar.com, author of the book Ghost Writers of Baghdad, and go over to the Antiwar.com blog right now or the Libertarian Institute blog, and there's this great video that they published at the New York Times with Danny, as well as with the great Danny Davis, retired lieutenant colonel in the US Army, and four or five other Afghan war combat veterans talking about why to end the war in Afghanistan.
I was really excited to see that actually just a few minutes ago, and we've already posted it there.
But anyway, welcome back to the show.
How are you, Danny?
You know, I'm good.
I'm good.
It's a it's a crazy time of year for me, you know, I'm in this weird space where veterans and Memorial Day, those two days out of 365 days, I suddenly become, you know, like a hot commodity.
And and I've written, geez, I think four articles today.
I haven't even gotten around to throwing them all out there.
And you know, I mean, Veterans Day is a is an interesting day for me.
I have, as you know, I have a article on any war dot com about how veterans need to reclaim Veterans Day.
And I've written a lot about Armistice Day and why we should really rename the holiday or or bring the name of the holiday back to the old days when it was called Armistice Day back when it was, you know, imbued with real meaning.
But you know, I'm doing well.
I'm talking to you from Iowa City at the University of Iowa, where I've already given two speeches today and I'm giving a long one tonight.
So, yeah, I mean, the work the work is getting done.
There's a lot of us out here trying, even if the mainstream media doesn't cover us.
Although today on November 11th, 2019, The New York Times decided to grace me or, you know, allow me the presence on their page, which, of course, they they normally ignore folks like me.
So it's fascinating that I'm there on this the hundred and first anniversary of Armistice Day.
So, yeah, I'm sure there's a lot we can talk about.
But the bottom line is, this is just this is an interesting day that you chose to call me and to and to interview me, because it's it's it's really hectic and it's really interesting.
But it's also instructive in a lot of sort of dark ways.
Yeah.
Well, I got to say, man, you make a great spokesman for our cause.
Seeing you there in that New York Times video, the way you just lay it out there, couldn't have said it better myself and certainly could not have said it from the position of stature that you have having been in the wars and and the seriousness which with which they have to take you, at least when they do listen to you, which is, you know, in my case, never in your case, a couple of times a year, at least.
So thank goodness for that.
So, yeah, now talk to us about you mentioned Armistice Day, Veterans Day.
You're a historian, too, taught history at West Point.
So what's Armistice Day mean to you as an American aside?
We could talk about Iraq and Afghanistan in the 21st century wars, but I bet you probably have a little something to say about the end of World War One or at least the calling of the temporary ceasefire in the Great World War of the West.
Yeah, you know, definitely.
I am a historian.
I'm kind of a geek and I'm really fascinated by World War One.
I mean, I really do think that the modern warfare state can can trace itself back.
I mean, definitely to the 1947 National Security Act.
But but but I think it really goes further and I think it does go back to World War One because this was a pivot point.
And and the important thing to understand is that, you know, all the combatants in World War One after nine million soldiers, and that's a conservative estimate, had died in the trenches, you know, across several continents on the 11th minute of the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918.
They called that armistice.
And and, you know, it obviously didn't hold.
I mean, it held for just barely a little less than 20 years, right, before the Germans invaded Poland.
But I think that nevertheless, the beauty of Armistice Day, which is what the holiday used to be called, the holiday we now call Veterans Day, had for, you know, until 1954 something called Armistice Day, at least in America.
And the beauty of Armistice Day was that it was imbued with real meaning.
It was a political holiday.
It wasn't this sanitized, vacuous holiday that we have today, where the only thing that's compulsory on Veterans Day in America today is to thank the nearest vet and then watch a war movie on TBS.
I mean, this was a political holiday because the people who left those sodden trenches, the veterans, the even some policymakers and definitely the veterans who became artists.
And I'm speaking about writers like Hemingway and Fitzgerald and, of course, in Britain, Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon and Robert Graves.
These guys left with with a determination, a dream, but also a determination to make sure that theirs was the last war.
Now, of course, we know the history and clearly World War Two stemmed in large part from the failures of the peace treaty at Russia in 1919.
And then in the half century after World War Two, the war was it, you know, the world was at war more than it wasn't.
And then I would say that ultimately the obituary for Armistice Day, for the dream of Armistice Day, if if war continues forever, which I think it might, I think the ultimate obituary, the gravestone commemoration will be our post 9-11 forever wars.
So my point that I'm making is that Veterans Day is a lifeless, soulless holiday.
You know, the assumption, the inherent assumption in Veterans Day is that there will always be veterans.
Right.
The assumption is that this is not a political day.
I mean, I heard more commentators on CNN this morning talk about how the great thing about Veterans Day is it's not political and it's, you know, this day of coming together in unity, which of course is horseshit.
Right.
I mean, that's clearly not true.
Veterans are proxies and political pawns as much as anybody.
But that's that's the narrative.
But, you know, Armistice Day was was it was a day of hope.
It was a day of mourning for probably the worst war in human history up to that point, which was legitimately a veritable collective national suicide.
And these veterans said, we're not going to do it again.
And even some politicians, at least for a while, said we're not going to do it again.
But of course it failed.
And once it failed so deeply and so obviously and overtly in 1954, the United States changed the holiday to Veterans Day, which is the current lifeless, soulless holiday we have today.
And I'll tell you, I am so sick of Veterans Day.
I've come to the point where I don't even call it Veterans Day anymore.
I mean, I correct people on the street and say, oh, you mean Armistice Day?
And of course, I'm being flippant, but I think there's a political motive to what I'm doing, which is to say that, you know, for all my cynicism, for all the darkness in my soul, I refuse to be fatalistic and resigned to forever war, because ultimately.
Our nation is not required.
It is not obligatory that we be at war across, you know, almost three dozen countries in the greater Middle East.
There is nothing obligatory about that, because there are plenty of countries in the world that don't do that.
And you know, to be a little bit more provocative, like how about Bhutan?
Like I want to be more like them, because you never hear about them invading people.
And the point I'm making, and obviously I'm being a little bit facetious, is that this is not determined.
There is contingency and agency in human history and in human activity.
And if we really wanted to end these wars, we could.
The odds are stacked against us in terms of wealth and power, and the military-industrial complex is inherent, you know, accumulation of both.
But I really, really think, and I'm rambling a bit, but like I would really encourage your listeners to just Google Armistice Day and read my article on antiwar.com.
I also have one on the American conservative and one on Truthdig.
I mean, I'm very prolific this Veterans Day.
And all my articles, while they're unique, say the same thing, which is we need to revive the spirit of Armistice Day, but literally for the health of our republic, what's left of it.
Yeah.
Well, I'm with you.
I mean, there ain't nothing messing our country up more than, hey, the very worst thing our government is doing, which is the wars, which is, hey, as James Madison said, Mr. History Professor, it's the germ of every other problem our government causes.
And it remains true.
And he knows because he got us into a war.
So he was a real expert about that.
But so, yeah, you know, I got to say, you talk about this in your New York Times video there, that according to the polls, the Middle East war veterans, the 21st century war veterans are more opposed to the current wars, even than the general public at this point.
And the general public's doing pretty good, 63 percent.
The vets got them beat at 69 percent.
And here's my thing is, I don't really believe that our democracy can work or anything like that.
That's stupid.
However, there comes a breaking point on all things where no matter how unresponsive your government is, at some point, if there is no popular support for the, you know, such an expansive and violent project, an expensive project, at some point when the only people in the common understanding, in the common narrative that they can't even escape on TV, when the only people who still support it aren't even the troops on their bases, but just the contractors and the lobbyists and the connected politicians inside Washington, D.C., the bankers that service the debt and all of these vested interests, and that everyone else, including the infantry, are sick and tired of it and don't want to do it anymore.
At that point, they have to give in, or at least it's going to make it a hell of a lot harder for them to keep this thing going.
And this is an election year.
And so there's a lot of opportunity here for antiwar veterans like yourself to make a real ruckus inside both parties by, you know, of course, creatively attacking the left from the left and the right from the right in all the best ways.
And every politician is such a troll these days that there's always something available, some good ammo to use for and against all the best stuff going on, you know?
Nobody's doing that better than antiwar.com.
And that's not just a plug for, you know, your site and a site that I work for.
But, you know, you guys have been talking about fighting the right from the right for a long time.
And I like to think that I fight the left from the left.
Well, I think I like to think I fight both.
It is a profound thing that more than two thirds of American post 9-11 veterans have said that not only one of the wars, but that Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan specifically, that all three were, quote, not worth it.
I mean, that is a profound thing because, you know, whether we like it or not, whether it's healthy or not, the the average enlisted soldier in the military is more rural, more poor, you know, more politically conservative, usually in the broadest sense, and also more likely to have family members in the military.
Those things are all true empirically.
And so, you know, it took a while.
But the fact that we're at this moment where, you know, sergeants with 14 tattoos and PTSD and a bullet wound in their pelvis are more against war than Rachel Maddow and Hillary Clinton.
I mean, that's a profound moment, isn't it?
Absolutely.
And I think, look, wait, here's the one thing that you left out of that, which is really baked into that.
And, you know, I'm sure you could have mentioned it on your list.
But also anybody, and I hear this all the time from even anti-war soldiers and stuff like that.
But that when you join, especially you join the infantry and they train you this way, you want to fight.
Right.
We're talking about 18 year old, 19 year old young men who are volunteering for the job of being a soldier.
Let's not kid ourselves.
It's the job of killing people, presumably only when it's really, really, really necessary to protect your country.
But still, so for guys who are, as you said, rural and conservative, they're also very macho and like brawling.
And for them to be, you know, anti-war at this point is against interests, not just kind of in a political conceptual way, but in a very visceral way for them.
I really do like fighting, but for now, I think we should just settle for training and not killing Afghans because I just don't see the point anymore.
That's really profound when these guys aren't even expected to have opinions about that.
Their job is to be a soldier, not to question why and that kind of stuff most of the time.
So it's, to me, that makes it that much more profound than the way that you describe it, I think, you know?
Oh, you're right.
I mean, it goes against the instincts of a lot of these kids, you know, and I call them kids because, you know, most of the people fighting these wars tend to be, you know, young, young guys and gals.
And, you know, their default position is not to be anti-war, I assure you.
You know, their default position is, as you described, to be like, you know, let's kill, let's fight, let's do it, you know, like, get her done.
You know, these are the kind of people that served under me and with me.
But something's happening and it's really interesting and I hope it's not a false hope because I'm normally really like cynical and dark and skeptical.
But look, tomorrow I'm leaving Iowa, I'm leaving the University of Iowa, which is a pretty liberal haunt where I'm working with veterans for peace right now.
But tomorrow I'm going to D.C. from the 12th to the 14th with an organization called Bring Our Troops Home.us, which is a libertarian, a Republican, quite frankly, I mean, overtly Republican organization of veterans that started in Idaho and Wyoming who, you know, we're going to D.C. and we're holding press conferences and I'm leading a panel or I'm co-leading a panel and, you know, Rand Paul's going to be there.
And, you know, it's like, wow, even politically conservative in the traditional sense, veterans from the Mountain West are fed up with these wars.
And it's like, this is remarkable, because in the Bush years, Bush two, there was nothing like this or at least not much, you know.
And I think after three presidents, a Republican, a Democrat and then whatever Trump is, I think that left and right distinctions have become less important, especially among veterans, because there is a, you know, a personal interest, an emotional interest and a physical interest in these wars ending.
And I think, look, soldiers go to war and they want to win.
And even relatively uneducated, relatively unintellectual soldiers, after a certain amount of time, realize that we're not winning.
And when winning is impossible, even they start to throw their hands up and say, what the heck?
And I think we've reached that point.
And it's really interesting, because a moment is going to come where the only people in favor of these wars anymore are chicken hawks on the left and the right, like Clinton and Maddow and McConnell.
And look, I get in trouble every time I mention his name, but Trump, who has not followed through on 99 percent of his anti-war rhetoric, although his rhetoric is profound sometimes, Trump does have the pulse of the people, especially his people, you know, and I think his people is actually a broad swath of Americans that reaches into about 60 percent of people who are either for him or interested in him.
And look, I think that Trump is paying attention to this moment that we're in, and it wouldn't surprise me if he finds a way to run on a far more anti-war platform than whoever the Democrats put up, especially if it's one of the moderates or centrists or corporate candidates that appear to be in the lead.
Hey, guys, Scott here.
I've got some books you should read.
The War State by Mike Swanson, a great history of the early Cold War.
No Dev, No Ops, No IT by Hussain Badakhshani.
How to Run Your Computer Business Like a Good Libertarian.
Oh yeah, and don't forget Fool's Errand, Time to End the War in Afghanistan by me.
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So here's a little bit of a strategy for you attacking the left from the left for all of your comrades, so to speak.
Attacking the left from the left out there, Danny, is use the right wingers against them.
That's the creative way to do it, right?
Is to say, listen, you're not going to sit here and be to the right of Rand Paul just because he's actually liberal on something, right?
From a liberal point of view, this is a left thing about him, even though he's such a right winger.
Hey, you're not going to outflank Rand Paul on the right on anything, are you?
Mr. Democrat, Congressman, candidate, person, or Mrs. or Miss, sorry, whatever.
That's to me, you know, hey, just because Trump says some anti-war stuff, does that mean us Democrats are now all got to be pro-war and we're going to let them steal this position from us or we're going to do it better than them?
We're going to never let Trump, who by the way, as you said, hasn't delivered at all.
We're not going to let him run like he's Ron Paul after escalating eight wars.
Hell no.
And so if he and Rand Paul say some anti-war stuff sometimes, we left wingers in the crowd demand that our liberal and Democratic congressmen say even more anti-war stuff louder and all the time.
And make sure you always stay to the left of Rand Paul on everything because that's the iron law of the universe, right?
And then how can they say no to that?
It's just never framed that way.
It's always framed like, oh, Trump's being reckless.
I guess we have to stay.
But you could just, you could obliterate that with a narrative like the one I'm talking about.
You know what I mean?
What do you think?
And I try.
I mean, I absolutely, absolutely try.
I call what's afflicting the mainstream left, I call it Trump derangement syndrome and I've said it a number of times.
And it's like these hypocritical quote liberals in the establishment, the MSNBC Democrat as I like to call them, they're only against wars that Trump likes.
So they're against Yemen because Trump likes Yemen, right?
He likes the war in Yemen or at least he's supporting the war in Yemen for his Saudi friends.
But if Trump says something that's anti-war, if he doesn't like a war or even if he just proclaims or purports to not like a war, suddenly the Democrats love that war.
Which tells me that they're not principled.
For them it's politics over patriotism.
And that's what the Trump derangement system is or syndrome is.
And I think that you're right that that strategy is the best one and I'm out here beating the drum as much as possible.
And the problem of course is not speaking to the choir.
But I think, which I often find myself doing, but I think that the interesting thing about me going to this Republican libertarian anti-war organization tomorrow in D.C. is that it's the ultimate manifestation of the natural alliance that should cohere between the truly anti-war left and the truly anti-war right.
And I really hope that we can make a splash, you know, after General Retired Don Bulldog speaks later in the day, Rand Paul will.
And then a bunch of us are going to meet our congressman, you know.
And my congressman is from Staten Island in New York.
I'm still a New York resident for now because I just retired.
And you know, he's a Democrat.
He's also a Purple Heart recipient, Afghan war veteran.
And you know, he's been, you know, a pretty typical centrist Democrat.
A pretty typical afflicted member of the Trump derangement syndrome.
And, you know, I mean, I can't wait, you know, to get my face time with him, which I hope I do and I'm supposed to, and challenge him on these very things.
And you know, will it work out?
I don't know.
But what I do know is he's going to have some tough, tough questions to answer when he gets in front of me tomorrow.
Yeah.
Well, listen, I think this effort is just great.
And I've talked with Dan McKnight and some of the other guys from this group and it seems like such an important group.
And I'm sorry, did you see my anti-war piece on Attack the Right from the Right a couple of weeks ago there?
I totally did.
Eric sent it to me.
And in fact, he had asked me to write one of the fundraising articles in the vein of that.
And that's actually going to be my next fundraising article is building on your piece, which I thought was really excellent.
Cool.
So, but anyways, I'm not trying to promote the piece.
I'm just talking about there was one thing in it was that quote of Trump saying to his staff, well, I don't know.
They chanted bring them home at my rally in Minneapolis.
So sounds like they believe in what I think.
And so screw you guys kind of thing.
So yeah, that was to me.
That's the key right there is for him.
What if he hears that at every rally, but not just what if he hears that at every rally?
What if it's clear that, whoa, those are some barrel chested Marine Corps looking dudes who were leading this chant.
And I'm pretty sure they look like war veterans to me, kind of inescapably leading these chants.
And what if actually they sound more like they're telling not asking?
And what, you know what I mean?
Like that could be seen as a very just, you know, we expect you to live up to your promises at face value thing, but it could also be kind of like, hey, we expect you to live up to your promises a little bit more forcefully.
That could be such a powerful thing in the social psychology of this whole year coming up, man.
I mean, we got a year to do this and especially this bring them home, man.
I wish I was given a speech at that thing.
I'm too much of a twerp to stand on that stage with the rest of you guys.
But I hope somebody really goes off about the whole right from the right thing and focusing on invoking president Trump's best words on these things and, and framing it all as support for the policy that he said he wants to do.
And all of this, the incumbent Republican president after all.
It's just the potential here for really disrupting the narrative on foreign policy in America.
I think it's just like, there's a, an H bomb sitting there ready to go off figuratively speaking if we can just get the code, right.
You know?
Well, I agree with Scott and I'll tell you, you know, I mean, I'm going to do my best to, to bang that drum that, that you'd be banging if, if, if you were one of the speakers and you know, this is really important and, and, and I'll tell you, I'm not a person who thinks the government is particularly responsive, but Trump is an interesting fellow because like I said, I do think he has his finger on the pulse of a lot of this stuff and he may not specifically know about this rally or this conference that we're doing on the 12th and the 13th, uh, tomorrow and the next day.
But um, but I think someone in his staff will.
And I think even if, even if that doesn't happen, he, he is getting a sense.
He's a guy who knows the polls and he knows that most military folks actually do support him.
I mean, there are also polls that show that military folks are happier with him as commander in chief than they would have been with Hillary.
I mean, there's polls to that effect.
So, you know, in a, in a weird way, even though I don't like the guy in a lot of ways, we are part of his base and, and he does have his finger on the pulse of that base.
And uh, and I wouldn't be surprised if he rides this to victory in 2020 I mean, it won't be just this, but it'll be a part of it.
Yeah.
Well, and of course the fact of the matter is as good a game as he's talked, he really has done very little to follow through on this.
And so it'll be interesting to see whether he really feels that pressure and feels like this is something he has to really start falling, following through on, uh, in order to win.
And so that's, that's the part that's up to us.
That's right.
And you know what?
I wouldn't be surprised.
I mean, and I'm being a little optimistic here, but I would not be surprised if one soon or at least before the election that we're going to hear president Trump step up to the podium someday and say, listen, I talked to the veterans, even if he didn't, I talked to the veterans, the veterans don't want this.
I'm all about the veterans.
So we're getting the heck out.
You know, I wouldn't be surprised if you hear that speech and what in the heck is Elizabeth Warren going to do, right?
What in the heck is whoever's against him going to do with that?
I think they're going to have a real hard time, um, getting to the left of him on this or, I mean, it's not left, right, but you know what I mean?
Getting, getting more anti-war than him on this.
I think that's going to be a profoundly difficult thing.
Yep.
And it's the perfect way to frame it.
And coming from him, he's so shameless in the way he does it.
You know, there's that famous picture where he's wrapping himself around the flag, right?
And when he talks about soldiers, he's like, he's so over the top.
He's like, these are the greatest humans who ever have lived in any circumstances are the current privates in the army and doing whatever they're doing over there.
And so, and he sounds like he means it.
And what a great way to talk about bringing the troops home, right?
Our great victory, our great sacrifices, the greatest heroes ever.
And apparently meaning it, but also just being so over the top in the way he states it.
So there's no question here about everybody's turning into Jane Fonda and running away from danger or something like that.
This is something that is, as you're saying, for them, because they're the ones who matter the most.
And that is the perfect angle for any right wing candidate, any American anti-war veteran who's trying to get across to candidates the way that they need to stand on these things.
I mean, man, again, there's so much potential right there for, uh, fortunately not me because Bill Clinton was the president when I was 17 and there was no question I was going to go serve the new world order.
But anyway, the rest of you guys though, it's a, it's a great new mission for you to go on.
And, you know, as we close here, I just want to say like, won't it be ironic when it's Donald Trump, maybe for the wrong reasons, whatever, who knows what motivates him?
Won't it be ironic when we have to look back when historians have to admit that it was potentially Donald Trump who felt the pulse of the veterans and whether he used us or we used him or vice or both, you know, that that was the Alliance that ended the forever war.
I mean, won't that be ironic?
I mean, what a great footnote in history that will be.
It'll be absurd, but it'll ultimately be really interesting.
I think.
And I say that as a historian.
Yeah.
You're totally right.
And then what's going to be even more hilarious than that is when they pivot out of the middle east so that they can start a new war with Russia and or China, because that's the real threat.
There's a whole other, you know, responsibility of ours to confront too.
And don't be surprised if it's the next democratic president, who's the one that gets us into that war, which we may, which humanity may not survive.
It was Hillary that wrote the pivot to Asia.
So of course she did.
Of course she did.
Yeah.
I'm increasingly persuaded that my vote for Hillary was a was a distinctly, profoundly wrong decision.
And yeah, I think that's pretty safe to say there, buddy.
And I say that as somebody who doesn't love Trump, despite what my critics say.
But I mean, I am convinced I am increasingly persuaded that we're better off with this guy in the White House than her, at least on foreign policy.
You know what?
I don't even think there would be an us to discuss this if she was the president.
We'd all died in an H bomb war right now because Putin would have tried to stop her from putting Ayman al-Zawahiri on the throne in Damascus.
And so she would have dropped an H bomb on Moscow.
Yeah, we might not even be talking about this.
What would we say?
Same thing with John McCain.
You know, I'm not a partisan.
I'm just for who's ever less worse on Russia.
That seems to me to be the most important thing right now.
And she was absolutely the worst.
But wait, anyway, wait, before you go, do you have to go?
Yeah, I have a minute.
I have a minute.
Okay.
Because I should be asking you more things.
I'm always talking, you know, all this politics and strategy and stuff with you.
But and I hear what you say about, you know, the first world war and the start of this holiday and, and a little bit there about your frustration with the modern day terror wars.
But, you know, like, I don't know, what if there's somebody's right wing uncle is listening to this, and they really have supported all of these wars this whole time.
That's what Ronald Reagan would do, they think.
And what could you say to them to get them to understand what it's really like to be a veteran of the Iraq and Afghan wars and look back at the beginnings, you know, the first two decades of the 21st century here, through those eyes, and that's what this all really means?
It's a really important question.
Because like, my dad is the guy you're describing, okay, so this is this is profoundly personal for me.
Um, you know, there was a time in my anti war journey where I turned so far left that I was alienating the guy you just described, right, the Reagan supporting troop supporting authentically supportive, I don't mean to, I'm not insulting these people, I think some of them really mean it.
I alienated those people, but I'm past that.
And and if I will, and I wouldn't be, you know, I wouldn't be writing for anti war.com if I wasn't past that, or at least mostly past that, you know, what I would say to them is that this, you know, Reagan, if you like Reagan, remember the following thing, Reagan avoided nuclear war.
Reagan, for all his flaws, was one of the most important peace activists, ultimately in human history, through his work with Gorbachev.
And also, Reagan didn't start new wars with the exception of Granada, which was relatively brief.
Yeah, it was a little stupid.
And but it was pretty low casualties.
Look when, when he realized that the 241 Marines who died in Beirut in that tragic bombing, when he realized those Marines weren't doing good, when he I mean, he not that they weren't being brave, but when he realized they weren't achieving anything, Reagan had the courage to say, no, we're leaving, you know, because he knew that his people would follow him.
He knew no one would call him a dove.
And so my point is, I'm, again, increasingly persuaded that if Reagan was alive today, he would be listening to the 69% of veterans who say the war in Iraq and Syria and Afghanistan aren't worth it.
And I think old Ronald, like the Donald would, would eventually support that viewpoint because not because he was weak, but because he was strong, because he was strong.
And sometimes strength, the better part of strength is restraint.
And I think he would support that.
And so my point is, just because I'm criticizing the current manifestation of Veterans Day and the whole vacuous thanks for your service thing, it doesn't mean I don't think people mean it.
I think a lot of people mean it.
And I think a lot of America's uncles who supported Reagan and support these wars really mean it.
So I'm not, I'm not attacking them.
What I'm saying is that whether you come from the left or from the right, I think that strength, the better part of strength is often restraint.
And it's often an understanding of we shouldn't be wasting lives unless it's absolutely necessary and unless it's winnable, unless it's achievable.
And I think it's increasingly clear that the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and everywhere else are not, are not achievable.
So I think that there is common ground for the Reagan uncle and the Bernie college student to to find common ground.
And I think that's a pretty, pretty important and remarkable thing.
Okay.
One more.
And this should be the hardest one for right wing uncle who actually does read Bill Roggio all the time over at the long war journal and knows a thing or two about this.
What about Western Iraq?
Are you just going to leave that wide open for a QI?
Let's get real.
George Bush and Barack Obama spread jihadists everywhere.
And in some places they're real danger in some places.
America's fighting on the side of a QAP right now.
God knows what kind of danger they're going to pose to us at the time that the current phase of the war in Yemen is over.
You really just going to turn tail on that?
Yeah, I am, but I understand the concern.
I think there's two things to say about this.
And the first one is that, and we can't undo this.
Okay, so this is not a policy prescription.
We can't undo this.
But the reality is we created a QAP, right?
We created a QI, we created ISIS in many ways.
So the question then that you're posing is what now, right?
And and I think it's a question of where do you stop your enemy?
Where do you defeat him?
If you believe that you defeat him by being in his country, occupying parts of his country, then I think you can be empirically proven incorrect.
And then there's a lot of stats, even the State Department stats show that the presence of American soldiers as an occupying force actually increase the recruitment and levels of jihadi activism.
So look, Western Iraq and Eastern Syria are going to remain a problem for quite a while.
And whether the Iraqi government and what's left of the Syrian government, although they were going to win the civil war, ultimately they already have, whether they can handle it is a question.
But I will tell you this, the distance between the Syrian-Turkish border and Russia is about the distance from Washington, D.C. to West Virginia.
And so all this talk about how we're ceding the Middle East to Russia is not only ludicrous and bunk, but in some ways I say, good, you know, let them have that.
It's their sphere of influence.
It's a bigger threat to them than it is to us.
So you want to harden our borders, you want to work on homeland security, whatever you think is right is fine.
But ultimately, I think we have to be honest with ourselves that that any action we take in Western Iraq is going to ultimately be counterproductive.
And the idea that Uncle Sam has a solution to this is belied by 19 plus, or 19th year now of forever war.
And so I just don't buy it.
And I think that there are interests in the Middle East, both external and internal, that have an interest, pecuniary and safety interest, in suppressing ISIS and AQAP and AQI.
And I think they'll do it if we give them the space to, and we can only ultimately do more harm than good.
Yeah.
Hey, let me ask you this, man.
Was there one moment when you were in Iraq or Afghanistan when you decided, wow, wait a minute, man, I got to rethink all this now?
Or was it, you know, you can't really quite pinpoint it that way?
Or how's that work?
I mean, it was gradual and there were a lot of, there were a lot of waypoints on that road.
I think, I think the final breaking point for me was, I was in just the fog of my Afghan war deployment.
You know, I've already been in the army by this point for 10 years and I've been in Iraq and I didn't like what I saw in Iraq and I thought it was unwinnable.
But there was this moment where, you know, I was in such a fog that like, there are these weird moments in one's life where you just sort of like wake up.
Like I just remember like coming back to consciousness because I'd been in such a blur and I like come back to reality and I'm giving a speech.
I'm standing at a podium and I'm giving a memorial address because I was the captain in command.
I'm giving a memorial address for a soldier that was under my command that I didn't even know.
Barely.
I may have exchanged like four words with him and his name was Gustavo Rios and he was killed.
Both his legs were blown off and he bled to death, you know, right there with me.
And he was an undocumented, you know, immigrant who joined the army and all this and it occurred to me in the middle of my speech, I was phoning in the speech by the way, you know, it was one of those things where I don't even remember what I said, but it probably wasn't all that good because I didn't have the words and it struck me that I don't think I'd ever be able to look his mother in the eye and I haven't to this day because I'm a coward.
I don't think I'd be able to look his mother in the eye and tell him what in the heck he died for.
I just don't have the words.
And that was probably my breaking point.
I don't know if it was the pivot point because I was against the war before that, but that was definitely the breaking point when I realized I could no longer look these mothers and husbands and wives and whatever in the eye and give them even, I didn't even have a fake explanation ready for them.
And I think that was it for me.
And from there on, I really started writing and dissenting even on active duty.
Yeah, man.
You know, that's almost the same story as what Danny Davis said to where he's like, and Matthew Ho, I think too, the same thing was the question is, I have to justify this somehow to the survivors of my guys, but I can't.
Yeah, absolutely.
Wow.
What a brick wall to hit, man.
I'm glad I did hit it though.
And I think I'm doing a better service to my nation now than I ever was as platitudinal as that might sound.
I really believe that.
No, of course, man.
There's no question about it, Danny.
And I'm here to tell you, there's a hell of a lot of people who appreciate it too.
As you said, it's not just today with the, I mean, it might be a little bit exceptional to have four or five pieces in one day, but it's never exceptional to have four or five pieces from you in a week.
We usually do more than that all over the place.
You're pretty much unstoppable and people notice it really matters to a lot of people.
I know you know that, but anyway, so happy Veterans Day, happy Armistice Day to you, buddy.
Yeah, I appreciate it, Scott.
And it's always a pleasure.
And I'm glad we did this on short notice and let's do it again soon.
I'm sure I'll have something else to talk about as soon as this is over.
Yep.
The news keeps coming.
Well, I'll be looking at antiwar.com for the next one.
Thanks, bud.
Yeah.
All right, brother.
Talk to you soon.
All right, y'all.
Thanks.
Find me at libertarianinstitute.org, at scotthorton.org, antiwar.com, and reddit.com slash scotthortonshow.
Oh yeah, and read my book, Fool's Errand, Timed and the War in Afghanistan at foolserrand.us.
