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.
You can also sign up for the podcast feed.
The full archive is also available at youtube.com slash scotthortonshow.
So this one is called Beyond Ukraine, America's Coming, Losing Battle for Eurasia.
And this is what I meant at the end of the last interview with my great segue there about the last thing the Republicans and the Democrats agree on.
It might just be the last thing they ever have the chance to agree on is their position on Russia.
And underlying this entire impeachment narrative, of course, is the whole completely bogus and uninformed and never detailed theory of Russian aggression against Eastern Europe and America's absolute dedication that no president has the right to overrule or change to defend our allies like Ukraine, even if they're not actually our treaty allies like Ukraine there in Eastern Europe, apparently no matter what the consequences.
And again, just like with the impeachment and everything else about the Democrats right now, they really are just breathing their own smoke and their own kind of group think consensus agreement, kind of like the dumbest of truters, right?
Like, hey, I know six people who say I'm right about this, and that's all I need to know.
And they just, man, they could get us all nuked to death, I think, possibly.
No, I mean, you're right.
I wrote this article based on a conversation I had on a podcast last week.
And I started waxing poetic about these, like, geopolitical, geographic theorists of the 19th, late 19th and early 20th centuries.
And my point was that even though we like to think that we're, like, modern and that we're, like, you know, enlightened, the reality is that Washington, our government, is still playing according to the script of old school geographical theorists like Halford Mackinder.
Now, let me explain.
Halford Mackinder was a British guy, a Briton, back when Britain was all that, right?
Remember, you guys remember Britain used to be us, they used to be the head of the world before they went into debt to us after World War I and then especially World War II?
Mackinder had a really, really profound thesis.
He said that global power, the global hegemon, which America wants to be and has been trying to be since the end of the Cold War, or maybe since the end of the Second World War, the global hegemon will be the one that controls the world's islands.
That's what he called it, the world island.
What did he mean by that?
He meant Eurasia, the heart of Eurasia.
Now, a lot of listeners are saying, what the hell is Eurasia?
Well, Eurasia is Europe.
We got some homeschooled in the audience here.
You're right there to assume most people went to government school.
They might have not showed you a map of the planet a single time.
But Europe and Asia, unlike the other continents, they touch each other.
They're completely intertwined.
It's totally arbitrary where Europe ends and Asia starts, right?
And that arbitrary line was drawn in the western section of Russia, right, of the Russian Empire, what used to be the Soviet Empire.
Mackinders said that whoever controls the world island, whoever controls the pivot, that was his word, the pivot point of Asia, specifically Lower Eastern Europe, Ukraine, the oil fields of the Caucasus, half of which is still part of Russia, the other half of which is under the Russian influence, and Central Asia with its mineral resources, for those of you who follow the Afghan war.
Whoever controls that shall control the world.
That's what Halford Mackinder said.
Now, let's say for fun that you're a Central European racialist nation with a growing population, the fastest growing population in all of Europe, and the biggest population in all of Europe.
And let's say a guy named Adolf comes to power, and he says two things.
He says, in order for our race to dominate the world as we should, because our hair is sufficiently blonde and our skin is sufficiently pale, we need Lebensraum, living space in German, for our people.
But we also need material resources for our military, specifically oil, but other things, too.
That guy, that Adolf Hitler, might just decide that he needs to invade Russia, because the Soviet Union at the time controlled the Ukraine, where all the wheat was grown for all of Russia, and the Caucasus and the Stans, as we call them now, former Soviet republics, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, where all the oil is.
The Nazis might just think they have to do that.
They have to invade it, because they can't face off against the British Empire with its coaling stations and its American alliance and its massive empire, unless we take not only the Lebensraum, the living space, but the material resources that are literally buried treasure in the Caucasus, Ukraine, and Central Asia.
Now that, Scott, is why the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union, despite it being a massively counterproductive and ultimately self-defeating decision.
That's why we're still in Afghanistan right now, even though it's only kind of a half-assed part of the Mackinder thesis, even in play.
Never mind exactly all the land between Ukraine and Afghanistan.
Somehow, just Afghanistan is a prize anyway, just to sit there, even if the security situation won't allow for the mining of a damn thing for a hundred years.
Well, that's the whole point that I was about to make, which is that- Oh, man, I'm sorry.
Well, you know what- No, no, no, no, no, no.
You know, you know.
That's the great thing about talking to you, is you know what I'm going to say, because you're hella informed.
Look, we are currently in a battle for Mackinder's Eurasia, Central Asia, Ukraine, Caucasus, today.
We're in that battle today.
Thomas Friedman, who I loathe, from the New York Times, in the early aughts, right, in the early 2000s, he was like, oh, control of land space doesn't matter, the world is flat, the Lexus and the Olive Tree, all that matters is how many McDonald's franchises are in Kiev.
He tried to sell us on that, but he was wrong.
I mean, he's been wrong about everything.
Exhibit A is the Iraq War.
The dude has been wrong about everything, and he still has a column at the New York Times.
I'm like, dude, I'm way smarter and a better writer than him, so if you're listening, Sulzberger family of the New York Times, hire Danny.
Hire Danny, because I'm way better than Tom.
I can second that.
Yeah, no, seriously, I should have a column in the New York Times, because I will tear him down.
But anyway, my point is this.
Mackinder hasn't died.
The ghost of Mackinder is alive and well.
And I know alive and ghost are contradictory concepts, but my point is the ghost of Mackinder still haunts American foreign policy.
We are still battling for the pipeline transit routes, natural gas specifically, and oil, the mineral resources of Central Asia, and the coal slash agricultural power of Ukraine, the world islands.
We're still battling for it.
Now, we're going to lose, which I mentioned in the article.
Yeah, and by we, you mean the middle part of North America.
Precisely right.
Precisely right.
Like, we are 10,000 miles away.
China's economy and Russia's proximity, okay, make them both superior partners in the coming battle for Eurasia.
And here's what I will submit, Scott.
Here's what I surmise.
The whole battle over Iran is definitively linked to the coming battle for Eurasia because whereas Russia has military bases and proximity to Central Asia and the Ukraine, and whereas China has economic clout in Central Asia through their one belt, one road philosophy and plan, right?
Google it, listeners.
America's only foothold in the region is the Persian Gulf and Afghanistan.
But Afghanistan isn't going so well, is it?
It's not going so well.
Scott, you know about this.
I heard you.
Did you write a book about it?
Did you write a book about this war?
I think you did.
Yeah, right.
So the same one that you were in?
Yeah.
No, I'm obviously being facetious, but like America's only tenuous foothold in the battle for the world island of Mackinder, I don't even know if I'm pronouncing that right.
It doesn't matter, is Afghanistan and the Persian Gulf.
Iran is in the way.
They're in the way.
Because they won't submit to imperialism, because they won't submit to our version of geopolitics.
Iran is, by definition, a block on our attempt to play a hand in the Texas Hold'em game of Eurasian supremacy.
But the reality is, Scott, we're going to lose.
And I don't even think that's a bad thing.
I don't think the United States of America ought to define itself by its control of Eurasia.
I mean, that's the whole joke here, right?
I mean, this whole thing is self-defeating.
The grand chess board and all that.
But I guess it does make sense if you're a Polish aristocrat.
But for Americans, why in the world would we want to dominate Eurasia or need to?
And why would we assume that anyone else is in the position to either, that we're preventing anyone else from accomplishing the same thing?
And let the Chinese try to occupy Afghanistan and see how much they like it.
And they have no interest in that.
No, totally.
They have no interest in that.
They're trying to build a road through there, which Americans, you know, actual humans, not the government employees, but the real people of this society should celebrate.
A road and a highway and a railway and a fiber optic line from Shanghai to Lisbon.
Are you kidding me?
That's the greatest invention of the history of humanity.
Now, of course, it could serve to transport troops, too, but go ahead.
But let's remember, though, that America has 800-ish military bases in 80-ish countries.
It's 2020.
It is the year 2020, which I never thought I would live to.
But how many overseas bases, military bases, does China have today?
Do you know?
It's guaranteed in the single digits, the same as the Russians.
One.
One.
And it's in Djibouti.
One.
It's a naval base in Djibouti, and it's fairly minuscule.
How many aircraft carriers, not that aircraft carriers matter much anymore in the age of, you know, ballistic missiles, but how many aircraft carriers does China have?
I think they just launched their second one, right?
They just launched their second.
Now, their first was a leaky Russian retread.
Literally.
Like, leaky.
Like, they bought the first one from, like, the Ukraine after the Cold War ended, and it literally leaked.
And it was like a joke.
But they just launched their second, which is a pretty good aircraft carrier.
My point is this.
The Chinese listeners, are you ready?
The Chinese are not coming for your children.
This isn't a global Lindbergh affair.
Like, they are not kidnapping your kids.
They are not taking your – well, they kind of are taking your jobs.
But they're not, like, geopolitically about to invade America.
And so my point, which I think you made five minutes ago, probably less verbosely, is that why should an unemployed, recently fired, you know, GM employee in Northwest Ohio give a fuck about Eurasia?
Why?
And people say to me, they're like, why did Trump win?
And I'm like, that's why Trump won.
That's why.
And that's why he's going to win again.
You know?
Because the Democrats don't have an alternative narrative, do they?
They don't.
And of course, check out the full archives.
More than 5,000 interviews now, going back to 2003.
And sign up for the podcast feed at scotthorton.org.
And thanks.
All right.
So let's talk about the arms buildup in Eastern Europe.
Despite all the hype, and maybe in spite of all the hype, quite literally, in order to prove that he wasn't a Russian spy, Donald Trump has been sending weapons.
And the whole impeachment scandal has been about a temporary holdup in the arms deal.
Amazingly.
But he's actually sent more troops to Poland, more troops to the Baltic, escalated naval activity in the Baltic and Black Seas.
And I don't know.
I guess they haven't stood in the way of peace breaking out in the east.
It seems like the new Ukrainian president is negotiating a peace with Putin there.
They already have Minsk, too, but they're trying to refine it, I guess, and really bring the last of the fighting to the end there.
But I don't know.
I guess, and integrate this into your answer, if you want, the interest of the army in having something to do there.
I mean, it seems so obvious now that the Navy and Air Force are interested in having a cold war with China.
Hopefully only a cold one.
And the army wants one with Russia.
And the SOCOM is more interested in continuing to fight the terror wars, because that's their thing.
Right, right.
No, there are institutional biases.
I mean, they exist.
It's a real thing.
Look, my peers, the guys that I grew up with in the army, a higher percentage of them are in Eastern Europe right now than are in Afghanistan or Iraq or Syria.
A much higher percentage.
A much higher percentage, dude.
How many total troops are we talking about over there, do you know?
Like, if we say the Baltics and Poland?
Yeah, no, I can give you a basic guess, okay?
Like, I'm not on the inside anymore, but here's what's up.
Like, we, during the Cold War, there were three to four divisions in Germany, okay?
Permanently stationed there.
Divisions are 10,000 to 15,000 soldiers, depending on their attachments, okay?
Today, there's only one light, medium, I guess, cavalry regiment in Germany.
That's all we have.
A lot of support troops, but like, just one.
Right?
And it's about 5,000 soldiers.
But on a permanent rotating basis, there is at least one division.
Armored, armored division.
The 1st Cavalry Division and the 1st Armored Division normally rotate, and the 1st Infantry Division, which is also armored, into the Baltic states, Poland, Hungary, and Romania.
So, what we're talking about is that on any given day, there are between 10,000 and 20,000 American soldiers in tanks, Humvees, trucks, right on the border of the Russian Federation.
Just waiting for something to kick off.
Now, obviously, they can't win.
You know what I mean?
Yeah, I was going to say, it doesn't sound like that's enough guys to win in a fight.
It's enough guys to pick a fight.
It's enough guys to create a speed bump.
That, if, okay, let me explain what I mean.
If the 1st Cavalry Division of 12,000 soldiers gets wiped out by Russia in Lithuania and Romania tomorrow, what do you think America will do?
They will lionize the fatalistic heroes of the 1st Cavalry Division, right, and they will use that as an excuse to kick off a major war with Russia.
So, what we're sending there is just enough soldiers to send a message, potentially serve as a martyrdom speed bump in Eastern Europe if Russia ever got the gumption to invade, which they won't.
That's all we're doing.
But my friends, Scott, my friends who are about to get promoted to Lieutenant Colonel, the guys I went to West Point with, most of them don't go to Iraq, Afghanistan, or Syria anymore.
Most of them go to Poland and Latvia and Romania.
And they train and they're ready to fight the Russians.
It's – dude, this is the untold story.
I'm giving you some damn inside baseball.
Like, this is what's going on.
Dude, when I was in the Command and General Staff College, which is the school for majors, it's like a big deal in the Army.
Like, only half of the officers get selected to go to this school.
And if you don't get selected to go to that school, you don't get promoted.
Like, that's it.
Like, that's the end of your career.
But I got selected because they used to think I was a good soldier.
Joke's on them.
But when I was in the Command and General Staff College in 2016 and 2017, what we do is we get taught how to plan major operations because we're mid-level professional officers.
We get taught how to do the legwork that's involved in deploying an army to a war.
Now, the Command and General Staff College of the United States Army, official Command and General Staff College of the United States Army, has to decide what scenario we're going to plan for.
This is very demonstrative.
It's very important, Scott.
What did I spend an entire year in school planning for?
A fake war in the Caucasus where the United States Army deploys to Azerbaijan and fights two elements.
A break-off Iranian Islamist movement and a Russian intervention force.
That's what I spent a year planning.
I learned all about the Caucasus.
All of us did.
It wasn't just me.
I mean we're talking about a generation of army officers who in 2016 and 2017, before Trump was even elected and just after he was elected, we were planning a war with Russia in the Caucasus.
In the Caucasus.
If that's not illustrative, I don't know what is, dude.
Also, here's something that will illustrate a thing or two, which is that America's support for, first of all, the Kolkata Revolution there where they overthrew Shevardnadze and put Shakhashvili in there.
Well, Shakhashvili then, he had started this attack to try to reabsorb South Ossetia in 2008.
And according to, I think Ron Suskind is one, but there's another source for this too.
I'm sorry, I can't remember who my second source is.
They both claim to have two sources themselves.
But it was reported a couple of places that Cheney had advocated strikes against the Russian troops who were coming through the tunnels under the Caucasus mountains.
And that George W. Bush said to the principals committee of the National Security Council who agrees with the vice president that we should strike the Russians here.
And the rest of them sat on their hands and he said, all right, that's it.
This is 2008, August 2008.
Right.
Most people don't realize that our proxies, like our boys in Georgia, started that war.
Yeah.
Well, and when it came down to it, Cheney, who wasn't calling the shots, thank goodness.
The guy who actually had the decision to make was George W. Bush, said, there's no way in hell I'm attacking the Russians in South Ossetia.
The vice president can say whatever he wants.
And by the way, then that also meant that it was Rice and Stephen Hadley and the rest of the war cabinet there who also said, are you kidding me?
So that should have been.
That's the test, right?
Same thing with Trump and the Iranians shooting down the drone.
You can escalate.
Are you going to back down?
OK, so if you you're going to back down, if you don't really want a war, then why don't you stop pretending like you do all the time?
We could really cause one.
And so it's just.
Yeah.
Obviously, if the Russians roll to Kiev and we do have some troops there training, but if they did do that, I mean, would America really go to full scale Holocaust and H-bombs for every major city in Russia and in the United States of America in order to prove some point?
I kind of doubt it, but it depends who's in the chair at the time.
I don't know.
I used to ask my students at West Point, you know, you know, as the listeners might know, I taught American history to freshmen at West Point for two years.
I used to ask them about NATO late in the semester.
I would say, hey, guys, if Russia invades Latvia, which is in NATO, which is in NATO, do you realize that it's in NATO?
How crazy is that?
It's a former Russian republic.
All three of the Baltic states.
They're all in NATO.
And I would say and I just chose Latvia because I thought it sounded interesting.
I would say, hey, guys.
If Russia invades Latvia.
These are the two words I used.
Would.
And should.
The United States defend them up to and including a potential nuclear war.
And I would ask those two questions and I would just stop and wait for a response.
I would say, would America do it?
Secondarily, should America do it?
And my students were blown away by that because 90 percent of them didn't even know that Latvia was in NATO.
Because the decision to expand NATO eastward.
Which was in contravention of George H.W. Bush and Secretary of State Jim Baker's promises.
Was not a Democratic issue.
Now, I know, I know what they're going to say.
I know my critics are going to say this.
Danny, the Senate approved it.
And I will say back, the Senate isn't and wasn't designed to be a Democratic institution.
In other words, the American people were never consulted.
And even if they were, Americans are bad on all kinds of things.
The whole thing was stupid on its own terms, regardless of what the majority or minority thinks about it.
I mean, just look at what we're talking about here.
Yeah, I know, but what we're talking about here is like...
And you know what it was Democratic politics.
I mean, Bill Clinton said he, you know, this was a huge part of the argument in 1996.
Was this would be good for Polish votes in Illinois.
Which, you know what?
That's what Harry Truman said about Israel in 1940.
You know, in terms of majoritarian politics, not so much.
But in terms of actual retail American politics, it was very much caught up with all of that at the time.
But the thing is, Scott, and you know this.
The proxy war in Ukraine and the greater battle for Eurasia, as I argued in my anti-war.com piece.
Everyone Google it.
Has the potential to end in human extinction nuclear war.
I'm not saying it's definitely going to happen.
I'm just saying the potential is there.
And my question is this.
If we're going to go all in, in the Texas Hold'em game of geopolitics.
If we're going to go all in.
I just think it might be better not to go all in for.
Sorry, I almost cursed again.
For goddamn Ukraine.
Right.
10,000 miles from us.
Not a member of NATO.
I don't even believe in NATO, which is a whole other question.
You know, we could discuss on a further interview.
NATO is irrelevant and anachronistic.
But, and it's actually, I think NATO is part of the reason that we're in a second Cold War.
Yeah, that's the core of the danger.
Exactly.
Look, at the time when they sold this, they said the Russians are our friends.
Eventually we'll bring them into, you know, even in Wolfowitz's defense planning guidance.
They don't say bring them directly into NATO, but they say we'll bring them into our security relationship of peace.
Or whatever the hell they say.
Our sphere of peace and security in Europe.
But it was a lie.
But it was a lie because ultimately NATO has always, from its genesis, been an anti-Russian alliance.
And it remains such.
Yep.
Well, and especially after the Kosovo War.
There was no way that was going to happen at that point.
And then with the rise of Putin and his declaration of independence, you forget all that.
But then, so what are we left with?
An expanded NATO military alliance and a war guarantee.
That's what people don't understand.
A war guarantee that, don't worry, if you get in a fight, we will come to help you.
To people who were in no position to help, as you said.
And look, even if they station the entire U.S. Army back in Europe again, just as in the Cold War.
If there was a real war, they would all die in nuclear bomb fire.
It wouldn't matter how many tanks you had.
They'd have gotten hit by H-bombs.
But so, here's the thing about it, too, that I want to ask you about.
Because you did.
You're a professor at West Point and a major in all these things.
You've got to know more about this than a lot of people.
So, I, and look, I'm really much more, have been much more interested in the Middle East stuff.
And keeping up with the Middle East stuff than the Russia stuff, I admit.
But it seems like I hear a lot of talk about, well, you know, if we fought the Russians here or there, in defense of the Baltic states, or if we fought them here or there, how much armor would we need and this kind of thing.
They talk the same way about China.
Well, we've got this many boats and this many planes and this many missiles.
And we're going to use that if we have to defend Taiwan, whatever.
But, you know, obviously everybody knows that all sides here, Russia, China, America, all have hydrogen bombs.
And like you said, there's a real danger that you lose one division.
Those guys become the greatest heroes since Iwo Jima.
Our heroic Americans who died at the hands of the dastardly Putinites, or whatever it is.
Yeah, look at the Philippines in World War II.
You can't back down from that.
So here's my point, though, is this.
It goes without saying that everybody's got nukes.
Because everybody knows they've got nukes.
But then it seems to me, and I'm sorry audience, I'm being repetitive from other interviews and stuff, but it seems important.
That the idea is essentially no one ever mentions it because it goes without saying.
But therefore it ends up really in practice going without being mentioned.
And so they really seem to entertain the possibility.
You know, even it goes so far as to really help them to indulge in the belief that they could fight a set piece armored battle with the Russians in Eastern Europe that would not go nuclear.
And that they could have a conventional war.
And that would really be cool, right, man, to finally see the big tank battle that never did happen.
That we were all so excited about.
But then it seems like nobody even mentions.
Yeah, but then we would all die.
You know, other than maybe a few hundred million humans would survive to carry on into the future.
But you're talking about a setback of millennia after a nuclear war between America and Russia.
We cannot fight them ever, ever under any circumstances.
If they roll all the way to the Elbe River tomorrow, tough.
That's what Ike Eisenhower said when they cracked down in Hungary.
Sorry guys, especially sorry for provoking you into starting this uprising, but we're not coming to help you.
You're too far from here for us to die in a war for that.
Right, right, yeah.
But is that crazy?
I mean, I really don't know.
So is that really you think that that's part of the dynamic is that nobody ever mentions the nukes?
And so really they kind of get lost in the fantasy that it would be easy.
We'll just do this.
It'll be great.
Like your record, too.
Well, I mean, you got to understand that the United States Army, the army that I dedicated 18 years of my adult life to, my entire adult life, right, until February 11th of last year.
I mean, less than a year I've not been part of this organization.
The United States Army is very insecure.
It is afraid.
In the era of hydrogen bombs that it is irrelevant.
It is afraid that it will stop being a major recipient of American taxpayer dollars.
So the army, since the end of Vietnam, has been obsessed with the myth.
The myth, that's the key word, that a war with Russia could be non-nuclear.
That somehow we're all going to be reasonable.
Both in Moscow and Washington, D.C.
And we're just going to let our tanks battle it out and see who wins.
Rather than end the world.
That is a very, very tenuous, I would argue, assumption.
Does that make sense?
Yeah, the whole thing's completely crazy.
But, you know, that's where this interview really started, was these guys think they can break off a Sunni stand and not have to fight all the Shia?
That's completely nuts.
They think that they could start a war with Russia and that somehow the rules of fusion won't apply just like we always knew they would in the event of a war with Russia?
If that was the case, Ronald Reagan would have taken the fight to them back then.
The reason he didn't is because they had thermonukes.
It's kind of the key to the whole deterrence thing.
Totally.
Supposed to be.
What do the Russians do when their H-bombs don't deter the Americans because the Americans prefer not to think about them?
I mean, you raise a really important point.
I mean, look, the truth is that the United States Army and the Russian Army are obsolete.
They're obsolete.
They don't matter any longer in a world where nuclear catastrophe is a potential reality at the fingertips of a Putin or a Trump or an Obama or a Medvedev, you know?
Or any number of thousands of their subordinates.
The whole thing is a joke, dude.
It's a joke.
I spent my entire adult life in a fantasy.
In a fantasy that what I did still mattered.
You know, Scott, you got to remember, I was raised in an organization where we sang God Bless the USA by Lee Greenwood every day.
Okay?
Like, I'm proud to be an American.
Like, we sang that every day.
At your government school or what?
At my government school at West Point.
Oh, okay.
I thought you meant when you were a kid.
Well, that too, but no, mainly at West Point.
But my point is, no one ever questioned that song.
Yeah, no time for thinking when you're too busy chanting, you know?
Like, in other words, no one ever questioned, like, wait, why am I proud to be an American?
What does it mean to be an American?
Are countries relevant?
You know what I mean?
Like, all those profoundly important queries.
Yeah.
No, I know that I'm spoiled.
I just, I don't know exactly what it was.
It was the Reaganites, you know, the cocaine deal and stuff, or whether it was just the cops.
Dealing with cops because I was a skater kid, so dealing with them from the time I was 11.
But just a few, and you know what?
I met Vietnam veterans, and every Vietnam veteran that I met when I was a kid hated the government, hated the army, hated the war.
Made it clear that everything that they were told about that then was all lies.
You'd be a damn fool to believe a thing they ever say again.
That was my childhood.
I was born right after Vietnam ended.
But that was so, you know, I'm a little bit older than you, I think.
No, yeah.
I mean, yeah.
How old are you anyway, Scott?
I'm 43.
43, yeah.
I'm 36.
Yeah.
You know, but I'm an old soul.
But I'm just lucky that way.
I mean, I was just grown up.
I was completely inoculated against the idea that these are the people that I would trust.
I can love my country without thinking that whatever Ronald Reagan says is true, or George Bush for that matter, you know?
Well, you know, you've got to remember.
I mean, so I just finished.
That's why I've been a little bit remiss on my columns.
I just finished my third book, which I had to— Oh, really?
I did not know that, man.
So tell me all about that.
Yeah, so I will.
So listeners, go on Amazon.
You can preorder it.
It's called Patriotic Dissent.
It's a philosophical book about how and why dissent can actually be the most patriotic thing you can do.
And it's not all about me, although there are some personal vignettes, but it's not all about me.
It's about how throughout American history, veterans and politicians and average folks have actually been on the right side of history and opposed American policy.
And my hypothesis is that that's truly what I call patriotic dissent.
But anyway, you know, I— Ordered.
Yeah.
Oh, did you find it?
Yep.
You know, I mean, one of the things that I've found in my journey is that, you know, a lot of the stuff— Oh, it doesn't come out until September, Danny?
Yeah, sorry.
I just sent them my draft, yeah.
Don't tell your listeners not to order it.
They can still order it.
They should order it now before the price goes up.
Yeah, order it now before the price goes up.
But man, you need to get on their case that they need to hurry up with that.
That's ridiculous.
It's pretty typical in the—well, you know the book world.
It's pretty typical.
Hey, when I published my book, it was current up to the week that it came out.
That's impressive, actually, because, you know, this is my third book, and I have not had that experience.
In fact, when I published my book, the very first editions, if people had the very first ones that came out, then Trump Surge is in the future tense.
He's about to do this.
And then five days later, he came out and announced it.
So then I put out another edition where all I had to do was—I had already marked them down in my draft, where I have to change—in these six places, I have to change future tense to past, and then republish.
Well, let me just say to the listeners, like, you know, not to, like, blow smoke up your ass, Scott, but, like, you're not a veteran, and you don't pretend to be, and you're unapologetic about that.
But the best book, the best book ever written about the Afghan war, the American-Afghan war, is Fool's Errand.
Really?
The best.
Oh, man.
And I mean that.
Well, thank you, Danny.
Appreciate that.
And, like, listeners, consider this my endorsement.
The best book about the war in Afghanistan, America's longest war, and in that sense, America's most profound war, the best book about it is Fool's Errand by Scott Horton.
And I'll tell you why.
Because you come at it from a totally modest, totally, like, disengaged viewpoint.
You just say, listen, I'm not—I don't have an ax to grind, I'm not a veteran, I'm not a politician, I'm not even a member of the two major political parties, I'm just here to tell you a story.
And the story that you told in that book, I mean, dude, this will sound, like, a little bit, like, intense, but, like, when I first read your book, I vomited in a trash bin.
Okay?
Because that's how much it hurt.
Because I knew it was real.
And I thought about my dead soldiers in Afghanistan.
And I literally couldn't make it to the bathroom and vomited in my trash bin.
Oh, man.
In the middle of your book.
So, listeners, buy the goddamn book.
Like, check it out.
Like, I wouldn't say that.
Look, I wrote a book about Iraq.
My publishers are, like, bothering me to, like, write the Afghan version of Ghostwriters of Baghdad.
And I keep telling them, I'm like, dude, I'm not in an emotional place where I can write that book yet, you know?
I've been writing, like, snippets for Antiwar.com, but read Fool's Errand.
It's the best book about the war.
You know, there's, you know, there are other good ones.
Carl Otagal wrote a good one.
But...
You know what?
Maybe you could split the difference there, man, and have them collect your Afghanistan articles and make a book out of that.
I'm hoping, yeah, I'm hoping we can do that.
Because, you know, I've been writing that series.
Because I sure would like to see that, too.
But I wouldn't want to put you through that, reliving all of that in a way that you're not ready for.
I don't think I can ever write a memoir about Afghanistan in the way that I wrote it about Iraq.
But I do think I can collect some of my anti-war articles and then maybe some new chapters.
Because my book about Afghanistan wouldn't be a memoir.
It would be more of, like, my series that I'm doing for anti-war.
I've done four segments, you know, called Profiles in Absurdity.
And it's, like, it's a play on the old JFK book, Profiles in Courage.
My point is, like, I'm trying to show you through my articles on anti-war that this war was absurd.
You know what I mean?
Like, it was, like, it's more of, like, whereas, Scott, like, whereas your book is an indictment of the whole war.
Like, my future book will be a complement to that.
Right?
In the sense that it's an indictment of the micro level of what it looks like to fight in what you correctly deemed as an absurd and fruitless war.
You know what I mean?
Like, I think in some ways, like, your current book and my future book are going to be, like, twin.
Like, I hope Amazon links them.
You know what I mean?
You know how they do, like, if you bought this, you should buy this.
You know what I mean?
Like, I think they should do that.
Yeah, I'm sure they will.
You know, your audience is my audience for sure.
Listen, I can't tell you how much I appreciate that.
I actually didn't even know that you had read the book.
I know I sent it to you.
No, I know.
I mean, it's on my, you know, it's on my shelf.
I've made, like, a lot of people read it.
You've probably made, like, $9 off of the amount of people that I've told to read it.
No, it's a perfect – I don't say this lightly.
I'm a big reader.
I'm an avid reader.
I mean, most kids – I was an exceptionally strange child.
So, you know how, like, most kids, like, around the age of 10, like, they can't sleep because they're worried about, like, the boogie monster in their closet?
Like, I was a weirdo and, like, even though I was from, like, a working class family and I was the first one to go to college, like, I couldn't sleep at night because I was, like, worried in 1991 that, like, Somalians were starving, you know?
So my point is that I was an exceptionally weird kid and, like, that's always kind of been, like, my jam.
You know what I mean?
But, you know, I think what your book illustrated was that this is America's longest war, and you wrote it before things even went further off the rails.
But that was actually my first introduction to you.
I read your book before I went on your show.
Oh, okay.
I didn't realize that.
Yeah.
No, I wouldn't have come on your show if I hadn't read the book.
Yeah.
No, I wouldn't have done that.
I mean, I didn't know you at all.
It was goddamn profound.
And all I kept thinking was, like, this guy, he is not an academic per se.
He is not a veteran.
And he just wrote the most profound indictment of this war.
And I was like, you know what that proves?
It proves that sometimes you need somebody outside of the system, right, to indict American policy.
And that's what I thought about your book.
I think it's incredible.
If you guys, if you listeners haven't read Fool's Aaron, like, read it.
It's the most important book ever written about Afghanistan.
And I don't say that lightly.
Yeah, man, that's really great.
I really appreciate that.
And, yeah, listen, I mean, that's supposed to be the message of this entire radio show that I've been doing for 22 years now, 21 years at least, is that anybody can do this.
I am just a regular guy.
And my audience is never supposed to have been.
And in the book, the audience is not powerful people.
The audience is regular Americans, you know.
Right, right.
I'm not a think tank guy, really.
I run an institute, but it's still my audience is the people, not the decision makers, you know.
Absolutely.
I'm just a prior radio guy.
And really, yeah, my advantage was that I stayed home the whole time.
If I'd been there, then I would have missed the forest for the trees, probably.
No, and I'm very, like, self-deprecating and self-aware about that.
Like, you know, my views on the wars are colored or biased to my own experience.
It's not so much bias, it's just the viewpoint that you're speaking from is actually standing on the ground over there.
You know, where I'm looking at a viewpoint of, I read 15,000 newspaper articles and I did about, you know, a thousand interviews of Patrick Coburn about it and Michael Hastings.
So that's how I know.
You know, it's a different, it's just a different take, you know.
Yeah, Michael Hastings, I mean, amazing.
You should go back and hear those interviews.
They're great.
You know, I'd call him.
He'd be up at four in the morning in Afghanistan taking my call and talking about, you know, especially during the surge time.
Yeah, so he came to my base, actually.
Oh, yeah?
He came to my base and interviewed my soldiers.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, he was great, dude.
It's in the book.
What was that book that was written by that guy?
It was called, like, Little America or something.
Uh-huh, yeah.
The Washington Post reporter.
I'm sorry, it's Shaka Sandrian.
Very close to that.
Yeah, yeah.
It was a really good, yeah, it was a really good book.
And it talks about Michael Hastings coming to my outpost and, like, interviewing my soldiers, like, about what we're doing.
And my soldiers are like, we don't know.
We don't know.
Like, all we know is we die a lot.
Like, we lose our legs a lot, you know?
Crazy.
Hey, have you seen the movie?
Did we talk, oh, we talked about this, right, when War Machine came out?
Oh, I love War Machine.
Did you, I forget now if we did an interview about that.
No, we didn't do a set interview about that.
But I will tell you, like, dude, that movie was a perfect, perfect indictment of Stanley McChrystal.
I mean, it's not, it doesn't even try to act like it wasn't Stanley McChrystal.
It totally was.
And, like, that's who he was.
Yeah, and Brad Pitt is great in that.
He plays McChrystal well.
I mean, it's a cameo in a way, because the whole movie is a satire.
But it's, yeah, it's wonderful.
No, it's perfect.
I mean, you know, I mean, it's a perfect movie.
But, yeah, so anyway, Scott, listen, I've got to go do an RT live interview in Topeka.
So I've got to call an Uber and get over there.
Listeners, I don't know if you know this, but I'm a Putin apologist.
And I love Russia.
And I hate America.
So I'm about to go on RT to make sure that everyone knows that.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, do your very best over there.
OK, buddy?
I will, brother.
Hey, yeah, I love you.
Bye, fool's errand.
And let's do this again soon.
All right, brother?
Absolutely.
Thanks, Danny.
All right, man.
Love you.
Talk to you soon.
All right, you guys.
That's Danny Sherson.
Love you too, man.
In a Bush Tallboys kind of way, you know.
Yeah, of course.
Of course.
Yeah.
Danny Sherson.
He's our guy at Antiwar.com.
And the new book, check it out.
It's at Amazon.com.
Patriotic Dissent.
America in the Age of Endless War.
And also check out Beyond Ukraine, America's Coming Losing Battle for Eurasia at Antiwar.com there.
