Sorry I'm late.
I had to stop by the Wax Museum again and give the finger to FDR.
We know Al-Qaeda.
Zawahiri is supporting the opposition in Syria.
Are we supporting Al-Qaeda in Syria?
It's a proud day for America.
And by God, we've kicked Vietnam syndrome once and for all.
Thank you very, very much.
I say it, I say it again.
You've been had.
You've been took.
You've been hoodwinked.
These witnesses are trying to simply deny things that just about everybody else accepts as fact.
He came, he saw, he died.
We ain't killing they army, but we killing them.
We be on CNN like, say our names, say it three times.
The meeting of the largest armies in the history of the world.
Then there's going to be an invasion.
Now it's you guys introducing Andrew Bacevich, former U.S. Army colonel and author of Twilight of the American Century.
Before that was America's War for the Greater Middle East.
True story, whenever anyone asks me what to read after Fool's Errand, I say read Bacevich, America's War for the Greater Middle East.
That's what you need to know right there.
Here he is again writing for TomDispatch.com.
The Forever Wars Enshrined.
Welcome back to the show.
How are you doing, sir?
I'm fine, thank you.
Thanks for having me on.
Very happy to have you here.
And what a great article.
I really like your writing.
You do good stuff.
This, of course, every Tom Englehart piece has two titles.
The other title for this one is What Illinois Bikers Know That Washington Does It.
And it's about your trip to Marseilles, Illinois.
Please do tell, sir.
Well, it's Marseilles, Illinois.
Okay.
It's spelled the same as Marseilles, France.
Yeah, we had Palestine, Texas, so I know exactly what you're talking about.
So Marseilles is a little town of 5,000 located along the Illinois River.
Not precisely, but generally halfway between Chicago and Peoria.
It's, you know, as is the case with many of these small Midwestern towns, prosperity sort of left and never came back, so things are a little bit worn.
But the distinction of the place is that a dozen years ago or so, in a project that was sponsored by Illinois bikers, there was erected in Marseilles a Middle East Wars memorial.
And it is, to my knowledge, and I think I'm correct, the only memorial in our great country, our vast country, that honors all the dead of all of our conflicts in the Middle East, going back to and including the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty in June of 1967.
Isn't that interesting?
So this is not a post-911 wars memorial.
It's a Middle East conflict memorial that spans, what, a half century now.
So yes, it certainly is Iraq and Afghanistan, but even before 9-11, it's Somalia, it's the Gulf War of 2001, it's Beirut, Lebanon, it's the terrorist attacks on the U.S. barracks in Saudi Arabia, and on and on and on.
There's a documentarian who's making a film out of my book that you very kindly mentioned, and so I met him there at this memorial a couple weeks ago now in order to do some filming.
And it was that that inspired me to write the essay that you just referred to.
And the point of the essay is, there's something rather perfect about having this monument in Mar Sales, Illinois, which nobody knows exists and nobody goes to, because I think that that sort of applies to our attitude toward all these wars.
We don't want to think about them.
We don't really want to remember them.
We just assume they all go away.
And so Mar Sales is exactly the right place, I think, to have this memorial.
Yeah, that's a great point.
And I think, as you say, you know, the Washington establishment who are responsible for all these deaths, they'll never even know the thing exists.
Although I guess at some point it may become a politically, you know, catchy thing to do to try to create something like this in Washington, D.C., but maybe not for a long time.
I don't know.
Yeah, it's hard to say.
And actually, I do imagine that sometime in the future, who knows when, 10 years from now, 50 years from now, there'll be some form of commemoration for these wars.
It's likely to be politically something of a hot potato.
You know, what will we in fact name that monument?
Some people probably want to name it the Monument for Middle Eastern Peace and Democracy, since there are claims that that's what we've been trying to do in that part of the world for the last half century.
But for the moment, it's the Monument at the Memorial in Marseilles, which is the only one that has this, you know, takes on this mandate to remember.
Well, when they do build one in D.C., I'm sure the sailors slaughtered by the Israelis in 1967 won't be on there.
I think that's a safe bet.
Anybody new to that story, by the way, because a lot of people, anytime anyone mentions it, you're going to find people are new to that story, because it's never discussed hardly, but anyone can go through my archives, just search for USS Liberty at Scott Horton dot org, and you'll find interviews with the survivors and Ray McGovern and other experts on it.
Incredible, very important story.
And by the way, if you have anything in particular to say about that, you're more than welcome to before we move on.
About the Liberty?
Yeah.
Well, I don't have anything in particular to say other than, you know, it remains an inexplicable event.
And the fog of war explanation, you know, that things always happen in wartime that nobody intends, is not particularly persuasive here.
But more than anything else, I think, and I disagree with you a little bit.
I mean, there have been several books written about the incident.
Oh, yeah, sure.
I think there's been a documentary, too, made about the incident.
I guess I just sort of meant on TV.
That's where it really counts, right?
Yeah, you're right.
In a way, yeah.
But it is one of those events that is so fraught with sensitivity that from a political point of view, it's more convenient to shove it aside rather than confront it dead on.
You know, it's one of those things we simply don't want to have to address, because if we address it directly, then all kinds of other questions end up having to be confronted.
And again, if you are in the political world, if you have any aspirations to be in the political world, there's no upside to opening that Pandora's box.
And so there it sits.
You know, this inexplicable episode that we really don't want to come fully to terms with.with a QR code on the back.
You take a picture of it with your phone, and it gives you the instant spot price and lets you know what that silver, that ounce of silver is worth on the market in Federal Reserve notes in real time.
It's the future of currency in the past, too.
Well, there actually is a new book that I have, but I have not read.
I just barely started reading.
It's called The U.S. and Israel Conspired to Ambush the U.S.S. Liberty.
It's by Joan Mellon.
And it seems like a pretty good piece of work from the beginning.
I wouldn't want to characterize it too much, because I don't know much about it yet.
But that should be an interview coming up.
Anyway, tell me, who's the filmmaker that's making this documentary about America's war for the greater Middle East?
Well, let me simply say that the documentary is probably like 80 percent done, 90 percent done, and the producer hopes that it'll be finished, I think, by, let's say, September.
I don't think there's a specific date.
And then he's going to start shopping it around to film festivals, trying to get somebody to be sufficiently interested in it that they would buy it, so that then it would end up, is it going to end up in movie theaters?
Probably not.
Could it end up as a documentary broadcast on television?
That would be wonderful.
But the little I know about this business is that there are lots and lots and lots of documentaries being made out there, and only a handful of them end up seeing the light of day.
So, you know, I got my fingers crossed.
I hope this would be one of those handful, but it's too soon to tell.
Well, it sounds like a great premise for a documentary, and put it on Netflix.
It might as well be in the theaters if it's on Netflix.
Oh, I agree with you.
I mean, that's hitting the jackpot, but it's just, you know, not too many people hit the jackpot.
Yeah.
Well, you know, my first, my book turned into a book about Afghanistan, but that was supposed to just be chapter two, because I was writing the same book that you wrote, but then your book came out.
But now I'm going ahead and doing it anyway.
Time to end the war on terrorism, and it'll probably be out in the fall, and it'll be a pale imitation of what you wrote.
And in fact, I've only looked at your book in certain places, but I've never read it all the way through yet, because I'm afraid that I'll end up just plagiarizing the thing.
So what I'm going to do is I'm going to have my book as written as I can possibly get it, and then I'm going to go back and read that book cover to cover last, make sure I didn't miss anything really important.
I think that makes sense.
You would not actually plagiarize, but you want to be able to form your own interpretation.
So I, yeah, I don't want to have too much of the exact same thing to say, you know, I cite you in Fool's Errand about Afghanistan, of course, but again, there I waited until I'd written so much before I went and read your, your two Afghan chapters in that book, which were great, by the way.
But anyway, so yeah, back to this memorial here and this town, because it is, it's such an interesting story.
This is, as you said, as you say, this is Trump country because this is just a completely depressed town and how, even though this marker for the victim, the American victims of the war on terrorism is, you know, this small thing in this small out-of-the-way place, maybe to the rest of us, it's sort of the biggest deal in this town now because there's nothing else.
Well, I think it is.
And they have an annual event that I wasn't there for.
It's in June.
You know, several thousand bikers convene on the memorial site and they have, you know, a day of conviviality.
I think that's the day that they add new names to the memorial or unveil the new ones that have been carved into the granite.
So there is a continuing life.
What I was suggesting in my little piece, I guess half tongue-in-cheek, is that, you know, we are now well into the presidential sweepstakes, whether I like it or not.
We've got a couple dozen people who say they want to become president.
And, of course, over the next several months they will be flying to Iowa and making speeches and they'll be flying to New Hampshire and making speeches in, I suppose, South Carolina and a few other places, you know, the early primaries and it would seem to me it would be good if they would all sort of stop by Marseilles and stop by that memorial and use that as the backdrop for talking about why they want to become president and the meaning of that memorial and their take, their interpretation on all the conflicts that are remembered there and their evaluation of why it would be a wonderful thing to do.
And I said, again, half-jokingly, that I imagine that the Illinois biker community would probably provide a podium and a microphone for anybody who showed up to give that kind of a talk.
I don't think that's actually going to happen, but it would, in fact, be a wonderful thing if that became one of those expected campaign stops.
You know, when people in New Hampshire go to certain cafes or when they're in Iowa they go to some county fair and eat barbecue.
If everybody went to Marseilles as part of running for the presidency, I think that would be good for the country, to tell you the truth.
It certainly would be good for Marseilles to bring a little economic life into the community.
Yeah.
Well, you know what?
There are three veterans in the race in the Democratic primaries right now and one civil intelligence officer in Afghanistan for one deployment, I think.
And Tulsi Gabbard was at the Balad Air Base for two different deployments, I think, in Iraq War II.
And then I'm not familiar with the third guy.
Seth Moulton.
Seth Moulton, okay.
Do you know his background?
Yeah, he's...
I know him a little bit.
He's a very impressive man with very impressive credentials.
He's got a couple degrees from Harvard.
He was a young officer in the Marine Corps.
He served in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
He challenged a...
He's a Democrat.
He challenged a sitting Democrat, beat that guy in the primary to win his seat.
This is on the North Shore, north of Boston.
I think he's got a great future in politics.
Is he anti-war?
No, I wouldn't call him anti-war.
I'd call him anti-stupid war.
I mean, that's pretty good.
No, it's very good.
Were he to become president, I think he would be a realist, somebody who would be quite prudent.
Would he close down our 800 bases around the world?
No, I doubt it.
But I think he'd be a solid guy.
I don't think it's his year, personally.
But what the heck do I know?
There's 23 or 24 Democrats at this point, all of whom think they've got a shot at winning.
That'll sort itself out over the next few months.
But he is indeed a very impressive man.
It's interesting.
In a way, especially for the Democrats, someone can essentially do sort of like you do.
Say, hey, look, I'm a colonel, I know what I'm talking about, and then say a bunch of cool anti-war stuff like Tulsi Gabbard does.
Or you can be a veteran like Tom Cotton, I guess, and go, hey, I was over there and I can tell you how dangerous Iran is.
And so I wonder if that's a scale of 1 to 10 between Gabbard and Cotton, where would you put him on that?
Oh, closer to Gabbard.
But you know, you make an important point here.
I think this is a problem in our politics at the present moment that there is a presumption that if you're a veteran, therefore, as a direct result of you being a veteran, you have important things to contribute when it comes to questions of national security policy.
I think there's a huge fallacy there.
There are stupid soldiers just like there are stupid civilians.
And I don't believe for a second that only veterans should be heard and listened to when it comes to questions of war and peace and national security policy and what our military should look like.
We ought to be respectful of our veterans but there's just a little bit of a smarminess, I think, just because somebody served in a war once that that means that their opinion is therefore worth more than other people's.
I've met Gabbard.
I think she's, again, an exceedingly impressive person and gutsy too, I think.
I'd love to see her make it well into the Democratic primary whether she will or not, I don't know.
But she has things to say that ought to be heard.
Yeah, I think she's got such potential to crack some skulls in those primary debates if they give her a chance to talk.
She's so much better than the rest of these guys on the questions of really who's who and whose side are we on over there and the tangles around these guys and if she can pick a fight like when Giuliani attacked Ron Paul and gave Ron the spotlight to talk about blowback and that kind of thing that if she can get in a tangle with Joe Biden, I mean, think of all the things he's guilty of that if she really went after him and said we can't do this, he's just Hillary Clinton, he's going to lose and this kind of thing just keeps going, you know?
Well, I think that's what, to me, that would be tremendously useful what you just said, to have the candidates take their stand on the wars.
Where are you?
And I don't mean specifically what do you think about Afghanistan or what do you think about Yemen, but to render a judgment, an overall judgment of U.S. military policy and involvement over the past 20 or 30 years.
What is the grade you would give as a candidate?
What is the grade you give to U.S. national security policy over the past 25, 30 years?
I mean, is it an A?
Is it an F?
Where is it in between?
And the reason that discussion would be useful is not simply in order to assess the qualities of a particular individual, but to promote that larger discussion in the world of politics with the public.
I'm all constantly struck by the unwillingness, reluctance, refusal to try to make a comprehensive assessment of our military policies over the past quarter of a century or so.
You know, people will talk about Afghanistan, they'll talk about Iraq, but there is an unwillingness to talk about everything together, how much money we've spent, how much money we've wasted, what we've achieved, what we have not achieved, the gap between what we said we intended to achieve, whether we're talking about Iraq or Afghanistan or anyplace else, and what has actually occurred.
There's a need for a stock-taking, and that stock-taking, I mean, historians are doing that.
Some of the stuff I do, you do, we try to do that.
But there's a need for a stock-taking in the realm of electoral politics, and we need to have some gutsy people in politics to undertake that.
Hang on just one second for me.
Hey guys, you know, you probably need a new website.
A lot of people do.
What you need to do, then, is go to expanddesigns.com.
The great Harley Abbott and his team over at expanddesigns.com.
They'll hook you up with a great new website for 2019, and in fact, what you really should do is type in expanddesigns.com slash Scott, and you'll save $500.
Well, and like you say, there's 24 people over there, so if not Gabbard, somebody has got to see that the advantage is in really fighting about this and picking bad fights about it and going ahead and saying, yeah, Ayatollah's not so bad and doing something crazy to get the real fight going because I think, you know, everybody's all complaining how everything's all gone wrong, and like you're saying, there's this kind of lack of interest, but I think it's sort of a dormant interest that could really be sparked if anyone would just say, like, hey, it didn't have to be this way at all.
You know, even Gary Bernson, who helped for a time lead the hunt for bin Laden at Tora Bora before he was called off in the middle of doing the job, he said in his book or I forget which interview, where, yeah, it really is true that this whole thing could have been over by Christmas.
In other words, this entire 21st century didn't have to happen like this at all.
We never had to occupy Afghanistan, never had to, obviously, didn't have to invade Iraq or kick over where we've been fighting against this whole time, seven or eight of them, depending, maybe 10, depending how you count, with our special operations force.
All of this didn't have to happen and we all know it cost $6 trillion.
Donald Trump kind of ran on this in a sense as part of it saying that this was all money wasted so the counterfactual is right there for anyone to imagine.
You don't have to be any kind of expert to say, can you imagine if instead of George Bush Jr., you had had to get rid of him as quickly and with as minimal force as possible and then brought the troops home and had a century of peace and prosperity so far.
How different and better everything would be and how much less we would all hate each other in this society left and right and all the divides the way it is.
It's so obvious, isn't it?
Come on.
Well, I mean, it's obvious to you and me.
Part of the issue here, I suspect, is that all of these candidates, I mean, there are a lot of people who talk about campaigns, but my sense is that the first thing you do after you, maybe what you do before you announce your candidacy is you go hire somebody to run your campaign.
Some smart person, some savvy person who knows politics and it's that person who tells you what you ought to talk about in order to position yourself, in order to have a chance to be heard and to be heard and to be heard and to be heard and to be heard to have a chance to, you know, to get to the finals and maybe to win.
And I'm guessing that the campaign manager of most of these candidates, maybe we would, you know, say, Tulsi Gabbard is an exception, but whoever is managing most of these campaigns, that manager is saying this is not what we want to talk about.
What we want to talk about is Trump.is Trump, Trump and Russia.
We want to talk about race.
We want to talk about women's rights.
We want to talk about economic development.
We want to talk about infrastructure.
But I don't think that the perception in the political world is that there's much political advantage to be gained in talking about all these wars.
And so the conversation that you just said is obvious, I think it's obvious, doesn't happen because of the perception that there's no political gain to be had in promoting that kind of a conversation.
And again, that goes back to why is the only memorial to Middle East wars going back to June of 1967?
Why is it in some little prairie town in the middle of Illinois that nobody ever heard of and almost nobody visits?
That I think tells you that there's little political advantage to be gained in talking about the things you and I think ought to be talked about.
Yeah.
I mean, not in DC, right?
And that's the whole thing about it is these people live in their crazy bubble, but Donald Trump really, I mean, think about it.
Just one president later, he ran against the previous Republican president.
So George Bush never should have done any of that.
That's the worst thing anybody would do.
Guess what?
All those wars that he denounced, Trump denounced, are continuing.
Oh yeah.
No question about that.
But I'm just saying that appealed to the American people where Hillary Clinton thought, you know how I'll win is I'll get the swing voter conservative types by bringing Robert Kagan with me and proving what a hawk I am, and that'll get Republicans to vote for me.
This kind of thing.
And Trump said, no, I'm going to break all those kind of old rules down.
And I guess so my only point being that I hope a Democrat, someone like Tulsi Gabbard, for example, without sounding too much like Trump could say, it's obvious why the media hates me.
They love Beto and they love this guy and they love that guy, but they want you to hate me.
Why?
Because I'm a combat vet who says I'm anti-war and I want to end this stuff.
And they have their agenda written all over their face.
And so it's that divide between the people out in your prairie town and D.C., but it's the people out in the prairie town that vote and D.C. and TV can't control it not as well as they used to.
I guess that's what I'm thinking.
You're certainly right about what the political experts would say, but they're wrong.
That's what I think.
And I just hope really that Gabbard or any of the rest of these guys have the courage to really fight about it, because I think they'll find that they'll do quite well.
In fact, I think if Bernie Sanders had been willing to denounce Hillary Clinton's foreign policy, then he would have clearly won the primary season.
But he didn't want to hurt her that bad.
But I sure as heck agree with you.
I wish he had.
I wish he had had a stronger foreign policy plank.
I think it would have helped him.
And again, it would have been, whether or not he would have won the nomination, it would have been an action on his part that would have helped to bring the foreign policy debate into center stage.
But he didn't.
And so, you know, that was a missed opportunity on his part.
Well, we still have a year before it's really decided who's the nominee.
So I think we can look forward to some real good fights here.
I hope so.
I think you're right.
Yeah.
Hey, listen, I love talking with you.
And I don't know if I ever said this before, so I'm sorry if I'm being repetitious, but other people must have mentioned to you that, you know, you could probably make a pretty good congressman.
I'm almost 72 years old, man.
Yeah, but you know what, you're a young 72, I think.
Hey, I enjoyed talking to you.
All right.
Have a good one.
Appreciate it.
Bye.
All right, you guys.
That's Andrew Bacevich, a former U.S. Army colonel, and he's got a new one, Twilight of the American Century, which I haven't gotten a hold of yet.
But before that, America's War for the Greater Middle East.
And that's the history of 1979 through today that you really need to look at.
All right, y'all, thanks.
You can 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.
