5/29/20 Ron Enzweiler on the Continued Gaslighting of the American Public on the Pensacola Terrorist Attack

Scott Horton 0:10
All right shall welcome Scott Horton show. I am the director of the libertarian Institute editorial director of anti war calm, author of the book fool’s errand, time to end the war in Afghanistan. And I’ve recorded more than 5000 interviews going back to 2003, all of which are available at Scotthorton.org. You can also sign up to the podcast feed full archive is also available@youtube.com. Slash Scott Horton show.

Aren’t you guys introducing Ron ends Wyler. He was in the State Department in Iraq and Afghanistan and also worked with us aid. But now he’s a good guy and writes for us at anti war calm from time and this one is really important gas lighting of the American public on Pensacola. terrorist attack continues. Welcome back to the show. Ron, how are you doing?

Ron Enzweiler 1:04
Hey, Scott, great, great to be on your program again and supporting your journalism and the anti war con people. So thank you.

Scott Horton 1:13
Yeah, well, we’re happy to have you around, you do good stuff. And this is, well, it’s a crazy time all the way around. And our news cycle is dominated, of course, by the big germ. So it’s important that we keep a spotlight on all this other stuff that is still also important, such as this terrorist attack at Pensacola and Naval Air Station, back on December the sixth of 2019 by a Saudi national who was in the US for pilot training at the Naval Air Station there. And as you remind us here, three Americans were killed and eight were injured. And then just last week, there was one right along these lines. I hope you know the details better than me because I don’t know him very well.

Well, about what happened in Corpus Christi was where there was something like an attempted attack along these lines, although apparently, a guard grabbed his rifle and put an end to it real quick. And I think that was the end of it there. But maybe you can fill us in on that, too. But this was, again, I believe, another Saudi student insurer in the country. Well, go ahead.

Ron Enzweiler 2:23
And that case, in that case, God Well, first of all, I almost put in my article that was published on your website a couple days earlier, as their as well as the Arabic word for a copycat because I was almost sure there would be other people tried to now this is back in the news, you know that some in the FBI you know, kind of glossed over all the all the background on the on the terrorist motivation, you know, anti Americanism and doesn’t like we’re doing in the Middle East, that sort of thing. And that case got actually I think it was it wasn’t so much a pilot. I saw the national in the country for pilot training. It was a local Arab citizen of the United States who just got flamed up and just tried to go through the front gate of the base. Oh yeah, he did shoot shoot it’s actually I think he’s doing a security contract with him sure as a US soldier a better

Scott Horton 3:15
citizen that did it Han that attacked a military base Jesus Christ.

Ron Enzweiler 3:19
Yeah, you know trying to crash the front gate there might have been a second accomplice. I never heard more about that but they thought it might have been another guy was part with and who got away then number one attacker got shot down shot killed. So that kind of ended that episode. But you know, back of the the information that came out, I guess it’s been about came out on May 18. I guess that’s like a, you know, 10 days ago or so. Scott, that was they actually did say in the police report or the FBI report that there are 850 Saudi nationals training at us air bases throughout the country. And after the guy in December sort of slipped through security in background checks and was obviously The detailed report on that that did come out from the Justice Department and FBI was that this particular Saudi national had joined them Saudi military on purpose to get say, Get get going to the pilot training bug and gets sent to the US then use his presence here to carry out a Jihadi attack and he was actually in contact with outside of the night before he akata of the Arabian potential. No, he was actually in contact with him the night before they finally got that off his cell phones, but I mean, this was one person who is 850 they actually sent home 21 more people in the last six months based on the fact that they thought they might be suspected Totti jihadi radicalized Saudis in our country when you think about a Scott work is next 911 looks simple. We’re giving them the airplane we’re teaching the fly we’re giving to the airplane and we’re letting them you know, fly around the country, at least within restricted areas you know for their pilot training and doesn’t take much imagination to find some guy decides he wants to, you know, plow that plane into a city or something like that and not land back at the base. And you

Scott Horton 5:10
guys imagination doesn’t seem to extend further than grabbing a gun. Hmm

Ron Enzweiler 5:15
You know and that’s it, you know if I was painting this I mean hey, I’m not trying to you know, it just couldn’t agree more. I mean if I was planning this thing out I don’t think I would have just, you know, got a gun run outside my base and shoot a couple of soldiers that me walking by, you know, as you got out there, but let’s not let’s not try to condone any of this stuff. It’s obviously horrible.

Scott Horton 5:33
No, of not just could be worse as all you know. Oh, yeah,

Ron Enzweiler 5:39
definitely. I mean, you know, and you know, it’s it doesn’t take much imagination to find it out.

Scott Horton 5:43
And when you look at what happened or

hood, where he knew he had a whole room full of guys and killed 13 you know, yeah. So and that was gone, I believe maybe two.

Ron Enzweiler 5:56
And this was definite, you know, motivated by US involvement in the Middle East, you know, pro Israel stuff, you know, soldiers and occupying Arab countries and you know killing 10s of thousands hundreds of thousands of Muslims for us geopolitical interest. I mean, it’s clear that this this was what motivated same as Osama bin Laden Of course going back to 911 if you read his manifesto, but so it’s kind of a you know, it’s getting I think the relationship I think the facts are getting pointed out here. I got I was just happened to catch a blurb last night I don’t normally watch much cable but I did catch a little bit of laura ingram she had prom pail on they were mostly talking about China and you know, softball questions about China and Hong Kong, that the anti Canada film is anger. And what about these this Saudi Arab guy in here propeller training, getting, you know, attacking and killing soldiers that are basis and how do we justify having these guys here to get this training when it’s obviously a security risk? And you’ll love this answer, Scott. So pangos from payout says, Well, you know, we have to train the soul. Pilots over here, we don’t have to send more American pilots in the Middle East so they can fly all the missions over there to try to keep Americans safe. So I said you got it. You got to be kidding me, you know, you know talking about gaslighting the American public. I mean, it’s as if we’re going to go over there and you know, of course we train these guys got to fly them here.

Scott Horton 7:19
Don’t have to train him over there. Like he’s literally flip floppy slogans, you know?

Ron Enzweiler 7:25
Yep. And we’re gonna walk.

Scott Horton 7:27
They’re keeping us safe from who the who these Is that it? Don’t make him finish that sentence about who the Saudis are helping keep us safe.

Ron Enzweiler 7:38
In the course, unfortunately, this kind of gets one of my questions I had about our article is that the American public gets so just you know, deceived us a nice word deceived by the press releases from the Saudi embassy. What these public officials what Trump says you know, Trump reads out this statement from King Solomon back in December. This was the article of one of my My first article that I wrote for you before@war.com back in December where he actually the kinko Saudi Arabs love Americans. I said, Gee, I lived there. My family’s lived there for a long time, my wife’s family, and I go, Wow, that’s news to me. I mean, it’s the most anti Western, you know, the Wahhabi establishment is practicing a very fundamentalist form of Islam. They still have, you know, Sharia law where you get your hand cut off if you caught stealing, and women who commit adultery are scorned, and there’s even does beheadings and stonings. I mean, you know, that that just I mean, any idea that there’s any sort of common values between our countries is just ridiculous, you know, and yet that type of information doesn’t get out to the American public and people in Washington, the mainstream media mainly tries to just downplay all that stuff doesn’t mention all the blowback and the fact that our presence there, particularly in Saudi Arabia, This cartel has caused a lot of anger in the Islamic world.

Scott Horton 9:05
You know, I think it must have been Daniel Davis, who recently was talking about that on the show about being in Saudi Arabia and how they told him during iraq war one, I think about how Yeah, you’re just the hired help, you know, they look at us like we’re Filipino maids basically here to fight their war for them.

Ron Enzweiler 9:24
Oh, yeah. I mean, and then, of course, we sell them, you know, 10s of billions of dollars of military hardware every year that, you know, fuels and ultra industrial complex and in

Scott Horton 9:34
that funny that, like whites are so in the West in the world, just generally speaking, that kind of so racist against Arabs, that they couldn’t imagine that the Saudis would be racist against us. And think that right that they’re the, the Uber mentioned, and that we’re just their servants. So here we are acting as their servants, but acting you know, completely oblivious to who’s zooming who, because how could those you know And, and words or whatever be, you know really taking advantage of us, not us.

Ron Enzweiler 10:07
Well, you know, the, the interesting The other factor that doesn’t come out too much am I mentioned, I did listen in on a Quincy Institute seminar on webinar on Wednesday that was the future of us Saudi relations. And besides there and David Miller, who’s a fairly knowledgeable person about the Middle East is most of your listeners will probably know, you know, in terms of being involved in us. Peace, probably the Israel Palestinian peace process as well as a scholar from London School of Economics and the Dow. We are Rashidi, who is a Saudi and lives in London. Very, very astute woman from what I could hear, but she even tells me she brought out the fact Scott that the pro West orientation of particularly Mohammed bin solem, you know, the current president, I guess he’s the king and waiting, whatever you want to exactly.

Scott Horton 10:56
Crown Crown Prince. Yeah, yes.

Ron Enzweiler 10:58
Yeah. He’s basically he He’s going so far pro Western, that he that the Wahhabi religious establishment is. He basically said right out in the in the interview that they basically here they have no legitimacy now anymore for a large part of the Wahhabi religious establishment, which is the dominant force in the country in terms of how people how the instability is maintained in Saudi Arabia. That’s been a very tenuous relationship. Ever since Aramco, which was the Arabian American oil company was formed in 1930. They didn’t want any Westerners in the in the country to even you know, help with oil production, that sort of thing. And they kind of had to make a deal where you kind of keep these guys profiled, and like you said, just use them as indentured servants to work you know, work on the oil fields and keep the oil flowing, and we keep all the money. So that was kind of like you were saying a moment ago, kind of the they looked down on us as inferior people because that we didn’t practice religion most. You know what I mean, and all the other things I think are important in life and that relate equals Appalachian I got really strain. We started putting us soldiers in the country. Of course, there’s been several attacks the Khobar Towers attack and other ones, where they just right out, yeah, they just don’t like Westerners in the country. And, yeah, I think there’s a good chance and this is kind of what she was alluding to this Arabic lady on the podcast was that she was literally on the fact that there could be the world’s under bin sama has to be a little bit careful because he could he could really upset things here. And that got to be interesting part of the discussion, Jen, is that how stable and how mutually beneficial is the Saudi us relationship? Yeah, at this point,

Scott Horton 12:39
right now when you know, their economy has got to be I haven’t seen the charts. I should ask david stockman to come on. Tell us about what the Saudi charts say about their oil production and revenues. But it’s got to look like the world’s deepest black hole right now.

Ron Enzweiler 12:56
Yeah, and, of course, they just went to that price for with Russia. You know, that was also discussed that

Scott Horton 13:01
you write for, for the world’s greatest drop in demand for fuel ever, by a million times, they were already in a price war with the Russians. Hmm.

Ron Enzweiler 13:12
Yeah. And with that, that’s a geopolitical I mean, you know, they’re doing us no favors by stuff like that, you know, because they probably realized that we’re getting more oil independent. So we’re not, you know, the big reason I was there in the 80s, you know, and people before me, and even up to probably 2000 or so that we needed, you know, four or 5 million barrels of oil of Saudi oil coming, you know, coming our way every every day. And it was made sense to have a military presence ever protect that. And that’s just no longer the real world anymore. That’s what

Scott Horton 13:43
david stockman used to always say that no, I mean, as we’ve seen since then, the solution to higher oil prices, in this case, not because Saudi cut us off, but just because of the disruption from Iraq war two over there, that the solution to high low prices is high oil prices. All that does is the obvious, which is create new discovery and new development and new investment in bringing new resources to bear so that greedy capitalists can profit off of those high prices and then that’s what drives the prices right back down again and so forth. So with or without, you know, the Saudis, the world find a fuel supply. There’s enough oil to last forever, and a lot of people think that’s unfortunate or whatever. But nevermind, environmentalism for the sake of the argument just in terms of our dependence on Saudi oil. There’s always been enough oil in Texas. The only question is, at what price Are you willing to develop it? Yeah,

Ron Enzweiler 14:39
you know, they have to go to more expensive recovery techniques. And let’s face it, we’re with our massive military industrial complex that we’re, we’re, we’re we’re subsidizing the carbon fuel industry, which mostly people that are environmentally concerned with climate change were the ones who were it’s kind of funny because you I think in that call was on with the Quincy Institute, Dr. Miller talked about the fact that we’ve spent $60 billion fighting terrorism, I’m not sure we got that number. As far as I’m concerned. All of our all of the all of the Afghanistan war might not even be low, you know, why would it be closer the truth? I think 6.4 trillion is the number I’m you know, in terms of, let’s face it, we, we got the the, quote, fighting terrorism started after 911. And that was the Iraq War and the Afghanistan war. And that’s all about I mean,

Scott Horton 15:32
the Pentagon is probably consumed as much oil in that time as Germany, you know,

Ron Enzweiler 15:37
yeah. And, clearly and, you know, I mean, that’s, I mean, that’s our, quote, evil foreign policy in the Middle East has sort of caused us to spend all that money and get all you have all the other, you know, plus the names of local nationals. We killed them. It’s just it’s just incredible having been over there and seeing all that I can never could understand why we are fighting that What was this whole thing about but then it really, really caused a lot of problems. And yes, I think there’s a good I’m sorry, I was gonna say I think there’s a growing I think there was a consensus from some of those people that I on that call and i know i know Martin Indyk who was, you know, very prominent member of the blob in Washington and Middle East. He wrote a nice editorial in the Wall Street Journal after after the, out to the sulemani assassination in January about Hey, man, we got to start rethinking why we’re even over there, you know, because

Scott Horton 16:30
this is the primary author of the dual containment policy. It’s crying. Oh, yeah, finally.

Ron Enzweiler 16:36
Well, it’s finally saying i think i think he saw Trump going into the, you know, starting a war with Iran, which he of course, I would have read about you, but the stupidest thing you could possibly do, but that’s not i’m not sure that is a constraint on what? foreign policy Yeah, full of voice comes out of Washington these days. But I think I’m a little bit optimistic, Scott, that there’s a growing consensus, you know, I get the washington post some credit. Maybe because of your, their, their relationship with, you know, the Kasai guy that got murdered viciously by the Saudis, give him a little bit of credit for pointing out that some of this Saudi us relationship is starting not to make as much sense and should be reassessed. So most of the other people are just, you know, sweeping as long under the carpet, you know, making these terrorist attacks. I’m no big deal. You know, in terms of the pilots, we talked about being flat airplanes around our country and getting all this training. And, you know, I think, clearly Trump sees the whole thing is just a big business deal, you know, hey, they’re going to buy, you know, 10s of billions of dollars of aircraft and other military hardware from us every year. And that’s just good business. But he doesn’t think through the implications of that. And I think that’s very unfortunate because it is, I see it as a lose lose relationship. At this point. It might have started out as a win win, you know, back in the day, we needed the oil, they needed, you know, some economic development, we had to help them produce the oil. That’s why they had you know, a lot of Americans and Westerners over there, but I don’t see that anymore. That’s just as you gotta do. Reality the situation and we’re making the US presence there their Western president you’re you’re there your flaming terrorism I mean I love it in this one article I quoted from the in my in my article or quote at the press release the Saudis put out after after the press report last Monday. This is where they they claim that this is the report

Scott Horton 18:23
that came out was about the disc I really had been working with, okay, the long term Okay, something like

Ron Enzweiler 18:30
Yep. And the quote says the Saudi people are greatly angered by this barbaric act of the shooter. This person, the perpetrator, in no way shape or form represents the feelings of the Saudi people who love the American people. And then there was one about how they later on in the article they talked about how they this one I liked, I said, as this attack tragic reminds us, the extremists and terrorists threaten both our nation’s will not stop in their efforts to target innocent people. But we in the course they talked about the Saudis will never let the terrorists win or allow other acts. There are other acts to hate a patriot to divide us. Saudi Arabia claiming that high ground on fighting terrorism is about his ridiculous as you know, you know, I mean, I mean, just, that’s just completely the opposite of the reality that and this came out in that call on Wednesday as well. You know, they are the greatest sponsor of all their jihadi ideology comes out of the Wahhabi ism that they find all around the world. And I saw all the masks and buildings that mosque and buildings I think they built in Afghanistan. I mean, they flew all the pilgrims back over to Mecca and stuff like this. I mean, they I mean, they are they are really, you know, the greatest source of terrorist ideology and financial support in the Islamic world and yet they in America to the American They claim they’re out there fighting terrorism and trying to work with United States on making everybody safer. I guess again, those are statements that just have no basis in reality. And I think the fact that the they’re sort of losing legitimacy with their own people, the Saudi royal family, that’s, that’s going to be that’s going to be a factor that comes up here fairly soon. I think.

Scott Horton 20:19
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Well, not so There’s this report in the weekly standard, but it confirms my bias. So I believe it. It’s from back in 2001. And it says that in the 1990s, it’s the sources a unnamed Special Operations Command or a high level one says that the Joint Staff at the Pentagon used to always say that, well, terrorism is a small price to pay for being a superpower. And you know, the thing about that is not that this is justified or anything, I definitely don’t mean that. But I’m saying it is understandable why they would think that that, you know, a couple of truck bombs go off in Africa, and mostly Africans are killed and a few dozen Americans Yeah, somebody tries to sink the coal. They don’t even sink the coal. They kill 17 sailors. They bombed Khobar Towers, they killed 19 airmen, and how from the point of view of those guys that like hell, we had a storm on D day, the beaches Omaha and whatever the thing and so it is It’s a small price to pay if you look at all the advantage that we’re taking and that kind of thing, and then of course, September 11, at least temporarily changed the calculation on that, that Geez, you know, we really can do a lot of damage with a plane. Hmm. So that I worry that and of course, we have all the FBI entrapments over the years. But now the FBI doesn’t have to keep in trapping people because now they really are generating enough homegrown and pseudo copycat and Fort Hood style San Bernardino style attacks like these, where I fear that because you have I’m not saying it would be better if it was bigger. I don’t mean that but I’m just saying because you have a small attack where handful of people are killed and doesn’t reverberate through the society and everything. It’s just another news story goes away again. I think, you know, there’s no reckoning right? There’s no it doesn’t matter that it happened. And so, where we’re supposed to be saying, Oh my god, you know what? Keeping our bases in Arabia and continuing to bomb Arabs from them continues to cause problems for us here. And so we don’t even have that conversation at all. We just continue on like, it’s okay. And then you and I are having conversations like this where we’re going chasis kind of lucky he didn’t suicide crashed his plane into downtown somewhere, which he might have, considering he was a flight student. You know, this is the kind of thing where it’s like, all other things being equal, if it was just a regular Tuesday or whatever, that the needle should scratch off the record, everyone should stop and go, look, we still got been last night type attacks in our country. You know, 20 years after you guys promised you were going to end terrorism by fighting it over there. So what in fact is the damn deal and instead, that conversation isn’t even happening?

Ron Enzweiler 24:50
Clearly, and I’m, you know, the sooner we withdraw troops out of Afghanistan, that place becomes a non problem. And then same way in the Middle East, you know, get out of Iraq. In Syria These are places that we’re creating more problems and issues than we can possibly any do any good but as I mentioned, Scott the other shoe that’s gonna drop and this came up in the Quincy a seminar on Wednesday is the fact that you know Trump is Trump and Kushner and net and I you are pushing this one sided land grab deal by us Riyal. And there was a question that came up that I think was a good one where you know, if this if this is clear that Saudi Arabia is not going to this was Aaron, David Miller’s opinion not going to support that in any overt way. Because it’s just too much chance to do they don’t want their fingerprints on it. But if the Trump administration pushes it through with the new with the network, they’re continuing now, you Israeli Government. I think the jihadist elements in Saudi and the other countries I just don’t see them abandoned in Palestine. is a core is brahmic issue. That is You know, been around that region now for 50 6070 years. I, I agree that the Saudi Crown Prince is probably, you know, not going to rally against it any overweight because he needs to, you know, he stays in power only because the US supports him. So but I just think there’s enough. And I think modality, the lady from London kind of thought the same thing that there is, there’s no probability that that goes down, maybe it won’t go down because we won’t go anywhere and Trump may not get elected who knows what but if it does go down, then it’s going to be a real that’s gonna that could be a real game changer in terms of Jihadi activity and Arab unrest and attacks on US military installations over there with almost no consequence of what the what the secondary effects are, is I think that’s still out there is a, you know, is a potential problem if, depending on how that situation goes, yeah. Someone has to keep that in mind and I can’t do things without ran. I’ve kind of been toned down a little bit, but I still think there’s the There’s still there’s still underlying issues there and the continuing strangulation of their economy is only going to, you know, make things worse if Trump gets reelected, but let’s just You mean, those are still a very dangerous place? And yeah, I’m just interested to see some of the big name Middle East experts so called coming to the same conclusion that more or less, you know, I am is that, you know, hey, it’s just time to get out of there because you just, I’ve heard him Andrew Bacevich talked about this in some of his books, seminars and things that, you know, we got to just reassess this thing and realize it’s, there’s no wind out there as we might as well, just down, you know, minimize the involvement and realize are never going to change that part of the world. Israel can take care of itself, it’s got the strongest military in the region by far, and just, you know, just focus, you know, spend day with our own problems here at this country, but that’s kind of kind of the philosophy I’ve developed just having been around the world and vents on these places and seeing things a little bit closer up and, you know, in realizing that whatever good USA did, we probably did more But all sorts of other ways Believe me, State Department, same way military clearly, you know, so we just don’t have the our institutions are not the Empire This is not receive any place in the world that I’ve ever lived. I can almost say that is a fact. Yeah.

Scott Horton 28:15
Well, and you know, the real danger. One real danger here is it’s so easy for Al Qaeda to jerk America’s chain. And, you know, by that I mean, take one example where there’s at least I don’t know, I think a 5050 chance that the attack on December 27 on the American base in Iraq, wasn’t even ca t ball Hezbollah, the Shiite militia at all Iran backed or otherwise, but was actually an ISIS attack makes perfect sense to think that it was Yeah, America’s they’re embedded with the Shia fighting against ISIS. Why wouldn’t the presumption be that it was ISIS that attacked the damn base? But then, so it goes to show though that when you have Americans in the Foreign Policy establishment and particularly in the form of our current Secretary of State and his cabal inside the administration, that they are so primed to blame Iran for anything that, you know, think about if that same principle took place inside this country and so instead of a local rocket Katyusha attack kill her, instead of a local Katyusha rocket attack in Iraq, you had a major terrorist attack inside the United States. And wouldn’t we expect that pompeyo and the people with him would be saying to Trump, that this must have been Iran and now’s our chance to hit Iran and relying on the fact that Donald Trump actually does not know shit from apple butter and would say, Okay, if you guys say it was the shear who did this, let’s hit him and go along with something like that. I think that is the real danger and by the way, other than the overthrow of bin Solomon or you know, the The installation of the watt Zawahiri as Pharaoh in Egypt or something like that, can you think of anything that al Qaeda would like to see better than the ayatollah beheaded? And the current regime on overthrown?

Ron Enzweiler 30:15
Yeah, matter of fact, at this webinar, listen to the Airbus lady, Huawei, she said that they actually call their attack on the houthis down in Yemen, jihad, they consider that to be jihad against, you know, infidels and Islam or whatever you want to do that shia Sunni issue. Of course, coming back, maybe

Scott Horton 30:36
that was Obama Trump al Qaeda war against the Houthis in Yemen. Uh huh. Go ahead.

Ron Enzweiler 30:41
Is that’s why she said, we’re supporting what the Saudi fundamentalists believe is jihad. Yeah. See, we are actually talking about spreading terrorism and we are reinforcing the notion that they are saving their form of Islam or whatever they think they’re saving, but you’re to be even territorial integrity, but you may so that gets so muddled in next You’re right, there’s no, there’s no idea that there’ll always be the tension between the Iran is a Shia power and Saudi is the Sunni power, you know, that we don’t that’s, that’s been going on for a century. So I mean, to think we’re going to get involved in that and resolve it, but we just got to get out of the middle of it. And, you know, by the way, going back to your rocket attack story, episode there, Scott, I lived in all those bases in Iraq and in Afghanistan. We got we got we had rocket attacks every week. I mean, it was just standard procedure. The sirens go off, you’re jumping the bump bunker, you know, sometimes they would hit sometimes they would miss. But I mean, I just like anybody that served over there lived over there. That’s just, I mean, that’s just like not even news. I mean, that’s just Yeah, they don’t want us here. They want us out. And every day, they’re gonna remind us of that fact. And that’s about what those things are all about. They’re not really intended to be capacitate the military or have any big strategic value. It’s just reminding you that we don’t want you over here. And so you get out the better and you know, they might Every now and then kill somebody by locking out I mean, and but that’s mean to make a major issue out of that and to go launch this war against, you know, assassinate a government official of another country set that precedent Think about that for a minute, you know that, you know, now someone comes to Washington, this acetate some assassinate some government officials just paid back for the Samadhi execution, you know, I mean, you got to recognize that these, you know, some decorum or some rules of war here that we’re violating. But so that’s kind of what I mean, I never I always thought that i think i think you’re right about the intelligence and intelligence masses, whatever assessment, the powers to be wanted to win, it’s to say, I mean, I’ve been through that I’ve seen how they would come up with all these assessments that were winning the war in Afghanistan every year, you know, and yet we always did, the one commander would come in and claim he did better than the guy before him, and even then, then the next guy would, you know, do better. Well, we’ve had five or six successive commanders are all doing better why we went to war. I mean, no one ever asked that question. So I totally I agree that the, the the intelligence community’s assessments of who did what, for what reasons, is is designed to fit a narrative that somebody wants to achieve based on some other objective or interest they have. It’s not based on hard reality. So that’s kind of my ground level observation of that. As I said, the rocket attacks are just that’s just, that’s just not even a significant event.

Scott Horton 33:25
Yeah. Now, so, back to the Pensacola thing in specific here. A fun kind of sort of side note about this. I guess it’s not that fun is that there was a republican congressman who tweeted out some of the statement that was made on Twitter by the attacker at the time last December, and Twitter took down his page for the day or two days or whatever it was a republican congressman, and the Congress Congress made that this is terrible censorship which I Totally agree, obviously not official government censorship, but it’s totally against the spirit of free speech is totally uncalled for. And the fact is that if they had let his posts stand, his post actually refuted itself, because what he claimed the statement said, was that Islamic extremism will not sleep until all Americans are dead or something like that, when that, in fact is not at all what the statement says. In fact, it begins. I’m not against you for just being American. I don’t hate you because of your freedoms. I hate you because every day you supporting funding and committing crimes, not only against Muslims, but also humanity, I am against evil and you are evil, etc, etc, etc, etc. has nothing whatsoever to do with I’ve signed on to this extreme form of Islam that says that I You must travel to North America and kill innocent people for believing in Jesus peace be upon him but not Muhammad peace be upon him too. Yeah. Right. And instead and and it goes on, by the way, and by the way. Yeah, I think you know this my article as far as I know, my article@antiwar.com from last December, which is held Pensacola blowback terrorism is the only place in the world where you can find this guy’s entire statement at set. If you follow my link, there it is on the web archive, they saved his tweet at the Wayback Machine is where I linked to and go it, which I’ll give credit to the New York Post because they actually were the first to link to the Wayback Machine there. But they didn’t quote the whole thing and I quote the whole thing, and in no way justifies this guy killing anyone. It’s just a matter of shedding light on the reality. It’s not an excuse. It’s his reasons and we need to know what are the motives for doing this kind of thing and what he’s talking About, of course, his violence committed by the American government against the people of the Middle East at large. And he ain’t wrong about that. And as Ron Paul said, you know, if we ignore that people are upset about what we do to them, then we ignore that at our own peril. And we put ourselves in danger. If we think we can just go around bombing people and not end up getting shot in return. This is the way it works. And so here we still are having this conversation in 2020.

Ron Enzweiler 36:34
Yep, but that was Matt gates OR gates, I guess it wasn’t, wasn’t for him to close. So it’s his his his his his his district. So you’re right Scott, because I was working on my article Yo, and I tried to link back to his tweets or whatever his statements and he was gone, you know, because I wanted this guy. I knew this guy said this. I just read it five hours ago, what happened to it? And you know, I had to wait to your article came out where you actually could link back as you mentioned, to the The original tweet on Twitter, but you know they Twitter in the MSM, Wall Street Journal had an article, they just completely whitewash it with any of this Manifesto. You know, I, you know, anti Israel anti American military interventionism the white horse at all out of the news stories, as I mentioned in the article we just talked about the one I wrote last week. No one did I give the Washington Post credit. They do make a few words in that regard. But no one talks about the manifesto about why was he radicalized? What was the real issue that was perpetuating this attack? And what are the implications for our foreign policy? That was my whole point. What’s the implication our military and foreign policy for myself, all these jets to Saudi Arabia, these warfighting machines have to bring their pilots over here to train them. That’s, that’s a, you know, that was that was the question the wisdom of doing that, given the large potential for a major attack and problem. And of course, secondly, if if it’s all driven by blowback from our policy in the Middle East, is a time to reassess our policy and realize like you just said that the fundamental problem, we’re creating the problem we think we’re trying to solve by just the way our actions are over there and how we support, you know, despotic regimes and, you know, don’t care about the Palestinians and do all sorts of things that are just anathema to most of the people in the Islamic world. And these are, I worked a lot of real educated, you know, people, you know, in the jobs I had, you know, doing training government officials and doing business stuff and things like that as God and they would have very intelligent conversations with them where they’d ask these very simple questions and I had a hard time you know, you’re right, I got a great we’re not we’re just doing this for some geopolitical reason that has no real interest in your society of your culture, your people, we’re just, you know, have our own reasons to be spend all this money and doing all this and I really can’t answer those questions about why this makes sense from your viewpoint because I kind of agree with you. It doesn’t you know, that’s that’s just the reality of how that plays out. I mean, we Always try to oversell I think our you know our how the rest of the world loves America and our way of life and things we do and and stuff like that I just don’t come away with that.

Scott Horton 39:11
Just funny stuff is mostly just for American consumption that don’t worry everybody we’re going to help the people over there. They know that the people over there know better, but they know that we don’t so

Ron Enzweiler 39:23
that you’re definitely right about that. What did I did maybe they have to sell it to the American public doesn’t have most of them are not world knowledgeable people just because they lived the other very life, you know, without traveling a whole lot over abroad. But in reality, you’re right it and you know, they, yeah, but you never you want to trust your gut, right? You want to believe what they’re saying is true. But you know, you get out in the real world and experience some of the causes and effects of these things and negative consequences, civilian casualties and daily bombing runs and, you know, just disrupting people’s lives. You realize, man, this isn’t really up in advance anything You know, any legitimate humanitarian interest I mean, I was kind of always my final judgment on the whole thing but and then like the article said, we get the the US public gets gaslighted by the politicians who are taking money from the arms industry and other, you know, people that are influential in Washington. So it’s just a perpetual machine trying to maintain the status quo. I mean, that’s, you know, it’s gonna be hard to see that break in. But that’s, that’s hopefully there’ll be some you know, some crack in the blob there. And some of the thinkers they’re starting to realize that this is perpetuating this makes no sense and this hope it winds up as I say, at the end of my article, you really got this the only way this silver we just got to retrench in the Middle East if you want to really get rid of make Americans safe here in this country because it’s you’re not going to make them safe by going over there and interfering in all these other civilizations and destroying countries and creating refugees and bombing people. You’re not gonna win in the hearts and minds by you know, running massive bombing campaigns and you know, The people you support one day they they support you the next day, they’re getting used to you and there’s no loyalty to any cause that would be sympathetic with what the American military is trying to do.

Scott Horton 41:11
Yeah. All right, you guys, that is Ron ends Weiler again writing for anti war.com gaslighting of the American public on Pensacola terrorist attack continues and check out his book. When will we ever learn question? Thanks again But

Ron Enzweiler 41:29
okay, Scott, thank you.

Scott Horton 41:31
The Scott Horton show anti war radio can be heard on kpfk 90.7 FM in LA, APS radio.com antiwar.com Scotthorton.org and libertarianinstitute.org