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.
We can also sign up for the podcast feed.
The full archive is also available at youtube.com slash scotthorton show.
Look here, you guys, on the line, I've got the great Doug Bondo.
He is Senior Fellow, of course, at the Cato Institute and also writes regularly for us now again at antiwar.com as a contributing editor or regular contributor or one of those wonderful things.
Welcome back to the show, sir.
How are you doing?
I'm doing okay.
All right.
So who was Arthur Vandenberg, and why would the neocons name a thing after him?
Well, he was originally viewed as kind of an isolationist, though that was never really what he was, but he was opposed to international adventurism before World War II.
But coming out of that, he became he kind of switched sides.
He became a very active supporter of a very strong American presence abroad, you know, and they talk, you know, they put in terms of a bipartisan foreign policy and in terms of, you know, politics stops at the water's edge.
But he made a real flip.
People like Robert Taft remained very skeptical of America as a new imperial power.
But Vandenberg went over to the other side.
So most famously, I guess what I know him for is his advice to Harry Truman before he gave a big Cold War speech, scare the hell out of him, Harry, he said.
That's right.
I mean, he and that that shows how dramatically he changed, you know, from be honest to the American people, it becomes do whatever it takes to get what you want.
And that, you know, so no surprise, the neocons thinks that's a pretty good model.
Yeah, exactly right.
So Elliott Abrams founded this thing.
And is it notable?
I noticed in forgot if you mentioned this part, but I noticed Jim Loeb had pointed out that William Crystal apparently was not invited to this one.
It's Elliott Abrams and the rest of the PNAT crew.
But without Crystal, is that right?
That appears to be so.
Now, the interesting question is, you know, is, you know, Bill not actually involved?
I mean, he could be funding it.
I mean, they could certainly decide that at this stage, his name is not helpful, shall we say.
Yeah, I mean, you know, he's he's quite a lightning rod when it comes to these issues.
You know, most of their other people are kind of officials and stuff who don't have the same, I think, political toxicity attached to them.
You know, you put Bill, you put Crystal into it.
Everybody knows exactly where he's coming from.
Right.
Elliott Abrams, on the other hand, he's just fine.
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, yeah, he has quite a record, you know, going back to Latin America.
But, you know, I mean, hey, Trump appointed him, you know.
So even though he was an ever Trumper, which, by the way, you know, for the crowd, I'm constantly harping on this piece, the redirection by Seymour Hersh from 07 about how Khalilzad and Abrams were the ones who decided that, boy, we really have empowered Iran so much.
Now it's time to tilt back toward the Sunni kings and meaning supporting the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria, Jandala, suicide bomber headchoppers in Iran.
And then, you know, eventually the rest of the policy that Obama continued on of fighting for even the Bin Ladenites, as long as they're, quote unquote, redirecting their activity against the Shiites that they had done so much to empower in Iraq War II.
Because of Elliott Abrams and his friends in the first place, of course.
But this is where they decided that actually, you know what, we prefer Bin Laden to the Ayatollah.
No, it is incredible because you figure in Syria, you know, and we still are effectively supporting.
I mean, you know, the Al-Qaeda offshoot, I mean, they don't call themselves that anymore.
They claim to have split, but nobody really believes them.
You know, controls Idlib.
I mean, the one part of the territory, you know, that, you know, the Damascus government doesn't control, that the U.S. doesn't also control, you know, is controlled by a bunch of jihadists, you know, affiliated with Al-Qaeda.
And you'd think that that's something, you know, the U.S. government would find appalling, but not at all.
I mean, you know, we apparently think it's greater to support the people who like the fact Americans were killed on 9-11 than to leave in place the Damascus government.
It's, you know, it's just an extraordinary story.
Yeah.
Yeah, well, and as you say, it continues on.
I mean, our friends, the Turks, are still protecting Al-Qaeda in the Idlib province.
They're, I guess, saving them for one day soon.
Oh, might as well.
I mean, heck, for a long time, the Turks worked with ISIS.
I mean, it's only when it appears that ISIS may have struck in Turkey that they got turned off on that possibility.
I mean, you know, Turkey does its own thing, and it's certainly not good for the Syrians.
It's not good for the Americans, yes, and not good for most people.
You know, for so long, the idea was that the construct of all of these questions was the conservative Republican says this, the Democrat, the liberal Democrat agrees because of that.
And so, you know, off we go to war.
You have, you know, liberal humanitarian interventionists, neoconservative hawks, and then just right-wing conservative nationalist type hawks.
And then that's the entire table, right?
And you guys at the Cato Institute, you're in D.C., and you've been right about all this stuff for 20 years.
And I guess I wonder, you know, there's the new Quincy Institute, which has a lot of great members of it, you know, writing really great stuff all the time.
And I wonder whether the feeling in D.C. has really changed, where now the so-called restrainers and non-interventionists really are, if not ascendant, they are, you know, really making progress there.
And the neocons are kind of panicking and saying that they have to counterbalance this with another hawkish foundation or two, that kind of thing.
Is that what's going on here, do you think?
Or are the realists making enough inroads to get this kind of reaction?
Is this just about something else?
I think this is, you know, I wish that was the case.
I mean, look, a lot has improved in part, you know, I give credit to Charles Koch.
I mean, he's, you know, he's gotten a lot of grief over the years from the left, but they never really understood him, that he was, you know, in favor of peace.
He's really put a real effort in in recent years, you know, in terms of building up.
So the fact that he joined with Soros on the Quincy Institute, I mean, that's a major undertaking to try to demonstrate that there's an alternative vision, and it's an alternative vision that can be held by what people perceive as both right and left, though.
I mean, I never really liked to be called somebody on the right, though, you know, certainly on the economic issues, you know, Cato would look more that way, but we always emphasize, you know, we're libertarian, we're not conservative.
You know, so there are, you know, Catholic University has a new kind of institute going, which is very much of the restraint, you know, mode.
You see some offshoots there.
I mean, out at the Texas, I guess Texas Tech has, you know, I mean, kind of an institute that's somewhat, you hear a lot of the same stuff, you know, so there's, there are places around making the argument, but the reality is, if you, I mean, I watch a lot of webinars these days when I'm doing filing and email, and not many of us get invited to many of those things.
It's almost always the interventionists speaking to the interventionists, talking about why interventionism is the only thing that matters.
It's certainly what you see in government.
I think what the neocons are scared of is they see on the right, primarily because of Donald Trump, you know, for all of his other disastrous tendencies, he's not a warmonger.
And, you know, even, I mean, the crap he did in my view with Iran, and I mean, early on, kind of threatening war against North Korea, these things, I don't think were helpful.
But this is a guy who, he didn't start a new war.
And, you know, every time he came close to using the military to start bombing somebody, I think he did Syria once, but Iran and other things, he backed away.
And I mean, the neocons were frantic because, of course, now our credibility is shredded.
No doubt the Chinese or the Russians will take over the world, or between the two of them they will, because, you know, if we're not willing to bomb Syria over something, you know, then, you know, these folks won't take us seriously.
But Trump didn't want to do it.
And that appears, as far as I can tell, that's the real animating factor here, because there's now some folks on the right.
I mean, Mike Lee, Rand Paul, you know, some others out there, Amir, you know, who took over from Justin Amash.
I mean, there are some serious folks on the right, and they realize at the grassroots, this is not, there are no Indians.
The neocons have long been chiefs, but no Indians.
I mean, it's not like there are people out there protesting, demanding we go to war all over the world.
So they're trying to gin that up.
I think they're just nervous about that.
And they know the restraint crowd is kind of around.
I mean, they hate it.
There was a recent story, you know, Chris Prebble from Cato went over to Atlantic Council, so did Emma Ashford.
And, you know, they put out a paper that was sensible on Russia.
It said, maybe we need to try to work with Russia.
And we have, you know, we have to make some accommodations, and we can't make this a human rights crusade.
And 22 of the usual suspects who spend every day saying bomb Russia, essentially, attacked, you know, their two colleagues internally.
And then in Political Magazine, ran an article and the, you know, the unattributed comments, so the, you know, refuse to be identified, you know, people, I mean, we're vicious.
You know, you could see, you could tell they're nervous about that stuff, and they're angry about it.
But I think it's the Trump phenomenon that's really got them spooked, because they realize there's a grassroots behind that.
And that's what really worries them.
Yeah.
And after all, McCain and Romney ran on Bush Jr.'s legacy and got decimated.
And Donald Trump repudiated Jeb Bush, really for being George Bush's brother more than any other thing, said famously that going to the Middle East in general, not just invading Iraq, but just going over there was the worst decision any president had ever made.
And he dragged the right wing along with him on that.
That, you know what, I do remember some rhetoric from the 90s about how we don't want to be the policemen of the world.
That sounds expensive and outside of our charter.
What do you think?
No, that was absolutely critical.
I mean, you know, Ron Paul, to his credit, got into this.
And of course, everybody criticized him.
And it was evident even then that there are people out there who, you know, that I mean, what Giuliani and others, you know, attacked him viciously.
But, you know, they only got applause within the Beltway.
Even then, I mean, kind of out on the hustings, you know, there's not much of a movement saying, let's go to war constantly for reasons none of us can ever understand.
You know, but Trump is the one who was definitely, I mean, Trump had that manner and that kind of the viciousness of dismissal.
Are you just making fun of somebody like Jeb Bush?
I mean, why does anybody pay attention to this guy?
And, you know, so explicitly attacking Bush, you know, W, you know, that he really did change it.
And I think that's the fact that he kept winning.
I mean, Marco Rubio, I mean, all these warmongers are there.
I mean, Lindsey Graham got into the race just because he was mad that Rand Paul was running.
I mean, and all these people got swept away.
And Trump proceeded and he went after Hillary Clinton as a warmonger, which, of course, she is.
So that was very, very important.
Yeah.
And, you know, like you're saying, these guys are all chiefs with no rank and file among them.
I mean, if they've lost the American Republican voter, the Tea Party, right.
You know, not the political class, but just Republican voters of America.
If they lost them, who do they have left?
Right.
Couple of kooks on Twitter.
No, that is it.
I mean, that's always, you know, their problem.
What they were always very good at, excuse me, is of capturing Republican candidates.
You know, so, you know, I mean, Sarah Palin comes out, I mean, from Alaska.
What does she know about foreign policy?
Nothing.
But, of course, now she's going to run with John McCain.
So he makes sure she's briefed by all the wrong people.
You know, I mean, the governor, and now I'm even blanking on his name of Wisconsin, the Republican who, you know, had a domestic agenda.
He didn't know anything about foreign policy.
But they always perceive, oh, if I'm going to be serious as a presidential candidate, you know, I have to be a tough right winger, a hawk.
Because otherwise, you know, all these people will say that I'm soft and I don't know anything.
So almost all of them would turn out to be on the right, even though, what do they know?
I mean, Nikki Haley, what did Nikki Haley know about foreign policy?
Nothing.
You know, or Perry of Texas.
I mean, all these people understood the way I act.
I seem to be serious to all the leaders in Washington as I want to blow up the world.
Right.
You know, I mean, they don't know anything.
They don't have any reason to do that.
But, you know, that's what they did.
You know, and Trump was the great one who said, you know, none of that stuff.
I actually know about this issue.
And I think that's stupid.
Yeah.
Well, and, you know, what they're going for here, right, is that Trump was, in practice, a hawk.
He said a lot of great things.
You're right.
He didn't start any new wars.
But he, you know, vastly downgraded America's relationship with Iran and increased tensions with us and Russia and China.
You know, if anything, escalated Obama's support for the genocide in Yemen and all these things.
So and especially on the Iran issue.
Right.
Because that's what this is all about is Likud in D.C. and what they want.
And that's an anti-Iran policy more than any other thing.
And so that's the part of Trumpism they want to accentuate.
Right.
It was like, hey, you guys, you know, you're half don't want to be policemen of the world and half macho, tough guy.
Let's go get them and kick some Muslim butt kind of thing.
So can we focus on that?
Don't you hate the Ayatollah?
Which, after all, is pretty effective propaganda for a right winger, you know?
Well, that's right.
But what was good is that, number one, is that they're they are the people, you know, they believe in alliances.
So Trump made them very unhappy every time he would make fun of, you know, the Europeans or the South Koreans or something.
I mean, it really did freak them out because, you know, I mean, their their goal is to have America doing everything, protecting everybody all the time, everywhere.
So suddenly Trump's kind of blowing this apart, you know, that he's saying, well, I might bring troops home.
And what are the why don't these weenies spend more money?
And so that really did agitate them.
And, you know, on Iran, I mean, the weird thing about Trump, see, Elliott Abrams wants to both starve the Iranian people to death.
And if they're not willing to get rid of the the mullahs, well, then they deserve to starve to death.
But he also wants to bomb them.
And the problem is Trump failed the neocons dramatically.
I mean, the neocons wanted to bomb Iran.
They wanted to bomb Syria.
You know, they wanted us bombing the militias in Iraq.
You know, I mean, I guess, you know, and ultimately, you know, they put this all in terms of credibility because ultimately they want to bomb the Chinese and they want to bomb the Russians.
They want to bomb everybody else.
And that's and Trump so dramatically failed them on that.
So I think what was and I think that makes them very nervous, because for all the hawkish talk, he didn't walk the walk from their viewpoint.
I mean, they really want war.
So, you know, this new organization, in my view, is the attempt to, you know, they will claim to build on Trump's legacy.
And that's one of the things that makes it very dangerous is that, you know, they will say, oh, we're just following Don, you know, because he understood that all these terrible, you know, mullahs in Iran should be taken in.
But, you know, they want to take it to the next step, which he never did.
And they realize they're going to have to work on that because, again, it's not like protesters turned out in the streets and said, why aren't we bombing Iran?
There was no enthusiasm for that.
I mean, American people didn't want it.
How many Americans wanted to get in another war in the Middle East?
None.
You know, so the neocons have a problem.
And I think that's what they're working on here.
And their hope is, forget the people.
We need to make sure the elites in Washington do what we want.
And for that, you need yet, you know, the 37th or the 59th or whatever it is, pro-war organization, you know, which they're creating.
Right.
Hey y'all, Scott here.
If you want a real education in history and economics, you should check out Tom Woods' Liberty Classroom.
Tom and a really great group of professors and experts have put together an entire education of everything they didn't teach you in school, but should have.
Follow through from the link in the margin at scottwharton.org for Tom Woods' Liberty Classroom.
Look here, you and I both know that what you need is some Libertarian Institute things, like shirts and sweatshirts and mugs and stickers to put on the back of your truck and to give to your friends, too, that say Libertarian Institute on them so that everyone will know the origins of your oppositional defiant disorder and where they can listen to all the best podcasts.
So here's what you do.
Go to LibertasBella.com and look at all the great Libertarian Institute stuff they've got going there.
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It's such an effective echo chamber the way that they do it.
There's, you look at the Council on Foreign Relations, kind of had a monopoly on this sort of thinking and planning for all those years.
And then the neocons just said, well, we'll just make 10 new CFRs.
We'll just run them all.
We'll just, and then eventually, I think Abrams himself and Max Boot and a couple others went to the Council on Foreign Relations, too.
So now they just dominate the entire damn discussion, except at Cato and antiwar.com and other places like that.
No, that's right.
And of course, what they do their best is to try to just ignore the rest of us.
I mean, they don't respond and they certainly don't invite people.
It was a slight exception of a couple of the Quincy people on a couple things.
But I mean, go to the Atlantic Council, go to the Wilson Center, go to the CSIS, look at their webinars and ask how many people on those webinars are against the reigning Zeitgeist that America has to dominate the world and go to war whenever they think it's necessary and stay at war forever.
20 years in Afghanistan certainly is not enough.
I mean, this city is overflowing with criticism of Biden on the thought that he just might be serious.
I mean, could you imagine and take us out of Afghanistan?
I mean, it's an extraordinary reaction.
It makes no sense.
And again, where are the people in the streets protesting, demanding that we stay at war in year 20 and 21?
They aren't there.
Again, there are no Indians.
I mean, this is all an entirely elite led escapade.
Let me ask you this.
Say we take as a given Dick Cheney's ridiculous lie that deficits don't matter.
That's a direct quote, everybody, that the government, the U.S. government and the American people have unlimited deep pockets for, you know, to spend on providing security for the world.
And like, I know that there's so many disingenuous people in the imperial court there in D.C. and people making money and, you know, at least paying their mortgages, maybe doing a hell of a lot better than that based on the system and all that.
But obviously, there are people who really believe in this, too, right?
That America is the guarantor of the liberal rules based international order under the U.N. charter.
And the U.S. army really is the world army.
And we're here to make sure that people don't violate the international law.
And after all, who would you prefer do it?
Even our best friends like the English are known as sadistic, cruel monsters all over the world.
So if anyone is going to be the guarantor of the world order, it has to be those selfless high minded Declaration of Independence believing Americans who are here to essentially agree with you, Doug.
Right.
That no, this is not in our national interest in any very close and narrow sense.
This is in the interests of all of mankind.
And we're doing it selflessly.
And because after all, without us to be there, all these armies would go to war with each other, like back in the history of the world before the end of World War Two.
Right.
So go ahead.
Tell me that ain't right.
Oh, yeah, that's the wonderful argument that's made.
I mean, my goodness.
If your allies did more in Asia, there'd be an arms race.
I mean, wouldn't that be terrible?
And, you know, whether or not that would be true, why?
Why do we have to be the only one in an arms race?
You know, and how is that better than having countries that are actually feel themselves endangered building the arms?
I mean, it's a I mean, you know, again, Europe.
I mean, you look at Europe and you say, who there wants war?
I mean, this I mean, even in World War Two, there was really only one person in Europe who wanted war.
And that was, unfortunately, Adolf Hitler, who was chancellor of Germany.
I mean, most of the Europeans were horrified.
They still remembered World War One.
Well, Europeans today, I mean, you know, they've come together.
They're making money.
They have lots of issues.
But, you know, you just don't see people wanting to shoot at one another.
Yeah.
But they also promote the fantasy.
I mean, they also promote this idea that, well, you all had better take care of this because you never know what might happen.
I mean, years ago, I had Japanese tell me, well, you wouldn't want the Imperial Japanese Navy, you know, on the loose in the Pacific, would you?
And you just think this is stop me before I commit aggression again.
I mean, this is, you know, this is idiotic.
I mean, you know, you you all have got to build a really big Navy to protect us, because otherwise, who knows what we might do?
I mean, this is this is wild.
You know, so they'll use any argument they can.
And I mean, some of them look from the standpoint of being a kind of foreign policy geek.
That's a very nice world, because then you get even if you don't really run everything, you you can pretend to run everything and you get invited to a lot of nice conferences.
And I just came across I got I came across a conference or a clip from three or four years ago from Ukraine that was doing kind of a friend of the week, enemy of the week.
And I was the enemy of the week because I didn't think we should defend them.
You know, so needless to say, I'm not getting a lot of invitations to speak to Ukrainian audiences when I say maybe we shouldn't be thinking about going to war over this, you know.
But I mean, if you're one of the every I joke, every, you know, kind of webinar or a conference held in Washington on a particular country starts with we must strengthen the alliance between America and X.
That's it.
Everyone.
I mean, no one.
No one is established.
The think tank runs a thing, runs a conference as well.
Maybe this alliance isn't necessary.
Most of these think tanks are actually funded by those governments themselves.
I mean, the the amount of money.
I mean, the Middle East.
I mean, Europeans.
I mean, all of these people pour massive amounts of money into Washington think tanks, you know, which who would imagine it, you know, say nice things about the alliances with those countries.
Yeah.
You know, when I was a kid and I first heard the term think tank, it was such an interesting way to call an institute or just a catchy kind of a name for a thing.
What is a think tank?
You know, and then whatever I was told, I don't know, people who write about policy or something boring.
Right.
But what they didn't say was, oh, well, that's where the arms industry pays eggheads to write excuses for the U.S. military to patronize their firms, essentially.
And they sure as hell didn't say, well, that's where the Saudis and the Israelis and the Germans and the English pour tiny amounts of money in terms of state budgets into propagandizing the American Congress and the American media and everybody else into serving their interests.
It really is the ultimate case of the tail wagging the dog.
You find out the Germans pour all this money into the Marshall Fund and the Atlantic Council and all of these things.
Well, who's zooming who here, man?
No, it is absolutely extraordinary that I mean, and it's it's a wonderful way of doing it because, you know, you simply give the money.
And, of course, it's not as if you're telling them to do something.
But, of course, you know, I mean, if Germany is giving money, you can be sure that nobody there is going to be saying much about why Germany seems to be underfunding its defense and why are they relying on America and why should the U.S. be doing this?
And the Germans seem to be quite capable of it.
Thank you very much.
Right.
Or why should it even be legal for foreign governments to lobby our government in this way, you know, at all?
Well, the critical thing is always that you've got a law, you've got to launder it properly.
Right.
You know, so you're not you're not buying influence.
You're merely promoting the discussion of the issues.
Hey, let me ask you one more thing before I let you go here.
And oh, boy, I'm over time.
But so my friend Pete interviewed me the other day about Somalia and Yemen, a couple of the worst of the terror wars and two that people know the least about.
So we went on for an hour and a half or something about it all.
But one of the things he was really focusing on is why you look at the level of devastation and you look for a reason, not one that we would necessarily agree with, but a reason big enough to somehow, you know, equate or rationalize.
It makes sense why.
Well, they think this is at stake.
So that's why they do that when it all seems so petty.
But then the part they never talk about, but is pretty obvious, right, is that this is the gate of the Red Sea, the Bab el-Mandeb that separates the Indian Ocean from the Mediterranean.
Otherwise, you got to go all the way around the Horn of Africa.
I mean, the Cape of Good Hope in southern Africa and go all the way around.
And so it's a huge, you know, the Suez Canal.
So it's obviously a huge bottleneck in international trade and all that.
But so is that why America is so determined to try to choose who rules in those two countries?
And then I guess whether that's what they're about or not, is there a real threat there at all that anyone would ever really try to close that straight or that they would need the Americans to use our Navy to keep it open?
Anything along those lines?
Because I kind of feel like I don't really understand why they do what they're doing in these two countries particularly.
It just doesn't add up, you know?
I think there are multiple reasons.
I mean, I think that on a lot of the I think there's an element of its terrorism.
I mean, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is in Yemen.
So we worry about that.
Part of it is Saudi Arabia.
I mean, the reason the Obama folks did Yemen was only because of Saudi Arabia to show support.
They're trying to win over support from the regime for the JCPOA.
And people now talk about the straits, but nobody really believes that the Houthis are going to be shooting at ships.
I mean, they've shot at a couple recently, but that's because we're involved in the war.
I mean, we're helping the Saudis.
So that becomes kind of a thing everybody throws in as a kitchen sink argument.
Somalia is a bit of the same.
I mean, it was a Soviet-American battleground back during the Cold War, along with Ethiopia.
You know, the regime disintegrated.
I mean, you've had piracy, which bothers folks, you know, because it really did.
You know, they have grabbed ships and held people captive.
And then you've gotten the rise of Islamism there.
And then you've, you know, some terrorism over the border into Kenya and stuff.
So it's kind of a it's a mix.
So all these and the U.S. has come to the conclusion it has to fight terrorism everywhere, and that all we have to do is keep killing people and we'll stop it.
When, of course, the more people you kill, the more terrorists you seem to have.
So it's a mix.
I mean, there's you're giving these people too much credit if you think they actually really know what they're doing.
That is all that stuff kind of comes together.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, listen, I'm I'm happy, I guess, in a way that you're leaving us wanting so much more here.
Everybody, please go and check out Doug's great archives at Antiwar.com.
And then you also have a spotlight, I think, on Antiwar.com today is.
Oh, no, that was Ted.
Yours was yesterday.
No, yours is up here.
This is something that you wrote for the American Conservative.
Let someone else worry about Central Asia.
Oh, yeah.
A huge one.
And then there's just look, I don't know how many times you write a week, four or five times a week or something.
It's just insane.
Everybody, please keep up with everything Doug writes.
It's original.antiwar.com slash Doug dash Bando.
And well, it's Bondo, but it's spelled like band out, I guess.
That's right.
Thanks, Doug.
Appreciate you so much, man.
Happy to do it.
You take care now.
The Scott Horton Show, Antiwar Radio can be heard on KPFK 90.7 FM in L.A.
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