All right, y'all, welcome to the Scott Horton Show.
I am the Director of the Libertarian Institute, Editorial Director of Antiwar.com, author of the book Fool's Errand, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, and I've recorded more than 5,000 interviews going back to 2003, all of which are available at scotthorton.org.
You can also sign up for the podcast feed.
The full archive is also available at youtube.com slash scotthorton show.
All right, you guys, introducing the great Dan McKnight from bringourtroopshome.us.
Welcome back to the show, Dan.
How are you?
Good, Scott.
How are you?
I'm doing great, man.
Thank you for having me.
Good work done here and focusing, as well you should, on the greatest enemy of peace and liberty in the world, Representative Elizabeth Cheney of Wyoming.
So why don't you tell us about your great efforts, your group's great efforts, along these lines recently here.
Sure.
Yep, just a couple weeks ago, back on the 22nd of July, we sent a letter to all Republican members of Congress, asking that they disavow Representative Liz Cheney and ask her to resign first from her leadership positions in the GOP caucus.
And if she won't resign, then to vote her out and replace her with a Republican that will support President Trump's efforts to end the wars and to bring our troops home from Afghanistan and Yemen and Iraq and Syria and any of the other unauthorized wars that we're fighting in all across the African continent.
And then we follow that up with a letter to all GOP candidates for Congress and anybody that's won their primary yet that's moving on to a general election, asking them to disavow any endorsement or financial contributions from Liz Cheney and to send it back to her or donate it to a veteran's cause of their choice and to promise that if elected in the general election, they will not vote for Liz Cheney for any leadership positions whatsoever.
And we're taking that campaign nationwide.
The letter that we wrote to Congress can be found on our website, bringourtroopshome.us, as well as the press release announcing the efforts nationwide.
Great.
So on the committee positions, which committees is she on and how is she wielding that power?
Specifically what we want her to resign from is her caucus chairman position for the GOP caucus in the House.
Ultimately, we'd love to see her be removed from her position on the Armed Forces Committee.
But right now, the leadership position is the one that the GOP can actually handle and they can they can hand they can vote her out of her, ask her to resign from immediately without waiting for the for the election.
Right.
Oh, that's a good point there.
Yeah.
And then so that's a pretty powerful position in leading the GOP.
That makes her sort of like a mini whip in a way, is that it?
She is a whip.
And she's also the the offering plate for all financial donors to the GOP.
So she walks around with her handout, with her pack, which is called the Cowboy Pack, which is a funny name for somebody that lives in Bethesda.
But the Cowboy Pack and then she collects all the money and she goes around to candidates around the country and donates to their their campaigns and helps them get elected.
And I'm sure that that comes with strings attached.
As soon as she got in the Congress, right, she got herself on the Armed Services Committee and on the Rules Committee and all these things.
She's been very effective at kind of worming her way into leadership roles very quickly, too.
Right.
I mean, she's skipped over a lot of people in terms of seniority, it seems like.
Yeah, she's in her third term and she's the third senior most representative in the GOP.
Yeah.
Amazing.
And not literally speaking, right, but just in rank.
But there hasn't been that kind of turnover in the House, has there?
I mean, you still have people who've been there for decades, right?
Correct.
It's clearly in a rank structure, not in a seniority structure.
Yeah, she's in fact, she's she's risen through the ranks so quickly that if the Republicans were to somehow win the House in November, she would be in line to be speaker of the House, which would be catastrophic for veterans and the United States military for decades.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, so now talk a little bit more about that, because TV says that all soldiers want to do is fight and that Liz Cheney must be every soldier and every veteran's favorite congressperson because she's such a chicken hawk, right?
You know, that's what they say.
They say, oh, our military is an all-volunteer force, right, an AVF, all-volunteer force, which has been since Vietnam, which means that we all signed up to fight, which is not correct.
If you talk to most veterans, they signed up out of sense of duty and loyalty to protect and defend the Constitution and the country that we love so much.
And if we must fight, we were willing to do that.
All we ask is that if there's going to be a fight, if there's going to be a war, that Congress not advocate their responsibility in this, in war, and that they vote on a proper declaration of war and don't give that authority to an executive branch.
But Liz Cheney, like you said, she wants to be every veteran's best friend.
And so last year, she sponsored a bill with Jason Crow, her neighbor to the south in Colorado who's a Democrat.
It was a H.R. 5046, the Global War on Terror Memorial Location Act.
So she and Jason Crow passed this bill to start building and finding the location for the monument for the Global War on Terror.
Scott, that's a war that's not over yet.
I don't know if you're aware or not, but we're still fighting that war.
And they want to build a monument to a war that's still going on.
And those two sponsored that bill.
And then they turned around this year and sponsored another bill.
Actually, it was an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act.
It was H.R. 7343.
Those two sponsored it again, which takes funds away from President Trump in his effort to bring troops home from Afghanistan specifically.
So they propose to build a monument to honor these veterans and at the same time limit the president's ability to bring them home from a war that's never been authorized in the first place.
The duality of that is just it's it's unbelievable.
I can't believe it's not more it's not more of a headline in America today.
Yeah.
And I think that's because really it goes kind of without saying to you that, you know, enough is enough already of this stupid war.
Whereas from the TV's point of view and regular consensus point of view, it wouldn't even occur to them.
In fact, even if they had just finished reporting on the polls, they would still turn around.
You know, they're they're essentially stuck in the, you know, 2002 and 2003 era presumption that to support the troops means to support their mission, period.
Correct.
And that's that's something that, you know, Danny Sheridan, the great author, wrote in his newest book, Patriotic Dissent, he talks about once upon a time not too long ago, Veterans Day and Memorial Day used to be enough.
Veterans believe that was enough.
We thank you for your for appreciating us.
And those two days of remembrance and celebration were enough.
And now we've America's gotten to a point where the ninety nine point nine percent of the population that never serves the military feels obligated to tie the yellow ribbons, to buy a coffee, to give up your seat in first class on an airplane, to incessantly thank veterans for their service and their sacrifice daily.
You know, veterans discounts at Lowe's and Home Depot and all the other things that goes into to honoring those that are deploying to war over and over and over again, honoring them at football games and baseball games and on the jumbotrons.
These are all things that America feels that they have to do now to assuage their guilt and make them feel better about the fact that they don't serve and they don't really truly care what happens in their name in nations all around the world.
And it's a Danny writes a tremendous amount about that in his new book.
And I don't know if you've read his book or not, but it's incredible.
It's something that should be read in high schools and colleges all across the country.
Yeah, it really is great.
Patriotic dissent coming out real soon here.
And so now talk to us a little bit about these polls, because it's not 2002 or three.
It's twenty twenty right now.
And the soldiers never even mind.
And no offense to him, but I'm just saying, never mind the Vietnam War era dissidents and peace activists and whoever left over from back then.
This is, according to the polls, the veterans of the 21st century terror wars, obviously mostly Iraq and Afghanistan, although ground troops have been spread around all different places as well, of course.
But those are the two major battlefields of the terror wars so far.
And the veterans of those wars from this century, they agree with you by super majorities.
Yeah, it's not even close.
In fact, just this weekend on the Hill dot com, there was a poll that was released.
I don't remember who did it, but 75 percent of veterans and Americans, for the first time, there's a reconciliation where veterans and Americans both at 75 percent say the war in Afghanistan and Iraq have gone on for too long.
Concerned veterans from America did a poll in April where 73 percent of veterans said it was time to come home from Afghanistan.
Twenty nineteen in June, Pew Research Center found that 64 percent of veterans and 62 percent of Americans said the war in Iraq was not worth fighting.
We did a poll earlier this year that found that 80 percent of Americans and 80 percent, 84 percent of veterans felt that it was time to end the war in Afghanistan.
And there was no justified reason for being there.
Imagine 84 percent.
You can't get 84 percent of people to agree.
Today's Monday.
Correct.
Correct.
Right.
And there was another one.
Stars and Stripes magazine, which is the military's official publication last Veterans Day, not even a year ago, found another 84 percent of military service personnel and veterans agreed.
And this is their language, that the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq have been going on for too long.
They didn't necessarily oppose the war or the purpose of being there, but that we've been there for too long.
And now what we're doing doesn't make any sense.
Right.
Right now.
So talk a little bit about, Dan, if you could, about the this second letter that you guys have sent out.
It's at BringOurTroopsHome.us.
And it's kind of this press release where you are warning the other Republican congressmen that they better stay away from Liz Cheney before they get the stench of death all over them.
Sure.
Yeah.
It's a letter that went out to all congressional candidates that have won their primaries so far.
And in the letter, I simply say I'm writing to you with a warning and a plea that your campaign for Congress may be approached by or may already been endorsed by Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming.
I urge you in the strongest possible terms to reject any such endorsement.
And if you have already received such backing, I urge you to immediately and publicly renounce it and return it and return any funds that she may have sent you.
And we've just urged all GOP candidates that if you're elected, you must oppose the election of Representative Cheney to any position of leadership in the Republican caucus.
And there's another reason for that.
We feel we're getting a little bit more traction on it.
She also supported the NDAA and a clause in there, a red flag law, basically authorizing the removal of firearms from military members, anybody that's subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice, based on an accusation without due process.
And so we're hoping that the Second Amendment crowd, which is very vocal and very active, will understand that Liz Cheney is not a Republican.
She's not a conservative.
She's not, I dare say, she's not American.
And if we can get the Second Amendment people and the anti-war folks and the veterans that are the ones making these sacrifices to all understand that there is this giant movement led by Liz Cheney that does not favor us in any way, shape or form.
Yeah, think about the level of contempt there, where you have these Joe Biden-like gun control experiments being practiced on active duty soldiers first.
Right.
And what's crazy about that, Scott, is that the Uniform Code of Military Justice already gives company-level commanders the ability to take away firearms, to restrict soldiers to the barracks, and do all kinds of number of things that you wouldn't see in the civilian world in cases of domestic violence or danger.
And that's been around since 1996 with a thing called the Lautenberg Amendment.
And so what's the point of codifying those powers that commanders already have into the National Defense Authorization Act?
What's the point of that?
There's no other reason to do that other than to use the military as a guinea pig for further gun control measures in the future.
Yeah, so that they can point at it and go, well, we do it in the military, so it's perfectly reasonable, right?
It's just a red flag law.
It's not for everyone.
It's just for the accused.
Yeah, if you're not doing anything wrong, it shouldn't affect you.
We've heard that before.
Yeah.
And after all, even Liz Cheney, the right-wing conservative, thinks it's OK.
And so it must be, they will argue.
Right.
What's great about this is the Democrats are screaming at people like Jason Crow for teaming up with Liz Cheney.
Why are principled Democrats teaming up with an evil conservative Republican?
And Republicans aren't saying anything about it.
They don't care that Liz Cheney's teaming up with these Democrats because she's in a position of power.
And they have to bow down and pay their price.
They have to make their sacrifice at the bloody altar of endless war to keep her happy.
And so it's funny that the one side is angry that she's working with Democrats and then her own side doesn't seem to give two cents about what's going on.
Yeah.
Well, and listen, I mean, all other things being equal in terms of the Republican Party's slavish devotion to the military-industrial complex and the national security state and the rest of it.
You would think that they would be able to hire and pay somebody smart enough to tell them that Liz Cheney's brand name is a real loser.
She's Dick Cheney's daughter.
And that's enough right there.
She's poison.
Anyone who hears Liz Cheney did a thing, they're on their guard.
They're worried about what the next sentence is.
Nobody's saying, oh, thank God Liz Cheney's up there.
You know, no one thinks that.
So they're insane.
And Nancy Pelosi, too, and the Democrats, they're nuts to attach themselves to her like this.
And the rest of the Republicans, too, man.
She ought to be the first one they throw overboard.
They're crazy for not figuring that out themselves.
I don't know how they haven't figured that out themselves.
Yeah, it's quite amazing, especially since her father, you know, Darth Vader himself, even today is the lowest rated politician in history with the lowest approval rating ever.
Right.
And for being just like her.
It wasn't because he had a sex scandal that made him unpopular or something like that.
It was because of all the things that they share in common, their support for aggressive war, torture, presidential lawlessness, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Correct.
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We're moving forward with our program here, you know, trying to make her as toxic as we possibly can.
The people that have accepted money from her already that are incumbents.
The one that's that's really striking me out is Brian Fitzpatrick up in Pennsylvania first.
He's in a very dangerous election.
He's likely to lose that election if we don't get involved.
But I'll tell you right now on your show, we're getting involved and he's either going to disavow Liz Cheney or he's going to have to find himself a new job in November.
And that's one that we're going after.
And we hate to lose a seat, you know, we hate that.
But I'm more interested in ending the war and bringing people home than keeping crappy politicians paying their price at that bloody altar.
Lee Zeldin up in New York, who's an incumbent in a dangerous seat.
He's accepted money from Liz in an endorsement.
Lee Stefanik, who defended President Trump in his impeachment hearing, has accepted money from Liz Cheney.
The list goes on and on and on.
You know, I've got, you know, Wesley Hunter, who's a Republican in Texas, Michael McCall in Texas, Kay Granger in Texas, who's an incumbent.
Pete Sessions, who is trying to get a seat back in Texas, has taken money in an endorsement from Liz Cheney.
His chances of winning down there aren't great.
And I'll tell you what, if he doesn't denounce her, we're going to get involved in Texas as well.
We're coming after people that are going to align themselves with these mass murderers and war profiteers.
Yeah, and it's just I can't emphasize this enough, and I know you know it, but for the audience, too, and whatever, it's so important attacking her and them from the right and the right, you know, yeah, libertarian, leaning Republicans and this kind of thing.
But but first of all, you guys are the war veterans of these wars.
But secondly, you know, as you say, this is all about, you know, enforcing the constitutional law, protecting the republic from, you know, all kinds of bankruptcy and all the different problems that come from the militarism and all of these things.
Just the fact that you are attacking her at all from the right in this way, I think is, you know, hugely impressive and should make a massive difference in the way that people perceive this question.
And you know, the idea of going after these different Republican congressmen for their associations with her and accepting PAC money from her, it's that's just absolutely the best idea here to bring it all together about, well, OK, we're going to criticize her this way or that way.
But what exactly are we doing about it?
You know, you set this up in a way that I think you'll get a lot of press coverage out of this and should be able to make a big deal out of it.
We hope so.
Well, 17000 press releases went out last week, and so we're hoping to crack that nut today.
As you know, the national media is complicit in this problem just as well as all the politicians are.
Well, maybe I'm living in the past here, but there's so many a.m. radio shows that you just got to get your guys on the phone cracking and demanding to be on.
Correct.
Yeah.
We're we're hoping to get it out there.
This week should be a big week for us as we as you know, there's a couple more primaries this week.
And, you know, with Arizona, Kansas, Michigan, Missouri and Washington, all the primary last week this week, I think, is Wyoming.
There's a couple more.
And so that's just more opportunities, more media outlets, more press releases and more candidates that have won that we can reach out to and say just about and turn away from her.
Right.
Man, that's so cool.
And then.
So on the the association with Pelosi and the way that she has stooped to dealing with the Democrats to stab the president and the soldiers in the back this way, the way you guys are framing it.
Have you gotten much reaction from that already?
There's been a little bit of outreach.
You know, we've got four or five different outlets that want to do, you know, interviews and things like that.
But more importantly than the response that we've got is the lack of response that we've gotten from those that have taken the money.
There's been almost no response from the people that have that have been endorsed by Cheney and that have been working with Pelosi side of the aisle on the NDA or any of those things.
And to me, they're just hoping you'll go away is what they're hoping.
I'll tell you, if you don't respond, if you respond to me with a thoughtful answer that makes sense and I can understand it, I'm still going to fight you, but I'll at least respect you.
Right now, I have no respect for you.
Pick up the phone.
Have one of your staff members contact us.
And you know, at least I understand where you're coming from.
All it's going to help me do is sharpen my pencil and understand where you're more vulnerable.
But you have to you have to respond to your critics or you're basically admitting to the accusations as being correct.
Literally one of the only campaigns we've even heard from you're going to die when you hear this is through a back channel representative Liz Cheney's own staff reached out to a member of our organization asking what we could do to negotiate a truce.
You tell me what that looks like, Scott.
I've got it.
Well, yeah.
In other words, like you guys have not really landed a good one on her chin yet.
And she's terrified of you.
Let me tell you what that list would look like in case Liz Cheney's listening to The Great Scott Horton Show.
If you would like a truce from us.
Number one, sign my pledge that you promise not to abdicate your role and responsibility as a congresswoman when it comes to matters of war.
Number two, support President Trump publicly in his effort to bring troops home from Afghanistan and the 12,000 that he's trying to bring home from Germany that you oppose for some reason.
Number three, stop taking money from defense contractors.
It's important.
And number four, publicly admit that you were wrong in the war on terror in the way that we've waged that war.
And number five, admit that the man behind the mask is Dick Cheney.
That's that's my that's my opening salvo.
She wants to negotiate a truce with us.
That's where we start.
That sounds like a reasonable basis to sit down at a table and talk about things, you know, keeping your social distancing, of course, you know, but within your six feet is probably not enough to keep away from her.
Yeah, well, I'll tell you what, man.
I know there are a lot of veterans that listen to this show despite themselves sometimes.
But you know, for anybody who is a veteran against the war but has not joined up yet.
I mean, this there are a lot of different groups to choose from.
I wouldn't prejudice against any of the others.
They're all great.
But I think bring our troops home dot us.
This is what I've always dreamed of was having, you know, somehow, if I had Ross Perot dollars or whatever, what would I do with it?
I would have hired somebody to find me a Dan McKnight.
I mean, this is exactly the kind of organization that we need to change the narrative in America to get people to understand that, you know, at least a solid third of the tough guys are also smart and know better than this stupid crap.
We have to stop it.
And that message is getting through.
I mean, it's and look at the calendar.
It's 2020.
You can't argue that.
Well, of course, it takes 20 years to kill 400 guys.
You know, nobody could possibly argue that now, you know, they could change the subject to the Ayatollah or something.
But, you know, the argument that of the war against bin Laden and his followers and, you know, international terrorist enemies of the United States could go on and on for 20 years.
Come on.
It's silly just to say it.
Sure is.
All right.
Well, we definitely we definitely need to bring, you know, bring this thing to an end.
But Scott, if people could, I would encourage them just to go to bring our troops home dot U.S. go to the in the news link and you'll find the letters that we've sent to to the congressional candidates and to Congress itself.
If you if you're so inclined, you can reach out by phone to 08917 3507.
It'll likely go to voicemail.
It rings nonstop, but it'll go to voicemail.
I get back to as many people as I can.
And what I really love people to do if they if they have the ability and the desire would be to call your Republican congressman.
If your congressman is a Republican, call two or two, two, two, four, three, one, two, one.
Right now.
And urge your say one more time to zero to two, two, four, three, one, two, one.
That is the the Congress switchboard.
And then you'll ask for your congressman if they're Republican, make sure it's that's where we're focusing our effort and ask them to publicly disavow the chicken hawk Liz Cheney and vote in favor of removing her from the House Republican leadership.
Tell the office staff that you speak to, and this is important.
Tell the office staff that you speak to that you would like a response in writing and ask them to call you back and let you know what the congressman said.
And once you get that response, we'd like to start a viral campaign on our on our social media.
So if you go to Facebook to bring our troops home, you'll find us there post your written response from your congressman.
So the rest of us know whether we need to focus some efforts and target our efforts there or if they're on our side and they agree that American foreign policy has gotten out of control.
Yeah.
And listen, for the cynics who think this all just amounts to, oh, yeah, sure.
Vote harder and you'll fix it or whatever.
We're talking about working hard to change the public perception, to change the presumption of legitimacy of American foreign policy in order to see to it that less people are killed and that America's path of, well, murder, suicide, you know, self-destruction here could somehow be thwarted from the worst case scenario.
So, yes, the best we can do is on the margin, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't matter.
And in fact, it matters more than anything.
And so I don't think Dan or anyone else is trying to sell a naive belief in, you know, American Democrat, you know, the efficacy of American Democratic political action or this kind of thing.
But it is what it is.
This is the game board that we have to play on.
And I think anyone listening to this could agree.
Having especially a massive conservative slash libertarian veterans movement against the war in this country is about the most important thing that we could possibly see here.
So for those of you listening who fit the description, please join.
Do whatever you can.
And anybody listening with deep pockets, these guys could spend your money well on doing the most important work in America.
So bring our troops home, dot US.
Anything else, Dan?
Scott, I think you pretty much nailed it.
I appreciate the time being on the show.
Thank you, sir.
Appreciate it.
You bet.
The Scott Horton Show, anti-war radio can be heard on KPFK 90.7 FM in LA, APSradio.com, antiwar.com, scotthorton.org, and libertarianinstitute.org.
