08/07/12 – Karen Kwiatkowski – The Scott Horton Show

All right, y'all, welcome back.
I'm Scott Horton, scotthorton.org is the website.
And our next guest is Karen Katowski, heroic Pentagon whistleblower, former Air Force lieutenant colonel, now a libertarian writer, writing at lourockwell.com, of course, a great archive there.
The most recent are what I learned in my political campaign and advice for our children circa 2012.
So welcome back to the show.
Karen, how are you doing?
I'm doing fine.
It's good to be here.
Well, good.
I'm very happy to have you here.
And I already mentioned it in the show, but I got to mention it again now so that it goes on this archive.
People need to, you know, if they want, to look at the new Pentagon papers in salon.com and the three-part series beginning with In Rumsfeld's Shop at the American Conservative magazine.
That's theamericanconservative.com.
And then, of course, there's Soldiers for the Truth in the LA Weekly.
In fact, if people go to the Lou Rockwell archive and page all the way down, those begin with the anonymous articles that were originally written for David Hackworth's site, Soldiers for the Truth.
Correct?
Yeah, yeah.
And I'm not sure how good all the links are.
It's been a while on the Hackworth stuff.
I believe it's been a long time since I looked at it too, but in my memory it's the same, you know, plain white Lou Rockwell page so that they had all been imported successfully to the LRC site at some point.
I believe they still must be there even though I didn't double-check that.
Yeah, yeah.
It's been a while.
And then, wait, wait, wait, the Q&A with Brian Lamb on C-SPAN.
Oh, yeah.
That is the best.
You've just got to go look at that.
I don't know if the streaming video still works.
It probably does.
C-SPAN's got a pretty good site like that.
But at least the transcript is there, and that is so important.
Brian Lamb, I must have interviewed you 35 times or something, but Brian Lamb just asks every single most important question in just the right order to elicit the absolute best information about how the neocons lied us into war in Rumsfeld's shop, as you put it.
It's just great.
Everyone, please go look at that.
It's so good.
Yeah, he's great.
And, you know, years have gone by since I was really energized by the lies on the way to the war in Iraq.
And I guess we've reduced some of our footprint in Iraq now, but we have this billion-dollar embassy.
We have huge integration, political and intelligence integration, into Baghdad's government.
It's not a democracy.
It's a very troubled country.
And we've left nothing but profits for some of our friends and a crap pile for the poor Iraqis.
We think the price is worth it.
Yeah, yeah, that's right.
And, you know, we've got a lot of folks.
I was talking to a guy.
We're doing some local politics here.
So I had a petition.
I went over to a friend's house, and he was asking me about he's not a Tea Party person or a libertarian.
He's actually more of a progressive-minded person, liberal, Democrat, whatever you want to call it.
I guess that's what you might consider him.
But he said, why is it that the Tea Party is so unwilling, seems so unwilling as a Tea Party to cut military spending?
And, you know, we talked about this false concept that, you know, we have an empire, but many people insist on calling it a republic and denying that it's an empire.
And then we have this false idea that to spend money for the military is patriotic and that everything a military person does protects our freedom, which these things are not true.
I mean, you know, I found this out kind of the hard way.
It really is.
It's like they're living in a cartoon world where somehow, what, Europe and China are going to invade?
I mean, how many boats would the Chinese need to get an invasion army to California, you know, with a Japan in their way and everything?
Come on.
Sure, sure.
But we have these false ideas, which are still taught.
And, of course, the neocons at the time of the lies in the expansion in Iraq and all that, you know, the objectives that they had, the things that they were looking for, pretty much leveraged this language of patriotism, this language of security.
But the real world, it doesn't match that at all.
And if people wake up, they start to see it.
And so one of the things I mentioned to this guy, back to the soldiers that have come back and all the people that have served and seen it with their own eyes, you know, in the tea parties, you don't find a lot of Iraq or Afghanistan veterans.
You don't find them.
Because, you know, they might be libertarian and constitutionalist, but they're not out there saying, hey, send me back the fifth time to Afghanistan so I can fight for your freedom.
They're not saying that because they know firsthand that that's not what they're doing at all.
So, anyway, hopefully things are changing just over time as we kind of, you know, as people with experience and with perspective on reality are back into the system so they won't be as easily lied to as we were so many times in the past.
And then, I guess, for me most recently, Iraq and Afghanistan.
But, you know, what's this thing in Syria?
What's this thing in Libya?
Yeah, I fear that the veneer on all the PR about how good this is for everybody and how necessary it all is, at the same time that that's worn so thin that nobody really believes it anymore.
I mean, anybody who wants to stop and look back at the Iraq war and look at where it is now and all that and ask whether that was worth it or not, they'd have to be crazy to say that it was.
Crazy or sociopathic.
But by the time that people no longer believe in this kind of thing, they actually don't care anymore either.
War in Syria, whoever even heard of that this long hot summer?
There's a war in Syria?
Right, nobody has a clue, they're not paying any attention.
And the fact that we are, in this country, our intelligence and our government is fomenting it.
You know, somebody should have woken up when China and Russia stood up and said, No, you need to stop pushing to topple one more Middle Eastern dictator.
This is not smart policy.
We should have reexamined it.
I mean, China is the one that owns all our debt.
Russia is the one that sells us oil and gold.
And yet we can't listen to what they have to say.
They're all stupid.
So, I don't know, I hope people will wake up.
Well, I'll tell you what, I was looking at the Moon of Alabama blog and they linked to the Council on Foreign Relations website, cfr.org, and there was one in the Wall Street Journal like this too, Karen, there.
This is what they consider learning the lessons of the Iraq war.
You've got to promote the war, but at the very same time, you have to say, Oh, but don't let it lead to a rise in Al-Qaeda terrorism, please.
Okay, good.
That way you cover your bases so no one can accuse you later of helping the bad guys.
So this one is Al-Qaeda specter in Syria, where he just uses very sophisticated and very kind of interesting language to explain how Al-Qaeda is basically the backbone of the rebellion and we love them and we need them right now, but we just need to be sure that we're already planning to move to limit them once they're done doing our dirty work against Assad.
There it is at cfr.org.
Oh my gosh, I'm going to have to look at that, that's insane.
It's crazy, but there it is.
I think the defense, security, anti-terrorism, drug war gravy train, prison complex gravy train, I think it's getting ready.
I think when these people, 55 and older, realize that your choice is to do all these stupid unconstitutional things or get your social security, I think they're going to vote to get their social security.
And that house of cards, that economy that's built up on the basis of all this government spending, this federal spending in the security realm, all false.
If it was really a security issue, like what you get when the militia went down to the border in Arizona, you get people rising up to take action.
That's how people respond to a real security threat.
If they really feel it, they take action.
But the rest of this is just money making.
And I think the time, the writing's on the wall.
It's not going to be funded, but the problem is so many people are dependent on those industries and those beliefs, they're going to be in for hard times.
It's not going to be pretty as it collapses.
Yeah, you know, I met a lady who, just the other day in fact, who said, okay, well you seem to know a little bit about this.
Where all does America have wars now?
And she described herself as just very regular and very uninformed on these kinds of things.
Certainly doesn't keep up with them.
Hadn't really heard in a while.
Give me some kind of update.
So I said, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, Syria, and working on Iran.
And she just looked at me like, you've got to be kidding me.
Although I think she had heard all of those words in the last couple of years one place or another.
I'm just not all put together like that.
And she just said, what are we doing in Syria?
That's the latest one, right?
Why don't we just leave them alone?
And this is the lady who, you know, by her very definition, is sort of just a run-of-the-mill Republican voter type.
Doesn't know much about it, but just can't believe how far it's gone.
And certainly doesn't approve, you know?
Well, that actually is a good thing then.
It's a good sign.
Let's hope it isn't too little too late, that's all.
Yeah.
Anyway, hold it right there.
I'm sorry to interrupt.
It's a heartbreak built in here.
We've got to go.
But we'll be right back with Karen Katowski from luerockwell.com right after this.
All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
I'm talking with Karen Katowski from luerockwell.com.
So you just ran for Congress in Virginia.
How was that?
Well, I guess it was fun.
You know, we sent a message.
We got about a little over a third of the primary voters to choose a constitutional conservative over the long-term incumbent.
He spent over a million dollars to save his seat from me.
So I guess that said something.
But we didn't, you know, we obviously did not succeed electorally.
We're continuing the educational process.
You know, we talked a lot about liberty.
We're going to keep doing that, and we're just going to keep the campaign going kind of at a low level for this year.
I'm not putting my head up too much before this presidential election, because seriously, you know, I ran as a Republican.
And, you know, Romney, of course, it looks like.
In fact, I just heard they're not going to let Ron Paul speak at the convention in Tampa.
Right, just the sun.
Which I don't even understand.
I'm going down there.
I was going down there to participate in the day before, which I think is a big Ron Paul, a lot of Ron Paul activities.
And I was expecting that he would be able to address the convention, but now it sounds like he's not.
Anyway, you know, kind of a mess.
So I don't want to do much campaigning at all before that election.
But we're going to start again and do it in 2014 and try to take him out in another primary unless we get a convention to choose the nominee.
Either way, we're going to keep the pressure on him.
I mean, the guy I ran against was Bob Goodlatte.
He's a big statist, follows John Boehner's lead.
I mean, he might as well.
You know, he's a Republican, but he's a statist.
I mean, that's all he is.
That's what he stands for.
His latest vote was with the Democrats, actually.
Voted with the Democrats to eliminate the requirement for the Senate to confirm executive appointees.
Not all of them, but there was a handful identified, and they said it's a streamlining act.
Well, in order to streamline government, which I'm sure the founders would roll over in their grades just that people are trying to streamline government because the whole purpose was to put roadblocks up on how government operated.
But in order to streamline government, they said, well, we'll just let the president appoint various positions throughout various executive agencies and departments.
And they're not that important, so we won't have the Senate have anything to say about it.
Not that they don't rubber stamp anyway, but, I mean, seriously.
Well, I guess this really is Hamilton's Federalist Party.
They wanted to call George Washington your majesty and have him appoint all the state governors.
And no words of the king will ever be questioned under fear of death or torture.
So it doesn't matter to this guy that it's Barack Obama who's supposedly such a terrible left-wing Democrat in the right-wing narrative.
But that's OK as long as he's an executive.
Good lads for that.
Yeah, exactly, exactly.
In fact, one of the things Goodlatte's looking to do, and he's made his desire public.
He even talked about it a little bit before the primary.
He wants to take Lamar Smith's job and be the chair of the Judiciary Committee.
And so there's a lot of folks that don't think that's a good idea, and hopefully it won't happen.
But these guys with power want more power and rules and regulations, manipulations, managing the economy.
In fact, I posted something just a few days ago, I guess late last week, referencing Hayek's concept of the fatal conceit.
The idea that bureaucrats can know everything and know how everything should be so they can make rules and create the world in some way.
And of course it never works, it's impossible to do, but you elect these people and all of a sudden they think they're king of the world.
And they can change the laws of the economy, laws of economics, laws of nature, laws of God and man are all subject to a politician's whim.
Anyway, it's kind of disappointing.
But yeah, the fight's still on.
We did have a campaign, learned a lot.
Had some fun, it wasn't completely all fun, but I don't think you can expect that.
But we think we made some progress, talked a lot about our principles.
Like you were mentioning with the lady who considered herself a mainstream Republican, but she was still appalled at all of these wars that we're in.
And all the stuff we're doing, doesn't think we need to do.
There's a lot of common sense out there, regardless of party affiliation.
And we tried to tap in and appeal to that, and we found lots of it out there.
So that was kind of a positive thing.
Yeah, you know, I always wonder, and you know, statistics and mathematics, I'm not so good at these topics and whatever.
But when I meet people, they sure do seem a lot more reasonable than the answers in the polls.
But I guess that's just a difference between individual action and kind of collective opinion.
Well, you know, this is kind of weird off topic, but you mentioned polls.
I have been, I've always wondered, I remember back before we had cell phones, and they would make polling calls during the middle of the day.
And so you'd get housewives and retired people, back when they used to be housewives, right?
And now we have cell phones.
Well, most polls are not going to hit you on your cell phone.
A lot of people don't even have phones in their houses anymore.
People are working.
Of course, there's more unemployed and people working from home, so maybe they're getting a different.
But think about all the people that are not getting asked the questions in these polls.
So I'm not sure, you know, you really have to look at.
Well, most of the manipulation is in how it's worded, and even not necessarily deliberate manipulation, but just the unproven but widely believed premises of the whole discussion a lot of times, you know.
It could be that there's a tyranny of polling from all sides, and it's not sure that that really is a way to understand how people in this country really are thinking and feeling about things.
Because I'll tell you, as we went out and talked about all kinds of issues, there's a lot, a whole lot of common sense out there, a ton of it.
And people understand stuff.
They do resent being told what to do.
They resent the nanny state, even if they're dependent for some reason on, you know, for their job.
They work for government or they make their living enforcing government laws, you know, whatever.
Even with that, they still have a sense that some things aren't right.
And I don't know.
Polls aren't really going to tell you that.
The government is very interested in making people who question the government feel like a minority.
And my experience was people who question the government or would like to take a more active role in questioning the government, there's actually a good number of us out there.
But we're encouraged to think of ourselves as the fringe or, you know, whatever, and maybe what we have to do to really take control of our future is to recognize our own power.
And, you know, recognize the government is really, the federal government in particular, is really frantically worried about the change that is coming.
And that's a good sign for us.
I mean, now how are we going to deal with when the federal government goes broke?
It's going to be tough.
It's going to be tough.
It's going to hurt a lot of people.
Hyperinflation is going to hurt a lot of people.
Deflation, massive deflation is going to be very strange if that comes to it.
But, you know, the monetary system is going to collapse.
It cannot be sustained.
And I heard Bernanke's talking about a third easing, a third round of money printing right before the election.
Wouldn't that be something?
Yeah, well, now here's the thing because I'm with you on that.
I think that, I don't know exactly how it's going to go, but it seems like the economy can only get worse with these crazies and horrible people running things the way they're running it.
Bernanke first and foremost among them all.
So to me, then, the most important question is, you know, like Tom Woods is always talking about the remnant and how big it is and how organized it is and whether it's got its priorities straight and really knows which arguments have to hold sway.
Because one thing that we've learned for sure is just how easy, just how shameless the powerful will be in whipping up and demagoguing against the weak.
You know, think about CNN and Lou Dobbs spent years going Mexicans, Mexicans and making everyone hate and fear Mexicans as though they were the ones who are running our country into the ground or something when they're just poor migrant workers, for Christ's sake.
And they will just do that.
They have no shame whatsoever in doing that.
So then we have to be the anti-demagogues who say, no, actually, you know what?
The people who have power are the powerful ones, not the poor and the gay and the black and the Hispanic.
The people in Washington, D.C. and New York, you know, of all races, but the ones who have the ability to make these calls.
They're the ones who've been making them.
That's right.
That's right.
I mean, these lawmakers and legislating and trying to create additional controls every day, more controls.
I mean, you know, controls on us, less controls, less oversight on government.
I mean, this is exactly why people really need to look at the Declaration of Independence and read it a few times.
It's a very short document.
Better read the complaint that the people had against King George.
My God, we could write a modern version that would be just as fantastic, just as pressing, just as gripping.
And ten times as long.
And probably ten times as long, because, sure, you know, we have our information controls, which were, you know, unthought of, unenvisioned in the 1700s.
You know, we really, I think, in many ways, we are where the founders were or the people that fought.
And it wasn't much, you know, 33 percent, a third of the people really engaged.
And I would say we've probably got that 30 percent right now of people very, very unhappy with the way power is concentrated at the top.
Well, yeah, and in great part due to Ron Paul's efforts the last couple of presidential elections.
I'm sorry, we're out of time and we've got to go.
Advice for our children is at luerockwell.com today.
Karen Katowski, thanks very much.
Great to be here.