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Alright y'all, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
Our first guest on the show today is the great Jacob Hornberger.
He's the founder and the president of the Future of Freedom Foundation at FFF.org.
And his brand new blog entry is called An Impeachable Offense.
Welcome back to the show.
How are you doing, Bubber?
Hey, fine.
It's always an honor and a pleasure to be with you, Scott.
Thank you for having me on.
Well, good deal.
I'm very happy to have you here.
So, let's start with what happened in the House of Commons yesterday.
Apparently, under pressure, the Prime Minister split the war resolution into two.
First of all, agree with me on the facts, and then second of all, I'll beat you over the head with that in order to get a war resolution.
You already agree with me on the facts, now let's have a war.
And they said no to the first one.
Blam!
Can you imagine that?
The House of Commons telling a Prime Minister that, no, you can't have a war, and then how does that relate to what's going on in Washington, D.C.?
Yeah, it really is a phenomenal thing, and that he's going along with it.
As much as he would like to be Obama's poodle on this thing, he's complying with the legislative part of his government, and that's really what America's supposed to be all about.
That's what the declaration of war requirement's all about, Scott, is that the President, under our system of government, cannot initiate a war against another country without a Congressional declaration of war.
Like it or not, that's our system of government, and that's why I wrote this piece called An Impeachable Offense.
What better example of an impeachable offense than an intentional violation of something as grave as initiating war against another country without a Congressional declaration of war?
Well, especially, you know, it's just ironical and all that, that this is America, the limited constitutional republic, and over there, they don't even have a constitution, they've still got a queen and all this stuff, and yet over there, their Prime Minister is apparently much weaker than the American President when it comes to issues of war and peace.
Yeah, I mean, it really is ironic that we live in this country now where the President has all the powers of a dictator with respect to this foreign war business.
To me, this guy is really what amounts to a private army.
The army really belongs to him.
They're going to do whatever he wants.
Their loyalty is to the President, and he decides, the President decides on his own whether to send the entire nation into war.
What better example of a dictatorship than that?
Well, but you know, when this starts, they say it's just going to be some limited airstrikes for humanitarian purposes, Jacob, so what's your problem with that?
Yeah, well, you know, that those humanitarian airstrikes are inevitably going to kill people.
I mean, they're not going to go after empty buildings, and let's face it, it is an act of war.
I mean, it's a military strike against a sovereign and independent country.
Obama is starting this war.
You and I can both hear it now, that if Syria retaliates, let's say, with either a bombing attack on some American military installation, one of its imperial installations overseas, like what happened in Lebanon under Reagan, or if they engage in a terrorist strike, we're going to hear it.
Oh, they just hate us for our freedom and values, oh, woe is us, why do they hate Americans and so forth?
Well, here's a classic example of U.S. foreign policy, that they're over there starting to attack this country, they're going to kill people in the process, real people, with families and children and cousins and so forth, and then when the retaliation inevitably comes, it's going to be, oh, they just hate us for our freedom and values.
You know, it was funny, yesterday I saw, before the show, I was watching the Prime Minister in Britain on CNN International, and he actually, part of the case that he made, was that Muslims everywhere are waiting to see whether we live up to all of our highfalutin rhetoric about how much we care about humanitarianism and human rights, and so they're going to be really mad if we don't intervene here.
And if we do intervene, then that'll help make the terrorists like us, that see, we do care about Muslims so much that we're willing to go to war in Syria for you.
It is so nonsensical.
Do you think that that's what they say to each other in their councils of power?
That this is actually, that's why he said that, is because that was part of the argument that they went over earlier at the office, or that was one of the lines he's supposed to use and he knows it, it's completely ridiculous, or what?
Yeah, that's a fascinating question, because, let's face it, this thing's about regime change.
That's what it's been from the very beginning, it's no different from Iraq.
They want to get rid of Assad, and they want to put in a pro-US dictator.
And that's what the whole deal with Saddam was, when they partnered with Saddam back in the 80s, when he was using WMDs to kill Iranians, they loved him.
And then they turned on him after the Persian Gulf War, or as part of the Persian Gulf War, and then they spent the next ten years trying to get rid of him with those brutal sanctions and ultimately the invasion, and that's what this is about.
They partnered with this guy, don't forget that it wasn't just Saddam they partnered with or Mubarak they partnered with, they partnered with this guy to torture the Canadian citizen Mehar Arar.
That's who they sent, that's where they sent this guy.
They sent him to Syria under Assad precisely because of their brutality in that regime, and they tortured him for a year, and so they're just turning on their partner here, and trying to oust him from power.
That's what this is all about, with all the humanitarianism and the limited air strike, and we have to punish him for chemicals and all that, it's nonsense.
They're trying their best to get this guy out of power.
That reminds me of a great resource for people, if you just search for the term, I believe this is the title, it's been a little while, but, where did Saddam get his WMDs?
You'll find a great resource page at www.fff.org, you can add that to your search terms, where it's just, with all the resources there, all the links to all the original sources of all the best journalism on where Saddam got his weapons of mass destruction back when he was Ronald Reagan's sock puppet, as Jacob was just explaining, and I guess now you're going to have to update that page with the new piece from this week in Foreign Policy, where they got all the new CIA documents, describing in much greater detail how they helped Saddam target the Iranians, etc.
Yeah, it's a real horror story.
This is why, when they invaded Iraq, and Bush did, this is why he expected to find those WMDs, because they knew that it had been the United States and the Western powers that had furnished him those WMDs, and so their plan was, oh, well, we know he'll have some leftover from what we furnished him, and then we'll go in and act like, oh, we're big heroes, we found the WMDs, parentheses, that we gave the guy, and now we've saved the world.
And little did they know that their old partner that they had furnished all these WMDs to had destroyed them, and so their little plan didn't come out, but the whole concept was, we want to get in there and oust him from power, and we need an excuse or rationalization for people to support us, and that's what the WMDs were about, and ultimately the humanitarian deal, about, oh, we're here to bring democracy, that nonsense.
Yeah, Bill Hicks said about the first Gulf War, that, oh, incredible weapons, incredible weapons.
Well, how do you guys know?
Oh, well, we looked at the receipt, but as soon as this check clears, we're going in.
What time's the bank open?
Eight?
We're going in at nine.
That's true.
There you go.
I mean, what's so amazing, Scott, is that with all the disasters they produced with these interventions.
I mean, look at Iraq.
This is not exactly paradise, you know, where the bombing's taking place every day, and so forth.
I mean, it's not your, even though the Pentagon and the CIA may think, oh, well, this is a really model of a free society that we brought into existence, it's a hellhole, and so is Afghanistan, and yet, here they're going to do it again.
Now with Syria, I mean, they're thinking, well, maybe one of these things is going to turn out really beautiful, and bountiful, and paradise, and, you know, it won't.
It's going to turn out to be another disaster.
How long are people going to put up with this, Scott?
Why don't they come over with us libertarians?
I mean, what more proof do they need?
Yeah.
Well, you know, they were supposed to start bombing yesterday, and they didn't, and certainly, I mean, there are a couple of headlines about Obama wants to bomb them just enough to not look weak, or whatever.
Very kind of minimalist for domestic political purposes kind of thing, and they're admitting that outright, and it seems like he's got such a good line if he wants to back down, which is, hey, I'm listening to my generals, and they're saying that really, once we start bombing them, the thing will just escalate, and we don't want another Iraq war, and that's what this would end up turning into, and so we're just not going to do it.
He could do that.
I mean, that's always the criticism, is that, right, the generals ought to run the whole damn country, and the whole world.
They're the smartest people that, you know, we have to suffer civilian control of them in the first place, but certainly, a president ought to listen to his generals, and do what they say.
Well, the generals are saying, we don't want to do this.
Yeah, you know, after you have guys doing five or six tours in Afghanistan, Iraq, and stuff, you know, they're exhausted, and not to mention kind of whacked out, because mentally, with all this stuff, and so now, and what happens if Syria retaliates?
You know, with some kind of, you know, killing a bunch of American soldiers, or something somewhere around, doesn't Obama then, isn't he then placed in the position of having to retaliate again?
I mean, can he just sit back and say, well, okay, it's tit for tat, now we're even?
I mean, this is the way things escalate.
It seems to me that his interventionist supporters are going to say, oh, now we really have to show them how tough we are, Mr. President, and you have to get on in there and fight vicariously with these troops to show the world how tough we Americans are.
Well, and of course, everything that Syria or Hezbollah does is really Iran doing it.
Oh, yeah, it's always going to lead back to Iran, you know, that they always have to make it look like, you know, the new official enemy is part of what's going on.
Well, and they, you know, they are, the Iranians and the Iraqis, too, have been helping.
I wonder whether we'll have to re-invade Iraq in this thing, since our last war was to install Iran and Assad's and Hezbollah's friends in power in Baghdad.
Well, that's true, you know, that's what I think a lot of Americans don't realize, that the plan to install a pro-U.S. regime in Iraq didn't quite pan out, and that regime is more closely aligned with Iran than it is with the United States.
I mean, that's, from the standpoint of the national security state and its invasion and occupation of Iraq, it's been a total disaster, and to think that those thousands of American soldiers that died there, I mean, that that's what they died, to install a pro-Iranian regime in a country that's now riddled with bombing attacks and suicide bombers, and they notice that not one single member of Congress ever goes on vacation with his family to Iraq.
I wonder why.
Yeah, no, certainly not.
Well, and of course, the American and the Iraqi, the now Iraqi government's enemies during that whole war and occupation and civil war, invasion, occupation, civil war, those are the guys we're backing now.
You talk about the absurdity of 4,500 American soldiers being killed and killing hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and getting hundreds of thousands more killed in that whole civil war and everything, you think that's bad, now they're actually, that's who we're backing, is the Islamic State of Iraq, is now the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant fighting against the Shiite Baathists in Syria.
Oh yeah, and then, you know, you've got those Al-Qaeda types that are part of the rebels, too, so, you know, the empire is now aligned with Al-Qaeda, which is, you know, one of the official enemies that we're supposed to still be, you know, engaging in this whole war on terrorism, you know.
I mean, this is what, this really shows you the moral bankruptcy of U.S. foreign policy in general.
Remember when they sucked the Russians into attacking and invading Afghanistan during the time the communists were doing the occupying of that country, and they were in there partnering with and supporting, you know, Osama bin Laden and the extremist fundamentalist Muslims who then later formed the nucleus for Al-Qaeda, and they don't stop to think that this is what U.S. foreign policy does, it always ends up with this bizarre blowback based on what they originally had done with their original intervention.
And you see it with Iraq now, I mean, you know, you have this whole movement here in the United States, interventionists saying, oh, we've got to do something about the Muslims, we've got to do something about the Muslims, when they've installed an official Islamic regime in Iraq, which they still want to support with foreign aid, an official Islamic regime in Afghanistan, which they're supporting with troops and money, and nobody talks about that.
And now they're working on overthrowing the last secular dictatorship in the region, as Lew Rockwell said on my show years ago, Syria's the last place in the whole region you can get a drink now, after Iraq's been overthrown.
And now they're working on regime change there, too.
Yeah, but you know what's fascinating is that they just, they can't bring themselves to just not intervene.
I mean, that's what I find so fascinating about the interventionist mindset, and look at Egypt.
I mean, they feel like, oh, we have to support the military, because Egypt's our friend, and then the other side, well, no, we have to support democracy, because Morsi's democratically elected.
How about just not supporting anyone, at least from the government standpoint?
You know, if you're a private citizen, you should be free to support whomever you want.
But you know, Switzerland is, to me, a perfect model in this area.
You know, you don't see the Swiss government saying, oh my gosh, I'm anguishing, should I support the military in Egypt, should I continue sending them $1.3 billion in weaponry so that they can continue killing people and protesters and demonstrators.
They don't, they're not anguishing at all, because they butt out of all these internal conflicts that take place in the world, and that's really what we ought to be doing, Scott.
There's absolutely no reason to be taking one side versus the other side.
It's not a question of one side versus the other side, it's a question of butt out of other people's business.
Yeah, nobody calls the Swiss isolationists.
They're not isolationists, they're just neutral.
Right, and they're oriented toward defense.
Legitimate, genuine defense.
No one would dare to attack Switzerland, because you'd be like swallowing a porcupine.
They are totally oriented to legitimate, genuine defense of their country.
They don't have bases overseas, they don't have foreign aid, they don't have torture, you know, sanctions, embargoes, none of that junk.
In fact, their foreign policy is really modeled after the United States when we were founded, and the principles that, unfortunately, today's Americans have abandoned.
But that's the model, Switzerland, and of course the founding fathers of America, who said, don't go abroad in search of monsters to destroy, spend your time here in the United States developing a free society, a model society, open the borders where people can come here to escape tyranny and oppression, but don't go bomb them in the name of helping them out.
Right.
Well, now, the polls are saying that the American people have learned the hard way again.
You know, it's too bad they couldn't just remember from Vietnam, but they've learned from Iraq and Afghanistan that both of these go in the failure category, if not the outright defeat category, certainly the didn't get what you claimed you were going to get out of it category.
And they don't want to do it anymore, and the recent poll mustered nine percent, less than ten percent, literally, were willing to say, yeah, let's intervene in Syria.
And of course, it's funny in a way that because the narrative is, let's go help those people, the Americans, the anti-war sentiment now is, screw those people, we should not go help them.
You know, like they accept the premise that to invade, to do a regime change and to intervene there would be to their benefit ultimately, but let them deal with their own stupid problems, I guess.
Which I'll take it, right?
If that's what, if that's the best, you know, pro-peace sentiment I can get out of the American people, I'll take it, because it's apparently in the super-duper-majority category, nothing to do with this, and so I wonder whether you think that that can translate to the politics at all.
Obviously, the power factions want a war in Washington, D.C., but the entire population of the country is against them.
Yeah, that's a fascinating question, and I, too, am fascinated by the numbers.
I mean, it really is an incredible thing that so many people are opposing this, and I think part of it is because they don't even see President Obama reciting a good reason as to why to bomb this country.
I mean, I don't see any humanitarian justification here.
He's not saying, I'm going to go save people with this bombing, and he's going to end up killing people, including Syrian, presumably Syrian troops, assuming he targets them militarily, that had nothing to do with this supposed chemical unleash, you know, even if the Syrian government did do this, and I think there's plenty of reason to question that, but if they did, the units that he's going to be attacking didn't have anything to do with that unleashing of chemical warfare.
They can't afford to drop bombs on the chemical stockpiles themselves, because it'll unleash the gas in that area, so what is the point of all this?
He wants to send a message?
I mean, why can't he just send a telegram?
I mean, is that really going to dissuade some brutal dictator from doing the same thing?
And I think the American people are picking up on that.
It's like, what's the point of this thing?
All it's going to do is unleash consequences that no one can predict, but you know, one thing we haven't touched on, Scott, let's not forget that the people that make these cruise missiles, they're making a lot of money off this thing.
As you use these missiles up, they get the factories ramping up, and the defense contractors and stuff, to have to start making new missiles.
That's jobs for America.
And people really do believe that.
It's really, I don't know, to people who are already libertarians, man, they've heard this so many times they can't stand it anymore, but I think that even mostly unsaid, it is such a major premise of American society that war is good for the economy, and even if you don't like war, well, at least, you know, it is good for the economy, and people just believe that like they believe in Jesus.
They believe that like they believe they need the government to pave the roads for them.
They just know that it's true.
They've known it their whole lives.
I don't know why, but they see it, well, they see it through a soda straw, the way you just described it.
Hey, you get this one factory ramping up, and it's good for my town, and so how do you mistake that for anything but prosperity?
Yeah, I mean, it's what we're all indoctrinated in from the first grade.
I mean, you've got a military that's much like the military in Egypt.
It is so extensive, it pervades so much a part of our lives, it employs so many people off the tax monies that the IRS plunders and loots people, that now you have this gigantic participation in the economy, but none of it's productive.
I mean, they're taking the productive capital from the private sector to fund this gigantic governmental sector, and then they say, oh, well, you know, if these people lose their jobs because we're not developing enough cruise missiles, that'll adversely affect the economy.
They make the same argument with the massive military establishment in Egypt as well.
Well, really, the best thing that could ever happen is you dismantle this whole monstrosity, put all those people in the private sector, because then they become productive citizens.
They're now producing wealth instead of extracting wealth, which is what they do with the IRS to fund this entire welfare warfare state system.
Yeah.
Well, now, so one of the things about the public opinion is that, and this has been a problem for a while, especially because Democrats are in power, I guess, that as the consensus becomes, we're sick and tired of war, give us peace time for a little while anyway, kind of a thing.
It's still, you know, 10th place on the list behind, you know, the economy and whatever other concerns people have, education for their kids and whatever, whatever.
And so you have this very large majority of people against it, but it doesn't seem like there's really much push, you know?
So I just wonder, I don't know, how do you get people, Jacob, to all yell on the same day and make Congress stop the president from making things worse over there?
You know, and it's one thing.
Is it even, is it, am I living in fantasy land to think that the American people have any political power at all at this point to, to really insist that we don't care about your consensus?
We have our consensus and we say no about this.
That's a fascinating question because, you know, we saw it in the run up to the Iraq war.
You had massive anti-war demonstrations.
I mean, most people were against attacking Iraq, yet there were worldwide demonstrations.
And the president and the national security state, they don't care.
They say, oh, okay, now you've had your debate.
And we really relish the debate and participating in the system and then order the attack.
And so, you know, to me, Obama's not going to pay attention to the polls.
He's going to do what he needs to do to, you know, to save face and so forth.
But I think the whole rationale of what we do in terms of libertarianism and advancing, you know, anti-war philosophy and ideas and principles and write articles and do like your show is that we're setting the groundwork, the intellectual groundwork, the moral groundwork is more and more people start to understand the philosophy behind a non-interventionist system.
Then you don't know what the future holds.
I mean, at some point, something can happen that none of us can predict that will galvanize people, that will just fortify them and say, this is not what we want anymore.
And then you have not just not to invade Syria or just getting out of Afghanistan, but then you have an entire paradigm shift where people start thinking in terms of dismantling the whole Cold War national security state, you know, the NSA, CIA, military industrial complex, and then a philosophy of non-intervention.
And that's really the only long-term solution because, you know, stopping these little things one at a time is a very, very exhausting process.
I think it's much better that we think in terms of a paradigm shift entirely to a non-interventionist country.
And then, boy, now you're talking about some exciting things taking place.
Yeah, that's the whole thing, too.
I don't know if I'm very good at communicating it or whatever, but I have a lot of kind of alternative recent histories about how things could have been if instead of having a world empire to, you know, spread free markets and democracy, as Bill Clinton put it, kind of paraphrasing the consensus, I think, what if we really believed in, you know, not democracy, you know, but a very limited constitutional republic and individual rights like the American creed is supposed to be, and real free market economics.
And what if we really believed in spreading those beliefs to the world and we really just didn't have an empire, say, at the end of the Cold War, abandoned NATO, and instead just went on a massive propaganda effort to just teach the world about private property and its benefits, or whatever, you know what I mean?
If that had really been what we had tried to do, obviously it wouldn't be perfect, but can you imagine how much better it would have been with all those trillions not just wasted away and with all those, you know, brilliant young minds not extinguished, you know, in the meantime?
Oh, it boggles the mind.
It really does boggle the mind as to what a fantastic country we would have today and a much better world.
But you know, we both know that's water under the bridge, you know, where can we go from now, from this point on out, and this is where Americans have a chance.
I mean, we're getting out of Afghanistan, we got out of Iraq, unfortunately they're shifting all the national security stuff, or a lot of it, to Asia and to the southern border of the United States.
But this is where people need to start questioning.
They should have done this at the end of the Cold War, but now's the time to start questioning and challenging this whole system of the national security state, interventionism, empire, and so forth.
And I think people are questioning that, and that's why I think we're living in some exciting times.
I think we could see some dramatic shifts in the short term here, simply because I think people are sick and tired of what's going on here.
Right.
Yeah, it is, as you say, it's just kind of fascinating to watch, to see.
It's a great test of how much, you know, power and influence the American people have versus the powerful and influential, you know what I mean, on a question like this.
And you know, might as well throw out the benefit of Ron Paul to our society over the past five, six years, ever since he became really famous when he ran for president the first time there, where he just really spread that theme that you do not have to be Michael Moore, big fat hypocrite socialist to be anti-war.
And people were just like, oh, we don't?
Oh, thank God.
We can be anti-war and we can be like Ron Paul.
That is just it's so great that he gave the American people that option, don't you think?
I couldn't agree with you more.
All right.
Right on.
Jacob Hornberger, you're the best.
Thank you so much for your time on the show.
I appreciate it as always.
Thank you, Scott.
Thank you, listeners.
Bye bye.
All right.
But that is Jacob Hornberger.
FFF.org.
An impeachable offense.
We'll be right back after this.
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