All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
It's anti-war radio.
I'm Scott Horton.
And, uh, first up on the show today is our friend Doug Bandao from over at the Cato Institute.
Welcome back, Doug.
How are you doing?
I'm doing okay.
That's good.
Good to have you back on the show.
And, uh, I noticed that you wrote this, uh, article for the American conservative magazine, Mitt Romney, the foreign policy of no nothing ism.
And I thought, Hey, isn't that just exactly on point?
You even, uh, you even made the same parallel that I've been thinking of, uh, to George Bush where, you know, I don't know, George Bush may have been a bit dimmer all around.
Romney at least seems capable, but he's just not interested in foreign policy.
Is he, he doesn't really know or care about this subject at all.
I think that's exactly right.
It's not an issue that motivates him, you know, and I think right now he figures he'll use it to prove, you know, to hardliners that he is one of them.
So vote for Mitt Romney.
You know that he can be for war like anybody else.
He hopes they won't worry about what he does on domestic issues.
Do you think that he'll be as bad of a pushover as George W.
Bush was, uh, when it comes to, you know, doing what Richard Perle wants and that kind of thing?
Well, it's hard to know.
I mean, if you look at him, the good news is he doesn't believe anything, which means I don't think he's actually committed to any of these policies.
Now, the bad news is he might figure it doesn't matter very much.
So, you know, why not let, uh, you know, let the folks have what they want.
No, he's bright enough where I would think that, you know, he can look at stuff and say, boy, this doesn't make much sense, I mean, heck, George W.
Bush, you know, near the end, clearly didn't go where Cheney wanted him.
I mean, Cheney wanted to go to war with Iran and with Syria and, uh, you know, Bush did not do so.
So I could certainly imagine that, uh, you know, Romney could react the same way.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, that's sort of the hope.
It, you know, if it had been in a way, look back just four years, if it had been anybody, but McCain, he's such a madman and a wild card that I don't know that you can make the parallel really.
But if you, maybe if it had been Mitt Romney sort of just cookie cutter Republican, uh, back four years ago, uh, he would have had at least the ability to do a little bit more of that Nixon goes to China thing and maybe making where Obama, not that Obama would rather not shoot people or whatever, but all the pressure is on him to prove what a tough guy he is, whereas a Republican sort of has it at, you know, on face value that he's a tough guy.
And so if he does something along the lines of peacemaking, it, it doesn't usually count against them that badly.
You know what I mean?
No, that's right.
I think that, uh, it's one of those realities of the, uh, political processes that for years, Republicans have used the charge of weakness against Democrats.
So Democrats feel kind of a need to prove themselves.
There may be with, uh, when Obama's done, whether he, or he wins or loses this time, but when he's gone, maybe finally Democrats won't feel that need because he's been as hawkish as George W.
Bush.
So you really, you know, when Republicans attack him for weakness, I just have to laugh.
I mean, I keep trying to figure out, you know, where is he weak?
You're please show it to me.
I mean, he's out there, you know, W kind of incre constantly increasing troops in Afghanistan, you know, killed, uh, you know, some have been London, you know, got us at a war in Libya, uh, you know, more drone strikes all over.
Yeah.
So it's very hard for the Republicans to up that.
And I think that unfortunately that's what Romney's trying to do is to keep the pressure on saying, look, I'm even tougher.
Yeah.
Which means, I mean, really what's left other than nuke Tehran, right?
That's right.
That's about it.
And unfortunately, you know, that's the sort of thing which Romney has come pretty close to, I think.
Man.
Yeah.
And see, the thing is too, and this is something that, well, we, we've definitely learned this lesson in the Obama years, but especially in the Bush years, the whole thing was just such a comic book of all of these lessons, really, uh, the argument ad absurdum, who you vote for, it really matters who they bring with them.
And people, in fact, I'm sure you remember would say, well, we're tired of Bill Clinton and his antics.
We got to get the adults in there and, and okay.
I can see that George W.
Bush is kind of a lightweight, you know, legacy spot, but at least he's surrounded by really good, smart, capable people like Dick Cheney and stuff like that.
But instead, Dick Cheney brought in the least responsible people in the world, the neocons and let them set the policy, even down to disbanding the Iraqi army and everything else.
Yeah.
What was really strange about that, of course, is that until then, you know, Cheney had looked fairly responsible.
I mean, he'd been part of the Bush one administration.
They hadn't gone on to, uh, you know, Baghdad in the first Gulf war, you know, the, you know, he had explained exactly why they hadn't.
Yeah.
I mean, it's, it's odd.
You had a going into that.
I mean, both Bush talked about humility and foreign policy.
Cheney didn't look so crazy.
And then, you know, they took over and I think Cheney clearly had changed.
They had a whole bunch of neocons in position.
And after nine 11, they had their opportunity and boy, did they take it.
Yep.
Well, and, you know, I think people, you know, they hear about the Robert Kagan argument that, well, America's great and we need to do all these things or whatever, but where the rubber meets the road, where Kagan's actually make policy, you get an Iraq surge and a war prolonged for years, trillions, more wasted tens, hundreds of thousands more killed.
And for what they put solder and power in Baghdad anyway.
No, I mean, that's the great irony.
Of course, as they kill a couple hundred thousand people die in the aftermath of the war, so it sure doesn't look very humanitarian.
It empowers Iran, which is the country they're most concerned about, you know, that then we're moving towards an authoritarian regime there.
So, so much for democracy.
I mean, the whole thing looks pretty disastrous, but they just move on.
I mean, that's, that's what I found striking that all these people who campaigned, if any of them apologized for a couple hundred thousand or more dead people in Iraq, not that I'm aware of.
I mean, they just kind of move on and act as if they had nothing to do with it.
Yeah.
Um, just a reminder at antiwar.com wrote about how, um, Robert Kagan has been cited by Mitt, I guess he's working directly for Mitt Romney, but then his new book has been cited by Barack Obama as this is the basis of my foreign policy.
America Uber Alice forever.
That's right.
I mean, the differences between them are so very small and I think what's really sad is how so many on the left just don't care.
I mean, you know, you would think that they would worry that they supported some guy supposedly because he was for peace and civil liberties.
He comes into office and then lo and behold, he doesn't care very much about peace and civil liberties.
You know, you'd love to have them join in and criticize, but people like Glenn Greenwald have been pretty lonely voices in pointing that out.
So many of them say, well, he's our guy, so we're not going to criticize him.
Right.
Yeah.
Poor Glenn.
It's the underlying premise of, or the, the unsaid statement at the beginning of his, every essay is please listen to me or whatever, like, just because he he's constantly, he's always, his audience that he's addressing is the liberals and progressives who still love Obama, no matter what he does.
That's basically who he's writing to.
That's right.
I mean, he had one, I remember one of his columns, he quoted some guys saying, well, yeah, you know, I just don't really care very much about foreign policy and if we're killing people, that's too bad and you're thinking, geez, I think what could be more important than wandering around the world, getting involved in unnecessary wars, killing people.
Yeah.
Well, the thing is you can get a real headache if you pretend you're anti-war, but you also love Barack Obama.
You're going to have to give up one or the other.
That's at some point you just say, you know what?
I don't care.
In fact, one of the great attacks on Glenn was that, well, he's just a privileged white guy.
And so that's why he's always going around, you know, complaining about the violation of the rights of people like El Masri or whatever, because that's his privilege, spoiled, rotten white guy, uh, privilege to do so.
All right.
Well, anyway, so, um, uh, oh, I wanted to ask you more, uh, if you could just cite and explain to people a little bit about who exactly these guys are.
Uh, I've been picking on Robert Kagan, but, uh, Elliot Cohen, isn't he the guy that came up with the whole plan for privatizing the entire Iraqi economy shock therapy style overnight and gave them all zip codes and all of that.
The plan to, uh, privatize all the oil right off the bat and drive the price way down.
Well, I mean, he's involved in, look, I mean, there's a whole host of these people who are involved in that stuff.
You know, I mean, you know, Bush sent over, you know, 22 year olds to write traffic laws in Baghdad.
So, I mean, you know, they came over assuming that Washington could kind of do everything.
And the people that are basically Romney has around him, it's kind of a range of people from hardline right to neocon, but they're all pretty much were in favor of the Iraq war.
They all like, you know, warmongering and they all like social engineering, you know, and it's, it's amazing to think that all these guys, despite the failure of their policy are now positioned to take power again, if Romney wins.
Well, that's hardly an issue at all.
Really?
At least on TV.
All right.
Hold it right there.
We'll be right back.
I'm ready with Doug Bandoff from Cato and the American conservative after this.
All right, y'all it's anti-war radio.
We're talking with Doug Bandoff from Cato and the American conservative magazine, the American conservative.com.
That's where his piece, Mitt Romney, the foreign policy of no nothing ism can be found.
And as we were talking about, maybe the emptiness of this guy's suit is the best thing we have going for us when it comes to his foreign policy.
He can flip flop around whatever he wants.
Maybe that means he doesn't have to be so married to, uh, you know, what the Kagan clan decides.
Um, assuming that he really even has a shot at beating the sitting president, which is quite doubtful to me.
But anyway, um, I was, uh, oh yeah.
So we were talking about all the neocons in the administration, uh, or who would be in his administration, the guys who are advising him now, that kind of thing.
But you really do a great job in this article, Doug, of going around the world kind of, cause that's where the American empire is pretty much everywhere and pretty much everywhere and sort of ticking off, uh, what Romney has said, you know, mostly what we see on TV of him on foreign policy is just America is great.
America is strong and it always will be.
And isn't that great.
And don't you believe that and vote Romney kind of thing.
Um, which maybe I'd be willing to settle for that BS if it didn't have much details to it, but apparently it does have detail and he does get into the details at times.
Um, so like for example, could you explain to us what's Mitt Romney's policy on Afghanistan?
Uh, how might it different from the current policy if at all?
Oh yeah, it's one of those weird things where it's hard to know.
I mean, that's one of those issues where, you know, Mr.flip-flop has been the flip-flop, you know, but the problem is he's talked about, you know, we have to win.
I mean, he's also talked about timetables and he's criticized the president for pulling troops out, but here he's also indicated he doesn't want to stay forever, but he's used this language of winning.
And they, I always find that scary because I have no idea what it means to win in Afghanistan.
And does that mean that we stay there for 50 years because that's what's necessary to win, whatever, you know, win means.
And that's one of those areas where, you know, again, you know, if you're out there kind of portraying yourself as being tough, you know, you can imagine saying we've got to stick around until we win.
And then, you know, kind of coming up with some, you know, statistics or something, which have to just, you know, we have to achieve before you're willing to pull troops out.
Yeah.
Uh, which, as you say, you know, you can't imagine it.
You're a foreign policy expert.
There really is no, I mean, Hey, even Obama, when he, when he announced the big surges, he still wasn't even pretending.
Petraeus wasn't even pretending that, yeah, what we're going to do with this coin is we're going to defeat the Taliban.
All they said was, well, we're going to weaken them to such a point that when we sit down to negotiate with them starting in 2011, then they'll do what we say.
You know, that's right.
That's right.
And it's just your idea that while we, by at least 2014, you know, our guys will be strong enough that if we give them billions of dollars a year for the next 20 years, you know, they might be able to hold the Taliban back.
Well, you're all great.
I mean, that, you know, that's wonderful.
I mean, you know, so that's what we've been doing for the last 10 years, trying to achieve that.
We know John Glazer had a piece of the anti-war.com saying that, you know, Obama's really lying here, spinning and spinning and spinning, declaring victory in Afghanistan.
And I'm thinking maybe we need to just let them have it, you know?
Yeah, you're right.
We won.
Hooray.
We'll do a parade just like Rachel Maddow wants.
You know, our guys deserve a parade.
Exactly.
Exactly.
They'll bring everybody home and we're done.
Thank you very much.
Glad it worked so well.
You know, I guess if that's how it has to be, then, you know, I'm with that.
We could do ticker tape.
How much does that cost compared to, you know, beefing up Africom?
That's, that's exactly right.
No, but you'll bring, we need to bring them home and give them a parade and then let them go back out into civilian life and not have to fight any more wars.
All right.
Now, how much more horrible is Romney on Israel and Palestine issues than Barack Obama?
Well, I think he's, you know, far, far worse.
I mean, Barack Obama, I think has been essentially rolled on the issue.
My sense is that he actually has had some genuine sympathy for Palestinians.
You know, he got rolled on the issue early with the election coming up.
I think he just decided, I'm not going to have any problems here.
I'm just going to do whatever I'm told.
And that's where we're at.
You know, Romney is a longtime friend of Benjamin Netanyahu.
It goes back to like 20, 30 years where they were both, I think it, you know, like a management company or something.
And what Romney has said among other things is, well, before I act, I'll call up, you know, my buddy, you know, Netanyahu and ask him if it's good.
You know, and I, I just, it's shocking, frankly, because now my reaction is, could you imagine if President Obama said, well, you know, before I do anything on Europe, I plan on calling up President Holland of France and asking him if he thinks it's okay.
The neocons would go absolutely ballistic.
But if you say, well, I'm not going to make any policy decisions until I talk to the Israeli prime minister, they all think that's wonderful.
But that's essentially what Romney has said, and I find it striking.
Yeah.
So at least Obama acknowledges that the Palestinians exist, not like he's going to do anything about it.
Whereas to Romney, basically, they're just invisible people.
You could just force march him right out.
He wouldn't even blink.
I think that's right.
And I think that, you know, Barack Obama, if you set him down, he would admit that, yes, what's going on in the, you know, with the settlements and the occupied territories is terrible.
Yes.
I wish I could do something about it, but I can't.
So I'm just not going to say anything.
Well, Romney would look at you and say, huh?
I mean, what are you talking about?
What's the problem?
No, everything's wonderful.
Well, my friend, the prime minister told me everything's wonderful.
So why are you complaining?
All right.
Now, what about mucking around in Korea?
Well, it's one of those where he hasn't said a heck of a lot about North Korea, thankfully, because he'd probably be advocating another war.
But on that issue, to some degree, he couldn't be a lot worse than the Obama administration.
I mean, they've strengthened the relationship with South Korea.
You know, they've made no effort to try to let the South Koreans actually handle the problems over there.
I mean, everybody kind of looks to China to solve the problem.
And frankly, China has no interest in doing so.
They like the situation as it is now.
Why on earth should they use their political capital to make things easier for America?
And of course, even if Romney thinks that's possible, he'll make it worse because he wants to have a confrontational policy with China.
Well, you can't insult them on the one hand and then beg them for help on the other.
Yet that seems to be his policy.
Does he really want to have a trade war with China?
He's just talking tough like Bill Clinton in the election here.
Well, I think, again, our hope is, given the fact that he doesn't believe anything, that this is political, that he recognizes those political kind of points to be made.
Clinton did it.
You know, others have done it.
So he's getting up.
And, you know, Democrats have ended up recently being less pro-free trade than Republicans.
So he probably figures this is a great way to defuse that issue.
He's going to be really tough.
People don't like the Chinese communists.
People don't like trade.
OK, great.
You know, here I can kill two birds with one stone.
So my hope is simply he doesn't believe anything.
So it won't matter.
What a shame that that's good politics.
I know that we have to be cynical and just hope that these people don't believe what they're saying.
Yeah.
Well, and then the American people like to hear a bunch of warmongering against the Chinese or any kind of confrontation escalation.
You know, wait a minute, the Chinese, there's a billion of them and they got nukes.
We have to be friends.
Simple as that.
So why find things to fight about when we can find things to be friends about?
Exactly.
You know, it makes no sense to be enemies with them.
You know, the fifth century is going to be a lot better if we're friends than if we're enemies.
Yeah.
All right.
Now, has he said anything?
I kind of mentioned offhand there, AFRICOM.
We got all kinds of Africa stuff in the news and on the show today.
But it seems, well, what the hey, there's this article here, Doug, called at news.
Antiwar dot com by John Glaser, U.S. to send large combat brigade throughout Africa.
AFRICOM will participate in military missions, training of indigenous forces and war exercises.
Is this just old South slavery in reverse now?
We're just going to export all our plantation owners over there.
I think that what this is, we just want to run the world.
And there's no reason if we want to run the world not to run Africa.
You know, traditionally, we haven't done a lot militarily there.
But with the end of the Cold War, why not?
I mean, there's no longer anybody on the other side.
So let's just get our troops involved all over.
And isn't that wonderful?
I think that tends to be the way Washington works.
Yeah, well, and then I guess I'm sorry I forgot the title, the exact title of the thing, but they're pretty open, right, that this is really not so much about there's any interest in Africa that we really care about, other than we want to keep China from having access to assets in Africa.
Yeah, I mean, our involvement in Africa during the Cold War very much was anti-Soviet, you know, we're worried about the other side gaining benefits.
You know, it's not so much that we have to do a lot.
We just have to make sure that the folks on the other side don't do very well.
I think that really is the focus.
America is such a poor sport, man.
What is up with that?
You know, this is the the interview coming up.
Ramsey Baroud's written all about this oil war in South Sudan.
That's America's war there.
Where, you know, we're on the side of the Southern Confederacy seceding from the Union.
No, it is very strange.
You know, we just don't feel we can ever stay out of anything.
I mean, the great thing about free market economics is it tells you it doesn't really matter who owns the stuff.
It's a world market.
You know, we spent the Cold War trying to kind of gain influence in Africa.
And we ended up losing a lot of money and it didn't come to much good.
And my reaction is, you know, let the Chinese try.
We've already had trouble in Zambia because it was their mind, you know, managers who shot a bunch of workers.
So needless to say, the Zambians don't like them very much.
The Burmese have turned to the West because they were nervous about the Chinese.
Let the Chinese try it.
We shouldn't have to worry about this.
Let's go do our own thing.
Right.
The indispensable.
My favorite lesson from that book, Overblown by John Mueller, was when we finally got tired and quit containing the Soviet Union, that it finally overexpanded and fell apart.
Yep, that's it.
That's all it took.
Just like they're doing to us right now.
Putin's like, oh, you need help invading Central Asia.
Come on in.
Exactly.
Please stay.
Please stay.
All right.
Thanks, Doug.
Appreciate it.
Sure thing.
Happy to be on.
Take care.
Doug Bando, over to Cato.com.
Org.
