07/22/08 – Doug Bandow – The Scott Horton Show

I'm Scott, this is Antiwar Radio, and the spotlight article today on Antiwar.com is War, Who Decides?
It's by Doug Bandow, he's the Robert A. Tath Fellow at the American Conservative Defense Alliance and author of Foreign Follies, America's New Global Empire.
He writes Foreign Follies for us at Antiwar.com.
Welcome back to the show, Doug.
Happy to be on.
It's good to talk to you again, and this is a very interesting question for all kinds of timely reasons today.
Who decides about war?
Of course, all of us learn in 5th grade that Article I, Section 8, Clause 11 gives the exclusive power to declare war to the Congress, not to the President, and for specific reasons relating to the Revolutionary War, which had ended just a few years before.
Isn't that right?
That's right.
Now, the founders of the American Republic believed that they were founding a republic, not a monarchy.
And they had seen, you know, they just kind of escaped a system where one man, the monarch, the king, could take an entire empire into war.
They made it very clear that what they were doing is transferring that power to several people as opposed to one.
They thought you put it into Congress, you have two different houses that have to vote on it, that you force a public debate, you force an agreement of a lot of people.
They were quite explicit.
They wanted to slow down the process to war.
They'd seen the other side.
They didn't like it.
Well, and we've seen what happens when Congress, which hasn't declared war since 1941 in the declaration of war against Japan and Germany there, we see what happens when they don't declare war.
A lot of times they pass these authorizations for the president to decide.
But then whenever things go wrong, they say, well, but the president decided.
And they've quite literally given their responsibility away, and they seem to be able to get away with doing that.
Well, that's right.
The problem is on both sides.
You have presidents who want to, you know, take the power into their own hands, and then you have Congresses that won't defend, you know, the Constitution.
And I think you're absolutely right.
Congress likes the idea of not being responsible.
So you let the president make a hard decision.
If it goes well, you applaud him.
If it goes badly, then you can complain and carp, and that's kind of where the Democrats are today.
Many of them, of course, supported Bush on authorizing Iraq, and now they're upset the way it's turned out.
But we never really had Congress take control, because, yeah, they passed authority off.
They say, well, you can decide, you know, certain things.
They've done the same thing in terms after 9-11.
We've seen that in other situations.
So even when they vote, and I mean, it's good at least that they vote, but even when they vote, they try to pass off responsibility.
That's not what the founders intended.
What's funny is they're now in a position where you have, well, like Senator Webb from Virginia there introduced a resolution.
There was a similar one in the House of Representatives, a rider onto a defense appropriations bill that simply reminded the president that he does not have the authority to start a war, and the Democrat leadership took it out.
Well, that's right, because, you know, let's face it, there are a lot of issues when you start getting into Iran, a lot of political groups out there.
You know, again, even on something like that, this should be clear enough.
You know, they hate to have that responsibility, and, you know, from their standpoint, far better off let somebody else take the heat.
They can pose, you know, they can give a speech, but when it comes down to actually taking up the tough job of voting yes or no on these issues, they'd prefer not to do it.
Yeah, and now, this is also timely because just yesterday, Attorney General Mukasey came out and said that he would like Congress to actually declare war against Al-Qaeda, and now there are a lot of implications of that we could get into, but I'm curious, because I remember after September 11th, Ron Paul introduced a resolution to put basically bounty hunters mark on their heads, a letter of mark and reprisal, like Jabba the Hutt and Han Solo kind of thing going on there, and because they're a stateless group.
They're less than a state.
Declarations of war are for states.
These guys are pirates.
Yeah, that's a very odd idea to declare war against a group.
I mean, I guess it makes a bit more sense than claiming you're at war against, you know, a technique like terrorism.
I mean, the problem with that was always like we're going to be going to war against artillery or something.
Yeah, right, but that's not saying much, exactly.
No, no, that's right.
I mean, yeah, I mean, it at least, it makes it somewhat more sense, but you're right.
We traditionally think of war between nation states.
You know, the idea of a war against a group, what on earth does that mean?
You know, my fear here is, you know, basically it's viewed as a technique to get around recent Supreme Court rulings, I mean, in terms of, you know, the question of Guantanamo Bay, habeas corpus, you know, terming people to be enemy combatants.
I mean, this administration has claimed extraordinary power based on the being the commander in chief and arguing that during, essentially they've argued that during wartime the president's power as commander in chief swallows the rest of the constitution, that he can deny an American citizen arrested in America access to the courts, you know, simply because he's turned to the president besides the terming him an enemy combatant.
So my guess is that since they haven't been doing terribly well in the courts, this is the way that Mukasey thinks they can kind of seize the initiative again.
If you declare war against Al Qaeda, then presumably that means America's, you know, the battleground and it's an unending war, which means the president can make these kinds of decisions forever.
I mean, it's a, I think a very dangerous step he's proposing.
I've always been curious about the limits of the war power, if there are any.
I read something that I believe was written before the Bush administration and the unitary executive theory coming into prominence on the part of, you know, the war party types.
And it was an article by Joe Stromberg for LewRockwell.com called In Search of the Elusive War Power.
And I think in there, he concludes, you know, kind of begrudgingly that it seems like once you have a declaration of war, all statutes are off.
The president basically can do whatever he wants at that point.
He could ultimately destroy all life and property in, within the state in order to protect the state.
Well, yeah, you could, there's always an argument for necessity, but at least in theory, if you're dealing with constitutional rights and the laws, you know, written by Congress, that necessity has to be pretty obvious that, you know, what this administration has essentially claimed.
And I mean, and now that this guy gets a Stromberg's kind of, you know, alluding to is that, you know, if you, if you say we are in a war, then all bets are off, essentially that means I can do anything that, you know, and that is something, but that's something which in many ways is very new.
I mean, there's certainly been exertions of presidential power, you know, by Roosevelt, by Truman, by, you know, Woodrow Wilson, but this administration, you know, for example, the claim that you can arrest an American citizen in America and designate them an enemy combatant and imprison them without access to the courts attorneys is really a step beyond anything we've seen before.
You know, there was a case in World War II, German saboteurs showed up on the, kind of in the United States.
One of them, I guess, technically was an American citizen, but these guys were, you know, in an armed conflict representing the other side.
I mean, it was a very different kind of circumstance.
So this administration, I think, is pushing it further.
There is an argument that can be made.
I don't think it's a very good argument, but in today's environment, if Congress won't defend the constitution, you're up to the courts and courts hate to get involved in these kinds of political controversies during an alleged war time.
Right.
So David Ten, in fact, that's something I've always been pleasantly surprised when the Supreme Court has issued in favor of the constitution and the law in the Rasul case, the Hamdan case and the Boumediene case, because I was so worried that while it's up to these guys, just like you say, they don't want to get involved in controversies like this, try to avoid it as often as they can.
They duck the Padilla case once on a technicality and kind of a silly one in order to not have to rule on it.
And I'm worried that it comes down to these nine judges.
And well, more than half of them are detestable creatures up there.
I don't trust them to decide the right thing.
I'm, like I said, happily surprised when they do the right thing.
I think you're right.
I think one of the reasons they've done what they've done is because no one else is stepping up to the plate.
It's clear that the Republican Congress is willing to let Bush do anything that he wanted, that, you know, the Constitution kind of be damned, you know, if the partisan comedy, we all have to be nice to our fellow Republican.
But then it turns out the Democrats aren't that good.
I mean, the Democrats here are, unfortunately, you know, hesitant to criticize the president on this.
They don't want to be held vulnerable.
And so you would think that Nancy Pelosi and company, having taken control, would move the other direction.
But they've been awful.
I mean, things like FISA, you know, where they've basically kind of ratified what the administration wanted, they've avoided any suits for, you know, lawbreaking by private companies.
I mean, it's an extraordinary record.
And you're right.
And you're left simply relying on the courts and expecting these guys to be willing to take those tough steps, you know, in the face of kind of a political system that won't respond.
You know, that's hard.
We've been lucky.
But there's no guarantee it'll continue.
Now the Military Commissions Act of 2006, which the Democrats also supported, which like the FISA amendments, basically is just going back and rubber stamping the laws that Bush had been breaking.
Doesn't it take care of all this?
What's all this about?
You know, we need a declaration of war and even more laws establishing procedures here and all that.
Well, I think the problem there is that from an administration standpoint, that still involves Congress.
So they couldn't get everything they wanted.
I think Mukasey and company, and certainly the president, the vice president, they want a world in which every decision is made by the president.
I mean, they're horrified by even this modest accountability where, you know, a Congress might say no about something, even if it gives them most of what they want.
They weren't happy going, you know, to Congress to get military commissions.
You know, Jack Goldsmith, who did a book on kind of the terror presidency, looking at the legal issues and the question of torture and stuff, a very interesting book.
He was one who, though he has an expansive view of the president's power, thought they should go to Congress to cement it, that in his view, the best way you can kind of solve this is you go and you have Congress behind you.
But, you know, he was kind of waved away by David Addington and, you know, the others in the administration who didn't want to share any power at all.
And now what's up with James Baker, the third and Warren Christopher coming out and talking about restraining the powers of the president?
I know Baker's made himself clear on TV that he wants talks and not war with Iran, that kind of thing.
And yet, when I read about their proposal, it seemed like the rewrite of the War Powers Act that they're proposing is extremely modest.
It basically says the same thing as the War Powers Act, only the time frames are a little bit shorter.
That kind of thing.
Right.
Yeah.
I think that there's a certain desperation there.
I mean, my reaction when I wrote about it was, you know, if presidents won't obey Congress into the War Powers Resolution, why do we actually think they're going to obey Congress under this new like the War Powers Consultation Act?
So I think there's a certain desperation there.
They recognize a problem and they don't know how to kind of bring the system back into balance.
These presidents, you know, will work hard not to be constrained and Congresses don't like to do it.
I think that they're hoping that if, you know, to create this committee of a congressional leadership and committee chairman to be reported to, and I think they figure if you mandate explicitly you've got to talk to these people and also you mandate a vote, even though you can't actually make the administration listen to it, but you mandate it, that they hope that it'll kind of force the Congress into the decision making process.
I don't think it's going to do much good.
I think you get the same problem as you had in the War Powers Resolution.
Well thought out.
But if nobody's going to enforce it, you know, presidents will do what they want and there'll be no impact.
That's funny.
Remember that Republican debate where, well, I guess it was Giuliani said, I don't care what the Constitution says.
I'll kill whoever I want.
And then Mitt Romney said, well, you know, I'd have to consult my lawyers first.
Giuliani McCain agreed they'll do whatever they want, whatever Congress says.
And Romney said he'd have to consult the lawyers.
And he got jumped on for having to consult the lawyers rather than just doing whatever he wanted.
And Ron Paul was up there alone saying, yeah, but it says right there in the Constitution in plain English.
That's right.
Now, unfortunately, these days, you know what the Constitution says, obviously is not so important for a lot of these people, you know, they, they figure they make points by claiming they'll do anything it takes, you know, irrespective of the damage it does to America's fundamental institutions.
Yeah.
Well, I think that's just McCain's middle name right there, as far as that goes.
And by the way, he is kind of a madman, isn't he, this John McCain guy?
Well, look, I mean, I jokingly call him the crazy war monger.
I mean, I mean, I think he's obviously not technically insane, but this is a guy who, you know, has yet really to find a war he didn't want to get involved in.
And that's kind of frightening.
I mean, this is somebody, you know, you don't joke about going to war with Iran and joke about killing them with tobacco strikes, unless, you know, you have some pretty malevolent designs there.
Now, he's written about attacking North Korea, that could spark a real war on the Korean peninsula, and he seems oblivious to that.
Now, he wanted a ground war against Serbia.
I mean, if you talk about a war where we had no interest, which is utterly irrelevant to us, which was over Kosovo.
I mean, this is a guy who wasn't even satisfied with bombing the Serbs.
He wanted a ground war.
You know, and he wants confrontation with the Russians over silly issues like the status of a place called Abkhazia, which frankly is just utterly irrelevant to America.
So I think he's extraordinarily dangerous.
I think this is somebody who doesn't seem to understand that trying to be a bully is not likely to, you know, kind of make the world a better place, that he seems to think all we have to do is demand everybody do what we want.
Well, frankly, that's going to make us a lot of enemies and people will resist.
I mean, they're going to have the same reaction that we would have if people were trying to bully us.
So I'd say he's quite dangerous.
Yeah, it seems like, well, I'm reminded of George Bush made some stupid statement where he sort of had amended America's Taiwan policy in regards to China, just with an off-the-cuff statement and everybody kind of slapped himself on the forehead and said, Oh, you're not supposed to say it like that, George.
This sort of seems like the same kind of thing where McCain, John Judas pointed out in his recent article in the New Republic that John McCain has said outright what we all know is the case, that the anti-missile missiles going into Poland and now into the Czech Republic, not just the radars, but the missiles too.
He's gone ahead and said, these are for the Russians, not the Iranian.
At least he's honest about it.
I mean, I ask people if we really think the Russians are stupid.
When we expand the former anti-Soviet alliance up to their borders and tell them it has nothing to do with them.
I mean, really, they aren't stupid.
I mean, whatever you think of them, they aren't.
They are not stupid.
You shouldn't treat them like they are.
Although that is one of those things where, you know, everybody knows the truth, but it's the off-the-cuff statement.
It's sort of the same thing with the Taiwan policy, right?
Bush didn't say anything that everybody didn't already know.
That's right.
The diplomats had always had this fine line that they walk in order to not piss off the commie Chinese on the mainland.
That's right.
Yeah.
He was quite explicit in saying, essentially, we'd go to war, you know, if they attack Taiwan and instead the policy is supposed to be what they call strategic ambiguity, you know, where you kind of hint at things, but you never quite say it.
Yeah.
Which, you know me, I'm all about taking any military, anything that we have in the Czech Republic, Poland, or anywhere else in Eastern Europe, or even Western Europe for that matter, and get them out.
But it just seems like McCain's the kind of guy who will go ahead and, and this is what Judas says in that article too, is that he will make it personal.
It's all about, he doesn't like Putin or whatever, and that's the way he's going to decide American policy towards Russia.
Well, that's right.
You know, here's a guy who is happy to have troops in Iraq forever, not realizing kind of what we're seeing right now is, you know, actually, they don't, you know, the Iraqis aren't interested in that.
But, you know, again, McCain is so oblivious, he can't, I guess he can't imagine a world in which kind of good people of good intentions elsewhere might not want us to dominate.
And that, and I'm afraid he could easily get us into some wars that way, because if you really believe that everybody on earth wants us to run everything, you know, we're in for a very rough time.
Yeah.
And, you know, I think that's really another problem that I have with him is I'm afraid that he really does believe the silly things that he says in his soundbites and his talking points, you know, like for example, the, Hey, we'll make it 10,000 years.
Why not a hundred?
Why not a thousand?
Why not 10,000 years in Iraq?
As long as we're friends with the local government there and our guys are just holed up on their bases, then of course it ought to be just like Korea, just like Japan, just like Germany, just like Italy.
We ought to occupy them forever.
Why not?
He really does believe that.
No, I think that's absolutely right.
You know, he likes to present himself as being this, you know, foreign policy genius who doesn't need on the job training, but what he's demonstrated is he actually understands very little about the world.
He thinks he knows a lot, and frankly, that's extraordinarily dangerous.
Those kinds of people are the worst people to have in a position of power, especially the US presidency.
Yeah.
George Bush knows nothing, but John McCain is a know nothing, know it all.
That's even worse.
Exactly.
Exactly.
Yeah.
All right.
So I'm going to ask you about this just because I know you've written about it and I know nothing about it, but I know that I should know all about it.
So the Law of the Sea Treaty, what is this thing?
How close is it to being passed and ratified?
Is the American Senate down for it?
What does it even do and why am I against it?
Well, it's an omnibus treaty.
It's a monster kind of thing.
The problem with these things is, you know, you've got good and bad that get mixed together.
So it has a lot to do with freedom of the oceans, where basically it's taken primarily customary international law, you know, start with basically the way we behaved over the long term anyway, freedom of navigation, and put that in along with some environmental provisions.
Some are good, but some are questionable, along with a really awful international seabed authority, which is going to be run by an assembly and a council, what they call the enterprise to mine the seabed on behalf of the world.
I mean, it was created back in the 70s when kind of coming up with grand, new, grandiose, you know, international institutions that were supposed to have lots of money and hire lots of people was kind of the thing you did.
And it was kind of a different world, which no longer exists, but it really is.
It's bad news in my view, because it gets into issues like technology transfer.
It raises questions about whether there would actually be controls that would result in terms of domestic environmental policies.
There's issues of litigation and whatnot.
So I look at it as being, you know, this fine stuff here, like navigation, that should be done separately.
It doesn't make sense to put this stuff all together and essentially package it with this relic that was created 20, 30 years ago.
The Clinton administration did some renegotiation and made it less bad.
I mean, when it was first created, the Soviets had three seats and the U.S. had no guaranteed seat on, you know, in the council, for example, and this is kind of, this is a really nutty thing for America to have ever agreed to.
So they fixed some stuff like that.
The problem is we don't have a veto, and the way the system operates, and the whole creation was the kind of, the desire was to have lots of money from the seabed that could be handed out by kind of a third world dominated international seabed authority.
So it's a really, in my view, very problematic structure.
The U.S. has signed it.
The Bush administration ironically wants it.
It's sitting before the Senate.
They're probably not going to take it up this year, because it remains quite controversial.
But I suspect there may very well be a vote next year that, you know, could easily be pretty close.
I mean, this is something which, you've got oil companies who say, oh, let's go for it, because there's some oil out there that we might be able to get, and you've got some environmentalists who are supporting it because they think it'll create more regulation.
The U.S. Navy likes it simply because anything that says freedom of navigation they think is a good thing, even if in practice, you know, it wouldn't give them very much.
I mean, realistically, China's not going to, you know, spend a lot of time reading the Law of the Sea Treaty in determining whether or not it challenges us in East Asia.
That's going to be a matter of power politics, not the Law of the Sea Treaty.
But, you know, some people find it appealing, but I think in practice it could be rather dangerous.
Yeah, it sounds like another WTO, NAFTA-type thing where, well, again, Congress giving their authority away.
There's nothing in the Constitution that says that they can sign away decision-making over policy within this territory to some supranational governing board of people whose names we never even know.
And you want to be real careful with organizations that, realistically, you know, having a lot of these kinds of governments, you know, I mean, the question is, you know, do you want governments like Burma and Nigeria and others having this kind of decision-making authority over American companies, over American assets?
You know, it just strikes me as a really bad deal.
Or vice versa, either, Doug.
I mean, I don't think that the American empire ought to dictate terms to them, either.
Sure.
No, I think that's right.
I mean, this is one of those things where they're creating what just, there's no argument for creating this.
I mean, you can argue about things like a World Health Organization because of infectious diseases or something, but, you know, the world is not crying out for the International Seabed Authority to have its own mining thing called the Enterprise, which gets American technology, which, you know, this stuff just strikes me as the playground of international bureaucrats.
I mean, it's not something which serves any legitimate American interest.
All right.
Now, what about China?
I know that you spend a lot of time studying China, and I know that the war hawks on the right like to pretend, or maybe they're right, I don't know, that China is this giant emerging threat.
Obviously, it's an emerging world power in terms of economic might and so forth, but there seems to be this narrative on the right that military conflict with China is inevitable.
Doug, isn't that the case?
I think that's an extraordinarily dangerous attitude to have, because if you think it's inevitable, you start adopting policies that are more likely to make it inevitable.
You know, and if we want to have fun, imagine a war with China.
I mean, this is not Serbia, this is not Iraq, this is an emerging great power, this is a country that already has nuclear weapons that can reach us, you know, this is a country that eventually will have a bigger economy than us.
I mean, China is a very serious place.
It's an ancient civilization, and it's an extraordinarily complex society.
People are highly nationalistic.
So I think that China could be, you know, go in many directions.
It could end up democratic, it might stay authoritarian, it's almost certainly going to grow, you know, as an economy to be able to match us and surpass us.
There's a lot we can achieve if we're friendly and cooperative, you know, the worst thing you can imagine is to have a war between kind of the outgoing superpower, whatever you want to call us, and one of the incoming, you know, superpowers.
So I think the U.S. wants to be watchful in terms of where China goes.
But the big issue, quite honestly, is are we going to try to continue dominating East Asia along China's border?
In China, it's hard to imagine a scenario where China will attack the U.S.
I mean, when the hawks get upset about China, they really aren't trying to tell us that China plans on seizing Hawaii, you know, invading California or something.
I mean, that's so utterly nonsensical.
I don't think even John McCain could really believe that.
You know, I mean, what they're upset about is the fact that what China is doing is simply building a deterrence to us attacking them.
And that's not acceptable.
So see, that and that, I think, shows the aims of the war hawks.
They're upset because China may make it difficult for us to attack China.
I mean, we really aren't talking about China attacking us.
I mean, China, these people are not stupid.
So my reaction is, well, why do we want to be able to attack China?
And how much is it worth to us?
And there, I think we're going to have to adjust our ends.
We can't assume that over the long term we're going to be able to bomb and destroy China.
Well, in, I don't know, 25 years from now, total speculation, long term projection, does it look to you like China will be an expansionist power in terms of occupying other people's lands the way our government does?
Now, I think that China is very likely to be assertive of what its own interests are.
That means it's going to want to have a sufficient navy to guarantee its sea lane access.
I think it's going to be assertive in some territorial claims that are disputed, things like Paracel Islands and whatnot.
I think the issue of Taiwan is going to remain very dicey.
The Taiwanese really want a separate existence that I think China matters a lot nationalistically.
And that if there's one place that China may occupy, it would be Taiwan.
I mean, I think that'd be very dangerous and very upsetting.
But I don't see a China that's likely to invade Korea, invade Japan.
Now, China has been at war with many of its neighbors over the years.
And if you look back, it's been at war with Japan, with Russia, with Vietnam, at different times, India.
So China is constrained.
I think these people are cautious.
They're going to be assertive.
So they're not going to be pushovers.
I don't think they're likely to go on an imperialist rampage.
But frankly, countries that should worry about that, it's Japan, it's Korea, it's Australia.
Countries in the region have to build up defenses, have to cooperate and have to work on creating an international structure to kind of bring China in and make sure it doesn't feel excluded.
Yeah, well, you know, when you just rattle off those countries, those are all at least middle powers, if not major powers surrounding China.
So they are pretty much hemmed in.
I guess they could go into the stands or something somehow.
But other than that, Australia, Japan, Russia, India, how's China going to conquer India or Russia?
You know, I mean, India has its own nuclear deterrent now.
It's expanding its conventional assets.
It's active in Southeast Asia.
It's had training missions within the Navy of Vietnam.
It's involved in Burma.
It's kind of a countervailing force.
So there are a lot of regional constraints on China.
So I'm not terribly worried.
My view is that the danger is the hawks will get us into a war trying to preserve the ability simply to attack China at some future point when there's no reason we should want to.
And I think it's utterly unrealistic to think that forever we can dominate China along China's border.
And we would not allow that in America.
There's no reason to expect the Chinese to sit back and accept that either.
And that's that's the danger.
Well, you know, there's really only one.
I mean, other than just delusions, I guess we can always take that into account when we're talking about the war party.
But there's only one somewhat realistic motivation that I can think of for this, and that is selling advanced weaponry to the American government, because, I mean, after all, the wars we're fighting are against homegrown insurgents with AKs and homemade landmines.
And, you know, like Robert Gates was even complaining that all the military's focus is on fighting a war with China in 20 or 30 years or whatever.
And so all they need is the most sophisticated airplanes and most sophisticated submarines and all these things that cost the most money but are basically irrelevant and unnecessary.
I think that's right.
So I think actually the problem is, to some degree, is less the military contractors than the military for the simple reason, quite honestly, it's a lot more fun to play with these toys if you're high brass in the military than to do more special forces and worry about intelligence and figure out how do you cooperate against, you know, a kind of very difficult, you know, potential enemies that are groups that are shadowy and that sort of thing.
So I think there's a tendency within the Pentagon to favor this stuff because, you know, it's a lot more interesting.
You know, it gives the Pentagon more clout.
You know, it makes the U.S. much more seem like a world power, you know, this kind of dominant place where we can kind of strut about and order everybody about.
So there are a lot of folks who like the high tech assets, the big planes and the big programs, even though, frankly, looking ahead, that really isn't where our concern should be.
Yeah, unless they make it that way.
All right.
Hey, listen, I really appreciate you giving us half an hour of your time today, Doug.
I already kept you long.
Everybody, that's Doug Bandow.
He's a Robert A. Taft fellow at the American Conservative Defense Alliance.
It's ACDAlliance.com.
That's right.
And then he's the author of Foreign Follies, America's New Global Empire.
He's got the spotlight article on Antiwar.com, Today War, Who Decides for the National Interest?
That's NationalInterest.org.
Of course, all his articles, Foreign Follies for Antiwar.com can be found at Antiwar.com slash Bandow.
Thanks very much for your time today, Doug.
Happy to be on.
Take care now.