All right, y'all, welcome to the show.
How's it going?
I'm Scott Horton.
This is Anti-War Radio.
Jacob Horenberger, founder and president of the Future of Freedom Foundation at FFF.org.
How are you?
Welcome to the show.
Hey, doing fine.
Thank you.
Nice to be back with you, Scott.
Well, I'm very happy to have you here, and I was very happy to read what you wrote here, because basically all you're really saying is, Scott's smart, because this is just what I was saying the other day, only I wasn't using your awesome Honduras example.
But yeah, you're confirming my bias all over the place here.
It's time to dismantle the Cold War military machine.
What Cold War military machine?
That was 20 years ago, Jacob.
Yeah, you know, ordinarily you'd expect the military to be dismantled, the huge military industrial complex and so forth, the whole machine, after a war is over.
And they didn't do that after World War II.
After defeating Nazi Germany, they said, well, no, we've got a new enemy now, our partner, our ally in the war, the Soviet Union.
The communists are coming to get us.
This is a giant threat.
And so they kept this huge what Eisenhower called the military industrial complex in place.
They kept the Pentagon in place as permanent institutions.
They bring the CIA into existence.
You've got the whole Cold War military machine.
And they all say, look, the only reason we have this giant national security state is because of the communist threat.
And then all of a sudden 1989 happens, and the Soviet communist threat, which was the real bugaboo, dismantles.
And what happens?
Well, they just keep it in existence.
And of course, as you know, they go into the Middle East and stir up a bunch of hornets' nests.
And they get a bunch of terrorist attacks like the USS Cole and the embassies in East Africa.
It's funny.
I actually read somewhere that James Baker was sent, the secretary of state under George H.W. Bush, the father, that he was actually sent on an emergency mission to try to help Gorbachev figure out how to hold the Soviet Union together.
They didn't want it to break up at all.
Well, I've never heard that.
But nothing would surprise me, because the whole national security state, the whole military-industrial complex, the ever-increasing budgets depend on an official enemy.
I mean, fear is the coin of the realm.
They've got to keep Americans fearful and frightened and all stirred up with crises and chaos in order to say, well, we really need this giant military machine as a permanent edifice if we're going to survive as a nation.
They have to have that.
Otherwise, people say, hey, what do we need this for?
The Cold War ended 20 years ago.
Right.
And, you know, part of the whole scam of Operation Desert Storm was it was quick and easy and painless, and we didn't get bogged down in Baghdad, and so it's over.
We whooped them so good and whatever.
And so even though there was kind of a long-term blockade and no-fly zone bombings, as far as the American people were concerned, that thing was over.
But so all they had to justify before the war on terrorism broke out, all they had to justify the empire was cocaine.
And it was actually kind of funny.
I remember, like, when I was a high school kid in the early 90s, like, kind of how ridiculous it was that they had $300- and $400-billion budgets, and the best they could do was, like, try to churn out Tom Clancy movies to try to justify this terrible drug lord enemy in South America that must be contained or something.
It was ridiculous, really.
It was like having the Pentagon take on Al Capone or something.
Well, that's right.
I mean, and that was this panicky desperation that was going through their ranks after the Soviet Union dismantled, because that was the last thing they ever expected.
I mean, the natural assumption was that the Soviet Union was going to be here forever, the Berlin Wall was going to be there forever.
And all of a sudden, suddenly, much to their surprise and everybody's surprise, it just dismantles.
And so they said, okay, look, and people were talking about, oh, the peace dividend, we can now reduce government spending.
And the military said, no, wait a minute.
Wait a minute.
Don't do anything to us.
We have other uses that you can put us to, the drug war or an unsafe world, rogue elements in an unsafe world.
That was one of the favorite ones.
And then it was also, we can protect private American businesses as they engage in business overseas.
We can be a facilitator for free enterprise overseas.
But this Honduras thing, I mean, it's sort of a throwback to what was happening then.
The Iraq occupation is over.
Americans are now demanding that the Afghanistan occupation be ended, maybe even before they want to do it supposedly in 2014.
And so, look, you've got the military doing the same thing they were doing in 1989.
They're going into Honduras.
They're waging this war on drugs from a military standpoint.
I mean, gosh, we don't even allow the military to enforce criminal laws here in this country.
And here we've got the military enforcing criminal laws in Latin American countries.
You know, how hypocritical is that, Scott?
Yeah, well, that was the whole story of the Iraq war, right?
It's like, yeah, we're here to bring you freedom, and our number one achievement that we're focusing on is building up enough army to wage permanent martial law against you all forever.
Well, yeah, and substituting one authoritarian regime for another.
Now, you know, I really am bad on this stuff.
I need to spend the summer learning Spanish or do some traveling or something and really learn much more about America's Latin American policy.
My kind of, you know, junior high school understanding of what's going on in Honduras now is that America supported this right-wing military coup d'etat, and ever since then drugs have been a problem and an excuse for further intervention.
Now, before that, just, what, a couple of years ago when Obama said, oh, no, yeah, we're kind of sort of opposed to that, but not really, that's when all this started in Honduras.
Well, that's the whole history of Latin America.
I mean, the U.S. has this long history of interventionism, not just in Honduras, but Guatemala.
I mean, all through Latin America, Chile, the regime change operation there in 73, and the propensity has always been to rid these countries of leftist regimes, so-called communist-oriented regimes, because they supposedly present a threat to America's national security, and put in right-wing regimes that are employing death squads with their militaries.
Their militaries have been trained in the U.S. School of the Americas, and that are out there slaughtering people on the basis that they're terrorists or communist sympathizers and things like that.
And there's always been this propensity of the U.S. to support military dictatorships.
I mean, that's what the Pinochet dictatorship was.
It's what the Guatemalan dictatorship was after they ousted Arbenz in 53.
And it's just been an absolute disaster.
So part of it has been this communism business during the Cold War, and part of it has been this drug war business.
But regardless, it makes the U.S. complicit in the deaths, the destructions, and the rapes that have taken place with these death squads and militaries.
I mean, it's just been a horror story.
And the U.S. is complicit in it because of what the government's been doing.
Well, and you know, the Soviet threat and the threat of cocaine addiction, when, you know, the political class probably do more coke than the rest of the country combined, and everybody knows it, and at least from time to time, and you've got to suspect all the time when you look at the quantities involved here, the government is involved in pushing the worst drugs, too, the coke and the heroin and that kind of thing on American streets and all over the world.
And everybody knows, you know, at least a bit of that sort of history.
You know, but really, those are just pretexts anyway, and I don't know how it is in every case or whatever.
I'm sure there's a lot more, but the most obvious case, right, was the Guatemala coup in 54, where this is nothing but the Dulles brothers, who were the lawyers for the Rockefellers, who had the controlling interest in this fruit company, and they wanted a dictatorship because the local, he wasn't even really a Soviet type.
He just wanted a little bit of land reform in a way that a capitalist could be for if it wasn't his particular business at stake, you know what I mean?
And, hell, hundreds of thousands of people died in that one, and I guess we have to assume it's pretty much always that cynical, that communism and drugs are always just the thin pretext, right, Jacob?
Yeah, that's the cover.
All right, we'll be right back.
I'm sorry, we've got to take this break.
We'll be right back with Jacob Hornberger.
He's the founder and the president of the Future of Freedom Foundation, fff.org.
They've got a lot of great writers.
We'll talk a little bit about that when we get back.
All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
It is Antiwar Radio.
I'm Scott Horton.
I'm talking with Jacob Hornberger from the Future of Freedom Foundation, and, of course, you can find Sheldon Richman and James Bovard and Anthony Gregory and Richard Ebeling, and there's a couple of new guys.
I'm sorry, Jacob, who are the new guys?
Well, we've got Andy Worthington and we've got… Of course, Bart Frazier's been around for a while.
Right, right.
I didn't mean to leave him.
That's true.
And we've got Wendy McElroy that writes for us.
No, but there's a new guy that does all foreign policy stuff, I think.
Oh, Tim Kelly.
Tim Kelly, exactly.
Yeah, he's good.
Yeah, he's been fantastic.
So, yeah, we have a lot of weekly columnists now that are writing original stuff every week for our email update, which, by the way, is free for the asking.
People just need to send us an email that says, subscribe, and we'll add them on.
There you go.
FFF.org, the Future of Freedom Foundation.
Yeah, and, of course, we have Jim Bovard that writes for us monthly, at least, sometimes more often, and we've got Lawrence Vance that writes for us.
Oh, yeah, Lawrence.
Yeah, so it's been pretty exciting.
Right on.
I should write.
I used to write and then I kind of just got sick of it.
Talking into a microphone is so much easier, you know?
Like, for example, I sort of alluded to this.
I don't know if anybody can really nail this down, you know, recently with particulars, but doesn't it seem weird that all rich people who can afford to, apparently, do coke, or at least major percentages of them, which has got to be, you know, I don't know, gigantic.
I don't know how to measure it.
Tons and tons and tons of coke every year consumed in the United States by people who can afford it.
How's it getting into the country?
I mean, isn't our airspace controlled, where if somebody's flying a plane from down south somewhere, the government knows who they are and where they're going and that kind of thing?
They've got to be at least turning a blind eye to this thing.
Well, that's where the bribes come in.
I mean, you know, that's one of the big advantages for government officials, that it provides the opportunity for people that can make big money to pay bribes to government officials, big bribes, to look the other way at the bridges on the borders or to look the other way at airports and so forth.
And so, you know, we often look down our noses, or government officials look down their noses, at Mexican officials and say, oh, look how crooked and corrupt the government is, and they're involved in the drug war, which, of course, they are.
But that's one of the whole points of these kind of regulations, is that they provide opportunities for government officials to make money on the side and make no mistake about it, it's also happening big time right here in the United States.
And, you know, we always get little tidbits of things like during the gun walker scandal and all the revelations coming out of that, that, yeah, apparently they're letting the Sinaloa cartel for a long period of time run guns, run drugs, launder money and get away with murder and whoever else because we have this strategy, we're going to use them against the Zetas, whatever, whatever.
But then we remember the ridiculous so-called Iranian plot to use a used car salesman from Corpus Christi to hire the Zetas drug cartel to kill the Saudi ambassador, but apparently the one thing that was true about that was that the Zetas cartel is run by a bunch of DEA agents down there, or at least, you know, paid informants, whatever, down there in Mexico too.
So, wait a minute, aren't those the two biggest warring drug cartels down in Mexico?
And at least here's a couple of anecdotal pieces that says America's playing both sides of that thing.
They're not working to destroy either of these cartels, they are these cartels.
Well, and the thing we have to keep in mind too is that it's the drug war that maintains these cartels.
This is a matter of principle.
This is why Al Capone-type gangs existed during Prohibition.
If you make these things illegal, that gives rise to these gangs.
And the government keeps trying to convince people that the only way to destroy these gangs is through criminal prosecution, and so they say, oh, we have to keep the drug war going.
Well, really, the only way to destroy these gangs is through drug legalization.
I mean, that's what happened when Prohibition was ended.
That's why we don't have any Al Capone-type gang wars taking place in alcohol and beer.
And that's the only way that can be done with this drug war.
You want to get rid of the gangs and the violence and the corruption, then you've got to get rid of the drug war and legalize drugs in the Prohibition and end the story.
And so when I look at these people advocating the war on drugs, I'm sitting there saying, well, do you realize that you're also favoring the existence of these drug lords and drug gangs and so forth?
I mean, it's just crazy.
Yeah, actually, I remember the Libertarian Party put an ad in the newspaper whenever they came out after September 11th with those drug war ads saying, well, yeah, if you smoke a joint, you're helping pay for world terrorism and whatever.
And then the Libertarian Party put an ad in the newspaper saying, if you support the war on drugs, you help drive up the cost as much as 17,000 percent.
You support terrorism, and how do you like that?
All right.
Imagine that, the Libertarian Party standing up and being tough on something like that.
Yeah, but it's the drug war itself that's sustaining all these gangs and stuff.
It's absolutely inane.
As far as pretexts and all that, what's the point?
Because it's not all about United Fruit, and it can't be all about the oil either, because even you look at Venezuela, American oil companies and the Venezuelan government, they have a perfectly fine relationship, right?
Shell Oil and Hugo Chavez, they're the best of friends.
So all that rhetoric is a bunch of rhetoric.
So what is it all about anyway?
I think it's about money and power.
There's people making big money out of Washington.
I think Washington has one of the highest per capita incomes in the world, and it's power.
People gravitate to this place because it provides them control over the lives and monies and fortunes of other people.
And so they obviously look for places to do that.
And the drug war has been a perfect example of that, but also has been this worldwide military hegemony, this empire, which has provided all the military contractors with tons of money.
You've got the military, giant military-industrial complex, the CIA.
I mean, let's face it.
There's a lot of people that make money off the warfare state, just like there are a lot of people making money off the welfare state.
But it's also satisfying this pathological need for power.
I mean, there's just certain people that have to have the power, just like certain people need a cocaine hit or a drink every day.
Yeah, you know, I forgot.
It may have been you that recommended it back years ago.
I don't know.
But I'm sure you know the movie I'm talking about where it's World War I, and it's that one real famous actor, Kirk Douglas.
I think he's supposed to be a French officer.
And for ridiculous personal reasons, the commanding officers keep sending the waves and waves of soldiers to die against the German machine guns.
And it's all about, well, this one officer has to impress this other officer whose daughter he's into.
And in order to get a promotion, he's got to have at least this many Germans killed.
And if it means this many more French killed in order to get this many Germans killed, well, then that's okay.
And let me volunteer my men for another mission, too.
But it's all this very narrow interest.
You know the one I'm talking about?
No.
It sounds like a great movie, though.
I should look that up on the IMDB.
Maybe someone in the chat room knows.
I don't know.
But anyway, that's how it works, too, right?
It's like a ribbon can be really important to a general, really important.
Absolutely.
And the way people get promoted in the military is that type of thing.
Are they successful in battle and so forth?
And sometimes that means sacrificing lots of people.
I think that's how to win the war against militarism in this society, is just make fun of them for all their pretty little ribbons.
Just go, wow, those are some pretty ribbons you have there, little ribbon man, until they're all humiliated and resign.
Well, unfortunately, that's not going to be enough, though.
I think what we really need to be doing is getting people to question the whole fundamental principles of this warfare state.
And I think that's happening.
I mean, I really think people are not only just questioning the Iraq, the Afghanistan thing.
They're starting to question the whole existence of this military empire.
And I think that's what's going to cause this thing to finally get dismantled.
You know, there must be at least a little something to this, that they really do believe in military Keynesianism, right?
That they thought, oh, no, we have to have a make-work project at the end of World War II.
We have to have a permanent war economy now.
We've got to find them something to do.
We'll send them off to Europe, and we'll have them occupy the world and whatever.
And that way to keep the thing going.
And George W. Bush is probably, whatever he, you know, stumbles and mutters, is pretty much representative of what D.C. thinks, right?
And he said, yeah, historically, you know, war is good for the economy.
He didn't have an argument for why it should be or anything like that, but just, yeah, that's what we all think, right?
And I wonder whether they really actually think that, thank goodness, we still have the warfare state.
Otherwise, we'd be really bankrupt.
I think you're absolutely right.
I think they really believe this military Keynesianism is essential to the economic well-being of America.
I think they see it much like the Castros see their total government-owned and run society, that if you start laying off people from the public sector, that's going to be damaging because it's going to create unemployment.
I think the U.S. officials see that same way with respect to the military magopolous empire, that if you start laying off contractors and troops, it's going to create unemployment and damage the economy.
Well, the exact opposite is the truth.
The best thing Castro could ever do is lay off everybody in the public sector, but everybody in the private sector.
And the best thing we could do here is do the same with this warfare state.
Did you see what Mitt Romney said?
Oh, no, I would never do a trillion-dollar cut like Ron Paul wants to do because that would be taking a trillion dollars out of the economy and would be terrible for the economy.
I didn't hear about it.
Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential candidate, said that.
Yeah, that's their mentality.
It's no different from the Castro mentality.
Oh, we can't lay off people in our public sector.
It would be too damaging as they continue to live in poverty.
All right, I'm sorry.
I already kept you away over time.
Thanks so much for your time, Jacob.
You're the best, man.
Hey, thank you, man.
I appreciate it.
I forgot to mention Richard Schwartzman.
He's another one of our authors, and Matt Harwood, too.
So it's free for the asking.
People can subscribe anytime they want.
Just free subscription.
Just send us an email at fff.org.
Right on.
Thanks very much.
Appreciate it, Jacob.
Thank you, Scott.
Enjoyed it.
Okay, bye-bye.
