All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
It's anti-war radio.
I'm Scott Horton and our next guest is John V.
Walsh.
He's a scientist, lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and is a frequent contributor to counterpunch.org, Alex Coburn's website.
And he's got one running at antiwar.com today.
It's called impeach Barack Obama, a challenge to tea partiers and anti-war liberals.
John, welcome back to the show.
How are you, Scott?
Nice to hear from you.
I'm doing great.
And I really appreciate you joining us on the show today.
So make your case.
What's this challenge?
Well, I think it's, um, you know, over the last few days, we've seen, gee, almost everyone say that what Barack Obama did here was unconstitutional.
He took us to war.
We weren't attacked.
It was a war of choice, a war of aggression, really.
Which is a criminal war, according to Nuremberg.
He took us to war, uh, without, uh, without a vote of Congress.
Now, pure and simple by his own admission, by the admission of Joe Biden, by the admission of Hillary Clinton, and, uh, by the admission of the, by every constitutional scholar, he has violated the constitution and, uh, that is an impeachable act.
Everybody has been saying that everybody has been saying that.
So there's only one more thing to say, impeach him.
And there's only one thing to do impeach him.
That's it.
It's really almost, it's almost so simple.
I'm embarrassed to say it, but we have to start saying it because if we don't say it, we won't do it.
The other thing I think that's very important is that there is now a coalition of forces in Congress that both claim to be against, uh, wars, undeclared wars.
There, there are the Tea Partiers that claim to have a reverence for the constitution as well.
They should.
They're the anti-war liberals who said they, they worked for Obama and supported him because he promised peace.
They're against unconstitutional wars together.
They just might have a shot at impeaching him.
And that would be to the good.
And if they don't do it, then they're not being true to their own values and they should be turned out.
It's time to step up to the plate.
It's time for both sides to, uh, walk the walk.
And, uh, and if we can possibly impeach one of these war presidents, then I think, and I don't care which one it is, uh, it could have been Bush.
Now it can be Obama.
Obama happens to be there.
Good.
Then it's time to impeach him because if we can succeed at this one, then we can succeed at it more than once.
And, uh, there'll be a warning shot fired across the bow of these war makers.
They're, they're, it's killed millions and millions.
There's no reason for this.
So I think, I think we have to move.
And I'm, I'm sorry to see there's a person at the left that the, uh, that many on the left who carried the banner of impeach Bush are saying are, are, are, are kind of quiet now.
It's, it's time to step up to the plate.
Right.
And that's the whole thing.
It seems like when the left and the right in power switch, their fans want to see them use the power against the other side and get back at them rather than set the example of how it's supposed to be.
I agree.
And the, and the, uh, and the, and the thing is now really that, um, for example, the organization that I'm working, well, it's, it's a nascent organization.
Come home America.
People want to look it up at come home America dot us all one word and a book of the same name, which Justin has remanded has contributed to.
And, and I also have, and, and, uh, many other anti-war people from all perspectives that, um, there's a coalition between, uh, left and right and everybody else.
And the value of that one value of that is that the two sides can keep each other honest.
And that's very important because everything that we learn in this country is about partisan politics.
People view politics only through the lens of two parties.
Well, that's not really very much what it's all about.
The matter of fact, it's kind of trivial because they danced around on trivial issues and don't come to grips with big issues that are, that are confronting us like war.
And also, um, I mean, it's not just the carnage, which I think the, the, the, the people, uh, it's the cost to who's picking up the tab for this.
Zarcozi wanted to go in to show, to, to help him win these by-elections that started last week.
And there'll be another, this coming weekend, but he wasn't, he, Darren wasn't capable of doing it because they're not spending the money to do it.
We're spending the money to do it.
Um, they have an education system superior to ours.
We have a war machine superior to theirs.
I'll take the education to the war machine.
And, uh, it's time that we stop paying through the nose for the, to, to, to make the world angry with us.
I don't want to control the world.
As I say, I'm happy here on this fantastic Island.
We, we, we happen to live on with a standard of living that could be much higher, very easily.
And, uh, so I think it's time to move on this now who will move.
And, uh, you know, there are noises from Ron Paul.
There are noises from Dennis Kucinich about actually doing something, but I'm not sure to me, the idea now is how can this be accomplished?
How can, how can we get the ball rolling?
Because, because, uh, as long as this war wears on, the issue is right before us.
And it looks like to me anyway, like it's going to wear on for, for quite a while.
It seems like it's another Bay of pigs that the United States is not going to be able to dislodge Gaddafi anytime soon or very cheaply.
So as long as this wears on the issues before us, we should take advantage of this.
We should take advantage of this to do what needs to be done.
The golden opportunity.
So people out there who have ideas about it, I hope they, you know, people who are better organizers than I am certainly are out there and, and can figure out ways to do it.
I hope we find a way very soon.
One way actually is since every single Congressman, um, could be part of this, could raise it, could push it.
And every single Senator, every one of us lives in a congressional district.
Every one of us is near a Congressman's office.
Every one of us could go with the placard to that office demanding impeach Obama.
Now, why not?
And get, get a Congressman or Congresswoman to define their position.
And, uh, actually it's interesting in Massachusetts, you know, the whole congressional delegation is democratic.
The only, um, member of this delegation who has said anything about this is probably the member of the delegation has been most, uh, warlike in the past.
He's put down this.
And, uh, I think that's of great interest.
There may be a whole different sentiment growing up out there.
I don't know, but I hope we can test it.
Mm hmm.
Well, now on the constitutionality of the whole thing, I mean, it's pretty easy to see why the average person, nevermind the average democratic voter, uh, would think, well, whatever Obama's doing, whatever Bush was doing was on such a larger scale.
But when it comes to the legality of the thing, at least he got a vote from Congress, majorities in both houses to support him and so-called authorize.
It wasn't a legitimate declaration of war, but, uh, it was at least still he went to the Congress and had them, uh, give him the authority to do the deciding, uh, as unconstitutional as that might be.
Uh, it's certainly not nearly as blatant as Obama just deciding.
And in fact, while Congress is out of town and, you know, the sad thing is Congress is probably worse on this issue than him, but they never even got a chance to be worse.
And that's supposed to be illegal, John.
I mean, the constitution is the constitution.
You know, our law doesn't come from the Bible or something.
The first law of our federal government, the law that creates it and presumably binds its authority is the constitution.
And nobody thinks it's perfect, but if it's not the law, then what is, except the will of whoever happens to be the emperor, it must be implemented or it's just a GD piece of paper as the Republicans say.
Well, you know, um, I agree with that in terms of, I think what, what Bush did was not adequate, but at least he, he made a, he made a bow in that direction.
And I agree with you.
Obama has involved himself here in a blatant disregard of the constitution.
It's just, uh, to me, it's, it's quite amazing.
And some people have claimed that the war powers act was not violated, but the war powers act may be unconstitutional.
I'm not sure whether it's ever been tested and if it hasn't been, this is a good time to test it because the constitution should come first.
And I think the war powers act is a relic of the cold war.
We're beyond that now.
It doesn't have any meaning.
And it's also from that point of view, an ideal time to test this whole thing because that, that does not stand in our way.
And, you know, I, I, another point on all this is that a lot of the discussion, uh, around this is, um, involved what's going on in Libya.
Is he a dictator or isn't he a dictator?
You know, only his custom designer knows for sure, you know, who, who, who, you know, that people are trying to figure out what's going on thousands of miles away.
They have no first hand knowledge.
It's filtered through the press.
Justin Raimondo on anti-war.com was the first I saw to raise the important issue that unlike in, in, um, in, uh, Egypt where the demand was basically, um, democracy and development, uh, more democratic and a more prosperous way of life.
Really in Libya, the demand is, is it's a tribal division.
It's a tribal fight that is broken out here between the East and the West.
And, um, that makes it a whole different thing.
I'm sure, and, and, you know, another thing that's kind of interesting here, uh, we don't, we don't know, uh, who these rebels are that we're supporting.
At least they call them rebels.
I, I don't, I don't mean what you want to call them.
We don't know.
And that isn't just Gaddafi who, I mean, this is really gets crazy.
It's not only that he says they're heavily, heavily, they're heavily infiltrated by al Qaeda, but the president that Obama's national security advisor was quoted as saying that last weekend in the New York Times.
So what, what's going on there?
It just seems like this guy has not been a reliable partner of the U.S. and Hillary and others are going to get them for that.
And, and by the way, another lesson that's being taught here is this guy is Saddam Hussein too.
And if, if I were the Iranians or the North Koreans, I'd say, holy smoke, look what happened to him.
Look what happened to Gaddafi.
He gave up his weapons.
He de-weaponized on the guarantee that he'd be safe, that there'd be no overthrow and the Americans double-crossed him.
The lesson, what they're telling, what they're doing here is setting the stage for more nuclear proliferation and making the world even more dangerous.
It is absolutely insane from every point of view.
Well, I think the one that is going to end up really hurting the American people there is at least in the nearer term, nuke proliferation is this whole other demon to deal with later on.
But it seems like the terrorist threat against at least the American forces that end up invading the country.
I mean, at this point, maybe I'm assuming, it doesn't seem to me like they can do anything short of remove him from power by way of force, just like Baghdad 03.
And, you know, once that happens, then that's another, I mean, it already pretty much is, but especially when there's ground troops there, that's another Sunni Arab, you know, Muslim state in the Middle East that were taken over to exploit their resources and God knows what else, support one other, you know, one tribal dictatorship over another, et cetera.
And this just plays right into the script of those who would recruit others to blow themselves up for the chance to kill Americans en masse.
And that is the blowback that we're dealing with here.
We use each event as an excuse to make matters worse.
But, you know, it seems to me like you could have just the same level of insurgency and suicide bombing and madness in Libya in the near, you know, next couple of years, as we saw in Iraq in the last decade.
Why not?
As a scientist, I know that we don't know everything.
And I always, we always can be sure that what we don't know is much greater than what we do.
And so if one is going to make any progress, there's only one way to proceed.
The way to proceed is to take the things that we know for certain and use them to take the next step ahead.
That's the way we really should behave in politics, too, as far as I'm concerned.
That is, again, and I'm returning to the theme here, it's not about Libya.
It's not about the U.N.
It's about the U.S.
And that we know plenty about.
It's about our Constitution.
We don't have to theorize about what's going on in Libya.
We don't have to theorize what's going on in the greater Middle East.
All we have to do, know our own Constitution, know the rules, and make sure they're applied.
It gets much simpler.
It's anti-interventionist, which makes things very simple.
I like things simple.
This makes things simple.
And so I think we have to get accustomed to thinking of things in that way, too, because once we get into the realm where we really don't know things, then we're in the realm where we can be manipulated by those who claim they do know things for whatever reason.
And I'd like to raise one other thing, too, about what this has done to the United States and the world.
And this was an article which I quoted in mind by William Lind, who always had, I don't agree with him on everything, but he always had some really interesting things to say.
And he pointed out the division in the yes and no vote and the abstention, basically, against this.
Hold it right there for a second, John.
You're the second guest who's done this.
It's an easy mistake to make, but that's Michael Lind, who I believe is of the nation and is a liberal.
William S. Lind is the conservative old military strategist guy who also has very valuable things to say, but I don't believe they're related.
OK, I'll take that back.
And anyway, I have the wrong Lind, but let's get to the facts.
The fact is that if you look, and you probably, I'm certain you've read this, but maybe your listeners haven't, but aren't aware of it, that if you look, there were five votes, five abstentions, and those are the BRIC countries.
Brazil, Russia, India, China, and then the biggest country in terms of population and the richest in Europe, Germany.
So those five voted against us.
The nine that voted with us, because they needed 10 out of the 15 votes, are much smaller countries, and I don't want to say they're inconsequential, but they're not powerful, they're not big figures on the world stage, except for France and the UK.
And what Michael Lind pointed out is that those who abstained, who were against what we did, have a population of 3 billion people.
The people who are with us have a population of 700 million, so what are we doing to ourselves and the world?
Are we part of a broad coalition, or are we isolating ourselves?
And in terms of the power relationship, Lind again pointed out that the people who are with us have an aggregate GDP of $20 trillion, $15 trillion of that is the US alone.
The people who are against us have a slightly greater GDP, $21 trillion, but you can see there that the United States is kind of isolated, and you can see by that fact, too, that the great wealth that's going to go into this whole effort, where is it going to come from?
Well, there's $20 trillion, $15 trillion is the United States.
You tell me where the money's going to come from.
It's going to come from us.
And it already is, a million dollars a smack to fire off each cruise missile, or maybe more, I don't know, about a million.
Well, and it seems like other than the Politburo, the Chinese have also kept the Leninist maxim that we'll always be able to sell the capitalists enough rope to hang themselves with, and that part they're getting right.
We'll be going to the Chinese, and I mean, if I was on the Politburo over there, I would just be saying, excellent, like Montgomery Burns on The Simpsons, and just, you know, they can just buy their time.
America's playing out exactly what the Soviets did at the end of their empire, and that is overextend themselves to bankruptcy, and why should the Chinese do anything but loan us more rope?
Yeah, well, that may be true, but on the other hand, I think in China, if I read, I do read China Daily, and I do correspond with people there, I think actually that there is some unhappiness with the government for just abstaining and not vetoing.
I think the Chinese, oh, this gets into China, but I think Chinese have made the judgment that in the 21st century, basically, military power doesn't matter much except to defend yourself.
It really, actually, the Chinese have a very libertarian foreign policy.
Their policy is that the way to proceed in the world, the way to do best in the world is to trade with everybody and ignore what they're doing inside their own borders.
Forget about that.
We'll trade with everybody, and we won't spend, we'll spend as little as we can on the military.
And you know, these days, whether it's the Chinese who are advocating it or the libertarians, I think it's very smart.
And again, there can be a disconnect between your general philosophy, or you can have two general philosophies, you end up with doing the same thing.
That often happens.
That can happen.
And so I think this is one more example of the United States being on the wrong track, or as you put it, I agree, overextending ourselves.
There is no longer the possibility of a great empire on the planet, and anybody who tries to do it, from my point of view, is just wasting a lot of money and lives.
It's folly.
It's human folly.
Yeah.
Well, and it seems like the Iraq war would have proved that, that a neighborhood full of men with AKs and homemade explosives can defeat your occupation and drive it away.
I mean, they could have just carpet bombed Iraq off the face of the earth, but they couldn't do that for the politics of it.
And so short of that, I mean, they even tried that in Fallujah.
They still didn't get control of Fallujah, you know?
And actually, although, again, I don't know the details.
How can I know?
I'm too far away.
There's too many details, but there is some sort of rebellion going on in Iraq, too.
And what's the United States going to do if the streets are filled with protesters that want to get rid of the government?
Are we going to go back to the point where we're shooting people?
But I mean, are we going to start shooting?
Are we going to be the people called in to shoot the protesters in the street?
What's that going to involve?
I mean, that's going to involve a whole new deployment of troops.
We're going to have to.
And I did notice, actually, that the National Guard from Illinois has been deployed to go to Libya now because they're experts in refueling.
So now we're calling up more of the Guard to go to Libya already.
Amazing.
I hadn't heard that.
This is this is this is madness.
So I hope people my only hope is, you know, we could talk about this forever.
But my only hope is that people will think about ways to accomplish this great opportunity we have here, the opportunity to at long last tell the president that he's not a king.
He's the president.
And if he if he violates the Constitution, he's going to go.
And, you know, after he goes, there's even the possibility of punishment for war crimes.
So these people should have to think very carefully about what they're doing.
And we have a chance to make them do that.
Yeah, well, you know, it's I hadn't really imagined it because it seems so impossible to have a real impeachment and removal of a president or something that barely ever goes off.
But, you know, now that you got me imagining the picture in my mind, wouldn't that be the best way to put the nail in the final nail in the coffin of this American empire and not for some Soviet style collapse, but for the American people to finally just demand that it rolls back and demand the troops are brought home and impeach the president of the United States and remove him and let the vice president understand that his mandate is to end this empire if he wants to keep his job.
I mean, we could do it.
It could be right now this year.
Everything could change.
Why not?
Absolutely.
You know, you don't know if you don't try.
It's like everything else.
And, you know, I have a friend at the when the Cold War, when the Berlin Wall came down, the Cold War was over.
So long ago now, he kept saying to me that the Cold War is over.
Let the good times roll.
Imagine what we can do now.
We can we can we can take all this.
We can enjoy our lives.
We don't have to worry about this baloney anymore.
It never happened.
I feel cheated.
We can make it happen now.
We're all out of time, but I really appreciate your time on the show today.
OK, and thank you for calling.
Oh, absolutely.
Everybody, there's John V. Walsh.
He's a scientist from Massachusetts.
He writes for Counterpunch and for Antiwar.com, where he has a piece today called Impeach Barack Obama.
It's at original.antiwar.com/John V. Walsh.
But put dashes in there with the middle initial.
