08/12/09 – Justin Raimondo – The Scott Horton Show

For Antiwar.com, I'm Scott Horton.
This is Antiwar Radio.
First guest on the show today is Justin Armando.
He's our editorial director, I think they call him.
Our head writer at Antiwar.com.
He's the author of the book, The Enemy of the State, The Life of Murray N. Rothbard and Reclaiming the American Right, the Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement.
He's written 1,000 columns now, more than 1,000 columns for Antiwar.com.
You can find him at original.antiwar.com.com.com Welcome back to the show, Justin.
How are you doing today?
I'm doing good.
Good to have you here.
Alright, so I want to ask you about, well, I guess the symptoms of our problem, which is this bogus two-party left-right system, and the establishment seems to just switch back and forth, the party in power, and then the American people do a complete flip-flop, too, from being the anti-party to being the pro-party and back again.
And so I guess now I want your help analyzing the aftermath of our recent switch to the Democrats and what's happened to the anti-war movement since that's happened.
I wonder, I mean, it's easy to be pessimistic, but do you really think that the average liberals and progressives are now basically going to roll over or are rolling over for the warfare state, or do you think that maybe we're just not hearing them as loud as we used to?
I don't know.
What do you think?
Well, I mean, it all depends on who's doing the killing.
If it's America's first black president who's a liberal and who's going to give them universal health care and is practically the messiah, then they're not even going to talk about it.
I mean, you know, notice that on MSNBC, for example, the nation's premier pro-government broadcasting station, we don't hear anything about the war in Afghanistan.
I mean, I don't think Rachel Maddow has even said the word Afghanistan in the past three weeks, even though she claims to be a foreign policy wonk.
Well, she made it clear that she really disagreed with the idea of doubling down there in the first place, but she's basically, I guess as you say, just not even mentioning it anymore.
Well, she's been told not to mention it.
I mean, you can bet that she's not allowed to mention it, especially when we have this spectacle going on at these so-called town meetings.
I mean, they're just not bringing it up, and, of course, Robert Oberman is never going to bring it up.
His head might explode.
And, of course, what we're involved in in Afghanistan and now in Pakistan and surrounding areas is a much bigger project than even George W. Bush ever dreamed of.
I mean, if you thought that the Iraq war was going to be horrible, then look at Afghanistan.
It's never been conquered.
It is not about to be conquered.
It's unconquerable, as the Russians discovered.
It brought down their empire.
It's going to bring down ours.
It almost makes you yearn for the Rumsfeld doctrine of light and quick and hire the Northern Alliance to do your dirty work for you and then leave.
Right.
It actually does, which is one reason they hate Rumsfeld.
Their whole strategy, clear, hold, and build, is the craziest slogan I have ever heard.
I mean, it talks about, it says they're going to clear Afghanistan.
Of what and of whom?
Of the Taliban?
I don't think so.
They're going to hold Afghanistan.
I mean, right there.
What's a stop right there?
They're not going to hold Afghanistan.
I mean, it would take over half a million troops to do this.
Over half a million.
I mean, I would say closer to a million.
Where are those troops going to come from?
And then they're going to build.
So they're going to build what?
Bridges, schools, clinics, a government?
Afghanistan has never had a central government, and it's not going to have one in the foreseeable future.
Well, you know, Jeff Huber, in his recent article, says, he points out some of these people have, I guess, in a way, let the cat out of the bag.
But what it's really about is just building NATO.
It's giving NATO something to do.
Take over all this land, I guess.
If you think on the map, you've got China and India form kind of a border on the eastern side, and then you have Russia in the north, and then you have all these Turkic countries and Central Asian countries there north of Iran, including Afghanistan and Pakistan to the northeast there.
And basically that's engine country, right?
The space between China and India and Russia in that little triangle, that's the new Old West.
Right.
But, you know, the stuff about NATO is just a lot of talk.
I mean, where are the NATO troops?
Actually, you know, the Brits are going to start withdrawing their troops from Afghanistan.
And where are the other guys?
I don't see any Frenchies over there.
Look, I mean, NATO, if any NATO troops are going to be involved, they're going to be from the newer NATO countries, and those guys are practically useless.
You know, like unless they have Georgia in there and Ukraine.
But it's just a lot of, you know, bureaucratic talk, and it's mostly politics.
But, you know, as far as actual fighting on the ground, it's Americans that are going to be doing it, and they're Afghan surrogates, you know, which are shrinking, actually.
But so what you're saying is, I guess, then, that they're following this policy of clear whole bill.
That's basically their strategy they're going with, but they're going with 10% of the troops they need.
To what end?
To what end?
Well, I mean, you kind of hit on it.
It's, you know, NATO, for example, is this structure that has existed and that will continue to exist indefinitely, even though the original purpose of it has long since disappeared.
So it's like every government program.
I mean, it never ends.
There's always some lobby that's pushing to keep it around and expand it.
And so, you know, you've got the arms companies, you know, which are keeping this NATO expansion thing alive.
And, you know, because each of the new NATO countries has got to upgrade its military to NATO standards.
So that is a ready-made market for these companies.
And basically, you know, Obama inherited this war.
And so he's stuck with it.
I mean, he reminds me of Lyndon Baines Johnson.
You know, you once had the editor of The Nation, Katrina Vanden Heuvel, on your program.
It was a great interview.
And she said something that, you know, struck me as very true, and that is that Obama may end up not like, you know, FDR, you know, as many people are comparing him to, but like Johnson, who, you know, got involved in a quagmire and was dragged down by it.
Well, I guess we should pray that he's only like Johnson and not FDR.
Right, yeah.
Well, you know, he's no FDR.
We'd be on World War V by then, right?
There you go.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, what do you think are the chances of a humanitarian genocide, basically, in Africa in the Obama years?
You know, we were just covering this news story here.
It's on the front page today by Jason Ditz about how all these arms that Obama is sending to the Somali government that we're backing now are ending up in the hands of everybody all over the place, of course.
And we know Somalia is the worst humanitarian crisis in Africa, worse than the so-called genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan.
But this always seems like it's pretty high on the agenda of the Democrats to spread not only into Central Asia, but to really move this whole AFRICOM thing forward and put more and more bases, especially on the east coast of Africa there.
Yeah, well, look, I mean, you have to look at it from a domestic political point of view because our foreign policy is all about our domestic policy.
That is, what will sell here at home is what we're going to do abroad.
I mean, it's all about, you know, in the age of Obama, it's all about political correctness.
So we have to uplift the poor Africans, spread the wealth or spread the weapons in this case.
But, of course, any entry into Africa by the U.S. military on a large scale is going to be a large-scale disaster.
I mean, Africa is a mess.
And, I mean, anything that we do in Africa is going to boomerang, and it's going to boomerang badly.
And, of course, unfortunately, it's going to boomerang on the people who live there.
Well, you know, I'm trying to be a little bit more hopeful about the left after their guy's in power than I was about the right.
I mean, you saw back in 2001 the guys at Free Republic, for example, go from anti-government extremists to pro-government extremists so hardcore in the blink of an eye.
And it seems like a lot of the liberals, at least the writers on the Internet and that kind of thing, many of them seem to have more intellectual honesty than that.
And I see their critique of Obama is actually far more accurate than the right-wing critique of Obama for the most part.
And that is that he's a puppet of Wall Street and the military-industrial complex, and he's a militarist and an imperialist just like George Bush.
Rather than, you know, he's some foreigner, weirdo Marxist or something, he's actually a Goldman Sachs guy, like he wrote back before he was elected.
Well, I mean, I don't know who on the left is attacking our president in those terms.
I mean, if you want to name any names.
But all of the so-called mainstream lefty types, like, for example, Matty Glazius.
I mean, he is mildly critical of the Afghan intervention, but he doesn't spend much time talking about it.
So, I mean, I don't see this honesty.
If you go to the native ultra of Obama worship, which is over at the Huffington Post, you don't even see the words Afghanistan.
I mean, it's just like MSNBC.
That's true, I guess.
But there is a lot of anti-Obama sentiment in the comments section, that this guy's doing everything just like George Bush did.
You know, Glenn Greenwald, of course, has written all about that, very clearly stating this is not Obama trying to clean up Bush's mess.
This is Obama deliberately making Bush's mess worse, like with preventative detention and that kind of thing.
Right, but Glenn has his schtick, which is his torture thing.
So he's gotten a lot of attention from that, including from the White House, apparently.
And so he's sort of sticking with that.
We don't hear much recently about foreign policy.
And I think that people who are generally sympathetic to the President's administration just aren't bringing it up.
And, you know, I think that it's really attractive to a lot of liberals, because they have this new counterinsurgency doctrine, so-called, you know, the clear hold and build slogan sort of encapsulates it.
And, you know, you have this incredible statement by their chief guru, John Nagel, who boasts of his doctrine's ability to, quote, change entire society.
I mean, isn't that what they want to do here in the United States?
Well, and doesn't that just sound like Paul Wolfowitz talking?
That's my thing.
That's pretty grandiose.
Well, yeah, but, you know, I think that they have a different way of going about it.
You know, they're going to build all these schools first and then win over the people and sort of play insurgent.
But, you know, of course, like you're right, in essence it's essentially the same thing, except it's just a matter of style.
You know, it's a stylistic difference.
I mean, they're playing the same role, but it's different actors.
Well, you bring up John Nagel, and I forget which think tank he's from, but, you know, we used to spend so much time, and I'm not saying they're worth ignoring now or anything, but the focus always was on AEI and JINSA and WINEP and the neocon think tanks.
But let's talk about some of these neoliberal think tanks.
This is where you go to find out what the Obama administration is really thinking about, and that's the Center for a New American Security and the Center for American Progress, Brookings Institution, and you may have others.
Can you tell us a bit about what these organizations are and what they're promoting?
Well, Nagel is with the Center for a New American Security, or is that Strategy?
I'm not even sure.
And, of course, they were founded relatively recently and headed up by Michelle Flournoy, who is now with the Obama administration.
Well, she's in Doug Feith's spot, right?
Right.
The Deputy Secretary of Defense for Policy.
Right.
She's with Doug Feith.
And they were founded a couple of years before the Obama administration took office, and it was an effort on the part of so-called national security Democrats backed up with a lot of Rockefeller money to reassure the establishment that they're not peaceniks, that the Democratic Party can be pro-military, and to sort of beef up the Democratic Party's national security credentials to prove that they could be trusted.
Of course, that kind of begs the question, trusted by whom?
But in any event, their big guru, this Nagel guy, is just translating the old liberal let's transform society premise into the foreign policy realm.
So now they have a military doctrine.
And I guess they're going to have universal health care in Afghanistan, and that that is going to win over the Afghan people.
And if not that, then universal wireless access.
I mean, these people are living in a dream world, and they're building castles in the air.
Of course, our own country is falling to pieces, and they are building empires over in Central Asia.
When are they going to wake up?
I don't know.
Well, you know, the thing is this, too, Justin, is where the rubber meets the road, you have a civil war going on in Pakistan right now that Obama and Hillary Clinton basically forced Zardari to start there with a couple of million refugees and already pogroms against Christians in retaliation, although the articles in the news I don't think called it that.
It was pretty obvious.
And this harkens back to these neoliberal think tanks.
There was that article back, I think October 2007, or maybe it was 2008, I think it was 2007, where O'Hanlon and Kagan teamed up, the neoliberal and the neocon teamed up to say, you know, we might just have to invade and occupy Pakistan, seize their nuclear weapons, and all this kind of stuff.
We see news articles about they're putting another one of these Baghdad-sized embassies in Peshawar, I think it is, or Islamabad, I forget.
What do you think is the future of this?
Are they really going to destroy Pakistan and try to occupy it?
Well, I mean, look, you know, it's a question of war.
In war, there's no halfway.
I mean, either you're going to fight or you're not going to fight.
So they've chosen to fight, and, of course, for now, they're limiting their involvement with these drone attacks, which just kind of discredited them in the Arab and Muslim world because it's just cowardice.
And so they're eventually going to have to cross the line and say, you know what, we're here, we're invading, we're taking over, get out of our way.
Or they're going to have to back off, which they're not about to do.
I mean, there have been some, you know, grumbles here at home from, you know, various Congress members, and, you know, we have a few pundits saying, well, wait a minute, you know, what are we doing?
You know, the focus is all on domestic policy now, which is probably why we're having such a hard time with our fundraising, www.
Drafthewaranywar.com.
And so, I mean, people are just not paying attention.
And you have to realize that, you know, anti-war activity is very sporadic.
I mean, you know, it took 10 years of involvement in Vietnam, you know, before the American people finally realized the extent of our involvement.
And with using drones for everything and keeping casualties relatively limited compared to Vietnam, maybe they can just keep on going forever since foreigners aren't people and it's only American casualties that count.
Right.
Maybe they can just do it forever and ever.
And, you know, I mean, it's very interesting that, you know, that that kind of racist, you know, mentality, oh, it's just foreigners, you know, dark-skinned foreigners who are, you know, who are dying, you know, and being killed by us, you know, is being carried out under, you know, an administration and, you know, of course its supporters.
If you say anything about Obama, you know, like not total adulation, you're a racist.
For example, I saw this article in the Huffington Post where Neil Ferguson is defending himself from charges of racism because he compared Obama to Felix the Cat.
Okay.
And so this was a horrible racist crime.
And, of course, he was attacked in the Huffington Post, where else?
Boy, things are tough when you've got to defend Nile Ferguson, huh?
Well, yeah, but, I mean, you know, it just gives you some idea of the intellectual atmosphere and the total hypocrisy of these people.
I mean, here they are supporting an administration that is killing people of color, you know, yet anybody who criticizes this administration is a racist.
So it's kind of a catch-22 there.
Well, you know, you talked about how a lot of these neoliberal foundations have got a bunch of Rockefeller money, like almost all think tanks in American history up until, you know, I guess the past 10 or 15 years or something.
But I wonder, because you asked the question, trusted by whom, they had to show they could be trusted, and there seems to be quite a split between the Brzezinski-Baker set and the neocons, particularly on questions about, say, for example, whether to nuke Iran off the face of the earth or not.
And I wondered if you saw this new video that's been put together with Zbigniew Brzezinski, James Baker, Jimmy Carter, and Brent Scowcroft, who everybody knows basically speaks for Bush Sr. anyway.
And they were calling for an immediate American-forced peace deal in the Middle East, which would include the dismantling of the settlements in the West Bank and the creation of an actual viable Palestinian state.
You know, this is the foreign policy wise man of that old Rockefeller establishment calling for this.
Do you think there's going to be real movement there, or what do you think's behind that?
Well, I mean, first of all, I don't think there's going to be any real movement, unless the Obamaites make the big compromise, which is agree to go to war with Iran in exchange for a comprehensive settlement.
And I don't think that they're going to do that.
And so I think there's going to be a big conflict there.
Look, I mean, if you look at the domestic politics of whatever administration is in power, you can pretty much get a good indication of what they're going to do overseas.
Now that we have a democratic administration that is not answerable to the religious right and doesn't have a large block of people supporting it that has theological reasons for being pro-Israel and unreasonably pro-Israel, that is putting the interests of Israel over and above the interests of our own country, then there's movement here for some change in our policy, but limited change, and only as regards Israel and the Palestinians.
But don't mistake that for a general change in what is going to be happening in the Middle East generally, as far as Iran is concerned.
So these are just tactical disagreements between different sectors of the ruling elite.
And it's true that there is a more reasonable, realist so-called sector that doesn't have any political reason for placating the Israel lobby to the extent that the Bushes did.
So that's what's going on there.
Well, so what do you think is the likelihood that there would actually be a war with Iran?
You say that you don't think the Obama administration would be willing to trade a war with Iran for a settlement in the Middle East.
So you think that they would tell Netanyahu, no way, Jose, and not do it?
I mean, we all know the Iranians aren't making nuclear weapons.
That's all red herring anyway.
I mean, it's hard to say what's going to happen, of course.
People have free will.
But, I mean, I cannot see that the Obama...
I mean, they would have to be crazy to start a war with Iran.
And I think that some of the people there realize that.
But on the other hand, they're already committed to this deadline stuff.
For example, Obama has said that by the end of September, they want some kind of answer from the Iranians about when to start these negotiations.
But the Iranian response has not been very encouraging.
Of course, the Iranians are bridling at this and saying, well, wait a minute, we're not going to jump to any of your deadlines.
We're a sovereign country, et cetera, et cetera.
So, I mean, it's not coming off to a good start.
And then, of course, this whole business in Iran, you know, the riots, the election, Musavi has set up the Iranians as the perfect villains.
And so, I mean, there's going to be a huge struggle inside the Obama administration over this question.
And, of course, we'll see who wins.
I mean, again, if you go back to the political calculations, I mean, the main objective for any administration is to stay in power and to increase its own power.
So what is going to do that?
Is it war?
I mean, how politically useful would a war be to the Obama people?
Well, usually it's very useful to any politician, right?
Don't want to change horses in midstream, after all.
Yeah, yeah, but, I mean, if you are the head of a war-weary nation, and if your constituency, you know, the rank and file of a Democratic Party, is going to take a lot of persuading, then it's not something that you want to do.
So you have to look at it in context.
How popular is this war going to be with his base?
I don't think it's going to be very popular.
So, I mean, there's that consideration.
And then, of course, there's the Israel lobby, which has a lot of financial punch.
And so what's going to happen to the party's candidates in the midterm elections?
Is the money spigot going to be turned off for, like, a lot of these candidates?
That's another question.
So, you know, the Obama people portray themselves as being pragmatists.
And so you have to take them at their word.
I mean, they don't have any principles, certainly when it comes to foreign policy.
So it's whatever is going to serve their interest politically.
Well, let me ask you this.
What's pragmatic about putting defensive so-called missiles in Poland and the Czech Republic?
I mean, this was viewed a year ago as a pretty extremist, Cheney-ite policy that the American people and the American state didn't necessarily have to be considered wedded to, you know, in the international news and whatever.
This was sort of an aberration.
Barack Obama came and said, oh, yeah, we're going to continue right on with that.
Well, I mean, it's pragmatic in the sense that it's something that they can trade off with the Russians in any future negotiations over, say, sanctions on Iran.
Well, you know, we'll, you know, think about withdrawing those missile, you know, shields if you guys will cooperate with us on the sanctions question.
And, you know, of course the Russians have been selling the Iranians all kinds of nuclear technology.
So are they going to cut that off?
Well, maybe they will if we withdraw those weapons from Poland, for example.
So, you know, it's pragmatic in the sense that they are using it as a bargaining chip.
But they may have underestimated the willingness of the Russians to deal with them in those terms because, of course, nobody likes to be blackmailed.
And that's essentially what's happening.
Well, and what about the push to include Ukraine and Georgia in NATO?
Well, you know, Georgia I don't think has been kind of sidelined because Saakashvili is really a nutcase.
I mean, he's not even a stable person.
You know, he's unreliable.
And plus, you know, word is leaking out about the way he's treating his own people and the opposition over there.
So they haven't been able to keep a lid on that, and so he has a bad rep.
You know, I think some human rights group just did an investigation into, you know, his own domestic, you know, like repression over there.
And, you know, the news wasn't good for fans of Saakashvili.
So he is a PR firm.
He'll have to work overtime to overcome that.
And you think that successfully sabotaged his own problems, have successfully sabotaged his entrance into NATO, at least for now?
Yes, yeah, yeah.
I think, you know, that also, you know, the Ukraine is not in great shape economically.
So I think that, you know, some of the Europeans, you know, are sort of wondering if it's worth, you know, like alienating the Russians.
You know, because don't forget that the Russians could always cut off, you know, the energy.
And, you know, I mean if, you know, like things really started up there.
So I think that the Europeans are not eager to confront the Russians, you know, except for the British are.
I mean, you know, they are the ones who are really lobbying to, you know, confront Russia.
But I think that the- Why is that?
Well, I think it's history, and I think it's also competition over the oil resources, because the British petroleum has big interests in Central Asia.
And so I think that that's what's going on there, but it's economic.
Well, is that not the root of all the occupation of Central Asia by the U.S. as well?
Right.
And, you know, of course, this all started back with Bill Clinton, who set up a special government agency of the U.S. government on Caspian oil development.
And, you know, there was a whole office there.
They were selling franchises.
They were subsidizing all the big oil companies, and not just with tax breaks, but with outright subsidies.
And so, you know, they actually built that pipeline, and they're building another pipeline.
And so that's an ongoing concern right there.
Well, let me pretend to play a realist for a second here.
How about, we need that oil, and screw those people.
If we didn't have our empire over there, then we'd all be paying $10 a gallon, and our society would break down.
Well, I mean, look, there's no economic reason why the U.S. government should be subsidizing and policing this impossible pipeline.
I mean, it is not even economically viable.
They could run it through Russia.
They could deal with the Russians.
And, you know, the price would not be higher.
They could deal with the Iranians and, you know, open up that whole thing.
But they wanted to go around Iran, and they wanted to go around Russia.
So they got this snaky, you know, oil route, and it goes through Georgia.
It goes from Azerbaijan through Georgia and then through Turkey, and then it comes out, and then it goes through the Bosporus to Europe.
But a much more direct route would be through Iran.
But they don't want to empower Iran, of course.
You know, Iran is a pariah state.
And, of course, they wouldn't control it totally.
So in order to placate, you know, a bunch of big American and British and also French oil companies, we are, you know, risking war with Russia and, you know, spending millions, billions in our tax dollars.
I mean, look, it's just crony capitalism again.
You know, that's what's at work here.
You know, the big boys are dividing up the world, and they want it all for themselves.
It's a very old story.
Well, now, as the economic problems in this country are affecting more and more people, we see kind of the economic draft where there's really no employment except the army.
So recruitment is up in that sense.
But I also wonder if the American economy really starts imploding, you know, the next few years' worth of mortgages resetting and that kind of thing, and things really get worse, is the empire really going to be the last thing to go?
I mean, or is there some chance that we could actually learn the lesson that, you know, who cares if Russia and China dominate in Central Asia or whatever?
Because it doesn't matter which way the pipeline goes.
We can still buy it, like you're saying.
Well, you know, I'm not clear about your question.
Well, I guess I just wonder if there's any optimism that we can give up the empire and maybe shore up America or whether America is going to be completely smashed on the rocks of paying for this empire.
Well, look, I mean, I think that, you know, like it's a war.
I mean, war is not just an economic calculation and a political calculation.
I mean, it's also an emotional thing.
I mean, if you can gin up a foreign enemy and say these guys are responsible for all of our problems, you know, as oil prices go up and this whole green, you know, sort of ideology permeates everything, you know, like you hear all this stuff about energy independence, for example, a crazy idea.
And, yes, you know, let's stop those evil foreigners from, you know, like making us poor.
Let's be energy independent, you know, and we have to have electric cars and, you know, it's patriotic to buy electric.
You know, it's interesting.
I saw on MSNBC last night we had Rachel Maddow prattling on about how, yes, we're buying an American car, you know, like coming to the market and it's an all-electric car.
And, of course, it's a socialist car because, of course, now that our auto industry has been taken over by the government, you know, MSNBC is, oh, this is great.
Now it's patriotic to buy American.
And, you know, so, you know, you've got these evil foreigners who are keeping the oil from us and, you know, let's show them by being energy independent.
So you've got this let's demonize the foreigners meme going.
And, you know, it's a hop, skip, and a jump from there to, well, let's really show these foreigners a lesson by invading their country and taking their stuff.
Well, Bob Hicks is coming up on the show, and I guess we'll be talking about the draft as a great means of reducing the unemployment rate with him.
Well, yeah, I mean, you know, of course, that's going to come, you know, like the militarization of labor.
You know, it's a great way to, you know, get all these young men and women who might cause trouble otherwise off the street.
And, of course, with the unemployment rate going up and up, especially here in California, you know, you're going to have lots of people on the street, and no government wants that.
You know, it's not good for them.
So that's another thing.
But, you know, of course, it's not going to be billed as a draft.
It's going to be billed as volunteering for America, as, yes, you know, we're going to build roads.
It will be sold as something like the old WPA work brigade, you know.
Let's get, you know, like people out there building real stuff, building bridges.
You know, like Chris Matthews is always ranting about this.
You know, he has no understanding of economics.
You know, they could be building pyramids for all he cares.
You know, just sort of doing something that's visible.
I mean, it's a very primitive idea.
But, of course, you know, liberals love it, and, you know, it's service to the nation.
Yeah, you can do three years of working at the old folks' home or a year and a half or two in the Army.
And so everyone will choose the Army instead.
Right, right, or, you know, whatever.
But, you know, it will just keep people busy so that they don't have time to, you know, cause trouble, especially political trouble for the Obama administration.
Well, now, if the Obama administration has successfully or pretty much successfully bought the silence of the left, what's it going to take to get all those free republic kooks to flip-flop back to being the anti-war right, like it was in the late 90s, at least?
See, that's really the big dilemma, because they have the right and they have the left.
I mean, you know, as far as the American right is concerned, they've been totally, I mean, they are hopeless.
You know, I mean, that's why the Ron Paul movement could only go so far, and then it just stopped.
And, you know, I mean, they could make, you know, gains, you know, locally by, you know, like electing maybe Peter Schiff to the U.S. Senate or Rand Paul or whomever.
But, I mean, that's going to be episodic and depend on, you know, like individual personalities more than, say, the foreign policy stance of these old right-type Republicans who are definitely in a minority and are going to stay in a minority because it's going to take another generation of people on the right to change the ideas, or rather the lack of them, you know, on the right and, you know, like in the conservative movement.
And then, you know, you've got people on the left who are blinded by their partisan loyalty to the Obama administration.
And so, you know, the deck is stacked.
You know, left is pro-war, right is pro-war.
What's going on here?
Well, I mean, you know.
And then there's us.
Right, and then there's us.
And I think that increasingly, you know, a large number of the American people are going to be with us.
But I think that they're going to lack any kind of organizational vehicle, especially, you know, in terms of, you know, partisan politics, you know, to really affect change.
So it's going to take another generation, I think, or maybe half a generation, to really reach the point where there's going to be a viable movement that is going to be pro-peace and pro-liberty.
Yeah, it's going to be a while.
Right.
I mean, you know, ideas have consequences, and bad ideas have very bad consequences.
Well, you know, I think if there's one thing encouraging about the part about the hopeless right wing, because you're right that so many of them got hooked into this war on Islamofascism and all that, but really on the right they have no intellectual firepower at all other than Ron Paul.
I mean, there's really, if you think about who's the most powerful Republican politician in D.C., or, you know, at least officially, it's Mitch McConnell.
I mean, they got Newt Gingrich, and they got Rush Limbaugh, and they got basically nothing.
And so, you know, at least from the point of view of the, you know, hairspray on hosts in the cable news shows, when you have, you want a Republican opinion, who do you go to?
You go to Ron Paul.
He's the only one who has any ideas and knows how to explain them.
So maybe there's a little room for hope there?
Well, I mean, you know, there is.
But so much of American politics, you know, depends on individual leaders.
And because people tend to group around leaders like Ron Paul, for example, who is not exactly, you know, charismatic, it's his lack of charisma that is itself charismatic in an odd kind of a way.
So, but I mean, I don't see any leaders arising who are going to be capable of actually organizing and leading a real mass movement.
And, of course, that's always been the problem with the libertarians, for example, of whom I am one.
And that is that they have been unable to organize their way out of a paper bag.
And lots of them have the illusion that if they act more like Republicans, that they'll be more popular and get elected to office.
When in fact, you know, the more they are like what's already there, the less marketable they're going to be.
Isn't it amazing they don't understand that?
This is so funny to me.
Yes.
Yes, it is.
I mean, it's one reason why I've kept my distance from the organized libertarian movement.
And it's one reason why we founded AntiWar.com.
I mean, you know, we were faced with this dilemma back in the early 90s.
And we thought, well, what are we going to do politically?
I mean, you know, there's the dead end of libertarianism.
You know, like the organized movement, i.e., the libertarian party.
And, you know, that can only go so far.
What are we going to do?
So we decided to concentrate on one overriding issue, which we sensed was going to be increasingly important.
And we, you know, chose foreign policy, founded AntiWar.com, and here we are.
Yes, it's a good thing, too.
Yes, it is a good thing.
All right, everybody, that's Justin Armando.
It's original.antiwar.com slash Justin for behind the headlines three times a week there.
Really appreciate your time on the show today.
Anytime.
And we'll be right back on AntiWar Radio.