03/07/08 – Justin Raimondo – The Scott Horton Show

For Antiwar.com and Chaos Radio 95.9 FM in Austin, Texas, I'm Scott Horton, and this is Antiwar Radio.
Well, this morning the U.N.
Security Council just handed down some new sanctions against Iran.
And as the U.S. Congress was prepared to warn the President of the United States that he does not have the authority to initiate another unprovoked war in the Middle East, this time against Iran, it was sailing right through.
And then at the last minute, Nancy Pelosi and her friends in the Democratic Party in the House of Representatives took that part out of the bill, giving what amounts to a green light to President Cheney to go ahead and start another war.
Sure seems like to me, but to help get some perspective on this, we bring back to the show Justin Raimondo.
Welcome to the show, Justin.
Great to be back.
Everyone, Justin is the editorial director of Antiwar.com and is the author of Reclaiming the American Right, the Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement, and An Enemy of the State, the Life of Murray N. Rothbard.
And, you know, what happened here, Justin?
The Democrats, they had this rider in their bill that said, hey, Mr. President, the war power belongs to us, not you.
Right?
That was all it said, basically.
Right?
Right.
Right.
Basically, you know, saying that they have to come to Congress first before they give the order to bomb Iran.
And now what could have possibly intervened to make the Democrats take that out?
I mean, we all know that the Cheney cabal has this insane foreign policy.
Surely the Democrats aren't for it.
They're for it.
They're the opposite.
They're for it.
I mean, I hate to break this news, but actually, when it comes to foreign policy, we have one party in Washington called the War Party.
I mean, this pretty much proves it right there.
These guys are giving a signal to George Bush saying, if the green light, go right ahead.
We're ready.
You won't hear a peep out of us.
What they could have done, though, was they could have said, hey, that war power belongs to us, not you.
But then they could have granted it to him and authorized it.
I guess they want to give the responsibility to him in a way that makes them look as blameless as possible.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's called a cover story.
And plus, you know, these guys are in a hurry.
You know, they're under orders to hurry things up.
And, I mean, Steve, that's what happened the last time, is that we were rushed into war so quickly that there was no time for a debate.
I mean, the American people hadn't even woken up to the fact that pretty soon we're going to be occupying a major country right in the midst of the Middle East.
People didn't really realize that, I don't think.
And this time, I think, also, Americans just don't get it.
I mean, you know, they're sitting there watching, you know, like American Idol and having a good time and, you know, going out on weekends and getting plastered and whatever.
And they just don't realize that there's something big in store for them.
This amounts to a blank check by omission.
This might as well have been the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution.
Mr. President, do whatever you like.
Right.
And so that's what's happening.
You have to understand that there are some pretty powerful forces lining up to push us into war with Iran.
And first and foremost is the Israel lobby.
So those guys have a lot of clout, not only in the Republican Party, but also in the Democratic Party as well.
And they are using it to its maximum degree at this very moment, pushing for war with Iran.
I mean, here's the scenario.
They're saying, look, Israel is threatened existentially, meaning that Israel could be wiped off the map, even though, of course, as we know, the CIA has said that the Iranians will not have nuclear weapons for another good ten years.
But according to the official mythology, the mullahs are about to grab those nukes, and they're maniacs, and why they're just like Hitler.
And so there's going to be a second Holocaust, and if we don't move tomorrow, then all is lost.
So that's what's happening.
And that's the rumor out of the White House, too, is that Bush thinks that if he doesn't do it, then the next president or the next one won't have the courage to do what needs to be done, only he's man enough to go ahead and risk his own, you know, sacrifice his own political capital to do the right thing.
Right.
I mean, he's not running for re-election.
So the whole concept of political capital doesn't really come into it, does it?
Well, of course, there's, you know, the Republican Party's political capital.
Right.
But since when did he ever care about that?
I mean, look, you know, neocons have been hosted in the Republican Party for lowly many years, but they could just as willingly leave that party and, you know, jump on the back of a Democrat.
And apparently that's what they're starting to do.
I mean, they see that, you know, the Republicans are yesterday's news, yesterday's victors, so they're not of a whole lot of use.
I mean, these guys need power.
They need state power because only states can declare war or rather make war rather than declare it.
So, I mean, they're getting ready to, you know, adapt themselves to a Democratic administration because it looks like the Democrats are going to win next time around, doesn't it?
Well, and most of them, I mean, Richard Perley's been a Democrat all along anyway, right?
Right.
Well, yeah.
I mean, you know, these guys started out as Democrats.
In fact, last time we talked, we talked about the history of a neoconservative, and so they started out as lefties in the Scoop Jackson wing of the Democratic Party, and now maybe they're going to make a complete circle.
So, but yeah, you know, Nancy Pelosi, the so-called anti-war liberal Democrat from San Francisco.
Remember the San Francisco Democrats, Gene Kirkpatrick's imagination?
Well, this is what they're made of.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's kind of a shame when the leader of the Democrats' name is Nancy, and she's the toughest one of them all.
I mean, if I remember right, she wanted to make Jack Murtha the majority leader, and the rest of her own party threw her under the bus and made this guy Steny Hoyer the majority leader instead, who immediately came out and said all options were on the table for dealing with Iran.
Right, right.
But, I mean, you have to understand that not living in San Francisco, you probably don't get this, but, I mean, San Francisco politics is pretty much big city, war-dealer politics times 200 with a very liberal dose of political correctness thrown in for good measure.
So, I mean, here there are, and of course I live in San Francisco, obviously, here there are so many different interest groups, and they're all clamoring for their piece of the pie.
And that includes the pro-Israel group here, which is not large, but is very influential, and Nancy has to appease them.
Well, I saw this article in the Forward the other day, and it said that American Jews are opposed to continuing the war in Iraq by super-majorities, by three-quarters, more than three-quarters, which I believe was the highest percentage of any ethnic group in America, according to this poll.
So, how come the Israel lobby seems to reflect such a different set of opinions than Jewish Americans?
Well, because, I mean, we're not talking...
I mean, you have to understand that Nancy Pelosi came to her position, she started out as a fundraiser for her Democratic Party.
So you have to understand that the people who are giving money are different than the people who are simply voting.
I mean, we're not talking about...
Because, of course, Nancy, when I ran against her for Congress here back in the mid-1990s, I mean, she got like 75% of the vote, or probably more.
I mean, it's not like these guys are threatened by anything.
It's just that they want to raise money.
And so the pro-Israel donors, as Leslie Clark has pointed out, are a major obstacle to any candidate who wants to push a rational or even semi-rational foreign policy.
I mean, you know, if you're talking about millions and millions of dollars, and you're talking about running for president, and, of course, you've got to raise all this money, or if you're talking about maintaining your status as the majority leader in the U.S. Congress, again, you've got to raise a lot of money, and you just can't do it unless you appease certain groups.
So you have to understand that the pro-Israel money is a very big factor, and that lots of these big donors who are pro-Israel are, A, single issue, and, B, well to the right of the mainstream Jewish community.
Yeah, I think the article in The Nation from yesterday talks about that as well, that says that AIPAC is basically perfectly in line with the Likud party in Israel, which does not at all represent the point of view of most American Jews.
Right.
So, like, we're not talking about a Jewish conspiracy, blah, blah, blah, blah.
I mean, it's just not true.
Most American Jews are even more liberal than I am on this question, you know, foreign policy.
So it's not the Jews, it is the donors, and they're the problem.
Okay, now, I've interviewed the experts in the past few weeks here on Anti-War Radio, Scott Ritter, Philip Giraldi, Wayne White, and all these people predict the most dire consequences if America bombs Iran.
You know, oil, over a couple hundred dollars a barrel, Hezbollah blowing things up across Europe, a possible coup in Pakistan.
So what other interests are lining up behind this war, when it's already been predicted what an absolute disaster this could be?
You mean, aside from AIPAC?
Yeah, at the start of the show you said the interests are lining up, first and foremost, the Israel lobby.
Who else?
Well, I mean, you know, you don't really need anybody else, you know, at this point.
I mean, it's, you know, it's pretty much, you know, the Israel lobby.
And, you know, of course you've got the neoconservatives, but that's, you know, pretty much the same thing.
Plus you've got the old, you know, military industrial complex folks.
As for big oil, I think they're against this whole thing.
I mean, it's certainly going to, you know, disrupt their activities.
I'm sure I'll hear from a lot of leftists saying, No, no, you know, the price of oil is going to go up to $200 a barrel, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, the oil companies.
But, I mean, I don't think so.
I think that the oil companies would rather buy and sell peacefully in the Persian Gulf rather than have all their facilities bombed out of existence.
I mean, it's pretty much, this is the Israel lobby nakedly coming out and saying, We're going to exert our political muscle, flex our political muscle, you know, pretty much do this single-handedly.
And they're doing it.
I mean, it's amazing that they have this much power, but they do.
Well, what's Dick Cheney's interest in this?
I mean, I see Dick Cheney as just a basic right-wing nationalist, and honestly, I can't imagine that he cares about Israel at all.
Yeah, well, I mean, what he cares about is a foreign policy of relentless aggression.
I mean, he's never seen a war that he hasn't been for.
So, I mean, these guys, they don't call them the war party for nothing.
I mean, they are the war party, so that's what they want, war and more war.
Right, that's what Jude Winonski used to say about the neocons, that these guys, that's their specialty, is war.
When the Cold War ended, they didn't know what to do.
They're professional warmongers, so they just kept on.
Right, they kept on.
So, you see the results.
Yeah, well, you know, when I talk with Craig Unger, who wrote that great article for Vanity Fair, I spoke with him last week, and he said that the way it looks now, with the new information from Seymour Hersh's article, the redirection, and the influence of Prince Bandar running around here and financing, helping America finance jihadists in Lebanon and that kind of thing, Craig Unger says it appears to him that the Saudis now agree with the Israelis that it's time to have a war with Iran, that maybe they were the restraining influence here through people like James Baker, their lawyer, but now they're basically in agreement with the Israel lobby that Iran is enemy number one and it's going to take violence to do something about them.
Right, I mean, you know, it's interesting.
All this started out because of an attack on America by a Sunni fundamentalist fanatic, which is Osama Bin Laden, and now we've got a new enemy, the Shia.
So, I mean, it's kind of Orwellian.
You know, yesterday we were at war with Eurasia, and, of course, today we're at war with East Asia.
Right, and now we've always been at war with East Asia, too.
Right, right.
So, you know, you're not supposed to remember certain inconvenient things, but which is it, guys?
Is it the Sunnis, the Shias?
What's going on here?
Of course, most Americans couldn't tell you the difference between Sunni and Shia, and rightfully so.
I mean, why should they know about this stuff?
But, you know, to those of us who follow it, it's kind of Orwellian theory.
Yeah, well, and I really like Tom Englehart's article about Seymour Hersh writes bloody murder in the pages of The New Yorker, and the rest of the mainstream media just don't even notice at all.
America's backing jihadists in Lebanon against Hezbollah that's not our enemy.
Right, and I mean, I think part of the reason is because Hersh uses sources that do not identify themselves.
So I think that they're not eager to really talk about it unless it's been verified by people who are willing to take responsibility for what they've said.
But it's very interesting to hear this from Hersh, because, of course, he always is reporting stuff that's going to happen in the future or is somewhat speculative.
And in the past, he's always been confirmed, except for a few points there.
But yeah, I mean, if Hersh is saying it, then I would tremble.
Yeah, well, and Michael Gordon and David Sanger and the rest of these goofballs at The New York Times, they don't have any problem giving us an article full of anonymous sources when it's making the government's case.
Right, right, but I'm just saying what the excuse is of the mainstream media.
I mean, that's what they're saying.
Now, when Charles Goyette interviewed Ray McGovern last week, Ray said that he thought that the chances for war with Iran are now less than 50-50, that when Cheney was in Australia that Connolese Rice got Bush's ear, maybe even Kissinger, and they got him to agree that it's time to start talking with Iran and try to back down from this brinksmanship.
What do you think of that?
Well, I mean, talking is not necessarily opposed to starting a war.
You have to understand that there has to be this kind of ritualistic aspect to the whole thing.
I mean, that's what happened last time.
We went to the U.N., right?
Remember?
Colin Powell went there.
He had a speech all written up by Scooter Libby.
Yeah, had his little crack vial full of pretend anthrax.
There you go.
And so they play this game mostly for the benefit of the American people and to placate anybody in Congress who is getting wobbly on this.
And then after that ritual is played out, it's time for bombs away.
Yeah.
I mean, that's what's going to happen.
I saw Zbigniew Brzezinski on Jon Stewart last night, and there's a couple of points, really, we could discuss about this.
But one of them was, please don't bomb Iran.
And now, you know, Zbigniew Brzezinski, to my best understanding, is just the mouth of David Rockefeller, basically.
Brzezinski on Jon Stewart?
I mean, that is so – I missed that.
Sorry about that.
Maybe I can check it out on the Internet.
It was actually pretty funny.
But, I mean, he warned specifically.
He said, if we bomb Iran, here's what's going to happen, guys.
Picture Asia in your head here.
We're talking about America owning all the real estate between Jordan and India.
Sounds good if you're a neocon.
Yeah.
Well, you know, apparently to the Rockefeller cons, it doesn't sound good.
It sounds like biting off way more than we can chew.
Right.
And I just wonder, how is it that the Israel lobby, which represents a foreign power, how could they so easily push aside the Anglo-American establishment that rules this country?
Justin?
Well, I mean, who rules this country?
I mean, it's not that clear who's in charge.
I mean, it wasn't that clear on 9-11, was it?
No.
So, you know, the Anglo-American, you know, we have long since had their heyday.
I think that it's now up for grabs.
So we're going to see who rules this country.
Yeah.
And, in fact, I guess that was even Carol Quigley's lament, wasn't it, that the Anglo-American establishment didn't rule anymore and that he was worried about what might happen if any doofus with a good political action committee can get his own way.
Right.
And, of course, we are ruled by the president when it comes to foreign policy.
We're not ruled by any establishment.
We're not ruled by any group of people.
One person has control, the emperor, or, excuse me, the president.
And if the president is, you know, a Caligula, we're in trouble.
If the president is like, oh, I don't know, who was the rational one, Marcus Aurelius, then things are going to be a lot better.
But it's just, I mean, you know, it's basically almost like a matter of chance who gives the order.
I mean, who rules us?
The president now has more power than any Roman emperor ever had.
I mean, surely that is a very dangerous thing.
And, of course, we're seeing how dangerous it is.
Yeah, and particularly with this president, I don't know if you saw the articles about Alexander Coburn's new book where in the summer, Justin, dig this, in the summer of 2004, Bush is on vacation and asks his father, Dad, what's a neocon?
What's a neocon?
And we're talking, you know, two months before he was reelected.
Those are the guys who are moving the strings attached to your wrist, my son.
Well, and according to Coburn, the one word answer was Israel.
Well, I mean, that's a simplistic answer.
You know, the neocons are about a lot more than Israel.
I mean, Israel comes into it, but it isn't all about Israel, no.
So, you know, that was a brief answer, I'm sure.
Well, and, you know, Junior didn't fall too far from the tree.
People think of Bush Sr. as a genius now compared to his son, but I remember back in 91 what a doofus he was, you know, in the first place.
Yeah, especially when he threw up of a Japanese emperor or somebody.
That was a good one right there, sort of a metaphor for our whole foreign policy.
Yeah, absolutely.
All right, now, and speaking of empire, you know, you get into just how powerful the president is and how much more powerful he is than he ought to be.
Something that caught my eye that hasn't gotten a lot of press, and I'd like to try to get some good guests on about this, is apparently in the Defense Appropriations Act from last fall, the John Warner Defense Appropriations Act of 2006, were these provisions that basically gutted Posse Comitatus and the Insurrection Act and basically places the state guard units under the authority of the president without him asking the governors at all.
And the American Governors Association sent a unanimous letter with all 50 governors signed it saying, hey, Mr. President, what are you doing?
You can't take away our power over our state guard units.
And apparently he won the fight, and it never got on TV news once.
Right, but, you know, another thing that did get on TV news was when he fired all those district attorneys.
So he seized the National Guard.
He's fired all the DAs.
What's going on here?
Is this seven days in May?
Yeah, this really is starting to look like that, isn't it?
Well, I mean, you know, obviously they're getting ready for something they know is coming.
I'm not sure I want to know what it is.
Yeah, well, I'm afraid that I do, and it's not going to be good.
It ain't going to be pretty.
Yeah, and, I mean, that is really, no matter who you are, I think, liberal, conservative, Republican, Democrat, or anybody else, wait a minute now, the national government seizing authority over the state guard units?
I mean, that is a symptom of empire.
That is a corruption of our most basic system of federalism here.
Right, but, of course, the Republicans don't care about that.
What they care about is the unitary presidency, as they put it.
And, of course, their theory of a unitary presidency fits perfectly in with their new vision of empire.
I mean, this is a point that libertarians make again and again.
You have an empire on which the sun never sets.
Then you have a leviathan state, which encompasses everything at home.
And that is the price that you pay.
So, all these Republicans who were moaning about, oh, well, what happened to the, you know, the old party of smaller government, less taxes, et cetera, et cetera.
Well, you know, I'll tell you, it's gone forever unless you guys give up your interventionist foreign policy.
Because it's one or the other.
Either we're a republic or an empire.
And you can't have both.
Well, so what are we to do, then, with our superpower status?
We don't want to just commit suicide.
I guess you'd like to see America bring our troops home from around the world peacefully and whatever.
But what about all this power?
America's the leader of the world.
Justin, what are we going to do?
Well, I mean, it's, you know, what are we going to do?
Well, I think we're going to cause a lot of trouble for ourselves and everybody else.
And then, since it can't be economically sustained, we're going to go into what empires always do.
They go into decline.
And, you see, because, you know, as Garrett Garrett put it, the old right author who nobody ever listened to, but of course maybe they will now, now it's too late, he said, with an empire, especially the American empire, it's a unique kind of empire.
Everything goes out and nothing comes in.
I mean, at least the Romans got tribute from their nation.
You know, they're like conquered provinces.
But we don't do that.
We pay tribute to our tributaries so that it's just a sort of act of vampirism.
You know, we have all these leeches attached to the American body politic, and they're slowly draining us of our sustenance.
You know, we have a huge trade deficit.
You know, taxes are at an all-time high.
It's just, I mean, it can't be sustained.
Well, if you had it your way, if everybody did read Garrett Garrett and, you know, would listen to you and run things your way, how do you go from the empire we have now back to the limited republic?
Well, the thing to do is, look, I mean, here is the breach in the dike.
I mean, here is the flaw in our constitutional system that allowed – and, of course, Chalmers Johnson talks about this in his new book, Nemesis, where he talks about how our system of constitutional government is now out of whack, out of balance, and that one branch of government has really seized power, especially when it comes to foreign policy, and that is the presidency.
I mean, we have this gigantism of the Oval Office, and it's really taken over, you know, there in Washington.
And so instead of having a republic, we have this imperial court in Washington, D.C., and that's really the problem.
And until we get back into balance, we're not going to be able to save the nation.
And so in order to do that, what we need to do is elect a pro-peace president.
I mean, I've got a lot of flack for writing at least three columns about Chuck Hagel and talking about how encouraging his candidacy is.
I mean, of course, not that I endorse him or anything, since I don't endorse candidates, and neither does Andy Ward.com, but still, he is a very hopeful sign.
I was somewhat disappointed when he announced that he was going to announce later whatever he's going to announce.
I mean, he's playing Hamlet while the republic is failing.
But, I mean, look, I'm willing to accept a republican realist or a democratic realist or whoever has the power to plug up the hole in the dike, because it's getting bigger and bigger by the day, and the water is rushing through.
This is an emergency.
I mean, we are really faced with a crisis, a crisis such as the American republic has never seen.
If we invade Iran, the economic consequences alone will devastate the American political landscape and change us forever, never mind the consequences for the people in the Middle East, which are just beyond horrific.
The loss of life, the loss of hope, I mean, it's going to be – Mr. Brzezinski is absolutely correct – it's going to be a disaster.
So this has to be stopped.
It's got to be stopped no matter what.
And if we don't stop it, we're going to be real, real sorry.
Well, I have to kind of play some sort of devil's advocate here.
Don't get me wrong.
I'm an individualist, and I'm not saying the ends justify the means or anything like that.
But would we really be better off if we had a Zbigniew Brzezinski-friendly government in this country that was setting up a sustainable world empire for long-term future domination?
I mean, it seems like what George Bush – Brzezinski's complaint is that George Bush has taken the imperial car out and wrecked it, not that he's built an empire.
Right.
Well, I mean, look, the question – I mean, the fallacy that you are expressing now is sort of the same as, say, the old German Communist Party used to say prior to the rise of Hitler, used to say, after Hitler, us.
Of course, there was no after Hitler until, of course, after he was defeated by the Allies.
So they thought, well, Hitler's going to take over, and he's going to mess things up so badly that the German people are going to throw him out, and they're going to install us.
Well, guess what?
It didn't happen.
And so, I mean, be careful what you wish for because, of course, as the old saying goes, you may just get your wish.
So, I mean, I am in favor of preserving the American republic, or as much of it as is left, as long as we can.
And, you know, with republics, it's kind of a delicate thing.
I mean, you can't just go in there and smash things up and then have somebody come in and rebuild stuff.
I mean, it doesn't work that way.
You know, the social and political fabric is kind of a delicate thing.
Once it's torn to shreds, I mean, it's hard to patch it back together again.
So, I mean, once the price of gas is quadrupled and people start to panic, and, of course, the whole mentality of the American electorate changes and perhaps gets a lot uglier and more aggressive, perhaps.
It's our oil.
We have to take it.
Gee, let's just go in there and occupy Saudi Arabia and put all our troops where all the oil is produced, which is Shia, by the way.
And let's just take our oil because, after all, we have to go to work, don't we?
And so the American sense of entitlement will kick in, and then we're in real trouble.
So then all bets are off.
So I would rather that the War Party did not win this round.
It's very important that they don't.
Yeah, and it makes me think if the economic consequences here are that severe, then I guess it could give Bush an opportunity to use his new war powers that he has over the State Guard units, right?
Right.
I mean, why are they doing this?
I mean, why are they firing all the DAs?
Why are they taking over the National Guard?
It's not clear to me, and it looked pretty ominous.
And, of course, with any other group, I would not be as suspicious.
But this crowd is pretty sinister.
So, I mean, be prepared for anything when it comes to the neocons.
That's all I can say.
All right, now, this coming Monday, you're giving a speech at a protest at Nancy Pelosi's office, correct?
Yeah, it's going to be at noon, right in front of the Federal Building in San Francisco.
It's on Golden Gate Avenue between Polk Street and Rockin'.
And it's directed at Nancy Pelosi, basically.
I mean, it's really supposed to be about the war.
You know, it started out as a protest, you know, stop funding the war.
But then Nancy went ahead and did this Duran thing, and I think that's really ratcheted up interest in this.
And, you know, I've seen this mentioned all over the place.
So people are, you know, I think going to be showing up in some numbers.
And it's going to be interesting.
We're going to have Matt Gonzalez, who was, you know, the Green Party candidate who almost beat Gavin Newsom for mayor.
And several members of Veterans for Peace.
I mean, it's going to be a good time.
Plus, it's probably going to be a nice sunny day.
So you guys, come on and show up.
All right, yeah, that's everybody in Northern California who can get there this Monday at noon at the Federal Building in San Francisco.
All right, well, I'll go ahead and let you go.
Thanks very much for your time today, Justin.
Anytime.
Bye.
Justin Armando is the editorial director of AntiWar.com.