The Liberty Coalition’s Michael Ostrolenk of the American Conservative Defense Alliance explains ten reasons why conservatives should oppose any U.S. attack on Iran and discusses the Campaign for New Policy With Iran.
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All right, y'all, it's Anti-War Radio, Chaos 92.7 FM in Austin.
You know, the use of the military, some people are now suggesting that if you don't want to use the military to maintain the peace, to do the civil thing, is it time to consider a civil force of some kind that comes in after the military, that builds nations or all of that?
Is that on your radar screen?
I think what we need to do is convince people who live in the lands they live in to build the nations.
Maybe I'm missing something here.
Are we going to have kind of a nation-building corps from America?
Absolutely not.
Our military is meant to fight and win war.
That's what it's meant to do.
And when it gets overextended, morale drops.
But I'm going to be judicious as to how to use the military.
It needs to be in our vital interest, the mission needs to be clear, and the exit strategy obvious.
I think what we need to do is convince people who live in the lands they live in to build the nations.
All right, everybody.
That was Governor George Bush in the debate on PBS with Al Gore back in the year 2000.
And that's an example of him talking about that humble foreign policy we remember so well from the early days of the Bush administration before 9-11 changed everything.
Well, here to discuss conservatism and foreign policy is Michael Osterling.
He's founder and president of the American Conservative Defense Alliance and the co-founder of the Liberty Coalition.
Welcome to the show.
Thank you, Scott.
Thank you for having me today.
It's very good to have you here.
And I guess I'm just curious, what goes through your mind when you listen to George Bush protesting how ridiculous it is, the idea, am I missing something here?
Why should we go and nation-build all over the world?
Well, it's interesting because if you listen to the rhetoric of someone like Woodrow Wilson or FDR or George Bush, they actually all opposed intervention.
And then you see what they actually did when they're in office.
So I would suggest that when politicians such as themselves open their mouths, you should expect the opposite in terms of their actions once they're in office.
Yeah.
Well, I'm glad we're focusing on the right this hour because in the next hour we'll be talking with Robert Dreyfuss about what a warmonger Barack Obama is from the left there.
So, first of all, the website, I'm sorry, is ACDEAlliance.org.
Yeah, there you go.
And that's the American Conservative Defense Alliance.
And you have this article here, Ten Reasons Why Conservatives Should Oppose War With Iran.
And this is, of course, top priority on this show.
And so I especially like to see the argument coming from a self-identified conservative point of view here.
So I figure we would just get started and go down the list here.
First thing you do is invoke Russell Kirk, who's considered the founder of modern American conservatism, and his position that war should always, only, ever be the last resort.
Exactly, Scott.
We have ten reasons, and the first one is the one you just discussed.
You know, from our point of view, from a conservative point of view, or I should say a traditionally conservative point of view, we should only be involved in military operations that directly affect the United States.
When we are threatened, we should be able to, in terms of self-defense, engage militarily with other countries.
In this case, Iran is not a threat to the United States.
They have not crossed the Mexican-Canadian border.
When it comes to Iraq and Afghanistan, I know there's been claims by the administration that they are arming and threatening us in both countries.
But I think if you look at the facts, as I know them at this time, in fact, the Iranians have been helpful with our efforts, especially in the beginning of our efforts in Afghanistan, and they have interest in stability in Iraq.
So I would question and ask for evidence that the Iranians are actually a threat to U.S. forces in both countries.
Yeah, well, I think that's very important that you would even stop to say, well, wait a minute, is that true?
Because I think a lot of people repeat that.
They hear it a few times, and they assume it must be true.
In Iraq and Afghanistan both, their interest, other than being wary of what we might do to them in the future, their immediate interest is in supporting Hamid Karzai against the Taliban, and in supporting the Dawah party and the Supreme Islamic Council in power in Iraq.
Exactly right, Scott.
And actually, I do remember probably about a year ago, some claims were made by the U.S. that the Iranians were arming and encouraging rebellion against the U.S. forces in Afghanistan.
And within 24 hours, one of their defense ministers, the Afghani defense ministers, came out and said a qualified no, that's actually not true.
And I know the same claims have been made on and off, especially with the explosive devices being used against U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq as well.
And I think the evidence has supported that those allegations are not true.
And it's not to say that there might be some legitimacy to some of the concerns about Iranians in Iran, you know, funneling arms and equipment to forces in Iraq, but we have to be really careful.
First of all, we need evidence.
Then we have to be really careful to determine whether it's the Iranian government, and or just individuals within, you know, the Iranian population, whether they're criminal elements doing such things, and in fact, what interest do they have, whether it's the Iranian government or criminal elements, or just interested Iranian citizens in arming such groups, because maybe those groups are providing a service that, although are contrary to our troops on the ground's interest, provide a service to the individuals in Iraq, the Shiites, you know, in protecting themselves against perhaps Sunnis or other Shiite forces.
Well, let me ask you this.
If we could take at face value whatever David Petraeus said about this, and just believe that the Iranian government is directly behind the funneling of explosives to Shiite militias like Sadr's Mahdi Army for use against American soldiers, would that amount to a costus belli in your eyes?
I would have to say no, because if you look back historically, there have been many instances, including our own, of supplying weapons and training and arms to various indigenous forces, and yet we would scream at the top of our lungs if the country, the main country involved in that particular location, declared war on us and went to war with us.
You know, these covert activities are going on all the time.
We support, they support, all these groups are involved in supporting one another over time.
You know, our present day enemies are allies, our allies become our enemies, all that kind of stuff.
So we have to be really careful of conflating covert activities that could be harmful, and we have to be aware of them, and I ask for evidence, conflating that with war.
We should not go down that path.
You keep using this phrase, really careful.
Is that part and parcel of conservatism to you?
Well, Reagan said we should trust but verify.
I suggest that we don't trust but verify.
Yeah, I think conservatives have to be very conservative.
It kind of goes with the term.
And just be really careful on decisions that are taken, hopefully in our own interests, and look down at the possible consequences of any decisions.
And obviously we're infallible as human beings, that's another tenet of conservatism.
So we don't always know the consequences of our actions.
That's why it's best to be very careful in deciding what we want to do, especially when it comes to foreign policy.
Yeah, I mean, this is, I think, just the kind of language, just sort of in the general sense, that we haven't heard from the right in, well, at least since the last time they didn't control the presidency.
Yes, and actually I would suggest that in most cases when you hear it from the right, especially in the past 50 years, it's mostly been rhetorical, because unfortunately when they come to power, their rhetoric and their actions are dissimilar.
Well, we can kind of take these out of order and just sort of go through them.
One thing I wanted to kind of pick a fight with you about was, toward the end there, you sort of imply that it seems like it goes without saying that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons, and you say that, you know, if we bomb them, that could be ineffective and maybe even increase their drive for nuclear weapons and so forth.
But the CIA and 15 other intelligence agencies said last November that they had abandoned all efforts at creating nuclear weapons, even such as they were, back in 2003.
Right, and actually I ask this as a question because I don't have an answer.
Why do we think that they were actually seeking nuclear weapons prior to 2003?
Well, as far as I know, it's all based on the so-called smoking laptop, which we know it came from the National Council for Resistance in Iran, which is the political front for the Mujahideen Al-Khalq and a front for Israeli intelligence.
I don't think anybody's ever proven the laptop even came from inside Persia anywhere.
And what it says in there is, at least as far as I know, two not very credible allegations.
One, that they were going to build a laser enrichment facility to enrich their uranium ore up to uranium tetrafluoride, which makes no sense because they can already get it to uranium hexafluoride stage, which is what you need to introduce it into your centrifuges, at the factory they have right down the street, that they already had, that is safeguarded by the IAEA and they're churning the stuff out.
And then the other thing was, supposedly they were working on a delivery vehicle for a nuclear warhead for a missile, but even David Albright, the discredited so-called nuclear physicist, who is usually the guy beating the drum about all this stuff, wrote letters complaining to the New York Times that this just didn't make any sense because if this delivery vehicle is what they said it was, you couldn't fit a nuclear bomb in that anyway.
Right.
And actually, I would like to go back and answer your question, because I actually didn't answer it when you asked it.
From what I understand, everything you just said is accurate.
And once again, I just kind of put out a question about the assessment that in 2003 they were interested in nuclear weapons, and perhaps they were, but I need to see evidence.
Well, you know, my favorite expert on this is Gareth Porter, and what he says is he believes that they were entertaining the idea of keeping that option open and maybe heading that direction and so forth, but that by the time of the Iraq war, they decided completely the other way, that they would abandon all efforts in that direction, they would completely open their books wide to the international inspectors, and basically put their hands up and say, don't shoot, see, we're not holding a gun.
I do know there's some unanswered questions, and this is definitely not a reason to go to war or to increase sanctions about some of Iranians' interest in nuclear weapons, including contacts through the AQ Khan network in the early 90s and the Pakistanis in the late 80s.
So once again, I just have the question out there.
We need to see evidence to support their interest in nuclear weapons.
But just from a self-interested point of view, looking at the history, if I was the Iranians, and although I know that the Supreme Leader has put out a fatwa against having nuclear weapons, I think I might want them.
If I had the United States, in this case, surrounding me in Iraq and Afghanistan with naval forces in the Persian Gulf, air bases all across the region, and various levels of threats increasing over time, and seeing what the United States did with Iraq and did not do with North Korea, I would wonder why the Iranians would not want a nuclear weapon, but perhaps there are reasons why.
Right, yeah, well, I don't know if we can believe a word that Khamenei says, but he claims it's religious reasons, and also money, that it's just too expensive to have a program like that.
That's what they claim.
I don't know whether that's really true, but it just seems to me that until our government proves that they even have a nuclear weapons program at all, we should never give them that much of the argument.
Right, right, completely agree.
And here's the other thing, and this is your second point, diplomacy first, and maybe I'm just the most naive young man in Texas, and I'm just using my imagination far beyond control here, but it seems to me that if America gave the Iranians some kind of golden offer, like, hey, look, let's just be friends and resolve all this stuff, that they'd be perfectly willing to be our best friends if we let them.
Well, I know that you're probably very familiar with the 2003 grand bargain, which actually came from the Iranians to us, basically saying the exact same thing.
And unfortunately we made the mistake of turning them down.
I shouldn't say we, I mean Cheney and his cabal made the mistake of turning them down.
I think, especially as a conservative, that the best way to go is to engage the Iranians commercially, culturally, and diplomatically with no preconditions.
I think the best thing we could do for our own interests in terms of some stability in the region and the ability hopefully in the soon future to remove our troops from Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East, that if we actually engage the Iranians, reduce the threat of violence and war, that the Iranians will actually change how they behave towards us.
But I think we also need to change the way we behave towards them.
And the U.S. foreign policy should not be regime change in Iran.
As a human being, I hope for the best for the Iranian people.
And I think, in fact, that if we change our policy and engage with them, that the regime will lose its pretense for being in power, al-Kamenejad, and you'll see a democratic flourishing in Iran in time.
And I figure in five to ten years, Iran could be an ally of ours.
But ultimately, my interest is what's best for the United States.
And what's best for the United States is to reduce the tensions and remove the threats of war.
The American Conservative Defense Alliance is part of a trans-partisan coalition called the Campaign for a New Policy with Iran.
Folks can learn more about it at www.newiranpolicy.org.
And speaking about engaging with the Iranians, we actually had a press conference on June 10th, this last June, on the Hill.
And it was really interesting.
I think you and your listeners would be interested to hear more about it, if that would be okay.
Yeah, sure, sure.
Okay.
We had conservatives and liberal members of Congress speak at a press conference, as well as Congressman Bob Barr, who is now running as a libertarian candidate.
On the conservative side, we had Ron Paul.
And then we had a host of liberal Democratic Congress ladies.
And then we had policy people, Phil Geraldi from the American Conservative Defense Alliance, and Doug Bandow, and then a whole bunch of more liberal-leaning policy people spoke.
And what was really interesting is behind the press conference was a series of red phones.
And on the red phones were Iranians.
And it was the opportunity for Americans to sit down and talk to real Iranians.
Oh, I saw a picture of that.
Yeah, it was really, really cool, actually.
Now, so this is a takeoff on the hotline to Moscow, right, to get the Kremlin on the phone.
Don't shoot, it's just a satellite.
Exactly, exactly.
And so you set up all these red phones.
And now in the picture I saw, it's just a table lined with red phones.
And basically what you're saying is Americans could just sit down, pick up the red phone, and there would be an Iranian civilian on the other end.
And they could just shoot the shit about whatever they wanted.
Right.
And from what I understand, Link TV, who filmed the American side, also filmed the Iranian side.
They're actually in Iran.
And apparently they're putting together a documentary about the whole thing.
So hopefully we'll be able to see it on television soon enough.
That is great.
That's really setting an example there.
I really like that stuff.
Yeah, I agree.
And, you know, this really goes to the individualism.
And this is something we ought to especially focus on with today being Independence Day and all that kind of thing.
It's self-evidently true, isn't it, that all Iranians have the natural right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?
And that when we talk about Iran, this isn't a shape on a map.
This is the actual place on Earth where human beings live?
Exactly.
And that's why I definitely support Track 1 diplomacy, where our people in the government talk to their people in their government.
But ultimately the more important thing, I think, is Track 2, where general American citizens talk to Iranian citizens.
Because if you start talking to people and realize that they are human beings or recognize, discover, I mean, most people shouldn't be surprised that they are human beings.
But some people get confused on occasion.
It makes it much more difficult to engage people militarily if you start realizing that, you know, they have families.
They have interests similar to yours.
They have aspirations and concerns.
They want the best for their children just like you do.
I mean, they might have slightly different worldviews when it comes to religion and other such things.
But, you know, that's the way the world works.
Right.
And especially here in America, we're not supposed to care what you believe in anyway, as long as you're not trying to hire the Congress to do something to us about it.
You know?
Thomas Jefferson said, I care not about my neighbor's religion.
If he has one god or ten, it neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.
I like that.
That's nice.
All right.
Now, reason number three.
War is the health of the state.
Never mind those Iranians.
If we want to be free, we need to oppose war overseas.
How's that?
Completely.
That's, yes, right on.
You know, if we look at what's happened since 9-11, and even prior to 9-11, but we'll just stick with 9-11 forward.
We have things such as the Patriot Act, the National Security Letters, the 215 Orders, the Sneak and Peek, the National ID through Real ID.
We now have border searches for your PDAs and phones and computers, domestic use of military satellites.
I mean, it's just really disturbing and pretty disgusting, if you think about it, how we've let kind of a police state to continue to develop since 9-11.
Isn't it ironic that the number one slogan on the side of the war party is simply that they're fighting for our freedom during all this?
I think Orwell is right.
You need to really look at language.
And, yeah, obviously they're not fighting for our freedom.
I know that, and hopefully many Americans know that.
But this is not an issue that you and I will necessarily get into this call, but our education system has indoctrinated generations of American citizens not to think critically or rationally.
And, therefore, when they hear things such as, we're fighting for your freedom, we're fighting for democracy, people unfortunately believe that, because they don't understand in their hearts and in their minds what freedom is really all about.
Yeah, it really is as though our army, rather than being the Redcoats patrolling Fallujah or whatever, shooting and bombing people, that they're all, I guess, fighting in Massachusetts Bay for Yorktown or something, forcing the Redcoats off of our land still.
It's like the Revolutionary War never ends, no matter where it really is.
That's very true.
And, you know, I was actually watching CNN this morning and last night quickly.
And there's two things that really struck me, and this kind of speaks to what we were just talking about.
This morning, one of the shows was about hot dog eating.
Apparently, there's a guy who can eat lots of hot dogs.
Some contest about food.
And I watched that, and then last night they had something about Obama's dog.
Apparently, he told his daughter that he was going to buy her a dog.
And they had a whole five-minute clip on this thing.
And I'm just thinking to myself, watching both, that we're in the middle of a constitution and monetary crisis in our country, and the best that the media can do is talk about eating lots of hot dogs and dogs.
I mean, it just really sickens me.
And you know what's funny?
It's been like this.
I can't even remember where now, unfortunately.
It would have made a good footnote.
But some movie about war propaganda that showed that right at the dawn of the Cold War, when they decided that, no, we're not going to scale back the military at the end of World War II.
We're going to keep the arms complex going on.
The movie Tone News was all about the sneezing contest somewhere in the Midwest and hot dog eating and whatever.
It's always been this way, the Britney Spears of the moment.
Everything but what's important.
Which is a very good reason to decentralize education and get the government out of it, because we need generations of people who can think for themselves and not put up with this crap.
Well, maybe we should just put all the schools under the Department of Homeland Security.
There's actually some interesting play between the Department of Education, Department of Homeland Security, and other government agencies.
So I wouldn't put it past them in the near future to start moving more in that direction.
Really?
Tell me a little bit more about that.
Well, the recruitment efforts, recruiting more folks in the military.
The information that they're allowed to gather, that they're gathering from multiple different sources, including gathering the information from the Department of Education.
So you have that whole piece of it, too.
And then I don't know if you're familiar with the new Freedom Commission on Mental Health.
Oh, yeah.
Well, no, we haven't covered that in very much depth here on the show, but I've heard Dr. Paul complain about it.
If you're interested, I would suggest you have Dr. Karen Ephraim, who's kind of the national expert on these type of things.
But it's basically collusion between various government agencies, including the Department of Justice.
And from what I remember reading, the Department of Defense actually has some kind of role in these efforts, too.
And understandably, I just would disagree with it.
But all these government agencies have an interest in gathering as much information on the American citizens, including their mental health, as possible.
And now this is the mandatory mental health screening in the government schools on the little kids, right?
We have to be careful on the use of language.
Yes, generally speaking, yes.
What they claim is that they're not mandatory and they're not universal.
But if you think about any kind of program that would necessitate the need to find, quote, unquote, mental illness in children, if the teacher themselves cannot see abnormal behavior and then determine that there's a problem with that child and speak to the parents about it, that's like the prime thing that should be done.
But if, in fact, it's not being done, then you have to universalize it, because then you're going to say, well, we're going to miss someone.
Because obviously someone's going to fall through the cracks because the teacher doesn't see something.
So you actually have to have it universal.
And at this time, it's not mandatory in all these districts and schools, but any program run by the government or private-public partnerships ends up being mandatory.
Right, yeah, especially the latter there.
Well, especially both, I guess.
And now this is something else that you brought up, and that was the debt crisis and the dollar crisis, which I guess those things are tied together there.
The national debt, just the national debt right now is over $9 trillion, which is actually, as far as I can tell, an unimaginable amount of money, at least for my limited cranium here.
And the declining value of the dollar, where now our dollar's worth less than the Canadian loonie.
That's a funny name.
And that leads me to ask some more questions.
When you listen to Senator McCain or Senator Obama talk about their various ways of solving these problems, which I have questions about the role of the federal government in solving any of these problems, one thing that they don't address, which I know Congressman Paul addresses a lot, and I know you had Lou Rockwell on recently and the Mises folks address a lot, is the whole Federal Reserve System and our monetary policy, which leads us to be able to fight these wars indefinitely.
Well, actually not indefinitely, eventually it's going to come down and crash and crash, but for a long period of time.
Explain that.
Why is it that central banking is so important to our permanent state of warfare?
I would refer folks to the Mises Institute website, mises.org and lourockwell.com.
They do a much better job than I can do explaining this.
And I listened to your interview.
I know that you're quite familiar with this, too.
But the fact that the government can print money and doesn't require to come to the American Citizens Institute for taxes or to borrow it allows them to pay for these wars and pay for all these other programs and projects over time.
But, in fact, by inflating the money supply, they decrease the value of the dollar, and then we get things like $4 or $5 for a gallon of gas or whatever we're now paying for bread and milk.
And, unfortunately, the American people are miseducated and blamed, such as they blame Exxon or they blame the Democratic Congress or they blame whoever they happen to blame at this moment for the increased cost of energy.
And they say, well, we'll just dig some more oil wells in the United States and we'll be energy independent, which is actually nonsense because if we dug more oil in the United States, it would just go on the world market.
It's not going to initially just stay in this country.
As opposed to looking at the true cause or possibly one of the major causes of the crisis we now find ourselves in, which is the monetary system, which is caused by the Fed.
No people really talk about the Fed.
I would say that was a perfectly fine answer.
Yeah.
That's exactly it.
The deferral of the cost.
Hey, this war's going to be free, everybody.
And then they end up paying later and they don't understand why everything is going up in cost.
But that's the price of the war they're paying at the pump there.
Right.
Right.
All right.
And now number five on the list is dead soldiers, dead American soldiers.
In fact, I've heard conservatives complain that, you know, we've got to get over this idea that our soldiers' lives are important as individuals.
And, of course, they always want to have it both ways.
Don't get me wrong.
But, you know, Iraq, 4,000 casualties, that's nothing.
We lost 4,000 in one day at the Battle of whatever the hell in World War II.
And that we're too attached maybe to the lives of our soldiers.
They're soldiers.
That's their job to die.
Well, I would say two things.
One, I wonder how people can be pro-life and pro-war.
Now, a war of self-defense is one thing.
But this type of war in Iraq is definitely not a war of self-defense.
And for so-called conservatives who, you know, run around wanting to protect life, how, in fact, can they put our young men and women in harm's way?
Obviously, someone dying is just horrible.
But then you have all the wounds, you know, people who are wounded, you know, the PTSD.
You know, mentally, with lots of mental problems.
And as conservatives, our interest should be, obviously, in liberty of the individual, but also the family, the strength of the family and community.
And how can you take young men and women and put them in harm's way for years at a time, change their mindsets, their, like, in a combat mindset, and then expect them to come back and just act normally within their families and within their communities?
It's impossible.
It's very destructive to parents, you know, parenting with their children.
It's destructive to their relationship with their spouses, with other members of their family and their community.
So that's just one thing that conservatives should think about, how destructive war is to the family.
And even a step closer in is just deployment.
I mean, even if we weren't in a war, the fact that we have, what, troops in 135 countries, 700 to 800 bases worldwide, that in and of itself is destructive to the family, let alone war, which is, you know, ten times more destructive.
Yeah, that's something that people hardly ever talk about because, you know, we have this kind of foolish division in our society, it seems to me, where, at least in general, if you're a liberal, you're against war, and if you're conservative, you're for it.
And yet this cuts to the very core of conservatism, is the importance of at least the nuclear family, without the extended family here in the United States as the basis of our society, and that war, this biggest of big government programs, is the most disruptive of family life, even worse than the worst sort of welfare programs.
Right, right.
And another piece of this, too, and I happen not to be a Christian, I happen to be Jewish, but there seems to be a lot of interest within the so-called conservative Christian community in support of a war.
And I would suggest they need to go back and actually see and read what Jesus said, because I thought he was the Prince of Peace, and would be mostly opposed to any and all wars.
I think they need to go check their premises about that, too.
Yeah.
You know, we talked about the torture at the Bagram Air Base there, the movie Torture Taxi and stuff like that, where a lot of these guys, the sleep deprivation, the method for the sleep deprivation in a lot of cases is they chain them to the ceiling, but where they basically have to keep at least one leg stiff under them.
If they give slack to both knees, then they either pull their arms out of their sockets, break their arms, and or it contorts the ribcage so that they can't breathe.
It suffocates them.
And when we were talking about that on the show a few weeks back, somebody commented on the blog, you know, that's called crucifixion.
That's what they did.
That's the whole point of the nails through the feet and all that, is you have to put pressure on the nails in your feet in order to breathe.
And this is what the Roman Empire did to Jesus Christ, and this is what we do.
This is what the American government does to people in our salt pit torture dungeon over there in Afghanistan.
You know, Phil Giraldi, who's one of our guys, wrote a piece for us that you can find on our website, Torture is Not a Republican Value.
And listen to you, I'm just disgusted by what we're doing and hopeful that we can convince the folks on the center right, conservatives and Republicans, that this is not the way we should proceed in the world.
Definitely not.
I assume you read the New York Times piece about that we've been copying the Chinese torture methods.
Yeah.
The Little Red Torture Manual?
Yeah.
Yeah, it's really sad.
In fact, we have an article we're featuring today on Antiwar.com by Jacob Hornberger about this.
Boy, he does righteous indignation well.
I love that guy.
Yeah, he is a great guy.
Okay, now, geez, after all this heavy torture stuff, I guess this sort of seems like a lesser problem, although really it still is very important, and that is the price of oil and the possibility of war with Iran really leading to a crisis in terms of the global economy and the division of labor as it's developed around the world.
Boy, it's really interesting.
I read a piece, I think, about two days ago in which the Iranians said that if they were attacked by the U.S., they would disrupt shipping in the strait, and then one of our admirals said that that would be an act of war.
And I thought to myself, wait, we attack them, they respond, and their response is an act of war on us?
I mean, it just logically doesn't make sense.
But in fact, the Iranians, you know, they do engage militarily and they do shut down oil in that area.
Yeah, you're talking about gas prices probably doubling, if not more.
And you know what kind of effect that will have on our economy.
I mean, the death and destruction aside, which is foremost in my mind, but just the effect on the U.S. economy and our lives would be just devastating.
Yeah, I mean, hey, listen, the reason that we're surrounded by 18-wheelers up and down the freeway everywhere we go is because that's how everything gets where it's going in this country pretty much.
Yeah, and that would, I don't know, come to a halt, but it would definitely slow down, because I don't think many people can afford, you know, $8 to $10 a gallon for gas.
Definitely not.
Well, I certainly can't.
I'll tell you that.
Right.
All right, now, this one is a real big one.
We'll fight them there so that we'll be fighting them here forever, apparently, and that is the blowback, the more terrorism that would be created.
It's impossible, basically, that it would be otherwise.
The absolute fact of the more terrorism that would be created as a result of a preemptive war against Iran.
Right, I would imagine that the Shiite in Iraq would turn against U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq, that Hezbollah would strike against Israel, that other Iranian interests in Europe and the United States would strike out.
I wouldn't see why not.
And there's obviously no need for that.
That would just add insult to injury and create more of a police state at home and more need for us to intervene abroad.
And it would obviously be a great threat to U.S. forces in both Afghanistan and Iraq, and we definitely don't want to put them in more harm's way.
You know, that Seymour Hersh article that came out last weekend about the Democrats financing the covert war, backing terrorist groups in Iran and so forth, well, part of that article, he talks about the Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, at lunch with some Democratic senators, and I guess he denied it later, but we all know it's really true, that he said to whichever senator it was that talked to Seymour Hersh and the rest of them at the table that if we launch a war against Iran, we're going to be fighting jihadis in our streets for generations.
Our grandchildren are going to be dealing with this problem.
And it occurred to me that what he's kind of getting at there, perhaps, is that it would sort of prove, quote-unquote, at least, that America is at war against all of Islam, that Shiite Iran is no different from the Sunnis that were fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq, and that basically what we're doing, that it really is a war of civilizations, a war of the West against Islam, and that bin Laden was right, that it was a defensive move to kill Americans.
Do you know the work of Terror Free Tomorrow and the polling that they do?
No, I'm afraid not.
I would encourage you to check it out.
They do polling in the Middle East, and they did polling about six to nine months ago of Iranians in Iran, and it's really interesting because the way you just framed it, in terms of how we kind of think, not we, you and I, but some people in our country think about the Iranians as the bad guys and they're part of the jihadist movement and stuff.
A majority of the Iranians, the demographics, the majority of the population is, I think, 18 to 35, but a majority of the people there actually are very pro-Western in their orientation.
They like our culture, our music, our food, things along those lines.
Well, they're very young, right?
70% are under the age of 30.
Right, right.
And, I mean, we should take that information and realize that we have allies.
If we kind of did opposite of what we're doing now, they could be allies of ours within five to ten years, if not sooner, because the population is so enthralled with Western culture.
And, as a conservative, I question some of their taste in Western culture.
But, I mean, I'm for freedom, and if they want to indulge in some crappy music and crappy food, that's to be their choice.
But the very black and white thinking that drives a lot of American foreign policy, that there's something called Iran, and that's part of the evil, axis of evil, and that all Iranians are stormtroopers ready to cross over and kill Americans and Israelis and everyone else, is just fallacious.
And we need to do the best.
Well, you do all the time, and what we attempt to do is just re-educate the American public.
Like you said, the Iranians are human beings.
Some of them are bad, and they have bad intentions, and we can deal with that.
But the majority of them are just like you and me.
They have aspirations.
They have cares, concerns.
They have family.
They want to do well for their children.
We just need to reframe our whole war on terror with that in mind.
Well, you know, you bring up in this piece, and again, I'm sorry, it's the 10 Reasons Why Conservatives Should Oppose War With Iran.
It's at ACDAlliance, American Conservative Defense Alliance, dot org.
And one of the things that you bring up in here is sort of a tangent off of that, is just hatred for Americans in general around the world, even people who aren't in the Muslim world at all and wouldn't necessarily be part of any direct retaliation, that really what we're doing here is we're destroying the reputation of America and Americans all over the world.
Well, being a big fan of your show and having listened to it via podcast, I know you're familiar with what I'm about to say.
You know, we've had a long history of interventionism abroad, and I'm actually quite surprised that it's only more recently that more of the world dislikes us than likes us, because we've done a lot of bad things in our name, you know, for various reasons, mostly corporate interests and some ideological reasons of overthrowing democratic elected governments and supporting coups and all these kind of just kind of covert activities, which I would think would turn populations against us historically.
And I'm just kind of surprised that, you know, there's more of a majority since our invasion of Iraq as opposed to more of a majority even preceding or, you know, before the invasion of Iraq.
But it is not good for our interests abroad or even our safety at home to have billions of people dislike us.
And not to say we should determine our foreign policy based on people liking us or not, but we definitely should take that in consideration when we decide to take actions or not to take actions.
Yep.
Well, you sure sound conservative to me, Michael.
Hey, I do need to give credit for this article to Phil Giraldi and our team.
I conceived of the idea, but Phil drafted the first draft of it, and our team worked on it.
So I just want to give credit where credit is due.
And people can read the whole thing at, as you said, www.acdaliance.org.
All right.
Well, I really appreciate your time today, everybody.
This is Michael Osterlenk from the American Conservative Defense Alliance and co-founder of the Liberty Coalition.
Also check out newiranpolicy.org.
Thanks very much for your time today on the show.
Thanks, Scott.
Take care.
