Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 3/2/23 Diego Rivera on Defend the Guard and Those Trying to Stop It

Episode Date: March 4, 2023

Diego Rivera returns to talk about some of the recent successes in the effort to pass Defend the Guard. Rivera explains what the bill is and why it’s necessary. They then talk about how the movement to pass it is led by veterans of the Global War on Terror. Rivera then talks about who the Pentagon is mobilizing to try and discourage states from passing this bill and why their efforts to stop it have only made him more optimistic.  Discussed on the show: DefendTheGuard.us BringOurTroopsHome.us TenSevenClub.com Diego Rivera is an Iraq War veteran and activist. He is the Director of Field Operations at BringOurTroopsHome.us. Follow him on Twitter @Diego4Liberty. This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott. Get Scott’s interviews before anyone else! Subscribe to the Substack. Shop Libertarian Institute merch or donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal or Bitcoin: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRjY Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For Pacifica Radio, March 2nd, 2023, I'm Scott Horton. This is Anti-War Radio. All right, y'all welcome the show. It is Anti-War Radio. I'm your host, Scott Horton. I'm the editorial director of Anti-War.com, and I'm the editorials. of the book, Hotter Than the Sun. Time to Abolish Nuclear Weapons.

You can find my full interview archive, more than 5,800 of them now, going back to 2003 at Scott Horton.org and at YouTube.com slash Scott Horton Show. And you can follow me on Twitter, if you dare, at Scott Horton Show. All right, you guys, introducing my friend Diego Rivera.

He is director of field operations for bring our troops home. dot us and of course that means also for defend the guard dot us welcome the show how you doing diego i'm doing good man stressed but good good um well listen you got some good news to tell me so go ahead and tell me yeah so our bill is now i think at least in about 26 states officially introduced if not more i think a couple states just popped off within the last couple of days so that's good. But what's new is that in the past two weeks, we've had two states pass it out of committee

through several rules committees, and it's got a lot of momentum on it right now. Yeah, man, that's great. All right. So tell him, what's the bill? The bill is the Defend the Guard legislation, essentially it's a state-based legislation that says without a formal declaration of war from Congress, that the states preserve the right not to send their National Guard into combat. all right and then so go ahead and tell us the history of this and why you're working so hard to get this through

right well i think for me is we've made the mistake of going up to dc to think that if we just told him and educated these lawmakers that they would start doing the right thing i sat down with the chief staffer for the senate foreign relations committee and i went full horton on him and told him everything that he already knew and he looked at me and he said well there's no political will for what you want and just ignore to me. And I went to different congressmen and their offices and their staffers and I said, what are we doing about? And so I think we've learned our lesson. And so if we're going to make change, we have to focus on localizing power and using that as a weapon to usher in peace. Right. And so focusing this at the state level makes it a whole lot easier

to educate, to influence, and to get the right thing done. Because I don't know that we'll be able to fixed DC. But I know that we have a way better shot in the state capitals. All right. It's anti-war radio. I'm Scott Horton talking with Diego Rivera from bring our troops home.us. And you're a veteran of Iraq War II. Is that right? Correct. And can you just tell us when and where you were there? Yeah. So I was in Iraq in 2006 and, you know, once you see it, you never, never forget it. Yeah. All right. So, I mean, this is really important. that this movement, bring our troops home.us, and the Defend the Guard movement is led. It's supported by a lot, but it is led by combat veterans of this era's terror wars.

Isn't that right? Correct. G. Watt veterans. Right. G. Watt. That's global war on terrorism for you, youngsters to whom that's ancient history, even though it's still going on. By the way, I don't know if you saw, but they attacked what they call an al-Qaeda target in Yemen yesterday, Diego. So as long predicted, they're switching sides again in the Yemen war. Yes, sir. The war on terrorism is not over.

The war for terrorism is not over either. Jesus, please. So listen, defend the Guard. The National Guard, don't they just stay home to put out forest fires and sandbag riverbanks if there's a flood and stuff like that? Why do they even need defending anyway?

What are we even talking about here, Diego Rivera from Bring Our Troops Home.us? Yeah, no, it makes no sense to me because the National Guard's motto is always ready, always there. So how do you accomplish just that basic mission statement if you've got them deployed all over the world, right? Like, they're supposed to be there to protect the state. How can you have a motto like that? And also they're constantly deployed.

I think the Minnesota National Guard, I think every other month they're deployed elsewhere and they're not at home defending what they're supposed to be defending, which is the state of Minnesota, right? So it makes no sense. And then so can you just kind of help fill us in a little bit about just how heavily the National Guard has been used in these wars over the last 20 years? Yeah. So at the height of the occupation, right? At the height, right? About 45% of all occupational forces in combat were coming from the National Guard. And about about 18% of all the casualties were coming from the National Guard. I mean, just process that number. These guys are supposed to be at home defending their state. And instead, they're almost half of the occupational force in about 20% of all the casualties. This is bananas, man. Well, your colleague Dan McKnight, I believe, has said in the past Diego that essentially they're just used as an extra set of reserves.

Is there much of a difference there? Yeah, no, no, no, they really are. And it makes no sense to me. And it made no sense to me when they were over there. I'm like, these guys shouldn't be here. It just doesn't make sense me. Yeah. They should be home.

It's Diego Rivera from Bring Art. troops home.us and defend the guard.us. So they're pushing this legislation in 26 states this season. You guys have been working on this for a couple of years. And as you said, the law is to prevent the national government from using the National Guard. What's the mechanism? You know, what exactly does this legislation say, Diego? Yeah, that listen, and here's the thing, is this legislation doesn't make necessarily a stance on war other than if you're going to do it, we want receipts and we want receipts from Congress, right? Is that if you're to expect these guys to go to war, Congress has to make a formal declaration of it.

And that's the bottom line. It's that you can hold whatever view you want on war, but you're not doing it without using the proper mechanisms to do it, which is to go through Congress formally declare war. Because absent that, you don't have any checks. You don't have any accountability. right now they're they're using this authorization to use the military force is essentially just a blank check with no geographical constraints no fiscal restraints really because when has congress ever limited uh you know any sort of military spending so essentially it's just a blank check to

the president for full authority to do whatever he wants it's crazy and even if you thought that the AUMF would check powers or whatever um and you don't think that it's an abdication of power 88% of the people that put forward those AOMFs are no longer in Congress now anyway. So how would you possibly think that this is a good idea? All right, it's anti-war radio on KPFK in L.A. I'm Scott Horton and I'm talking with Diego Rivera from Bring Our Troops Home.us. And we're talking about nullification and interposition against the warfare state. And this sounds like you guys have really figured out a key here.

This is doable. Yes, it is. And we know that it's doable because it terrifies all the people that we think it would terrify. And boy, are they squirming right now. Mm-hmm. Hey, guys, Scott here for Leo Hamill find jewelers out of San Diego at Jewelry StoreSD.com. They do business nationwide. They sell jewelry and watches, specializing in engagement rings.

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Hey, y'all, you should sign up for my substack. It's Scott Horton's show.substack.com, and if you do that, you'll get the interviews a day before everybody else. But not only that, they'll be free of commercials. How do you like that? Pretty good, huh? Scotthortonshow.substack.com Hey, y'all, libertosbella.com is where you get Scott Horton Show and Libertarian Institute, shirts, sweatshirts, mugs, and stickers and things, including the great top lobstas designs as well. See, that way it says on your shirt, why you're so smart.

Libertasbella, from the same great folks who bring you ammo.com for all your ammunition needs, too. That's libretasbella.com. Okay, so I was asked to participate, and I was able to participate a little bit, in the hearing in the Montana State Senate the other day, and there were some really great speakers, and it was so important. I mean, this passed a Senate committee in the state of Montana last week, which is, just huge, but can you talk a little bit about the opposition that showed up there? Because I think that is very important, as you're saying. Right. So the general rule that I have is that everybody

who's ever heard about this bill seems to like it. It makes sense. The most common phrases, well, that just makes sense, right? The only people I've ever found that don't like this are people that are paid to not like us. And that means the Pentagon, DOD, these adjutant generals at the state level that are essentially just bureaucrats for Washington. These are, the people that don't seem to like it, and they really don't like it. And boy, are they trying to peddle influence. So, for example, in West Virginia, two three-star generals came down to the Capitol and ream the Speaker of the House for about three hours. Following that, another three-star general threatened to pull bases from the state, which I don't know where the hell

he gets the authority, because last time I checked, his name wasn't representative, right? It was the fact that he was in general threatening to cut funding, which I don't know where the hell gets that authority because Congress has that authority. And this isn't a military junta. This is a republic, right? So they are essentially weaponizing military to influence state sovereignty and legislation. In fact, one of the proponents of the bill that testified in Montana said he knows a thing or two about bases and base closings. And he knows that they don't have any say over that whatsoever. So don't let them scare you. It was what he said. 100% of these lawmakers are terrified because these guys show it in their uniform.

We had adjutant general, we had JAG officers all in uniform, all together, essentially bureaucrats come marching into committee hearings, threatening spending several different times. And it's nonsense. I mean, Paul Gosar just recently put out an article where he said, no, this is crazy. This makes no sense. There's no way that they're going to cut federal spending. That is absolutely not going to happen. And as soon as the lawmakers heard that in their state, they said, oh, okay, cool, we can do the right thing.

This gives us an out. We don't have to go the wrong way. But these generals are definitely peddling influence. Dima over in Arizona showed up to testify against this. This guy was bananas. And I think the part that gave me a little bit of hope was the fact that you realize how dumb these people are. And then you also realize how nakedly evil they are. And it kind of gives you a little bit of hope on how we can beat these guys.

Because, for example, he said, well, what, you know, what happens in Arizona if there's another Chinese spy balloon? And it's like, okay, the National Guard can be federalized for three different reasons to stop an invasion, repel an insurrection, and uphold the laws of the union. If you have a Chinese spy balloon floating over your border, that is an invasion. And that's why you want them home and not deployed to Poland, right? So this guy doesn't even understand the argument. And that was a little bit of hope that I got because then we just came back and smooth. Mack them right now. It's anti-war radio on KPFK.

I'm Scott Horton. I'm talking with Diego Rivera from Bring Our Troops Home.us and Defend the Guard. Dot U.S., again, combat veterans leading this fight to get the states to pass laws preventing the president from nationalizing their guard troops without an official declaration of war from the Congress. But anyway, so tell us, because I know you are the guy who does the real groundwork in going, traveling around state to state training people up and putting them to work and making this thing happen Diego so here's the place for your call to action for veterans especially but anyone else

too in the audience who wants to get on board and help the defend the guard movement right and this is the most sincere that I can be when I say this is that if you realize that bring our troops home is three guys working really hard with our base in different states but the that essentially three people can become pushed back to the states. Imagine what we can do for those of you listening. And that comes from everything to testifying, finding people to testify. When we have phone banks calling legislators offices or legislative districts, which we're planning on doing just today itself, we have phone banks scheduled for Montana, right,

is we need people to make these calls. We need people to hop up and show up to find, you know, to testify. Or if they don't, they know a veteran or the mother or the wife of a veteran who, could come into the East Committee hearing and just give it to them straight, right? Essentially, we're talking to, I'm talking to the remnant out there that can listen, that can say, I need to do something. I'm compelled to action because there's 50 different things that we have to get accomplished, right?

And your grassroots effort has a huge, huge effect. We are terrifying Washington, D.C. with just a handful of people that can get together. Essentially, it's been maybe four or five people just working on this thing in Montana, and we already have it through committee. and we're moving it through right now to a House vote. And that's done with a short amount of people. Just imagine if you actually could get a little bit of education, not just philosophically, but also logistically on how to become effective.

You can weaponize that against the very people that you despise, the people that we despise, the people that sends our sons and daughters off to die in these horrific never-ending wars, unconstitutional wars. So that's where I just urge people to get a hold of me. Diego of bring our troops home.net, not dot us, dot net. And if you contact me, I promise to respond immediately because I want to work myself out of a job and you can help me do that. All right.

That is Diego Rivera. He is director of field operations for bring our troops home.us and defend the guard. Dot us. Thanks so much for your time, Diego. Thanks, Scott. And that's it for anti-war radio for today. I'm your host, Scott Horton. I'm here every Thursday from 2.30 to 3 on KPFK 90.7 FM in L.A.

See you next week.