Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 6/23/23 Dana Rohrabacher the Tragic Return of U.S.-Russia Tension

Episode Date: June 28, 2023

Scott interviewed former Congressman Dana Rohrabacher at Porcfest. Rohrabacher, who also worked under President Reagan as a speechwriter and special assistant, had attended Scott’s speech on Ukraine expecting to disagree with everything Scott would say, but he had been pleasantly surprised. In this interview, he and Scott talk about the revival of U.S.-Russia tensions after the end of the Cold War, his decade-long stand to legalize marijuana, his night out drinking with Putin, his experience in Vietnam and more.  Discussed on the show: Not One Inch by M.E. Sarotte Dana Tyrone Rohrabacher is a former American politician who served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1989 to 2019. A Republican, he represented California's 48th congressional district for the last three terms of his House tenure. He also worked as a speechwriter and special assistant to President Ronald Reagan from 1981 to 1988. 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

All right, y'all, welcome to the Scott Horton Show. I'm the director of the Libertarian Institute, editorial director of anti-war.com, author of the book, Fool's Aaron, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, and The Brand New, Enough Already, Time to End the War on Terrorism. And I've recorded more than 5,500 interviews since 2004. almost all on foreign policy and all available for you at Scott Horton.4. You can sign up the podcast feed there

and the full interview archive is also available at YouTube.com slash Scott Horton's show. Scott, you were on. All right. Great. Thanks so much. Scott Horton here. I'm at Porkfest, 2003 here

in Lancaster, New Hampshire with, I don't know what, two, three thousand libertarians camping out, having the time of our lives and you can see the whole galaxy from here it's beautiful if you did make it this year show up next year um and i'm having a great time done some great speeches and all of my guys at the institute have done a great job connor and kyle and keith giving great speeches and doing their part in this and uh so today i finished up my speech on um essentially

summing up the book i'm working on provoked how america started the new cold war with russia and the the catastrophe in Ukraine. And in the audience, surprisingly to me, it turns out, was Dana Rohrabacher, former congressman from Southern California. And so we got to meet briefly after the speech. And it turns out, Dana, you said you liked it, huh? I was surprised, dramatically surprised, because I was prepared not to like what you had to say.

But you know what? at least 80% I agreed almost all of it 90% I agreed adamantly with that 10% more so you you're an A plus student

for as far as I'm concerned All right, well great, thank you very much for that I appreciate it so the form of the speech of course I don't really give speeches I give lectures Right, right and so essentially it was just the history of from H.W. Bush through Clinton

W. Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden, what they had done, especially through NATO expansion, but through the color-coded revolutions and coup d'etats and other policies, and how they had provoked Russia and helped provoke this war. And this is something that I know that you've been speaking out. I can't remember, I got to admit, Dana, what you were saying back during the Orange Revolution and such, but I know that when the war broke out in the Donbass, that you had things to say about that in the Congress, the time right about what was going on there well i uh let's put it this way i thought i went

there during that time period and i went down to uh and i was known as the uh ultimate anti-communist in the west wing of the white house and uh i think i had an impact because uh i was able to see that we're talking about people and bureaucracies and uh it's a lot of the same things that uh Well, whatever question you were answering, asking me, yeah, I've had a lot of direct involvement. Yeah. Well, so, I mean, you want to go back to the 1980s when you and Sylvester Stallone went over there to save the day from the commies? Sylvester Sloan, did I go? What, Rambo 3?

That was Operation Cyclone was a joke there. Ghost wars and all that. Well, all I can say is that up until Ronald Reagan ended the Cold War, and I believe Ronald Reagan did end the Cold War. Cold War. It was whatever happened, whatever was going on, we had to look at the Soviet Union as our enemy. And I felt very comfortable in making sure that whenever there was a move that would expand the power of the Soviet Union anywhere through allies or through assassinations or taking over countries or whatever, I would be in favor of the United States stopping. But we have to take look and I was involved a lot of that in my life as you know but we when Reagan ended his term

he made a deal with the Soviets this deal should have been the basis for a free and peaceful world and it was almost that way Ronald Reagan was called a war monger for all the things that we were doing to try to stop the spread of communism but that was only when When you had a communist domination of Russia and anything that expanded that power was a threat to us because that was their goal. But with Reagan and what he did, he cut the deal about pulling, if the Russians would pull back all of their forces out of Eastern Europe, we would respect that. and we'd look at that as a new era and we didn't the bottom line is obviously people didn't understand that when the Russians were willing to pull their troops out of that area that a huge chunk of the world that that wasn't an historic move I recognize it Ronald Reagan

recognized it but the I don't want to be too hard on the bushes but A lot of people in the Republican Party, the more moderate wing of the Republican Party, they never were thinking right about the Cold War anyway. And so, anyway, I listened to your speech today, and I thought you were right on target, and Reagan set laid the foundation for peace in the world, and then they broke, they, meaning the people running our government after Reagan left, broke that deal. and that has put us a lot closer to mass annihilation than anything that's happened in my lifetime. So there's a scholar named, I believe it's M.E. Surratt who wrote this book, Not One Inch.

And she talks at length about the vast collection of foreign policy scholars and retired military men and diplomats and others who gathered together to oppose NATO expansion in the 1990s. And there's this joint letter that was put together by Susan Eisenhower, like Eisenhower's granddaughter that they all signed and it ran the LA Times and all this. But Serrat writes that the ship had already sailed three years previously. In 1994, all the decisions had been made that we are doing this. By the time they came out to complain about it in 97, it was too late. And that was sort of one last shot at it. Once they passed the original round of NATO expansion,

Kind of hardly anybody even complained when Bush added nine more countries, W. Bush, that is. It sort of was like, well, that's just the way it is now, and the Russians are just going to have to take of it. Can you take us back to the 90s? It wasn't just a military expansion. We were treating Russia like the enemy still. What do you mean by that?

I'll give an example. I was the chairman of the Space Subcommittee in the House of Representatives of the Science Committee. Science Committee, then I was the chairman of the subcommittee that oversees our space program. And I'm very proud of the legislation that I wrote on the Commercial Space Act of 2004, which was what I wrote, and made Elon Musk a lot of money, but it also created a lot of good business opportunities for Americans. But I'll tell you that one of the things that I did was that, but I was also the guy who insisted.

that if we're going to have a space program, if we're going to have a space station, remember, this is after the shuttles had gone down and everything like that, we should be partners with this new friend of ours. Russia, why not let Russia be a partner with us? And I took a lot of heat for that. But I stood up and we got it through. And so the Russians did participate and have been. participating in the space had we not done that when we quit when our shells went

down there we couldn't get our people up there and everything they the Russians ended up transporting our people as well as their own people up to the space station they didn't have to do that they would have kept thinking of us as their enemies they proved themselves they think they could treat us in a way that wasn't as an enemy but they could have taken over the space station we wouldn't have anything to do about it and I thought That was a really a positive sign, and that's why I went to Russia a couple times during that time period. But I guess that's not what other people had in mind.

I think the money end of it is true, that a lot of people make money off a Cold War with Russia. I'm not sure if that's the motive that's going on, but certainly it's something stupid going on, I'll tell you that much. Well, you know, speaking of all the heat that you got, I mean, it seems. It's like there have been certain congressmen and senators who sort of made it their project to really know a lot about Russia. Bill Bradley, who ran against Al Gore for the nomination 2000. It's another one, Senator Bradley. And he was at least somewhat expert on Russia. And it seems like people like yourself and him that essentially the difference is that the others really don't know anything about it.

And so they can sort of, it's easy to fill in their narrative, which is demonization and all that. Whereas you guys are like, well, geez, I don't know, compared to what we had before and compared to what could come next. And compared to them helping us with the space station and all of this context, it really changes things in a way. But it started with Reagan. Reagan was, and Reagan, I wrote his speeches and they'd cause a warmonger, warmonger. No, in the end, Reagan set up the world for peace. And then they didn't follow through and they ended up breaking the deals. And this is what happened in Ukraine, where we ended up overthrowing the government of an elected president of Ukraine, Yanukovych.

And that was, I think Hillary was in charge at that time. She was gone. Carrie was there. But Newland was really running the thing, of course. Well, yeah. If you heard the, have you heard the recording with Hillary and Newland? Or is Newland and Jeffrey Piot, the ambassador to Ukraine on the phone? So Hillary was out.

She did the first term, only was gone by January 13. It's good for her, because Boyd is, you know. And it's funny, because I'm actually glad you bring that up because in all the different stories of the history of the coup of 14, you don't hear very much about Kerry. The chain of command seems to go Vice President Biden to Victoria, Newland, to, you know, whichever, you know, groups are working behind the scenes from the NSA or the CIA and NED and the rest.

Well, you just had people who were just... I'm not saying he's innocent. I'm just saying we don't hear much about him. I don't know. All I know is that you had some people who couldn't get over that the Cold War should have been over. Yeah. And would have been over. And see what it was is, again, it's the fault, did the government of Russia, did they follow the principles of Marx and Lenin, were they communists?

Did they have this idea that they were going to dominate the world? No, they gave that up. Yeah. Well, Dana, so I mean, they're going to say, yeah, but you're just naive because Putin may not be Stalin, but he's still Putin, and he's still an absolute monster and a terror and aggressor. And if we don't stop him now and thwart him now, the next thing you know, he's going to be rolling into the Baltics, he's going to be rolling into Poland and Berlin after that. Well, I actually met Putin a couple times, and I remember he, uh, see, I, do you know who Nestor Machno was? No. Who knows who Nestor Machto was?

Nobody is, here you are, talking about Ukraine and you don't know who Nestor Magno was. And you're libertarians. Destor Machno was... Guys, make a note. You got to figure it out. Nestor Machno was an anarchist leader in Ukraine during World War I. And Nestor Machno actually controlled, Machno's legions controlled about, what, a third or was maybe a fourth of Ukraine.

And his troops put up signs all over the place, said, you are free to do anything you want except form of government. So, and Mr. McDonough, of course, became one of my heroes. And I had a big picture of Mr. Michael on the wall. That's cool. And, but what happened is the young political leaders

came to visit Washington from, Russia. And then, and they had to come and see me for whatever reason. And so they came in to see me and I have a picture of Nestor Machno on my wall. So these Russian kids, they knew who Nestor Magno was. And so anyway, what happened is I had long talk with them and I told them, because I had led, Reagan had put me in charge of a delegation of young political leaders from the United States and I went there with them to Russia and but anyway I got up to this group of Russians and I said to them is anyone here want to play some American style football and these are some big lugs there and there's Putin's there too I

didn't know who his put Putin was at the time and I said yeah we'll play football with you okay so I said okay beat me me down the spot at the mall and tomorrow. And I had some of the hardest core anti-communist, anti-Soviet guys in the whole world on my team. And I invited them all. And we had a game in which they came in and we, we didn't play. We divided them up a little bit. This is what year? In 19, ooh, let's see, what year was it? It must have been 80, 90, something. Must have been 90, 3 or 4, I think. Well, Reagan's still there.

No, Reagan's not. Oh, this is H.W. Bush era. I guess. Okay. I'm sorry, go ahead. I'm not sure because it's my memory again. That's fine. I'm the same way.

Okay. But anyway, so we, after we played American-style football, and I said, hey, let's all go up there to that public. The Irish Times in Washington is a nice pub. Let's all go up and have some beer or something. And so he had three Russians and the rest of us went up there. And so anyway, I didn't know who Putin was at that time. I didn't know who Putin was.

And so anyway, what happens is we start a discussion, and I'm sitting at the table with Putin. and I'm saying, well, because, you know, when you lost the Cold War, that's when things started improving, blah, blah, blah, lost the Cold War. Oh, yeah, you did lose the Cold War. Don't tell him we didn't. We won, and you lost. No, we didn't lose the Cold War.

All the reforms we've had since, because it's what we wanted to do. And I said, no, no, you lost. And so finally, we decided we'd settle this the way Americans said. I said, we're going to settle this way of Americans. So I put my arm on the table and got it ready to arm wrestle him, right? And he put me down in a millisecond. Bam, I was down. And so this friend of mine, do you know who Jack Wheeler is?

The name sounds familiar. A writer. You should know. No, he's the, he was the ultimate cold warrior. Okay. And he, I went, I did a lot of things to defeat the Soviet Union during the Cold War with him. And, but anyway, he comes up to me, whispers in my ear and says, let me take him on, Dave, let me take him on. So Wheeler gets down, and I know Wheeler is stronger than I am, because he helped me unload

a 120 millimeter rockets to shoot at Russians in Afghanistan, uh, at the Battle of Jalalabad, I might add. So anyway... Dan Laden was there. I'm sorry, then. Anyway, Wheeler gets him in this arm lock, and they start going down, and Putin is putting my friend Jack down. Its arm's going down, and Jack turned around and says,

when should I start, Dana? He said, get him now, and Wheeler puts him up, bam! And all of a sudden, Putin jumps up and starts screaming at my friend, CIA, CIA, CIA! And my friend Jack, comes up to him and punches him in the chest, nose to nose, and goes, KGB, KGB. And then they both sat down, started to drink him, and we had a wonderful rest of the day. Wow, that's great.

Anyway, I don't know what that answered any of your questions. It didn't, but I love the story. The only question, though, was, yeah, but now he's a psychopath and he's going to take over the world, like that time that Saddam Hussein almost did if we didn't stop him, you know? I don't, you know what, I think that we had a reason to worry that when a communist regime was taking power and thus were utilizing their new authority or their authority to hurt us, to hurt the United States, to hurt cause of freedom, and which they saw capitalism and freedom as being their enemy, well, That's what the communist did. But in terms of the Arab thread, and what did I ever put a Muslim thread,

I didn't see it that way. We have Muslim friends. But communist friends, they aren't real communists that they want to be friends in the United States at that time. But real Muslims could be friends in the United States. And Russians now without communism. That's absolutely correct. And that's the problem is we are treating Russian people

people who probably don't like communism. In fact, their opposition to communism is probably heavier than ours is because they lived through it and how horrible it was. So anyway, I sort of changed my, look, the Cold War was over. Ronald Reagan won it for us.

Now we're having arm wrestling matches with people in the Irish pub and all the rest. But it, it, A lot of the people felt that I was becoming pro-Russian or something. I wasn't pro-Russian. I was just pro-peace and pro-get-along with these people. They're good people. Let's profit and benefit and have a good relationship.

But that's a big change when I was writing the speeches for Ronald Reagan. And everybody knew, and everybody knew I was supporting the insurgency movements that we had against communist regimes. Well, I said, I'd not apologize for that. That was a good thing then. But once we had convinced the Russians to pull back and have this great sign to the world that we are now no longer going to be oppressing people with having our troops in these countries and murdering people who don't are trying to oppose communism, well, they've changed their ways. And so, anyway, I changed my own.

highway when they changed their way. And I felt that we should try to work with them like in the space shuttle and the space station. I don't know if you know, but in fact, right before the, I won't say the war broke out because it had been going on for quite a long time, but right before the war got much worse, a little more than a year ago, they launched an American satellite on a Russian rocket powered by a Ukrainian motor. And they'd been, they'd done the same thing October before that in 2021. And so this. This is the kind of cooperation that we ought to be able to go right back to. In fact, I believe that they at one point launched a rocket in the same sort of fashion during the war. I'm glad you used that as an example because I probably was responsible for that. Well, good, thank you. Because I'm sure that probably happened when I was chairman of the space subcommittee, and I was pushing for trying to be cooperative with them for peaceful projects like this. Great.

And, but we have, and I don't think it's an animus towards communism or tyranny or crookedness or whatever. I think that we've got problems with deep state, just like the left wing and other people have tried to warn us, that our country is not run by the Ronald Reagan's, who were honestly anti-communists because there was a threat to peace and security of the world, our own freedom. But Reagan and Dana Rohrabacher's in the world, we weren't anti-Russian, we were, and we're for peace. And now you have these people who are causing the most problem with Russia. Who is Hillary is the one who sent those guys in to overthrow the government of Yucana, Yanukovych, in Ukraine. And they did it knowing that that would be seen as, as, as, as, as, as, as, as, as, as, slap in the face of communism, et cetera.

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So heads up all you anti-war vets. We've got a mission for you. Find out all about their upcoming training. sessions and help support at bring our troops home.us and defend the guard.us. Hey, y'all Scott Horton here for the Libertarian Institute at Libertarian Institute.org. I'm the director. Then we've got Sheldon Richmond, Kyle Anzalone, Keith Knight, Lori Calhoun, Jim Bovard, Connor, Connor, Conner Freeman, Will Porter, Patrick Meafarlane, and Tommy Salman's on our staff, writing and podcasting. And we've also got a ton of other great writers, too, like Walter Block,

Richard Booth, Boss Spleat, Kim Robinson, and William Ben Wagonin. We've published eight books so far, including my latest, Hotter Than the Sun, Time to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, and Keith Knight's new Voluntarius Handbook. And we've got quite a few more great ones coming soon. Check out Libertarian Institute.org slash books. It's a whole new era. We libertarians don't have the power, but we do have enough influence to try to lead the left and the right to make things right. Join us at Libertarian Institute.org. Book club on Monday.

Gym on Tuesday. Date night on Wednesday. Out on the town on Thursday. Quiet night in on Friday. It's good to have a routine. And it's good for your eyes too. Because with regular comprehensive eye exams at Specsavers, you'll know just how healthy

they are. Visit Spexsavers. to book your next eye exam, eye exams provided by independent optometrists. So look, after Iraq War I, famously, Scooter Libby and Paul Wolfowitz, and Zalmei Khalil Zad wrote up this defense plan and guidance, otherwise known as the Wolfowitz Doctrine. This is America has to military dominate the entirety of the planet and allow no near-peer competitor ever again, and we'll attack them first, we'll do anything we can to disrupt them. Because that is the only way to keep the peace is for America, a.k.a. goodness, to hold crisis down.

And that, so in other words, when we extend what a cynic might call American hegemony and protection of American interests into other spheres, they say, no, we're only protecting the liberal rules-based international order of law and friendship and agreed upon agreements whereby the rules everybody's supposed to act and anybody who's opposing that they're the ones who are aggressing against the world order so in other words this world order is this objective thing that america is the steward and guardian of rather than in any sense an empire exploiting and taking advantage and pushing their power into others spheres of influence it's very hard to make these two sides even understand each other's kind of

point of view of the matter never mind the other side up from russia's side looking at this coming toward them so i agree i agree with that that's the analysis of what it's like and what's going on but what i would suggest is that uh the russians uh should never have been once once they pulled their troops out of eastern europe we should have changed our whole way of looking at them but what you're saying is they kept the same way at the same time at the same time of strategy, global strategy, even though the Russians had not proven themselves to want peace enough to pull all their troops out of Eastern Europe, for God's sake. Right.

And they proved it. And then we, and so I, and why didn't we do that? Because I think that, and I sort of agree with a lot of radical libertarians and everything, I think we've got a deep state and it's not just that they're so idealistic they're protecting our country. No. a lot of profit being made from a lot of people who are profiting off a bad relationship, not a bad relationship, a threat, a global threat, still coming from Russia.

Yeah. Listen, as long as I have you here, I've got to ask you about this. You've been out front on legalizing pot for, what, 30 years, more 40, 50 years. Actually, Eric Garris told me, 50 years ago he met you, 1971, more than 50 years ago. He met you at an organization, a rally, working to try to legalize pot in California. So I know you're not exactly a typical Republican. You mentioned your affinity for anarchism and libertarianism. I know, especially in your past there, but can you talk about, because so many people think

of pot as such a trivial issue, because it truly is a trivial issue. And yet, can you talk about why you think it's so important? Because it's certainly treated by the law as nothing trivial at all. It's a freedom issue. It's freedom. That's all. I will have to say that at some point in my life, I may have smoked some marijuana, admittedly. But that wasn't, even if I had never smoked marijuana at all, I still would not believe that it was a good idea to put people in jail for doing something that only affects their own body.

And so, yeah, I was in favor of, I was, I did support that, and I was very successful. I was more successful than ever thought I would be in that I passed a really important piece of legal mandate in law. And it's called the Roerbach-Far-Far Amendment, and it's still in power now. It's still been placed in the budgets and the treasury bills and everything. And what it is, it says the federal government can't spend any money in its budget. No federal money can be used by the federal government to supersede a state law on the medical use of marijuana. And so I barely got that through, but it got through it and it's still in play. No, but it's a freedom issue.

And, yeah, I spoke dope a little bit when I was disillusioned. I got back from Vietnam. I worked with some anti-communist programs in Vietnam for several months in 1967. And I was a little bit demoralized, and I knew we would lose, and I saw a lot of bloodshed. And with a horror story. And so that's when I sort of retreated to. a wild ass lifestyle fair enough well and you weren't alone for that era for sure so i mean you want to tell us a little bit more about what you were doing in vietnam and what happened

there well i was um when i when i uh i made a reputation for myself because i'd worked in young americans for freedom and youth for regan and i went saw regan and came out in his back lawn one time and i had to talk to him this is when he's governor california no this is when his first race for California. Okay, way back. And so anyway, I went with him, I went to him, and Nancy tried to kick me out of us. It was, I was there overnight camping his back lawn, and Nancy tried to kick me out, and Reagan came running after me, wait a minute, wait a minute, you know, if you can spend the night by back, well, I can certainly spend some time with you. And so, anyway, I saved youth for Reagan, and I got to be a real big reputation,

around the country, this guy Roerbocker, he'll do anything, blah, blah, blah. And so anyway, some friends of mine who were working with the CIA in a package and tried to, anyway, I was not an agent of the agency, but they sent me to Vietnam to see if I could do certain things and come back and talk about it, which I did. Yeah. But it was a mess. And you said this is in 67? Yeah.

And can you tell us where you were? what in what you saw? I was in, uh, well, uh, I was in play coup, which is a base of operations that we went. I went up to play coup in order to meet with mountain yard tribal leaders and see what I, what we could talk to them about. I was given, um, I was given a rank of major in the United States Air Force, uh, so I could, whatever I went in Vietnam, I would be treated like a senior officer. And that was given to me by the agency. And I did everything I could and walked away, feeling that we were going to lose. And I saw a lot of bloodshed and it was a horse word. And it's saying that you saw that we were going to lose, meaning you saw a lack of support

for the central government there or an enthusiasm for the insurgents? Not, they weren't an enthusiasm for the insurgents, but I, but there was, for example, how shall I put this? We, our guys were all crooked. And for example, I went to a, to meet with a group of doctors at Vung Tao, which was a area there. and sort of from Saigon, you go toward the ocean, and there's a base there. And some doctors were very upset, American doctors, and they had every bit of what they were giving. They were trying to start clinics that would win the hearts and minds of the people

to the American side or to the non-communist side. And what happened was they'd end up giving medical supplies to these villages. And immediately, then South Vietnamese allies of us would go in and take all those supplies and sell them to the North Vietnamese army. And so we were ending up, we're ending up supplying and, you know, and, you know, and, you. the bad guys and we convinced all the American people or all the Vietnamese people Americans aren't going to win this because look at this and so we ended up as I say we're financing the other side and then I saw a lot of bloodshed in a couple of times

and I just it was awful you know they're making a you know they're making a profit off these guys who aren't going to be a big guy i stopped by this one guy because he was a surfer and he was that shot himself in the he was in a jungle thing and he and american GI yeah american GI and they as they pulled it they tried to cross a little stream and he gave his rifle over and they pulled him across but the gun went off and he severed his spinal cord and so he was and i asked the doctor said well if he lives if he lives We don't know if he's going to be paralyzed from the waist down or the shoulders down. And that was pretty hard on a young idealist going there, seeing that crap.

Sure. And I came back and I said, we're going to lose this. That sounds just like the war in Afghanistan, frankly, all the corruption and financing the enemy through the pro-civilian programs for the side we're trying to support and all in that. I'll tell you one thing. I mean, I was very close to what happened in Afghanistan, because I was in Afghanistan as well during... In the 80s, you mean?

No. Or in the W. Bush years? I will tell you that I was at the Battle of Jalalabad and other places with the Battle of the battle of... And I helped smuggle in the 120 millimeter rockets that pulverized the Soviet forces at the Battle of Jalalabad. Yeah. uh you know the thing i did and what about america's afghan war from 2001 through 21 well you know i

i understand and i think trump's wrong in that he uh and everybody's saying that biden uh ends ended up in this horrible retreat from afghanistan how horrible it was you know we we let these guys off the, you know, we didn't do it right, you know, we didn't retreat in the right kind of way. Well, I'm sorry, but why were we retreating in the first place? And I will tell you, and I, you probably don't know, because unless you know the characters, we had provided the wrong side, the wrong people, with the weapons and support they needed to defeat. What we were doing is we supported radicalism.

Islamists who were friends of Pakistan. There were all sorts of other people who were really good to human beings. Zaire Shaw, I don't know if you know, Zyar Shah was the king of Afghanistan. He was there. You had Commander Massoud and others when he was alive and they murdered him. And there were a lot of people like that, but we ended up giving the lion's share of our stuff to people who should not have had it, who were radical Islam. And the Pashtuns are still the plurality of the country, right? So if you just give all the power to the Tajik's, it's not going to work. I mean, that's what they were mostly trying to do for 20 years, wasn't it? You know, that's a, you showed your, you're really, you're educated. I gave you my Afghanistan book. Most people, most people don't know. I did write a book about it. Most people have no idea about the difference between Tajik's and push tunes. But, but the push tunes, I'm sorry.

Yeah, they were a lot of push students who were just radicals. And we should not have been giving weapon systems of them. If the Tajik's were friends. Okay, but wait, wait, so back to Trump and Biden, though. After 20 years of Bush and Obama, surging and surging and failing and failing to figure out how to pacify the Boston population. And Trump says it's time to bail out of here. Biden agrees.

He obviously flubbed the withdrawal. But you're saying that we should have stuck it out another decade? No. I'm saying that... Or they should have gone back in time and back to different cast of characters. No, we should have had a different policy during that time

when Trump was president. We could have, we could have averted that by supporting the good guys. There are a lot of good guys. I know, you look to them just as the ethnic background, but there's more than just the ethnic room. Sure. Sure. You've got a bunch of good guys

and we were supporting bad guys. Well, but I mean, what good guys are you talking about? Because you got General Dostom, who was the secretary of defense minister and then vice president. Good friend of mine. Okay, but he's also a murderer. Hey, you do. Do you know anybody in the military that has been in a war that has not been called a murderer? I mean, in 2017, he had to flee to Turkey for a while because he had his men hold a guy down and rape him up the ass with an AK-47.

so then he fled to Turkey for a little while and then he came back and became defense minister again I think he was the trouble about making your decisions based on who's raping people of the end of an AK-47 Yeah, that's right It's because you don't know what the guy who Tell me about the guy who got raped I'm sure he wouldn't a very good dude

They must have got him out of Obama's Bogram dungeon You know, for all you know The guy had himself blown up a bunch of civilians could be not could be probably because general doston was a good man i mean i tell you the truth if i remember right it was just a competing member of parliament who's been talking about him was all it was oh well that's but that that could happen who knows i don't know you know ghani and abdula you know we're both trying to kill each other as a runner for president neither of them would concede when the other one won and they did that two elections in a row and in fact

the election before that cars i had just told everybody you vote for me or we're going to kill you and they just stuffed the ballots and the whole thing was a god damn hoax that's 2009 and in 14 and then when they did it again and whether it was i think 17 or or or late 16 when they did the election and somebody's you know throwing bombs at ghanie and it was like abdula's guy doing it like i'm at bush and gore throwing grenades at each other in the front of the thing wait ways lean forward lean forward here right now i would not be supportive of some of the policies that I was supporting before. Because during the Cold War, I felt that we needed to thwart the communist expansion in the world.

And if you've got another country that's taken over by a communist regime, it's going to eventually put us at risk and heavier risk. And so, you know, it takes a while to get out of that mindset. Especially radical Islam, how are we going to, a lot of people thought we were going to deal with radical Islam the way we deal with communism, but I'm not sure exactly how you do. You should have it up to them for one thing. Well, I'll be interested, maybe we could talk again after you read enough already, because I'll be interested in what you think about the way I present the Sunni Shield Wars during

all this time and how America keeps switching. sides back and forth again. Of which, which are it? Well, the Sunni-Shia wars, essentially Saudi, you know, Riyadh versus Tehran, with America mostly on Riyadh's side and yet continuing to benefit the Iranian side every time they tried to thwart them, right? Bush, Bush thought that by invading Iraq, he was going to stick it in the Ayatollah's eye and said he handed him Baghdad.

So then Obama thought he'd blow up Assad and that would get, that would show the Ayatollah. And all that happened was Assad became more dependent on Iran. Hezbollah than ever before. So then he said, oh, yeah, I'll show you all go and I'll bomb those Houthis down in Yemen, who just became more dependent and closer to Iran than ever before. And now Iran is more powerful in the region because of three major operations by America in the last 20 years to try to screw them over. And I know that you prefer the Saudis to the Iranians in this one, right?

I probably do, yeah. Yeah. I do. And I, but I don't think it's as clear cut. And I try not to get involved in that war. I mean, I'm not in favor of us being the policemen of the world, and that's that. But that's whether or not the good guys or bad guys are winning is sort of irrelevant to me or dominating the scene. I just don't think that we should be deeply involved in all that now.

Now that the Soviet Union is no longer threatening us. yeah and i don't think they are straight yeah right sure got agreement from all of us on that um and you know there's a a certain brand of guys uh maybe a pretty small cohort of guys who i think came with you i don't know all exactly at the same time but certainly scott mcconnell and pat buchanan and jude winiski and a lot of these guys who had been ardent cold warriors said, well, that's over with. And, you know, even maybe when Gorbachev was still in power, but the Cold War was over.

Reagan and Gorbachev are piling around eating pizza together and whatever. So we can abolish NATO and bring the whole thing home. We don't have to do this at all anymore. But that didn't really take the rest of the government just kept going. No, because it wasn't Ronald Reagan who was in charge. That's right. He was done by then. It was the other wing of the Republican Party, the Bushies.

And the Bushies are taught different than Reaganites. Let me ask you this. Now that you're no longer in Congress, are you doing anything to help educate people about America's relationship with Russia in this time? Well, I've taken a lot of hits. I've taken a lot of hits on it, just simply because I think that we should be trying to work with Russia where we can. There's a lot of usual, beneficial things we can be doing with Russians. And we have, anyway, like you've outlined today, we've decided to thwart them of whatever they really want. want to do and but but anyway uh so your question is is what yeah what are you up to now what am i up to now i'm uh i'm right i've written a book about my adventures starting old back when i was a kid but also uh i called it fighting for freedom and having fun

is the title okay great and it's and it's basically uh um all of a lot of things we've been talking about tonight one of the personalities that we're talking about tonight And I've been blessed for getting to know, and I haven't been close with Ronald Reagan, but also I know them all. And they all owe Dana. That's cool. Well, from the Ron Paulians, I think I can speak for most of us. It's been great to talk to you tonight. Thank you so much for coming to my speech.

It's been great to make your queens, and I've really appreciated this great conversation. I'm looking forward to working with you on getting, you have such, I was expecting to disagree with you a lot. but I don't disagree with you a lot I think I probably disagree with you heavily maybe 10% I'll take it I'll take it that's it because I think Well the book's in progress now so I'll be very happy

to have your endorsement right at the top in Dan Ellsberg's spot because unfortunately you had to pass on without us there Sure Okay well great Listen thank you so much again for doing the show Dan I appreciate it Okay

All right you guys from Porkfest That's Dana Rohrabacher Thanks Thank you the scott horton show anti-war radio can be heard on kpfk ninety point seven fm in l a psradyo dot com antiwar dot com scott horton dot org and libertarian institute dot org