Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 9/5/24 James Carden on the Afghanistan Withdrawal and Kamala Harris’ Foreign Policy

Episode Date: September 10, 2024

Scott interviews James Carden about two articles he wrote recently. The first looks back at the war in Afghanistan. He and Scott talk about how Obama immediately went the wrong direction with the war, how Trump had some good instincts but was ignored by his subordinates and why the disastrous withdrawal really was Biden’s fault. They then talk about all the neoconservatives and neoliberals who make up the foreign policy establishment rallying behind their new candidate — Kamala Harris. Discussed on the show: “The Real Tragedy of Afghanistan” (The American Conservative) “Looser rules, more civilian deaths, a Taliban takeover: Inside America’s failed Afghan drone campaign” (Audacy) “The Foreign Policy Establishment Licks Its Chops for Harris” (The American Conservative) “Video of Joe Biden Warning of Russian Hostility if NATO Expands Resurfaces” (Newsweek) Yesterday's Man: The Case Against Joe Biden by Branko Marcetic Bill Hicks on JFK James Carden is a columnist and senior advisor to the American Committee for US-Russia Accord (ACURA) and a former adviser on Russia policy at the US State Department. His articles and essays have appeared in a wide variety of publications including The Nation, The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, The Spectator, UnHerd, The National Interest, Quartz, The Los Angeles Times, and American Affairs. This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Roberts and Robers Brokerage Incorporated; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; Libertas Bella; 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 scothorton dot for you can sign up the podcast feed there and the full interview archive is also available at youtube.com slash scott horton's show all right you guys on the line i've got james cardin and he's from acura and that is the uh let's get along with the russians instead of having a nuclear war group over there i can never remember the acronym the acronym for Accura. But anyway, it's and he also writes to the American Conservative magazine

TAC. That's the acronym for the American Conservative magazine. I can remember that. He writes for TAC. And he's got great stuff here and one of them is the real tragedy of Afghanistan. And I see and hear that there's a lot

of opinioning about Afghanistan by a lot of people don't know the first thing about that war. And so I thought you know, because it is the anniversary of the disaster withdrawal and everybody's doing all their opinioning about it that we would talk to James. So, hi, welcome back to the show. How are you? I'm good. Thanks for having me on. It's the American Committee for U.S.-Russia Accord. I knew that. I have that in my brain

somewhere. It's just dormant. No, it's a lot. Unlike Shokin's investigation into Burisma, it was dormant um yeah so afghanistan well i mean i i i think i feel like i should be the one asking you the question since you literally wrote the book on uh on afghanistan but i'll try to keep up today well yeah i mean i your article's great um ain't nothing wrong with it i saw it starts out with um now the war could have ended a long time earlier, and Obama was elected mostly on ending Iraq, but the sentiment was, let's just stop doing what Bush has been doing. If it takes electing a black guy with two of his three

names sound like two of our enemies, Osama and Hussein there, then that'll be fine. We'll do that if that's what it takes to stop what Bush is doing, and instead he come in and he tripled the goddamn thing. So why don't you tell that story? first because that still bothers me and it's an important part of the prelude it's the prequel to how come we're even talking about withdraw in 2021 anyway yeah i think that's an important story because it also points to kind of the deterioration of a civilian control over um the military so when Obama got into office, January of 2009, you know, there was an expectation that he would begin to wind down these forever wars. The Afghanistan war began on October 7, 2001. At that

point, bin Laden was still in the wind. So we now know, of course, he was in Pakistan, not Afghanistan. Obama in his methodical, you know, professorial way launched a 10-month review of policy in Afghanistan. That might have been a mistake because it gave his opponents within his own cabinet plenty of time to, you know, rally their cause. And ultimately what happened, was that when the decision, when he finally got around to make a decision after 10 months and about 10 or 11 meetings of his top national security advisors, he ended up agreeing to send roughly 40,000 more troops into Afghanistan, 30-some-a-thousand-a-thousan Americans plus contribution, a contribution from Europe.

So President Obama got rolled in his first year by the Hawks in his own cabinet. Predominantly Leon Panetta, Hillary Clinton, General Mike Mullen, and then David Petraeus. There were a couple of the centers. from the, from the idea of an increase, Joe Biden and Tom Donlin, but that was about it. Every time, you know, Obama said he wanted to get to a point where he wanted to withdraw the military intelligence and policy advisors always came back with a bigger number. so Obama basically got played but it was a lesson I think that he unlike a lot of recent American presidents I think Obama has had the ability to learn from his experiences and so when it came time to launch a war a full-blown war in Syria he was at least wise enough

to ask some pertinent questions and decided to not go haul hog though of course one could say that he did also get rolled when it when when the issue of Libya came up but so that's anyway sorry I'm going on but that's the that's the beginning of the of the story yeah and then he did order his withdrawal he delayed it I think once he's drawed down but then he did go ahead and draw down but then the idea was we'd be all the way out by the end of 2014 and then when it came to that actually no that's canceled the number we last drew down to which i forget exactly what it was now that's going to stay and he left office with i guess it was 25 000 troops left or 50 000 troops left or something um

I do got what Biden's got. It's terrible. But, uh, so then he left it. And then, so Trump came in and he escalated the thing. And, you know, the story of his first year there, it's just crazy how it all went. And I know he had a lot going on. But in March, he ordered all troops out of Afghanistan. And they bragged about this to Bob Woodward, uh, Tillerson and, Mattis, they weren't even, he didn't get a scoop on him, you know, that somebody ratted on them. They told him this, that they just looked at each other, said, we're not doing that. And they just ignored his order, but then Trump, of course, forgot all about it. And the next time it came

up, really, you know, was when he ordered the escalation in August. And then, of course, he famously tried in the very last weeks of his administration to draw down from the Middle East And once again, his own advisors prevented that from happening, particularly Robert C. O'Brien and his defense secretary, Chris Miller. And, you know, trouble, you know, worryingly, you know, these people seem poised to make a return under a second Trump administration. right yeah oh brian and he's someone who wrote the giant thing in foreign affairs about what trump's new national security strategy will be and it could have been written by robert kagan you know it's the same old thing oh absolutely um you know it's a very hawkish statement and once again you know trump sometimes awakens from his deep slumber and says things that you know actually

makes sense. And today, for instance, he spoke in New York City to the New York Economic Club. And, you know, it was primarily, as you would expect, a speech about the economy. But, you know, he said some really sensible things about the danger of nuclear weapons. And he spoke at length about how dangerous the situation is and how, you know, there's a real threat of World War III and we can't have this happen. And, you know, climate change is, you know, is nothing compared to what he calls nuclear warming. And he said, you know, we better be smart. And this is a quote, we better be smart and we better have smart people at the top who know how to deal with these, deal with these things. And, you know, he was speaking in a question and answer period extemporaneously. And it really

did seem like he understood the danger that these weapons posed to humanity. And yet at the same time, he has people like Pompeo and O'Brien in his, you know, in his inner circle. So, you know, it concerns me that you know, should he win, we're going to have a replay of Trump won. And, you know, during Trump won, as you know, and as I'm sure your listeners know, you know, every time Trump tried to do something sensible in the Middle East, they undermined him. I mean, John Bolton, who served as one of his national security advisors, brags about undermining Trump's agenda in his memoir so you know that's kind of the situation I think that he's going to be facing once again unless he wises up I know which he ain't going to do

he'd have to start reading the national interest in the American conservative magazine and he's just can I just jump in there real quickly not the national interest if you it's been a while i haven't been reading it closely 20 you know 2012 or something maybe but you know the national interest has um transformed into a neocon rag um oh that's too bad it would not be yeah that would not be something that we would want uh mr trump to have on the well tack then tack yeah i mean i talked with danny davis earlier and i was watching him interview dug before that and I'm thinking well you know there's your defense secretary and national security visor so what's the problem it's so obvious you can't even get the guy to watch youtube you know what I mean

I don't know I mean he knows McGregor I don't know if he's got McGregor up his sleeve or not but it sure would be nice and and this is so obvious and this should be obvious to Trump in the same way you know it's this different dynamic with Obama but he could have done something like this but clearly with Trump and certainly with McGregor by his side. The narrative is we're so tough that we're not scared to anybody and that's why we can end all the wars and bring all our troops home and stop supporting allies all around the world and all of these things that we're doing because I ain't afraid to know Iatola. Right.

Like if Doug McGregor told you, I ain't afraid to know Ayatola, you'd be like, yeah, of course you're not, right? Perfect. So just get up there and say that. right and then um it'd be like if they could get maddus to say that it would be credible coming from him you know what i mean so same kind of thing and um i don't know why trump well i do it's the zionism man right that's the key to the empire anyway is the empire can't come home because then we won't be available to help Israel that's what irving crystal and norman pot horrid said in

1977 or whatever so that's america's life story now well i think that's unfortunately the case in terms of middle eastern policy um trump does seem to have some sensible instincts um with regard to he had he falls back on his old deal-making instincts when he talks about china and when he talks about russia he doesn't seem to be particularly ideological where the ideology does creep in as you point out is when it comes to israel um in the middle east and he's every you know there's just simply no daylight between uh the two parties on that issue yeah and so i'm sorry i'm like control effing through my book trying to find this guy's name because again with the biden brain i can't remember who he is um but it's this special forces officer it's the guy you

might know who i'm talking about he's the he's he's the reporter who did the story about the four green berets who got killed by isis in jordan where they were training terrorists for the syria war um and he also did this great article about well he did one about cia uh supporting missions inside russia about a year ago and he also did one that was a really in-depth thing about the air war in afghanistan in the trump years it's not william parkin is it no um no no no no this guy was a he was a ranger this guy or a green beret i think he was a green beret um and i'm so sorry you i'm blanking on his name here um but uh anyway he had this really great piece about the drone war in the helmand province and there was so little journalism about the

afghan war during the trump years because most of the troops were out of there and the focus was on so many other things but there were you know there was a special forces war in nangahar and the marines went back to helmand and they had a massive drone war in helmand and i guess in kandahar too think especially in helman anyway god the guy's name is on the the tip of my tongue um but uh it was a horror show down there and they're just bombing the crap out of everybody it wasn't just drones it was you know planes too but it was mostly air war and they're just bombing people over the slightest pretext from 30,000 feet they don't know who they're killing you know and uh and that went on for four years but then he did negotiate his way

out of there finally although he didn't leave as you say his own government prevented him from leaving and he was trying to leave early because he made a deal to leave in 21 after he was safely reelected if he was safely reelected and you know what let me ask you what your opinion is this speaking of the national interest

he got Zalmeh Khalil Zad who obviously he's an Afghan but he's a neocon studied under Strauss with all those guys that the University of Chicago is part of their group, you know, or at least their mascot. He's not a maid guy. He's very close to them. And somehow Trump made a deal with him, and he kept it to really see through a deal with the Taliban that, okay, we'll leave. And I wonder what you think is behind that. Because it would have been just as easy for Khalil's odd to lie to him and, you know, just string them along. and stay.

Well, I'm not sure. I mean, it's sort of the same story about, you know, like, how did someone like Elliot Abrams, you know, slither his way into the, into the Trump administration. Well, no, it would be more like, why did Elliot Abrams do that one good thing that he did, except that he didn't, right? But in this case, like, because Khalil Zad really negotiated an end to a, war and it just seemed like that kind of thing would have been it would have been more likely that he would have betrayed everybody and trump and state and really you know perhaps the fact that he had

been you know on the ground right he had actually seen what was going on uh with his own eyes as ambassador yeah that's true yeah um and so look now talk about the withdrawal because i think you know trump if he'd been reelected at least the deal was that we'd be gone by May 1st and not start with drawing in late July or whatever Biden started, you know, kick the can down the road. So we're not going to leave till September. But it was fighting season and the Taliban didn't delay their timeline. So I don't know exactly how it would have been, but it seems like the real disaster of the withdrawal is on Biden. I don't think. it's likely that would have happened under Trump because he wouldn't have played it that way.

Yeah, sure. There's, you know, obviously there's, there's no way to know. But the, you know, it's just another example of the, you know, really deep-seated incompetence that this administration has shown throughout. It seems like if the president left the decision up to Jake Sullivan, and Jake Sullivan seems to have decided on a whim that this was going to happen in August. And that's what happened. And, you know, from what I've read, you know, a lot of the military people were taken by surprise by this administration. And, of course, the decision backfired tragically and horribly. with the terrorist attack by ISIS K at the Abbey Gate at Karzai Airport,

where 13 American servicemen were killed and over 170 Afghan civilians were killed. I think that Trump, by reaching an agreement with the Taliban and then by acting on it did in the you know at the macro level made the right call but it was a shambles on the ground but that's something that i think that we've all come to expect from biden and his you know team of second raiders i know they really do suck by the way the guy's name is jack murphy not that i remembered it i just found it in my text here and it's not jack murphy the weirdo guy with the weird beard who embarrassed himself or whatever this is a totally different jack murphy the special forces

veteran who had written uh those articles i was referring to there oh interesting yeah i was aware of the the strange one yeah so if you remember about the the four guys this was a big really important story that of course got barry that the cia had the rangers were they green berets I think they were I think they're Rangers The CIA had them training Al-Qaeda terrorists in Jordan for use against Assad

And then they stabbed him in the back And killed them It was one of the One of the guards at the base Where they were training these guys Got recruited by them And then, you know, talk about biting the hand that feeds you kind of thing

Except that, you know, Al-Qaeda They're sort of like a rabid Rottweil in their way. You know what I mean? Sure, you can use them against the Russians and their friends, but they're going to knock your towers down sometimes, too.

Got to look out for that. Exactly. And we never learned our lesson. We get into bed with these people. And ultimately, it always comes back to Hanas. Yeah.

And which is, you know, speaking of which, like, this is going on right now. I don't know if you saw there was one from this morning where I have it here where that's not it here here Munich police kill armed man near Israeli consulate in Munich terror attack guy was shooting up the consulate over there and then I don't know how credible this is but I believe it because I'm extra paranoid right now that the New York Times says that the CIA foiled a plot to blow up a table. Baylor Swift concert that apparently, they didn't say specifically, but I guess the implication was that they were going to collapse a stadium full of little girls and their parents and killed 10,000 people or something like that, you know, potentially. And I don't know how serious that was. Doesn't seem like the FBI was framing up retards in Austria for this one. You know, I don't know yet for sure but that could happen and they sure continue to provoke these same guys that

they support from time to time too and uh it puts a lot of people in a lot of danger it seems like well sure and of course the the obvious next point you have to make is gee whiz why would they do something like this and um the you know the answer of course that no one in the mainstream media or in the administration or in congress or in the major think tanks in washington want to talk about is our policy in israel um and you know the fact of the matter is is that biden's policy of unconditional support for israel puts a target on the back of every single living american yep uh same as before And still, and, yeah, and, you know, you can take little ones, like, you know, you can't chalk this up to whatever, you know, it's a, might not even be a lone wolf. It might just be a crazy person, but like there was a black guy stabbed a Jew in Brooklyn and said, free Palestine. And that was, you know, a few weeks ago. And that to me is just like the first little bits of smoke on the coming blaze. You know what I mean? It's just as easy for five guys to take over an airplane.

and bring down a skyscraper with a knife you know these things happen well sure i mean i think anyone who is walking around today thinking that the ongoing slaughter of the Palestinian population is not going to result in some sort of blowback that harms large numbers of american citizens and or American soldiers is kidding themselves. That is, you know, the Biden's policy is, you know, it's a disgrace.

It's a stain on the, on his record, not on the conscious of our nation. And I think that we, you know, we will one day be in for it. There are long memories. out there yeah well you know i always wondered if is it just the buddhism or what the north

vietnamese don't take revenge or the hell the the south vietnamese don't take revenge for what america did to them let bygones be bygones and things like that we quit messing with them so much you know what i mean i think a good first step is to stop messing with them and also stop backing them and then see how it goes from there but we got this really dangerous policy support them and provoke them and then do not very much to protect the american people from them and so you know the problem is it's too easy for even an idiot to do so much damage i mean you saw 14 year old boy, shot up a school, killed four people and wounded, what, nine or ten or something yesterday? Or day before, whatever. I lose track of time. It's so easy for just one jackass

to do so much damage. And then, so what about people who aren't jackasses? What about people who really know what they're doing and have something really terrible in mind? This country is just lousy with soft targets. You can't protect them all, you know? Yep. Oh, that's exactly right. If only we had people in charge who understood that. Yeah, or cared what happened to us at all. No. Or even to them, I mean, their Pentagon got hit, and they had to have lost friends in those towers.

Those towers had important people in them, not just office workers and stuff, you know. But whatever. It didn't seem to matter then. They switched right back to Al-Qaeda within 10 years. right by 2011 they're right back to it really i mean no not right well i mean just you know by oh seven by oh six oh seven with the redirection by the time obama uh late obama um you know david petraeus was writing opeds and the you know urging us to you know make common cause with al qaeda yeah yeah openly yeah that was in the daily piece yeah um and yeah with according to hers you know the redirection

policy that came in 06 that like oops we we really fought this war for Iran now we got to fix that by tilting back towards Osama you know or the king of Saudi but aka bin Laden and bin Ladenite

types you know all across the Middle East that was still during Bush before Obama even showed up and he just continued it the other thing of course then you make this point very well in your book. And I only kind of mention it in passing in my short piece.

But, you know, the co-conspirators and the financial supporters and the planners of 9-11 are still at large. You know, there's a ton of evidence that indicates that the Pakistanis and the Saudis. we're working hand and glove with the with the hijackers um and yet you know the government had us you know avert our gaze in another direction uh and i think that that and of course they knew all along um and of course there's you know plenty of evidence that you know the nine eleven commission was hijacked by uh philip zellico um you know, to make sure to whitewash the story and make sure that there was no indication that, you know, the Saudis played a major role outside of the fact that the hijackers were,

I believe, primarily of Saudi or primarily Saudi nationals. Yeah. Well, there's more and more proof of that being leaked all the time because of the lawsuits against the salaries by the families right exactly the 9-11 they're doing are you know it's like pulling teeth you know it's disgraceful that they have they even have to go through that hey all let me tell you about Robertson Roberts brokerage Inc nobody trusts the US dollar anymore foreign governments are stocking up on gold instead of $100 bills one they know they need to and two that means you need to too interest rates are up but for some reason not much for savings accounts park your money there and watch

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with all my new pals. That's tutel twins.com slash 10 years. Well, and also, you know, I'm sure there are bin Ladenite type cooks inside the Saudi government. Maybe they really agreed with bin Laden about King Fod at the time. Was he dead by then? I know he was really bin Laden's nemesis, not necessarily everyone in the Saudi regime. but when you look at the actual support from the Saudi government for the hijackers I mean some of it you could just downplay

because they help Saudi nationals who come to America all the time anyway but then some of it is oddly specific and some of it seems to be including practice runs on airliners and things like this traced right back to the embassy but then you know

the ambassador is Prince Bandar and the head of Saudi intelligence is Prince Turkey. So those guys aren't bin Ladenites. Why would they do something to us? So then people skip from there to, well, Dick Cheney hired him to do it, stop being naive. Or, you know, I don't know. But there's, it deserves real questions.

And not about, you know, Donald Rumsfeld's shooting a missile at himself while he's sitting in the Pentagon. done, but why would America's best friends among the Saudi elite, how could they have had anything to do with it? What all did they have to do with it? And to what end and why and whatever? And those are the questions that really deserve asking that so much of the other smoke about September 11th has always obscured. Right. Absolutely. It's a shame. You know, like I'm against CIA torture, but if you just, I don't know, waterboarded Prince Bandar a couple of times and then asked him some questions,

I might look the other way, but it was just him, you know? Not the others, but just that one guy. Anyway, I think I got a friend fired from her TV news show for accusing Bandar of doing September 11th. I was kind of just joshing around, but serious on purpose, you know,

kind of playing, but also meant it. sometimes I say too much I like during this interview let me ask you about this you wrote this great article about Kamala Harris and how much the entire foreign policy establishment is behind her so before you describe all that

let me ask you what you think they have against Trump because I don't see really the discrepancy Huh. What they have against Trump. I think I would circle back to what I was talking about before, is that occasionally he shows glimpses of sanity. And I think that that's enough for him to earn their undying enmity. That's such a great answer. Like, this guy's sane. We got to. kick him out of the asylum right now. That's the only thing that you can really think of because it can't really be his record in office. He was a great disappointment to folks like us.

But, you know, he does have this, you know, he does have sort of glimpses of, you know, seeing things clearly. And, you know, unfortunately, you know, he has. people like his son-in-law kind of acting as his as a Sherpa throughout the first term and they were able to really keep a lid on it. I think they fear that he might have learned something during his four years in office, like how to actually be president. I think that that's overestimating his ability, but, you know, hope springs eternal. But I really think it, I think, I think it's, I think it's that.

I think that they also are very, they're very sensitive about, because I think they know in deep down that their stewardship of American national security has a lot to be desired. so they're very sensitive to any sort of criticism. So, you know, if you're Donald Trump and you basically, you know, go on and on about, in your public statements about how, you know, the NATO, I'm going to let the NATO countries, you know, I'm going to cut them loose if they don't, you know, hit the 2% GDP target or whatever, you know, they go, they go crazy, even though there's no evidence that, you know, Trump is going to, you know, withdraw America from NATO or anything like that. But they get really, they get really offended by his kind of unscripted public statements, because in those statements are implicit criticism.

of the way that they themselves have handled things yeah and it's true that it's such a laundry list uh it's crazy i mean speaking of calil zad it was at the national interest where he introduced trump and trump gave that speech and he said it right at the beginning he goes barak obama and hillary clinton created the islamic state caliphate and then he goes but the thing is it was a written speech so it wasn't just him bloviating he's like here's how they did it first they got us out of iraq then no i guess he said that he goes first they did a regime change for al qaeda in Libya then they started to do a regime change against assan in syria and they withdrew all the troops out of iraq so when alkaida came from syria into iraq there was no one there to stop

him and it was like man i don't know if he's been listening to my show or what, but that was perfect. And, of course, he couldn't memorize it in that much detail. He just went on to say, like, Barack Obama is the founder of ISIS or whatever, just because that was funnier. Well, I think the speech you're talking about

was the Mayflower Hotel speech that was sponsored by the national interests, and that was where he got into all that kind of... I think so, yeah. Because they invited the Russian ambassador. I mean, I don't know what hotel it was at, but it was... Oh, no.

No, no, no, I don't think this was the one where people got in trouble for shaking Kislyak's hand and all that. No, I don't think so. I think it was actually at the national interest they have a little headquarters in D.C. Yes. Yeah, I think it was just there. And Khalil Zad introduced him. She's always so weird to me.

I don't know. I don't understand that relationship. Well, they've always had sort of a mix of neocons and realists. Yeah. The realists have been routed. Yeah. Elliot Abrams is there. I like that Bill Crystal is the leader of the never trumpers his brother-in-law works for the guy on the national security council trying to overthrow venezuela and stuff that's crazy what a world um okay so talk about how much

they love harris what evidence do you have for that they meaning the foreign policy establishment what we're talking about oh they're just they're lining up um in in droves behind her i mean there's no better evidence than yesterday's endorsement of Harris by none other than Liz Cheney. She was at an appearance at Duke University, and she said that she plans on voting for Harris. And then at the DNC, you had former, I don't know if they're former aunt or current or whatever, former Republican, you know, congressman like Adam Kinzinger, who took to the podium to, you know, to endorse Harris. So, you know, and then, of course, there's the letter of

about 250 alumni of, you know, George W. Bush administration and campaign, Romney and McCain presidential campaigns, who've all come out and, you know, to highlight what a menace to the world Trump is and that, you know, it's the duty of every good Republican to line up behind to line up behind Harris. And of course, you know, within the Democratic Party, the, you know, the Clintonites, people like Susan Rice, Hillary herself, of course, Leon Panetta, all the Hawks are you know, very much on the, on the Harris bandwagon. So, you know, there's very little reason to expect that she will be appointing anyone outside of the, you know, the mainstream foreign policy establishment. Do you know much about Philip Gordon?

I know a little bit about him. might know that he, he's very well respected. He has a doctorate from Johns Hopkins, Sice. He wrote a, for a member of the Foreign Policy Establishment, he wrote a pretty sensible book on the Middle East. He was, I first came, I first became aware of Philip Gordon during my briefs,

very brief stint at the State Department. He was the Assistant Secretary. Terry for European and Eurasian Affairs. He held that post before Victoria Newland. I'm fairly confident if he hadn't left that post and Newland filled it, that perhaps things would be a lot different in Ukraine. Unfortunately, Newland was his successor and did a lot of damage. From there, he went to the NSC and became Obama's Middle East coordinator.

You know, he's a very widely respected guy with, you know, there's some evidence that he is something of an independent thinker, but, you know, he's a, you know, very much an establishment figure. It's widely expected that he's going to be her national security advisor, and it's possible that he's going to bring with him. um a lot of people um that he came up through the ranks with um during the clinton and then later in the in the obama years um so i mean if it's a repeat of obama that's not optimal but um as long as it's not a repeat of w or biden uh you know that that would be that would be a slight improvement yeah uh i've read this thing in the wall street journal where they said yeah this guy's a real rogue a real maverick, for example. He wanted to stay in Afghanistan forever.

And I just thought, oh, geez, you know. I mean, it's true that at the time of the withdrawal that, like, I don't know, a solid half of the foreign policy establishment was ready to call it quits and go ahead and pivot to Eastern Europe. But a lot of them wanted to stay, too. It's not so rogue.

And, of course, it's rogue for the worst, if it's rogue at all. So pretty dangerous. Well, even Trump has said, You know, he keeps saying, whenever he criticizes Biden on the Afghan withdrawal, he makes a point to say, well, I would never have given up bad room air base. Well, that translates into I would be staying there then, right? I mean, how do you hold on to an airbase like that without staying?

Well, and worse, what it means is that he'd have had to send 50,000 more troops, Because if he'd broken the deal, the Taliban would have gone back to war. And then it wouldn't have been a matter of how much force protection do we need when we're not being attacked by the Taliban. It would have changed to how much protection do we need when we are being attacked by the Taliban, which would have been a hell of a lot more thousands of men. And so he would have been facing a real escalation at that point after a two-year ceasefire. And so if he would just say, look, my withdrawal plan had us leaving

Bogram last instead of giving it up to the Taliban first and then getting stuck at the damn airport on the edge of Kabul that would make sense but he's Donald Trump he doesn't make sense he has to turn it into

I would have been George W. Bush in the situation to try to contrast himself with Obama with Biden Obama because he's an idiot what could you say man it's going to always be like that

you know he's saying Chuck Schumer is a Palestinian Chuck Schumer is a Palestinian come on when did when did he say that I don't know Dave was quoting him the other day I missed it but I saw it

it's just so you know because Schumer had said anything critical about Israel at all right so that's amazing that's one of his that's one of his top inventions i think yeah and then he does this thing too and he did it again on the mark levin's show where this is his talking point is that and he invented it himself he thinks it sounds great so he keeps saying it it's as i've heard him say it three or this may be four times now that it is just the greatest tragedy that Israel has lost control over the Congress.

You know, there was a time where no one would dare speak against them without the most severe consequences. And, you know, and out in the public, too, these protesters on these campuses, I mean, how dare they be critical of this foreign government? I know.

I mean... We need to get back to those times when you're not allowed to speak against this other country that's on welfare. I know. They really, APEC is really, you know, on its, on its back foot right now. After all, it spent, it spent $14.5 million to defeat Jemal Bowman in a primary and $6.5 million to defeat Cory Bush in a primary. You know, he really, he does, he does live in a kind of alternative Trumpian. world. Yeah. And, you know, it's... I mean, Zionism is the fatal flaw in everybody in Washington, D.C.,'s

politics, right? But, like, it doesn't have to be that damn bad. It doesn't have to be as bad as possible, but he seems determined to make it as bad as could be. I really, as much as I want to see the Democrats suffer right now, this is my biggest hang up about Trump. It's not even all the people he already killed in Yemen. And the potential for that to start up again. But it's whether he would give Netanyahu the green light to go ahead and cleanse the West Bank. Because you know that's what the Lakud wants. And they might see him as their only chance to really go ahead and just bomb Ramallah, whatever, chase all the Palestinians across the river.

Oh, yeah, I'm sure that, you know, when U.S. ambassador to Israel, Miriam Adelson, you know, I'm sure that she'll eagerly give that green light. Yeah. Secretary of Defense, Miriam Adelson. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, man. Well, we're pretty screwed.

On the Harris thing, isn't it interesting about how, like the, to the public anyway, you and I got more particular gripes. But to the public, the worst thing about Biden is he's so old that he's just checked out. And people, there's got to be somebody in charge, not that they can really be held responsible for anything. But it seems like it's just weird to have sort of a faceless committee up there running it when everybody knows the president's taking it now. But then they're running Harris basically as a continuation of that. They're like, listen, she doesn't really need to explain things to you because you know how it is. The Democrats, they're experts.

And she'll have a panel of experts up there to help her decide everything, which I guess means Jake Sullivan. I don't know. I mean, we're in kind of an interesting, almost unprecedented situation where we have a president who is actually brain dead about to be replaced by his vice president who is functionally brain dead. I think never before in American history, you know, have we seen such a thing? the idea that and I've heard this a lot recently because I think that he Biden now looks like constantly startled in his public appearances and I think that in turn startles the public but this is nothing new I mean Joe Biden I mean from the very day that he took the oath of office, there have been rumors swirling around Washington about who's really the real power

behind the throne. No one ever really thought that Biden was the actual power behind the throne. Right? Early on, it was like, well, Ron Clayne is running things. Or, you know, or then they brought in Anita Dunn and Bob Bauer, the Washington, D.C. power couple, they're going to run things. and then because they screwed up so badly prepping him for the debate they were out and then it was for a short time Barack Obama is running things from his house in colorama a few miles from the lighthouse so this isn't you know this isn't anything new no one really has ever thought that Biden is actually running things well it's funny because I mean look sometimes there are emergencies and somebody needs to be in charge and the national security advisor like

you know from history just examples of him taking 3 a.m. phone calls and that kind of thing. But he's not really in the chain of command. And the secretary of state seems to be, you know, relatively powerful in terms of just his relationship with Biden. But he's at the state department. And so he comes to the White House sometimes, but he can't be the guy running the White House. And the secretary of defense seems like basically an empty suit. Right. He's, he, I don't know. how much juice he has at the Pentagon but he's not like a strong man running the White House or anything like that

no one conceives of it that way so like you know and you mentioned Ron Clayne and these other kind of politicos but you know there are national security matters that have to be attended to you know what I mean? They're important decisions I guess you just have the deputies

committee just try to hash these things out and resolve as much of it as they can without having to ask Biden to break the ties and they just kind of the interagency as Vindman calls it just runs the government well sure that's like you know this government is like you know Vindman's you know dream because it's all it's all interagency and it's really the real power at the white house in terms of foreign policy is Jake Sullivan no one takes Blinken seriously so Blinkie Sullivan is the one is the one making the

decisions. And we haven't had a national security advisor this powerful and this empowered since the days of Kissinger and Nixon when Nixon was spiraling into, you know, drink and delusion towards the end of his presidency. And Kissinger was running things. And during the, you'll recall that in 1973, during the Yom Kippur War, Kissinger unilaterally decided to raise the, you know, American nuclear force alert to DefCon 3. Nixon didn't know about that. So, you know, that's the sort of situation that we're in today. That's amazing.

And, isn't it funny, too, how they said, okay, look, it's not that he's really senile. They didn't really say this clearly, but the implication is it's not that you're right that he's out of his mind. It's just that so many of you are wrong that he's out of his mind that you're not going to vote for him. And so he's going to lose. And so that's why we're overthrowing him. We're not overthrowing him because he can't do the job.

We're overthrowing him because you think he can't do the job. And we can't straighten you out on that, I guess. But meanwhile, the truth of the matter is, of course, he can't do the job. You know, I've been saying because I'm getting old and smoke a lot of pot and lose my memory and I can't remember anything. And so I say, I got what Biden's got. But I've been saying that for years and years. This is not a new situation on his part, you know? It's been like this since, you know, before he even started running in 2019.

Well, I mean, even when he was, if you talk to people, I don't know if you've ever had Winslow Wheeler on your show. Yeah, it's been a little while, but yeah, he's a great guy. Winslow's awesome. And he was, he's the only, I believe in the history of the Senate, the only staffer to have. have worked concurrently for both the Republican and the Democrat. I mean, Winslow saw Biden, you know, up close in an action when Biden was allegedly in his prime. And, you know, he was always, you know, the most unprepared member of the Senate.

You know, Biden was never, you know, this very sharp guy. And, you know, Trump tells the story, or he used to before Biden. and dropped out. Trump would tell the story every time he was on the stump about his friend, Trump's friend from Palm Beach, Teddy Kennedy. And Trump once asked Kennedy, you know, who he thought was the smartest and who he thought was the dumbest member of the Senate. Kennedy, this is the way Trump tells it.

So Kennedy tells him a name. And then Trump tells the audience, but I'm not going to tell you the name because I knew the guy and I didn't like him. So to me, that translates into Daniel Patrick Moynihan because they're both from New York. And I can't imagine either of them liking each other. And then he says, then I asked Teddy who's the dumbest. And he goes, Joe. And I go, Joe who, Joe Biden. I mean, you know, Joe Biden was never, even among, you know, people who were his allies and his friends like Kennedy.

never very well respected or hardworking senator in that they have in that he and Harris have a lot in common yeah well yeah i mean i always picture him as like the perfect mirror image of john mccain and they work together on everything we're bad on everything together you know in fact that's one of my anecdotes in the book

is biden versus moynahan on the floor of the senate in 97 it's in the new york times and moynahan is saying man, we should not be doing this NATO expansion. And as the Times reporter puts it, Biden is stomping around the floor of the Senate flailing his arms in the air and saying, oh, I can't believe this. And he's saying, you're saying that if we bring the Baltic states into NATO,

that that's like putting an iron ring around Russia. And he says, I just can't understand what that means. And then he says, are you saying that Stalin was right to invade the Baltics? And Daniel Patrick Moynihan was like, man, oh, I made up that part. I could just picture him going, oh, my God, let me out of here. And, you know, for your listeners, this is available on YouTube and on C-SPAN. Oh, no shit. Oh, man, I'm going to have to.

There's another footnote I need. Good old James Carden. You can look it up, and it's actually Newsweek posted it in March of 2022. So just look up Biden-NATO debate in 1997, and it should come up. Awesome. Unbelievable. So this is what's going to have to happen is I'm going to somehow figure out a way to bribe or blackmail. or otherwise pressure you into reading my book

now that it's 900 times longer than the last time I showed it to you. But then also you're going to have an extra assignment, which is when you know that there's footage of something and I don't have that as a footnote or whatever it is, you've got to let me know. Because you know all the stuff that I don't. I don't know about that, but I'd be happy to.

You sure got me on this one. man dang google doesn't like me anymore i'll find it um but yeah anyway yeah that's great i didn't know i should interview winslow all about just about biden that sounds really interesting uh because he always has just been horrible on everything you know have you read i'm sure you read uh bronco bronco march teaches book yesterday's man you've seen that yeah branco's great yeah he's uh he's one of the few remaining people on the left who actually have any principles. I know.

Yeah, he is awesome. And so he says in there, if I got this right, I think I do. The very first thing that Biden did when he got to the Senate in 1973 was condemned Nixon for his hasty and precipitous withdrawal from Vietnam.

Isn't that crazy? 50 years ago. 51 and in that great yeah he just like he flunked his way up into becoming the present where like as you're saying he was always a loser you know he got stomped to the primaries in 2008

you know he got made VP as a charity case I mean it is confirmation of a thing that I you know many American children were once told that anyone can become the president yeah so so there's you know a silver lining and all this you got it

yep I know obviously that too that was what Bill Hick said that about H.W. Bush who seems like a brilliant genius compared to these people but that was the joke about him back then too it wasn't just quail he also was known as a moron who said ridiculous things

and started horrible wars and expanded got got the groundwork laid for a nato expansion this is not this is far off topic but since you mentioned hicks yes everyone to go again to youtube and look up bill hicks on the kennedy assassination oh yeah most brilliant five minutes of stand-up yeah and i think the best version on audio is going to be from sane man uh no i meant to say rant E. Minor, didn't I? I think the best version of it is on Rantany Minor. Yeah.

And it is good. Even with the horrible pun. You know what? As long as we're talking about that. Isn't it fun to imagine what Bill would be like as a crotchy old man now? I always thought, wow, I wonder

what he would have been like living through the Clinton years. I guess he would have moved further left. Or he was already a leftist. You know, he would have been, he's already kind of like an anarcho nomchomskyite or whatever so i guess he would have just stayed that but then man he would have been great during w bush years i like to think what he would have done you know i mean it's easy to kind of imagine what he would have done with politicians what i think what i really would love to you know hear him talk about is are like these hack comedians like colbert and bill maher oh yeah

I think, you know, he just would have, and Kim all, I just think he would have absolutely destroyed them. Yeah, that's true. You think about how hard he went against Jay Leno. Think what he would have done with these guys. Exactly. Leno now looks like. A blood sprinkler.

He makes him look like Bill Hicks. Yeah, seriously. All right, man. Well, I can just sit here and goof off talking with my friend on the phone all afternoon, but I better go and work on my book. thank you for writing all this great stuff that you write all the time i know you're a great influence on people oh thanks yeah and i'm happy to have you on the show so appreciate that okay um looking forward to the book all right you guys that's james cardin he's at tack and at acura the scott horton show

anti-war radio can be heard on kpfk 90.7 fm in l a ps radio dot com Antiwar.com, Scott Horton.org, and Libertarian Institute.org.