Welcome to Keith knight. Don't tread on anyone, any
libertarian institute. Today I am joined by Kyle
Anzalone, the news editor at the Libertarian Institute.
Check out his show conflicts of interest.
Links will be in the description below.
Kyle, you have such a terrific archive of work.
You not only publish news items, you have articles, you have
podcast videos. If someone wants to get an
introduction to your work, is there a podcast, an article, a
video that you recommend them to?
I would just say, like, you probably won't listen to a
couple episodes of my show cause I do like a news based show.
And so it's all like, you know, it's just what's happening in
the world today. So it's hard to like point to an
episode where I really talk about libertarian foreign policy
because that's not what I do. I just want to talk about the
news. I'm a libertarian and so
everything is through the perspective of
libertarianantiwar.com and everything like that.
But yeah, cover news. So if you want to check out why
I do, just check out a couple of articles once you start to read.
Then you'll you'll pick out what's happening in the world
real quick, and hopefully you like it.
So when I watch the news, I get a lot of hubris from the
political class. It's a lot of, you know, hey, we
might have to take on China and we also might have to take on
Russia. So she and Putin better watch
out. So I came across this article.
This goes back to right after the Afghanistan pull out.
This is in mid 2021, the articles titled Our Greatest
Strength is Liberty, not force. By a guy named Jeffrey Warnick.
Linked to the description linked to the article will be in the
description below. Kyle, I wanna walk through this
article almost a a couple of sentences at a time.
I will start us off. Let me know what you would like
to expand on and what people really need to understand if
they really want to get a grip on having a proper understanding
of foreign policy articles. I mean, the most important
science is the first one, so go ahead.
Our failure in foreign policy is bipartisan.
Yeah. So this is, this is the most
important like lens, I think to look through US foreign policy
through is that it's not that the Democrats are weak or the
Republicans are mean. They don't care about human life
or the racist or things like this.
The foreign policy is 100% bipartisan and the only
consistency with foreign policy is that every time the
Presidency changes hands, the new president seems to get more
hawkish. And so, you know, they of course
like when Barack Obama. Was running for president.
He was running against George Bush's at least.
The war in Iraq and was, you know, sounded pretty good.
And there were a lot of people within the anti war community
who jumped on the Barack Obama bandwagon because, you know, it,
it sounded good. But once he took office, he
opened up the drone office and just let.
Bush's torture Ogre, John Brennan, decided to bomb who,
what? Whoever he wanted from some
troll office in the bottom of the White House.
They had these meetings called Terror Tuesdays.
You know, he went if Bush had wars going on in Iraq and
Afghanistan in the Middle East, and that was bad.
But by the time Obama leaves office, it's Pakistan, Yemen,
Libya, Somalia. I I mean the drone war and just
the US interventions across the Middle East, hugely in Spain and
then. When we look at the, you know,
Donald Trump, of course you know he ran on, ohh maybe I could get
along with Donald Trump or not Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin.
And of course the narrative around him was 100%.
Ohh Putin or Trump is Putin's puppet and everything like this.
Well the the reality is, is that Trump took several steps that by
Obama refused to take. When it came to how much support
he was willing to give the government in Ukraine providing
them weapons, he really escalated.
You know, Obama started the pivot to Asia.
It's not like Obama was weak on China.
He started a massive military buildup in the Asia Pacific
targeting trying to encircle China.
Trump just ramped that up and turned the speed up to 100.
And now Biden has gone completely off of even the the,
you know, the time Tom was 3 by 5 card of allowable opinion
while on China policy. Joe Biden's kind of ripping that
up and moving completely away from the like 5 decade.
One census of 1 China and you know we're going to maintain a
relationship with Taiwan, will sell Taiwan some weapons.
But you know, Taiwan isn't supposed to be a major non NATO
ally, which is what the US is moving towards.
We're not supposed to recognize or even support Taiwanese
independence. We're supposed to recognize that
China and Taiwan are part of a single political entity.
This is enshrined law, U.S. policy, and Biden is routinely
pledging that he will go to war and put U.S. troops.
On the ground in Taiwan to to go to war with China and if you
look at the the votes on a lot of this.
I mean, now that Biden's in office, of course, it's pretty
much just Rand Paul and Thomas Massey.
Maybe you get some of these right wing populists.
Matt Gates, Nancy Mace, Josh Hawley.
I'm sure I'm leaving off a couple like Marjorie Taylor
Green, even Laura Bobert isn't always bad, but for the most
part, you know, you know, everybody on the Republican side
and the Democrat side is bad. It when Trump was in office, I
think there was a little bit. More interest from the the squad
types and Barbara Lee and actually trying to rein in the
president. But but now we have none of that
at all. So the the foreign policy of
always escalating every situation, demanding complete
dominance over every sector of the world is 100% bipartisan
foreign policy. And I mean, I mean good thing.
This article is short, Keith. I just tell the people to read
this first sentence, but it's a very short, punchy article, so I
recommend reading the whole thing.
This is fantastic. Article goes on.
It fails to recognize that the use of military force doesn't
work. It fails to recognize there is
no American empire. The conversation of good versus
evil is no longer effective. Countries will preserve
relationships with Russia and China.
Our economy is no longer the strongest in the world.
It has competition, and we no longer have a strong currency.
Before getting into the currency aspect, what do people need to
know? About the war with Russia, a
potential war with Russia and what are some bullet points
about a potential war with China?
Well, I, you know, I just wanna mention here too, Keith.
This was written over a year ago, right.
And so he accurately predicts that when the US tries to
isolate Russia from the rest of the world.
That's not the case at all. You know, Americans completely
missed this. But there was a a conference of
the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.
This is a Chinese. LED trade block and now I think
has 14 countries that make up 43% of the world's population,
1/4 of the world world's economy.
And Turkey, a NATO member is applying to be the 15th member
in this President Putin attended the Conference for this group.
He met with Chinese President Xi, India's President Modi.
And so we could see that like Russia is clearly not isolated,
they are meeting with major. Asian powers and, you know,
they've maintained a relationship with Turkey and
NATO partner throughout this. You know, Mexico hasn't
condemned Russia here. You know, if we look at the
trend in Latin America, Russia's partner Venezuela is only
expanding its relationships. As you know, there's been new
governments in Peru and Colombia who are no longer interested in
just, you know, being subservient to Washington but
want to go their own way and develop their own.
Relationships with countries in their neighborhood and and so,
yeah I mean I think that like that right there is really
important also you know, this being written right in the
middle of the downfall of the the government of Afghanistan,
it is, you know, a really great thing to say, of course, because
it says, you know, we can't dictate the world by force.
And that's exactly what we learned in Afghanistan.
If there was a, if there was a military and if there were a
people that you would be able to force, right.
It's the most advanced. Military in the world and one of
the like least developed people in the world, right.
You would assume with that you would be able to get
subservience and we we obviously didn't get that. 20 years later
we we come, we go. The Taliban are still in Kabul,
what do you know so. That's a lot.
Now what Russia and China like what what were you asking for,
Keith, when it comes to Russia give us a couple bullet points.
There was a coup in 2014. Walk us through how we got from
there to today. If you just had to narrow it
down in summarize, yeah. So they're Ukraine has always
been very corrupt state. So there's a lot of people who
are you know upset with the government in Kiev and this
starts to boil over in 2013 and 2014.
But. In 2014, one of the things that
happens is very militant neo-Nazi elements get very
involved in essentially hijacked the protest.
There's the leader of the C-14 gang and the C-14 stands for the
14 words of the white supremacist creed.
Like these people are a bow. Neo Nazis, not, you know, I'm
labeling some guy who votes right to me a neo Nazi like
this. These people like, you know,
believe in white supremacy, that the Hitler message and all that
ugly, ugly stuff. Right.
And so he's saying that, look, these would have turned into a
gay pride protest if it wasn't for us.
We overthrew the government. Yeah.
You're only 10%. But if you're the most militant,
10%, you could, you know, change the country.
And so with that group taking power, you know, they're they're
white supremacists, they're Ukrainian ethno nationalist and
a good portion of Ukraine is made-up of people who are
ethnically Russian. And so this is set apart in this
the. The biggest event here was, I
think it's in 2015, the burning of the Odessa trade building
where there is a bunch of Russian citizens in there and
these neo-Nazi elements set fire to it.
And so then you have the Crimean Peninsula and the Donbass
republics, a Don Esque and Luhansk.
These are regions of Ukraine. The Donbass borders Russia.
The Crimean Peninsula is the most southern region of Ukraine
and Crimea votes to join Russia is Annette.
Russia takes over the Crimean peninsula.
There's not like battles or anything like that. 50% of the
Ukrainian military, they're just defense and joins Russia and the
Donbass. Civil war breaks out.
Ukraine tries to take it back. They say they're, you know,
engaging in this terror war largely as these Neo Nazi
aligned groups, the Azov Battalion, which is absorbed
into the Ukrainian National Guard, that that begin to fight
in the Donbass. And this ends up being a 8 year
long kind of frozen conflict. And this brings us to 20. 22022
in February, when the the general ceasefire that had not
ceasefire agreement, the Minsk Accords that had kept the
fighting on on a pretty low simmer, was completely abandoned
by Ukraine and its Western allies, as Ted Galen Carpenter
pointed out, and I believe in Cato, and the article was
definitely published on September 30th.
I remember the date he said that, you know, we have made
Ukraine a de facto NATO member. And so with those two things
going on Russia let's to invade Ukraine and we had now had the
seven month long fight and I guess the base development Keith
really in the whole world happened just this week with
Russia and had seen four regions of of Ukraine, the Donbass
Republics I referred to earlier Donetsk and Luhansk and then two
southern republics and you know they they did this with the vote
but of course you can't hold an accurate vote during wartime.
So that part is kind of a. You know, it's military tactic.
Thinly guised in democracy is I think what Russia did there.
But anyways, Russia I think took about another 15% of the
Ukrainian territory with that move.
And then when it comes to the China Taiwan issue, I'm in
America. I might be looking at this and
say I hate to see some big bully bully a someone in a vulnerable
situation. So therefore the US should
pledge their allegiance to Taiwan.
In case of a Chinese invasion, what what is that mindset
missing? What what does that person need
to know about the situation? So China has a very long policy
and a policy geared towards peaceful reunification with
Taiwan. They do want to have more
control over what happens in Taiwan, but the more America
says that we're going to. Defend Taiwan, the more America
says that we're going to supply Taiwan to military equipment.
And from at least the perspective of the Chinese
government, encourages Taiwan to declare independence and secede,
the more China is going to lead towards a military solution.
And if we're just being realistic here, Keith, the
Pacific Ocean is really, really big and China's on one side of
it, and Taiwan is right next to China.
And you know, America is on the exact opposite side of it.
And if China wants to, I, and this is even admitted by
American military officials, there's not a lot that the US
could do if China surrounds the island.
And so rather than provoking China till, seek a military
solution. You know, just encourage as much
diplomacy as possible that gives the Taiwanese as much freedom as
possible. Now look, if Taiwan wants to
fight China like that's on the the Taiwanese and that's up to
them. Like how, you know, much they
want to fight for their independence.
That, you know, we're libertarians, Keith.
We don't believe in liberating the world.
And, you know, the the Taiwanese are no more special than the
people of Afghanistan. And, you know, we've see that us
trying to create a more free society anywhere in the world
doesn't lead to that. The article goes on.
He says we refuse to recognize the state of the world as it is.
This is no longer the Cold War, America versus Russia, good
versus evil, where America was by far the biggest economy in
the world and the dollar reigned supreme.
We need to be honest with ourselves and recognize we are
no longer a superpower. The era of military hegemony and
dollar hegemony no longer exists.
We abused both for two. Long the day of reckoning is
here. We need to accept this.
And it was a bipartisan failure that got us here.
So imagine that you are a an advisor.
You get George Kennan's place talking to Harry Truman and
everyone since Kissinger's place.
What would you have advised the American Government to do once
it had the empire to make sure either they didn't abuse it or
they didn't lose it? What path should they have
taken? Yeah, I mean, retrenchment and
just, you know, bringing everything home that we can,
scaling back the military as much as possible and just being
an economic giant, right. You know, if every country is
trading with us, then our culture is, you know, being
traded to every country. And that's how we're going to
impact influence and everything like and look, if there's a
country that doesn't want to like, trade with the America and
like maintain their own backwards.
Culture, there's nothing the people of the America could
really do about that and we've seen that with Afghanistan or
Cuba and these other countries where we've tried everything
possible. We we've used all of our empire
might on these you know various small weak countries and have
been unable to change them for decades either.
You know, trying to use all of our economic power or all of our
military might. It just simply doesn't work.
And keep it. I guess if there's one thing I I
would just. They had, like, a little bit of
nuance in this article. It it would just be to say that
America is still a superpower. It's just.
And in the first paragraph, he says America is an Empire,
America is an Empire, America is a superpower.
We're just not a global superpower, right?
We can't determine what happens in eastern Ukraine.
But that doesn't mean that the majority of Europe isn't taking
American marching orders under NATO or, you know, just because
we can't prevent China from taking Taiwan.
Doesn't mean that almost every country in the Asia Pacific is
an ally and would do whatever the US wants.
And so we we still are a superpower, I guess.
And the only reason I add that little bit of nuance is because,
yeah, I think it makes the right wing or sometimes a little bit
apprehensive when they're like, oh, no, we're gonna lose our
military might. Now people are going to treat
America like America has treated Iraq and America still isn't a
rock, right, Keith? Like, we have our nuclear
arsenal. We are a major world economy.
We produce things here in, in ways that no other country can.
And look at the rule of law here.
I'm a libertarian. It's not great, but there
there's, there's pretty good property rights here most of the
time. You know what I mean?
Like, it's not like if you go out of town for a couple of
months, Keith, you're gonna come back and somebody somehow has a
title for your house and has moved in, which, you know,
there's a lot of places in the world where that's kind of how
life is sometimes. Yeah.
Definitely familiar with that. The people who would oppose this
and they say something like, well, if Russia goes one inch
into Ukraine, we gotta threaten a nuclear exchange with Russia.
If China goes into Taiwan, we gotta defend them.
First of all, one of my favorite quotes ever is he who attempts
to defend the world in the end defends no one.
He who tries to be a friend to all ends up being a friend to
none. And it's so vitally important.
He said like 300 years ago. But it comes with.
A lot of wisdom even to military generals.
Dwight D Eisenhower in 1956. The Soviets went into Hungary to
crush the rebellion, and Eisenhower did not have a large
scale military response. As a matter of fact, I'm pretty
sure he invited Nikita Khrushchev to Camp David in
response to that Lyndon Johnson. After the mass murder in
Czechoslovakia that the Soviets committed in 1968, Lyndon
Johnson did not respond militarily.
And then in 1983 when Ronald Reagan.
Was president and the Soviets shot down an American aircraft
with a congressman on it, and they killed him, a guy named
Larry McDonald. There was no military response,
and the Soviet Union came crumbling down eventually.
So we don't have to say, look, there's this new libertarian
idea. It's so we're like dumb hippies
who just live in our heads and just want this utopian world to
work out. We have actual examples of
people with a lot of military experience being on our side and
threatening. The danger of this?
John J Mearsheimer wasn't in the military.
But the point is, even so-called realists who follow the George
Kennan philosophy were saying the US is pushing Ukraine to be
tough with Russia, giving them almost a war guarantee much like
the British gave to Poland in 1939, or that Russia gave to
Serbia if it was. Playing tough with Austria in
the First World War. So this is no small feat that,
you know, we're threatening nuclear exchange over Taiwan or
the Donbass region because we don't like that they even
democratically voted years ago. This was long before this
military occupation took place. So it it's absolutely
unbelievable. Are there any other times you
could think of where we didn't have this Neo con response of
you know what that that nation. Cross the line, therefore we
have to go to war. Are there are there any other
historical examples you use that you'd like to convince people
with and say, look, we don't always have to respond to what
the military and it can work out?
No. And in fact, this is like one of
my has big, one of my big frustrations under the Biden
administration. It just doesn't make any sense.
If you want to try to isolate Russia from the rest of the
world, then you re enter the Iran nuclear deal and allow the
Iranian energy back on the market.
Or at the very least you start to relieve some sanctions on
Venezuela. Where what, you don't like
Maduro because he's a socialist and kind of bad to his people
that it, you know, the only historical example I could think
of here, Keith, is it it seems like Tony Montana at the end of
Scarface, just doing as much blow as possible and and
thinking that they're going to be able to take on the entire
world. You know, Kamala Harris is at
the DMZ, provoking the North Koreans.
What are we going to do with North Korea?
Tests another nuclear weapons? Put more sanctions on Pyongyang.
They're they're sanctioned by everyone.
Who's willing to implement American sanctions already?
It's not going to make a difference.
And yet they continue to provoke the North Koreans, continue to
provoke the Chinese, they want to isolate the Russians.
And as the Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi recently said, the
more countries America sanctions, the stronger the
sanctioned, the network of the sanction countries get.
And so, you know, it's one thing if you want to just try to
isolate Russia and then you don't have Venezuela, Iran,
China, Zimbabwe, Myanmar, North Korea and a dozen other
countries under sanctions, then it's much easier to isolate
Russia. But now all these other
countries are already sanctioned.
So there's no downside to them at all to doing business with
Russia. And and, you know, like you
basically have the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in a
large countries that I know this is a lefty.
Term. But the global S does generally
pretty well defined what countries we're talking about
here that are willing to do business with the Russia and
ignore U.S. sanctions and and there's just no possible way
that they could really expect that they could you know win the
win all these economic and agile military wars at the same exact
time and yet they there seems to be no recognition of that and
it's full speed ahead. Keith pedaled to the metal.
Again, it's hard to think of like why the the White House is
acting this way. Exactly.
And, and I love what the author mentions the discussing economic
growth and the importance of having a strong domestic
economy. I love Thomas Sowell's take on
this, he said. The very same people who say
that government has no right to interfere with sexual activity
between consenting adults believe that the government has
every right to interfere with economic activity between
consenting adults. So the more freedom people have,
the more chances they have to make mutually beneficial.
Voluntary exchanges, and that is what that that is really one way
that we could influence the world.
First of all, leading by example.
And if countries aren't trading with us, well, I don't know.
Make them jealous, become really rich, become really wealthy,
produce a lot of good things that they'll want to have so bad
that it'll create a black market incentive for them to go around
to their governments embargo. There's so many things, yet the
psychopath class jumps us right to nuclear exchange with
Vladimir Putin, who asked to join NATO in 1999.
Reaching his hand out after they're no longer communists,
they're moving towards an Eastern Orthodox path.
But of course they have to spit in their face and humiliate
them, just like Germany in Versailles.
And of course the dollar hegemony no longer exists.
Well, it's very classic. A lot of economists will
explicitly say monopolies are bad because they provide worse
quality and higher prices than would otherwise exist under
competition. Also, the Federal Reserve should
have a monopoly. On the currency, well, what do
you think? The same exact economic laws or
general terms apply. So if we really want this
strength, I think we have to embrace both domestic and
foreign policy freedom principles.
Anything else before we read the last two paragraphs, just to
expand on your point there about Putin wanting to join NATO in
1999 and, you know, the how the West is slapped his hand away.
It's almost like Biden doesn't remember the past 30 years, my
entire lifetime. You know, I remember.
In the movie Terminator 2, the Kid actually asked, like, why
would we get into nuclear war with Russia?
I thought they were our friends now.
And I, you know, distinctly remember from my childhood, my
impression of Russia growing up was Vladimir Putin was the first
person to call George Bush and offer assistance on killing
terrorists. Real assistance.
Not like, hey, you know, man, if I could help out, let me know.
But you know, I'll, I'll see what I could do.
They were offering to allow the Americans to use.
All the old Soviet bases in Central Asia to move military
equipment into Afghanistan, they were they were willing to help
the Americans fight the terrorists after 911 and somehow
20 years after that, they're now the unthinkable enemy.
I mean, I I love the independent media.
This past week has been doing a great job of back when, like,
Putin and all these people had a little bit more hair.
You got like, Putin and Biden standing together on all these
world event stages. Now he's Hitler.
Are you serious? Like 20 years ago, like these,
these guys were your best friends.
So you know what's changed. And it's the American military
industrial complex. Needs an enemy.
Of course, of course. And in almost every example, and
this was even after Putin had accused the West of arming
terrorists in the caucus mountains.
So he was even willing to what turned a but blind eye to that?
Did you, well, see him make that accusation in the Putin
interviews with Oliver Stone? Yeah.
I there's old episodes of my
foreign Policy Focus podcast. They were probably in like the
first hundred episodes where I broke down all four of those
interviews by. Alverstone, absolutely,
absolutely. If anybody really wants to
understand like kind of how Putin thinks and and how he
likes to at least present himself that I think that's very
helpful to understand, like how him and the Kremlin
communicating what's going on in Ukraine today.
Me too. Yeah, I thought Oliver Stone did
a phenomenal job. I know it costs money to watch
on YouTube, go to the Libertarian Institute.
I have provided a summary analysis and lessons learned of
all four episodes. So yes, I I think you're
definitely right about this. I don't love that the US, you
know, is palling around with Joseph Stalin in the Second
World War. I don't even like that they
talked to Mohammed bin Solomon today, but it is a heck of a lot
better than the alternative where civilians end up having to
bear. The cost of these conflicts, I
mean, Pat Buchanan's great point was always yeah, we've
sanctioned all these places. But I look at Saddam Hussein, I
look at Milosevic, I look at Fidel Castro.
They look well fed to me. So it's like it's always these
civilians that have to pay the price for these horrible
leaders. It's it's really tragic.
Article continues. At the end of Dirty Harry, Clint
Eastwood says that a man has to know his limitations.
We need to learn and accept ours as a nation.
We debased our military, we debased our money.
We were reckless with all the power we had.
We treated both with disrespect. And now here we are no longer a
superpower in a very competitive world where we have limited to
no influence. Again, we need to turn to the
wisdom of George Washington. Avoid foreign entanglements.
Our relationship with the world should be based upon commerce
trade. Any thoughts on that?
Beautifully written. And the only thing I would say
is that there's no indication in the year since this was written
that the White House is and anyway turning this direction.
And as I said, I think rather than Dirty Harry, we're getting
Tony Montana. And it's not something horribly
that distant. A very common thing is people
advocate a principle of my body, my choice, for example.
For instance, if I don't have the right to my body, well, then
who the heck else does? They own not only their body,
but mine too, if we extend that to the economic realm and
realize that economic decisions are simply people expressing
their preferences with how they choose to allocate their scarce.
Time and their scarce money on this earth.
Then we could embrace that policy in principle of
unilateral free trade, open discussion, and we wouldn't
constantly be vilified. I don't know if you've seen it.
I remember especially, like probably 10-10 years ago, there
were a lot of people in the comment sections of YouTube, a
lot of people confidently on social media saying that they
thought things like 911 were needed to.
To humble the American Empire, which is not too crazy, if you
can imagine people support Hiroshima because, well, we had
to do that to Japan. There are some people across the
world who say, well, I think America needed 911 to to to
really get a grip on the reality of things.
It's amazing that that they never assume that there are
downsides to any of this. They go, yeah, well, we might
have to go to war with this person or that person.
They almost never talk about the downsides of, first of all, the
deaths. And the financial costs and the
roaning of the currency, as Warnick has mentioned here.
But they never talk about the reputational cost.
It's like there's no downside. There's only upside.
We might have to defend Taiwan. We might have to send some more
money to the Poroshenko government and the Azov
Battalion. How is it that such a blatant
scam is able to continue, with all these intellectuals on the
same side and the people not being able to see through it?
Do you have any thesis there? Yeah, because they they like,
take it even further. And so it's not just that, you
know, everybody has to agree, but you cannot dissent, right.
Because if you are not in line with going to war with Saddam,
even if it keep, even if you have nothing positive, ever a
positive to say about Saddam Hussein and your entire life.
But other than I really don't see proof that he was making
weapons of mass destruction. You're a terrorist if you say,
look, I don't want to. Even China's communist
governments are oppressive. We all know this, but they're
not committing a genocide against the Uighurs, and they
use, you know, data with a decimal point in the wrong place
to try to prove that the genocide was going on.
Oh, look, now I'm a communist. Or if I say boy.
In 2008, William Burns, then ambassador to Russia, now
director of the CIA, wrote a memo to the State Department
saying that. For Russia, the brightest of all
red lines was Ukraine joining NATO and was seen as a security
threat not just by the hardliners in Russia, but by
every single person in the Kremlin.
And this was going to provoke a serious response, just saying,
like, hey, I'm not saying that that Russia was right to invade
Ukraine. I'm saying that you all knew
that if you admitted a NATO Ukraine into NATO, Russia was
going to invade Ukraine and you, you know, made them de facto.
Members anyways, and so this was a predictable consequence of
your edges. Well, now I'm a Putin
propagandist. This is this is how they keep
everybody in line established a narrative is that you you can't
descend or else you're no longer an American.
You're hurting your country, Keith.
You're making your fellow countrymen more vulnerable by
articulating factual dissent to the the, the common narrative.
It it's the classic guilt tactic that, you know, Meghan McCain
will use this saying, ohh, I hope Julian Assange burns in
hell. He's a cyber terrorist.
As if just like, putting these, like sticky notes on this hero
that like tugging on Superman's Cape like as as if she has any
credentials. But I think you're totally
right. You hit the nail on the head
there, almost like a stroking, this fear of people are just
terrified of social disapproval. It's like that old Jerry
Seinfeld joke he goes. People's number one fear is
speaking in front of an audience.
Second is death, meaning if you're at a funeral, you'd
rather be in the coffin than giving the eulogy.
People are so terrified of social disapproval that if you
just align them with not just, of course, you know, you're you
love Mussolini, you love Adolf Hitler, you love Vladimir Putin.
Even saying like you're Neville Chamberlain.
Like an ally of America Chamberlain's the one who
declared war September 3rd. Of 39, the fact that it it war
wasn't his first move. That's enough that they need to
write to, to write you off and look at the example you used of
that. These two are in like a major
position of of who knows what. These people are really in a
position to know what they're talking about.
William Burns, the current head of the CIA.
This was in 2008. What was his role?
He was a ambassador to Russia's ambassador, ambassador to Russia
under Condoleezza Rice as Secretary of State.
And then the guy he's quoting is Sergey Lavrov.
Isn't it the foreign minister since 2005?
Isn't that he's referring? He's, yes, in the memo he's
referencing a conversation with Lavrov, but he's just
articulating that this is the policy in the Kremlin.
I don't think that part was necessarily quoting Lavrov.
I think that was like William Burns's position on it, which I
think makes it even more important and powerful.
You know what I'm saying? Like, Burns is assessing that
this is the position of. Everybody in the Kremlin and and
then he has like the quote from Sergey Lavrov, that means net
like, you know, like this is absolutely like, no, this will
not happen. And just before they had put
both the Georgia and Ukraine on the path to NATO membership.
Yeah, and that was under George Bush, all right, the article
continues. And unfortunately, we refused to
recognize that coercion is a bad policy always and everywhere.
Alright, Kyle, this is gonna be rough, but I want us to go
through these quickly. I'm.
I'm one who named an intervention since the start of
the War on Terror. Give me the primary results that
occurred and the downsides you mentioned.
In Afghanistan, we replaced the Taliban with the Taliban after
20 years. In Iraq, what were the downsides
of going into Iraq and kindly liberating them from Saddam's
rule? Well over a million dead, a
civil war that really hasn't officially worked itself out all
the way in Iraq. The government there is a
complete train wreck. They held elections like two
years ago and still haven't elected a Prime Minister.
It it it takes months and months to even count a vote.
There's violence all the time in Iraq still, and I mean from the
position. You know of successive white
houses, like every White House wants to like disempower Iran in
the Middle East. And nothing has built up around
more and allowed them to have more ties in the Middle East
than the United States. Overthrowing Saddam and putting
a democratically elected government in Baghdad which
senses a majority Shia country ends up being a Shia government
which is friendly with Iran. Downsides of intervention into
Libya? So Libya still a failed state.
I think they estimate like 250,000 people died during that
war. The stories that you read from
Libya since the fall of the Gaddafi government are insanely
horrific people, refugees from other African countries try to
go through Libya and basically what would happen time after
time, you hear these stories where that, you know, the people
would call home, they're being tortured by some group and they
demand money from the family. The family sends the money and
then they sell that. Person to another group who
tortures that person. Or there was a regularly used
mass rape in the Libyan prisons to try to take fighters off the
battlefield so they would like just rape large groups of men
with broomsticks and things like that and then film it and then
use that as blackmail to try to keep people from the
battlefield. Hundreds of thousands of people
died trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea after the, you
know, Gaddafi died. Not only Libyans, but people
from across northern Africa and the Sahel.
And if you wanna look at what's going on in like Northern Africa
today, like the the top of the ice cream cone there, it's, you
know, coup after coup after coup.
And a lot of it's because AFRICOM, the US African command,
is involved in waging different military games.
And we pick out our favorite generals from Bikina Faso or
Mali, and then we train them up real good and then they end up
pulling off a coup. But a lot of it is because after
Gaddafi fell. The jihadist elements that
helped to overthrow Gaddafi with the support of the United States
went bad to other countries in the region and supported
different groups and inflamed all of these different ethnic
rivalries. And so you'll read a story and
Molly, about how 150 people died because this one group attacked
this other group because, you know, this group's now allied
with jihadists. I think there was just another
coup this past week in Burkino Faso.
I mean, it's a complete train wreck, and it's all because of
Obama's. Uh, war in overthrowing Gaddafi?
And then they had this bizarre lie that Wolf Blitzer on CNN
said that Gaddafi was giving his troops Viagra as a tool of mass
rape. I mean, just the propaganda that
came out of that one. And Obama wrote a book and,
like, pinned the whole thing on Sarkozy.
That was actually funny results to the US involvement in
Pakistan. So I guess the the big thing now
point out here is the US drone war in Pakistan.
Push this group that shrink E Taliban over the border of
Pakistan into Afghanistan to get away from the Pakistani army
there. They adopted the Black Flag of
the Islamic State and are now what's known as the Islamic
State course on fashion. And so if we look at, you know,
the the disasters during the US pull out of Afghanistan and the
near weekly or so suicide bombings around Afghanistan
since the US pullout by the Islamic State.
Of course, on group that's just a a direct repercussion from
Obama's drone war in that country.
When it comes to Yemen, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula was,
from what I understand, responsible for the USS Cole
bombing. This was October of the year
2000. Well, what are the results of
this conflict in Yemen? So there there's tons of things
going on in Yemen, Keith. There's the drone war against Al
Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which has been going on for
years and years and years. But more recently, in 2015, the
United States Bad Saudi Arabia, waging mostly an air war but
also like some proxy ground conflicts, they use a lot of
Sudanese military militants. They have the UAE backing
different forces, but largely, particularly the UAE.
Assumed all of the jihadist groups under their their banners
and and they now fight with the UAE.
And so we've essentially flipped in that war from what we are
doing under Bush and Obama to the the late Obama years in
2015. And rather than fighting a war
against AQ AP we're fighting a war against this group, Ansar Al
Ria or otherwise known as the Houthis that control the
majority of the the population of Yemen.
If you look at a map you're like, oh, they barely control
like 1/4 of the country. But that's where like 2/3 of the
population lives, like mostly yemens and empty desert.
And so they they control, like most of the populations, the
capital and everything like that.
Well, they're opposed to AQ AP and yet we're concerned about
bombing the Houthis right now because we have to back Saudi
Arabia and the UAE's ambitions in Yemen, which I think are
mostly like just stealing their oil and their ports and any
wealth they could squeeze out of Yemen.
When it comes to al Shabaab in Somalia, what's happening there?
So, al Shabaab. I think being informed till 2009
but you know where there are 2006 me but they're lumped into
the the terror war but this is really a whole separate thing.
I'll Shabaab did swear allegiance to Osama bin Laden
but their emergence in Somalia really rude spat to the the time
that Somalia became like the somewhat anarchist state that
they're you know wasn't a a foremost strong government in
Mogadishu. And so then there's a lot of
tribal groups that emerged. When these tribal groups started
to stabilize Somalia a little bit, and Scott Horton, our boss
at the Libertarian Institute, has a fantastical, fantastic
article that goes through all of this.
A lot more detail and a lot more eloquently than I'm going to do
here. But essentially the US tried to
overthrow the this, you know, loose system of like tribal
councils that was holding some stability in Somalia with the
Ethiopian army, and in that the group that emerged in Somalia.
As one of the most powerful was al Shabaab, and so it was, you
know, the US inviting The Ethiopians and that really led
to the rise of al Shabaab. Now they control the bottom, I
don't know, third quarter, maybe 20% of Somalia. the US has waged
a years long drone campaign. Every time a drone strike gets
dropped, they say, ohh boy, well, that's because, you know,
or that's because there's Al Shabab there and we killed 10 al
Shabaab and then some American journalists ends up going to
that village. Talking to the people there, and
they're like, what? That was a minibus and there was
three kids going to school and one old man that walked with a
cane. So none of them were al Shabaab.
And it turns out the US just kills militants.
Also, the US calls the largest terrorist attack in African
history in Somalia. Over 600 people died in this
bombing. And what happened was the US was
trying to wage a counterinsurgency operation.
And there's this key town in southern Somalia that produces a
lot of bananas, and there's a lot of wealth there.
And so the US tried to come in and establish themselves as a
security force, and then they allied themselves with this
fashion and the Somali military that went in and massacred 10
people in this village. And then a couple weeks later,
some guy from that village goes and he's trying to get into, I
think, the Green Zone of Mogadishu, where all the
international compound and everything like that is and has
this massive, massive. I'm in a dump truck and doesn't
get there, detonates on the way. We're all like all these
refugees live and just, I mean, wiped hundreds of people off the
face of the earth and this was like chopped up to al Shabaab.
But it there's like no real contact between this guy and al
Shabaab. And it's pretty clear that
there's a lot of hostility from the people in that region over
the the massacre that occurred by the Somali forces.
There were no guns in that village, by the way.
Like this was 100% verified that.
There were no guns in the village and some guy from that
village tried three times, like went to a Somali general and was
like, we see an American drone flying overhead.
Please, for the love of God, tell the Americans we're just
farmers and don't have guns. And the lazy ass general, the
Somali general, I think it sounds like was just negligent
and said OK, but didn't bother to pick up the phone and call
somebody because that's not what they do in Somalia and, you
know, then then the Americans. Helping the village with the
Somalis and forces and they killed 10 people and yeah.
Incredible. What do people need to know
about the results of US intervention into Syria?
Ohh wow, I forgot about this one.
So this is this is terrible. Keith, in the Arab Spring
springs up. There's protests, legitimate
protests against the the al-Assad government, the Obama
White House, and particularly I think Hillary Clinton and John
Brennan. I think Brennan was CIA by then
and Hillary Clinton's in the State Department.
But Brian. Might just been like an advisor
or something like that at that point really push to get the US
to step up the the support for the resistance to Bashar
al-Assad. That resistance becomes violent,
ultimately morphed into the Islamic State.
Who knows how many people have died in Iraq and Syria because
of this war. the US now occupies the third of Syria backing an
illegitimate Turkish government where we pretend that they're
better than the Assad government.
But from all indication, they're really not.
They have 10s of thousands of people.
In this all Hall prison camp in US occupied Syria, Keith and
they just live in squalor. They're a bunch of former ISIS
wives who have raised all these children that were, you know,
from, you know, the the, the sons of ISIS fighters.
And it's it's just it's a terrible, terrible situation.
US occupied Syria, the US is opposed to what our NATO ally
Turkey is trying to do in Syria. Our allies in Syria are they're
absolute enemies. And now we've implemented.
Sanctions on Syria that deliberately keep the country
from rebuilding after this war. And so, you know, there's people
all over Syria right now, Diana. Cholera, right.
There are people dying in Syria because they had so much
diarrhea that they dehydrate and it died.
Like that's unthinkable to happen to anybody in this
country who isn't either, like, you know, some degenerate, you
know, drug user on the street or somebody in like, you know, the
most advanced, highest Hospice residential type care.
Right. But this is like what normal
people have are dying of right now in Syria.
You know, babies freezing to death in the winter in that
country. And it's all because of U.S.
sanctions intentionally. So, you know, Rudy Giuliani,
this clip clip is going around, was bragging about how U.S.
sanctions and Iran led Iranians to trying to sell their organs
for $500.00 he, like he was saying that these are the
conditions that we want to create in these countries, so
the people rise up. And overthrow their governments,
which of course never happens, right?
Like if you if if the Iranians were starving you to death,
Keith, would you be like, I wanna kill the, you know, my
leader? No, you would want to kill the
leader of the person that's starving your family to death.
Of course. Is is just unreal.
And then this again, is the classic lie about, well, what?
We're gonna go there and we're gonna defeat the terrorists and
we're gonna fight for our freedom, never recognizing that
there's a second side to this equation, the potential
downsides. Today's blog post at the
Libertarian Institute titled Marco Rubio is a liar.
What I did was I used a number of quotes to respond to his
initial claim. And this is a quote directly
from Osama. Bin Laden talking about the
potential downsides of foreign policy, bin Laden briefly says
their leader, that idiot they obey, was claiming that we
envied their lifestyle when the truth which this pharaoh would
like to hide is that we are attacking them because of their
injustice toward the Muslim world and especially Palestine
and Iraq, as well as their occupation of the land of the
two sanctuaries. So I mean the the the warnings
were there, the the warnings were there for the war in.
Russia with the William Burns memo you mentioned previously.
The warnings are there with China.
President Xi is telling Biden about the potential downsides of
Pelosi, you know, flying these jets and landing into Taiwan.
But they're just so psychotic. They don't care to look at the
the the cost that everyone else is going to have to bear for
their belligerence, just as John F Kennedy was not about to allow
the the Soviets to have missiles.
In Cuba, these countries are not gonna want Taiwan to be a de
facto NATO member, nor will Ukraine be allowed to have their
time to do the exact same thing. Article continues.
Our founding was predicated upon our own fight to be free on our
own terms. It had nothing to do with
conquering others. We have a legal principle that
force is only legitimate when the threat is direct and
imminent. We perverted that principle in
the world stage. The reason I think this is
important is because you don't want to just strip people of
their identity. I know a lot of people who say
America's job is to liberate the world.
This was the guy. Who was talking to Roger Waters
on CNN? He goes, what about our role as
liberators and waters like, had to pick himself up off the floor
just because it's such a joke at this point.
But that mindset is real, so you don't want to just say actually
this thing you love is total trash.
Say no, this thing you love. I think you have to change the
your start date and maybe look at the Declaration of
Independence. We hold truths to be
self-evident. There is an objective truth.
People have the right to life. Liberty the right to pursue
their happiness so long as they don't initiate violence against
peaceful people. You have the the state does not
have the right to monopolize weaponry because then that would
give them a complete monopoly on force and that would be absolute
government supremacy. There's all these things in our
heritage that we can look to. I mean America goes a little
existed a little before Dick Cheney was alive to the issue.
All these ridiculous things when when it comes to we only got two
more sentences. Thank you for.
Your time today, when it comes to making sure we attack the
right from the right, so to speak, or make sure that people
don't think we're hating on the country, America, we live here.
And of course I love it here. I wouldn't want to live anywhere
else. Do you have anything that you
say to people that makes them really understand your position
so they realize we're attacking a subset of people who have
occupied the regime as opposed to attacking all of America?
So, especially if I'm talking to the right, I'll just go into
like look, look, look where America is located strategically
on the map and then think about the Americans.
You know, they're very proud people.
They're gun wielding people. They are, you know, wealthy and,
you know, like have the ability and the time to defend
themselves if needed. You know, we don't need to be
meddling in Iraq to keep Americans safe.
Americans can't keep themselves safe.
Washington. Tends to put targets on the bats
of Americans. And So what we need to do is
take the targets off of our bats.
We'll, you know, we live in a country where, fortunately, we
could defend ourselves if we need to.
And look, the the US government spends, what, 10 times more than
what Russia does on probably much more than that now, but you
know, 5 1 what China does on its military what 1215 times
more than Russia does on its military either.
We're really, really, really bad.
At doing military things, or we don't need to spend that much on
our military, right? Like what, you're telling me the
Chinese are five times better at building battleships than the
Americans and and things like that, that we had to spend five
times more? And then I feel like those
arguments, like particularly on the right, tend to diffuse it,
although sometimes I have to articulate them just a little
bit better. Exactly.
And but wars of aggression are constantly what bring these
other empires down. Whether it's the Romanov regime
or the Soviet regime, the Ottoman Empire, the French
Empire, the German empires, the British Empire, Wars are
constantly bringing down these, the Japanese Empire wars are
constantly bringing down these places, and the American Empire,
just that keeps on provoking the wars because they directly reap
a large amount of benefits from provoking the wars.
They get all the votes. Marco Rubio gets all the cheers
from the morons and the crowd when he talks about blowing up
Chinese aircrafts. And they never have to bear the
consequences that they're seen as heroes because they're the
ones who we look to to defend us article and saying we used it
not to defend ourselves, but rather in attempt to bend the
world to our will and have used the dollar as a weapon in the
same capacity hegemony. We are an even greater nation
when we reject the concept of hegemony and embrace
voluntarism, liberty and freedom.
Kyle Anzalone, where is the best place for people to find your
work? The Libertarian institute?
Keith Knight, where I think you're the managing editor.
I'm the news editor, so I write multiple news stories almost
every day for the institute. If not, I'm writing them an
antiwar.com and reporting them at the institute.
I want to tell everybody. I am speaking this weekend in
Denver, October 8th at noon at the Capitol on behalf of Julian
Assange. If we wanna keep doing this, if
we want real journalism, we have to fight for Julian Assange.
There's a huge event going on in DC my colleague Dave Decamp from
antiwar.com is speaking there. So if you're in the DC area, I
pretty sure they're at the Department of Justice, so head
down there. But if you're in the Denver
area, please come out. Support, check it out.
I think the like the Colorado LP is involved in the event so
there will be some great people there to hang out with and
everything but please come check that out.
You can follow me on Twitter at Kyle Anzalone, under score and.
Antiwar.com. Thanks to everyone for watching
Keith Knight. Don't tread on anyone and the
Libertarian Institute. Kyle, thank you for your time,
brother. Thank you, Keith.