>> now, here is scott horton on the war in afghanistan. >> good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. welcome to the 2018 literature he public party of pennsylvania.

my name is ken and i'm a libertarian party for the governor of the doing of the sheer. i have the great honor to introduce scott horton. he comes from austin to speak with us today and he is the host of aging work radio. you can catch it on the web at 11:30 on sundays. he's done 4600 interviews over the last 15 years. he has an impressive resume. editor for the aging war .com. he's managing director of the libertarian institute along with sheldon richmond, another famous libertarian. he's here to talk about his book full parent, time to end the war in afghanistan. rand paul called the book important and daniel ellsberg

said it was excellent so let's give a warm and sylvania libertarian welcome to scott horton. [applause] >> hello everybody. thank you for having me. i appreciate it a lot. tell funny jokes. pause for a laugh. [laughter] did that work okay? that was my joke. i hope you liked it. blowback. the term blowback actually and i'm quite grateful for the fact that it's worked its way into the popular culture into the and it has become just another synonym for consequences basically negative consequences but the real definition is actually a little bit more precise and the word was coined by the cia back in 1953 and in the report after the two against

in iran and the way it was defined in the paperwork was blowback is a consequence of secret foreign policies over the long-term that when it comes back to how the american people they don't understand the context and don't have a way to explain what is going on in that makes them susceptible to false conclusions about what is happening. for example, i iran with the revolution came in 1979 it wasn't a clear part of the narrative in america that they are overthrowing the dictator that america had installed in power after overthrowing their elected government. it doesn't mean everything to they did was great and it doesn't mean ayatollah was great but at the context that people didn't understand why are there

these hostages and terrible american into revolution is because they hate us and how it is and history began that day. this is the same thing that we are faced with the terror war with al qaeda. i have to remember on septembe september 12th or 13 and 2013 where they have awakened a sleeping giant. and i thought that is perfect and that's blowback right there. this guy doesn't know that the japanese awakened the sleeping giant back in 1931 and it hasn't even taken so much as a nap since. it was american activity in the world and intervention that had caused the terrorism problem in the first place in the sleeping giant just had or the awake giant, party me, had a brand-new excuse for further action. another part of the false narrative and false conclusion that the people came to with the

september 11th attack because it was blowback and because they didn't have their context to understand because it was a consequence of secret foreign policy that had been carried out that they are trying to scare us away. they're trying to get us to retreat. we are trying to get us to leave but there was more to it than that an impact on september 11 the attack it should be obvious now but it was designed to provoke america into overreacting. there was a chance america would turn tail and bring the troops home after september 11 and they would find a new place to send them. that is what al qaeda was betting on. now, in the 1990s the joint staff and these are the professional planning staff at the pentagon who prepare the real policy for the joint chiefs and they are very important part of the government and in the 19 '90s they had a cliché and an old saying that terrorism is a small price to pay to be a

superpower and not that it is moral but you can understand what they meant when they were coming from with that and a truck bomb goes off and blows up in africa or their has been an attempt to knock down the world trade center but only six people were killed and so what will you do and will give up your empire and when it is a small price to pay at least from that point of view. they succeeded in taking down the world trainers center when it was only 3000 and they stood for an hour and a half or so before they started falling down. it could've been 20 or 30000 people killed that day. then again blowback in secret foreign policy and mysterious circumstances surrounding the event and because the event was literally the equivalent of pearl harbor and even worse than civilians that were targeted

because when they had the pentagon and it was approximately the same death toll as pearl harbor in the same footage and catastrophes and villages of smoke and all of the stuff and yet there was material with japan fighting. it was a hail mary pass by a small team of guys trying to steal our planes to even have a weapon to crash into our targets. their current group leadership back in afghanistan was only 400 men. there was no islamic fascist caliphate but a tiny little group of former veterans of america's backed afghan war in the 1980s who had basically gotten one lucky strike against the united states. after attempting to attack the united states throughout the 1990s and doing those smaller tax they finally succeeded in what they wanted and that was to provoke the united states into overreacting. you may be familiar with a former cia analyst named michael

sawyer who is the chief of the cia bin laden unit and the guy at the gave bin laden that were declined for various reasons good and bad, i guess. he wrote and he quit the cia just to tell the truth to the medieval. he said they are not being straight with you about what is going on. he hunted al qaeda guys just to tell the megan people they hate us for what we do, not for who we are and not because of who they are but it is what we do to them and islam doesn't make them hate freedom. our foreign policy and our government and he was the cia guy in his speaking to the collective and their foreign-policy provoke this company. he listed the six reasons and try to explain that bin laden said ever since he declared war

against the america in 1996 the reason they were doing it was never freedom or liberalism but it always was american based in saudi arabia being used after the iraq war to enforce the permanent blockade and sanctions embargo against iraq. the no-fly zone in that account in the sanctions and the fly zones as reason, too. then american support for israel in their occupations of palestine and at that time lebanon which has been going on from us 20 years and then was american support for all the dictators and presidente's across the region such as the kings of saudi arabia and jordan and president so-called [inaudible] in egypt and the king of kuwait and the pressure

on these regimes to keep oil prices artificially low held subsidize the american economy at the expense of the arab people and also turning a blind eye saying nothing and doing russia and china and india's persecution of muslims. was pakistan also whenever they would clampdown and some of bin laden said the americans claimed they care about human rights and yet they don't seem to care about human rights when were the ones being killed and this is the only partially true because if you look at in bill clinton helped support the jihad is in bosnia and in chechnya and in kosovo and in 19 also helped the british to kill [inaudible] in 1999 in a 2000 in fact after september 11 bill clinton himself into different democratic corpsman went on record complaining that how come these guys don't like us until they know we did all the stuff for them in yet fighting for them in bosnia which is where

the green leader of september 11th earned his stripes by the way that did not cancel the sanctions regime against iraq but that did not and support for the support for the palestinians and bill clinton use them and failed to try to prevent their rise in a war against united states but he failed to buy them off. he tried and failed in fact it only built up the power at our expense in america was still a target for the same six reasons. and so the broader agenda. a sum of bin laden and you probably can remember back to the time they worked so hard to deflate al qaeda and the taliban and that the story was mostly the taliban had attacked us somehow and so the idea was that first of all to make a target

out of them but it appears the fact that he was an egyptian insurgent and osama bin laden an engineering degree and the pilots were the ringleader hijacking pilots of september 11 and his friend were the hamburgers selling -- they were studying engineering in germany and grad students. these were not taliban cavemen. they knew exactly what they were doing and why. what they were counting on again was this overreaction and i want to read to you this quote and bin laden said himself in 2004 and is reelected bush speech that were planning to be due to bankruptcy just as we did to the russians and that's a little after the fact that but bin laden had a couple of sons and two or three and one of them is a terrorist right now but this one is not in this given interview to rolling stone

magazine that the published in 2010 where omar bin laden said my father's dream was to bring the americans to afghanistan. he would do the same thing he did to the russians with america's help in the 1980s and i was surprised that the americans took the bait and i so much respected the mentality of president clinton. he was the one who is smart. when my father attacked his places he sent a few cruise missiles to my father's training camp and he didn't get my father but after the war in afghanistan they still don't have my father. they have spent hundreds of billions better for america to keep the money for its economy and in clinton's time america was very smart. not like able that runs after the red scarf. i was in afghanistan when bush was elected. my father was so happy. this is the kind of president he needs one who will attack and spend money and break the

country. i'm sure my father wanted senator john mccain more than obama in the 2008 election. mccain has the same mentality as bush. if anyone was educated the stuff they know these are extremely naïve takes on bill clinton and barack obama. and yet the point remains the same that when osama bin laden saw george w. bush he saw a mark. he saw a guy who was dying to take advantage of a crisis and to get away with blood murder that was exactly what happened. that brings us to the invasion. this did not have to happen. there was no imperial japan that we were at work. it was a group of 400 men they were not the taliban which was the religious leadership with america, pakistani and saudi help that had taken over afghanistan in the 1990s.

they were the arab afghans and not even more of them is a small group of men mostly from saudi arabia and egypt who were exiled to afghanistan. they had organized the attack there to a degree but mostly the attack was organized inside the united states and germany and spain in malaysia. don't need a safe haven to make a phone call. there was an argument inside the bush administration about how to exploit the situation and how badly to conflate the two different groups together. they were determined to go to war. in fact they could've negotiated in the televangelist did offer to negotiate and to turn bin laden over which is very difficult under their honor code system of protection of guests and like a japanese type honor system and not in every way but to the degree of severity of how seriously it is taken them and

they were still willing to negotiate to turn them over first to any muslim country which could have been, of course saudi jordan or egypt or malaysia or any sock puppet government of america which would have turned them over to the united states immediately. bush said i said no negotiations and that means no negotiations and hand him over. he said okay, how about and i should say they demanded evidence as well and if you give us evidence then we will turn them over. secondly they said we will turn them over to any third country. no, part of me, second was pakistan and will turn them over to pakistan and then the pakistanis ruin that. the pakistanis ruin that one. then they said will turn them to any third country in the world which will be canada or mexico or great britain or israel and probably not israel.

[laughter] and we don't negotiate with terrorists et cetera et cetera and then in early october the bombs started falling and once the bombs started falling patella man and one last offer. the final offer was we will turn them over to any country in any third country and drop the demand for any evidence at all. they said too little, too late. even if you say, you know what, bring me bring them to america to trial round them up and turn them over we are too angry and al qaeda has to pay. even if that is your opinion will still have to have war against the taliban. if you look at the history of the war in afghanistan it was against the taliban, not al qaeda. in fact the cia officer the

second-in-command said his orders were to wait against tell a man without al qaeda as a secondary target and is it available? they spent the whole first eight weeks or something of the war in northern afghanistan up taking [inaudible] from the enemies of the general. it had nothing to do with retribution so the men who are behind the september 11th attack at all. meanwhile, bin laden and his friends are making their escape in the white mountains in eastern afghanistan. finally at the second week of december the cia and the delta force cornered osama bin laden in the last three or 400 of these guys at a place called [inaudible]. it is true that they unleashed their power and b-52s and they even rolled a daisy cutter bomb which is up 15000-pound bomb out

of the back of the b130 in the blue al qaeda guys to bits there and one of the guys said you wanted a body count, you better bring q-tips. and yet for three weeks straight the cia and the delta force were begging for grounded reinforcements. our current secretary defense secretary mattis had 4000 marines just 100 miles away. the army rangers already controlled the airbase and thousands of airmen -- the green berets had their presence established part of north for their fighting against the taliban forces there. all they had to do was send them to help and they begged and begged if you go back to the wreckage of this you will find the cia themselves particularly [inaudible] is a critically

quotable about this that they just could not understand the refusal to send the marines and to send the rangers and green berets to come and help. it would have been as easy as the on and off 5 miles worth and their red herring excuse was that were supposed to seal the border from iran to china just right there where they were. the guys were trying to catch. i believe although it is speculation but i make up compelling case in the book that they deliberately made the plan to let these men go. it would be utter to have the parties permanent enemy out there. after all, who cares if saddam hussein is a friend with a summer bin laden if he is already dead. mission accomplishment is already over. they needed that enemy and so they do liberally let him go. they waged war against the town in which they did not have to do. even if you think the taliban

led to some of bin laden to live there from 2006-2001 then fine but we still didn't have to create a new government and install it in power there. even if you think that we did for whatever reason you come up with that i can think of we didn't need to go and make enemies out of all of their and what the american military did with donald rumsfeld is put the u.s. army at the beck and call of god knows who. this and that warlord from the side of the hill or that side of the mountain and all they have to do is shout terrorist and the americans go and pick fights with people that never needed to be picked. there are two famous document trees but the battle for -- [inaudible], pardon me, that entire thing began when some warlord convinced the army to

attack his business addition and kill the patriarch of the valley and take out some of his timber company. it was simply politics and had nothing to do is tell a man or al qaeda and that was a war that raged on for years. the work pace and this is been no good men among the living [inaudible] hopefully you've heard of his network but it's his family and his mafia syndicate but this was one of the cia guys in the 1980s in the war against the soviet union there. after the war -- he had been alive for the telegram and so after the war he thought everything was going to be cool and yet american decided that pkc didn't like the economy and convince them to attack and embalm him over and over again

and make peace over and over again and he sent year two later and sent his brother to go in the cia accepted him and said okay, we'll take you and make him militia and using guys to do this and that but the military betrayed and tortured the brother. only then did he become an enemy of the united states of america. since then his network has been second only to the afghan taliban in casualties. another case of an enemy that we didn't even have after the war began and it took couple of years and the same thing -- i could probably say most people don't notice at all but the credit for this reporting to the taliban completely surrendered. they did not doubt this will be the mother of all battles and say we will fight. the soft puppet that america installed was a man from

southern afghanistan whose father had been an important tribal leader and he had credibility in the telegram recognized the new government as islamic and legitimate and said don't attack us and we will retire from politics. some of them, i guess, wanted to participate in politics but not necessarily even the television anymore. many retired. omar retired. it took about two and half years before the american escalation were able to even provoke the taliban into fighting organized resistance against us. once they decided to the game was over in america had lost. they picked an absolutely unnecessary fight and one they cannot win. the reason why there is a few but i will show you real quick this map and this is an ethnic group of afghanistan and the light blue here these are the past you and this is another

province completely dominated by [inaudible]. the whole east and south of the country and they are the plurality. those tribes are 40%, not the majority but they are the single biggest ethnic group. america's mission to boil it down all the way is to install a government of whose backs to be the overlords of these and as i said he himself was a [inaudible] and they did incorporate some warlord types into the government for a time but that never amounted to representation for the people but that meant worse warlords closer to home to torture and abuse them in every way imaginable. and so, on top of that this is a

warrior culture and they live at the crossroads of planet earth and they have been invading armies in and out since time immemorial and not unlike texans who only have the battle of the alamo and a couple others to even cling onto but these people identify themselves and their very identity as a culture is based around their long in ancient and proud tradition of resisting foreign invasion. that is who they are. defenders from invasion. at the very core. and so, it is not working and it has not worked and it will not work. so, now to turn to page to hear. [laughter] here's another thing. afghanistan is landlocked.

it is a south central asia but there's about 400 miles of mountain before afghanistan in the sea. to get to afghanistan from the land you can drive all the way up through pakistan and through the past into afghanistan. it's incredibly long and expensive. this is a country the size of texas which if you've ever driven across texas long across texas that is how it became a cliché. you can see how it was its own country for a little while there. also they have deserts like california and mountains like colorado. it's forbidding terrain these are more things that make this mission incredibly difficult for the american people to have their way there. another problem is it just to

the east and i touched on this but that eastern border of the guinness and is called the durand line because it was drawn by an agent of the british empire in order to attempt to divide the posturing tribe from themselves in the first place back in the 19th century. it has worked to a degree and keeping infections apart to a degree and yet it also goes to show that there's an incredible kinship with the country next door and much like in the vietnam war with the vietcong had safe haven in laos and cambodia in the jungle the taliban has long had a safe haven in pakistan especially in southern afghanistan there. and so -- the pakistanis might wonder why their friends and why

did they promise they would bomb them to the stone age if they didn't cooperate in the answer is yes, they are our allies and we help them back in the 1980s and even help them install the taliban and in power in the bill clinton years. yet, the americans have been put in factions in power in the capital city for now close to india which is pakistan's enemy on their border to the east and part of their incident consulate in the region of kashmir. in the event of a nuclear war between pakistan and india the pakistanis consider afghanistan their strategic where they can retreat in order to live to fight another day by retreating into afghanistan which means this is absolutely their highest priority of the national security state in pakistan. therefore it would be unacceptable to them that

parties loyal to india would have a real monopoly in afghanistan so they have an incredible and undefeatable and irretrievable irreversible interest in keeping the afghan taliban at play in afghanistan, no matter what. they have continued to do so since at least 2005. there's a brand-new book by steve call out about it about how the pakistani help run the telegram all the time. ...

spin which they live in and pretend it was a giant city of 80,000 people with a tiny agricultural district and the ratio number two marines for every civilian because so many had left in the first place. they were absolutely unable to contain the town of marcia. they never won a single thing. general mcchrystal himself had a bleeding ulcer and said forget it and they abandon counterinsurgency. petraeus came in and took over the war and didn't even try it. it was simply an escalation force but no real change in strategy. they claimed they were going to beat up on the taliban to come to the table and negotiate by july of 2011 and then they were

going to do what we say. in july 2011 came and went. the taliban said forget you and that was it. eventually they pull the vast majority at least of the troops out and they haven't accomplished a single thing other than occupying whatever firebase they were occupying for as long as they were there. and then they left and as soon as they left the taliban to write back over all of helmand province up to the provincial capitol basically and they had really accomplished nothing. now the argument is that we still have to stay because somehow we really had to stay forever because if we ever leave something bad is going to happen. bad things happen all the time.

now despite all her best efforts if we leave it will happen because we left and a lesson from iraq for two was we should never have left. that's what although petitions have been saying and so they pretend that afghanistan is a magic portable to boston logan airport when in fact it's no-man's land. provides no special access to the united states whatsoever and in fact the taliban has a tremendous interest in preventing any international -- ever getting them into the mass that they got them into previously leading to this war. they have for years and years sworn that if we negotiate with them but they will swear up front that they will never allow international terrorist groups to be based out of afghanistan ever again. it doesn't really hold up.

the taliban now are really back in force. they rule about half the country and 50% of it at night according to america's own numbers. and so up until this point we have spent over a trillion dollars just on the reconstruction. they spent more than i have spent on the entire marshall plan or western europe after world war ii. it amounts to an absolute joke in the disaster and it's all on the record. and they have provoked a new terrorist attacks against the united states with the war in afghanistan. the orlando -- cited the war in afghanistan the boston bomber's war in afghanistan. there was a guy on a train in

germany that attacked with a hatchet. i'm sorry i have listed the book that there are seven or eight attacks on united states not really sent by isis. of course the big one of course hassan who massacred 13 men who are about to deploy to afghanistan. he was going to go with them. so we are paying the price here because they were fighting them over there. yet the more we fight them over there the more it risks we are putting the american people. and so now donald trump, donald trump's spend years criticizing barack obama for insulating the war. i think it was just policy. he just hated obama and he was building up his right-wing race. he was getting worked done but here's the thing, he was right

of course. the afghan war was a disaster. it was pointless. it was horrible. donald trump talked himself into a third is pretty easy. so much so that when obama said we are drawing the numbers down trump be banned tweeted the president obama is right in the generals are wrong and they had better shut up and do what he says fighting with the sworn enemy obama against the generals we came into office and they had steve bannon with a man steve danner was a corporal on a lot of things especially in iraq and afghanistan. his plan was to hire mercenaries and all the stuff. the real point was we had no right fighting this war and he said you are right about that. when donald trump came into power one of the first things that happened when general mcchrystal and in charge of the afghan war testified and john mccain senate arms

services committee on tv we need 3000 more troops at least. i don't know this but i believe that trump really presented that if he felt just like barack obama did that they were trying to just roll him into this. they were going to take a chance on this new threat. i know from some great pentagon reporters in and the word was they were going to have their proposal for the u.s. relations by march of last year. that trump told them no, i don't like it, go back and do it again they fought about it and thought about it and down the road it really was a fight inside the administration. i talk about in the book "fire and fury" and he kicked the can down the road all the way to august when trump finally gave in and ordered an escalation of 4000 troops. mcmaster strategy was pressuring the pakistanis who we argue now that we tried that and it never did any good and just

keep fighting because now i'm like david petraeus who screwed up doing what we can do in the year to half trump said give the four years. we have a four-year plan and maybe at the end of another four years of fighting and will be in a position of strength to negotiate with the taliban to do what we wanted. in the book "fire and fury" powell who was the deputy national security adviser and she says exactly what's going on here in trump referred to this in his speech and not as announcing the escalation. outlook if we withdraw the troops that means trump lost the war. trump can't lose the war. that's what they told him and he bought that and yet we all know he is donald trump. he could have said this is all president obama's fault.

the posture never were enemy and they are now. that's we could done. to end the war and have a parade do i have any time left? five minutes. i'm sorry i thought it was going way over time there. so now i to talk about the importance of wars in the libertarian movement and the libertarian party. murray rothbard mr. libertarian said in his essay war and peace in the state that war is the key to this whole business and he met government and he meant the libertarian movement. what are we really doing and this is what we are doing here. a great part of libertarian party and the legacy is that these were the right-wingers who

oppose vietnam. they were the young americans for freedom that split and that was a big part of south vietnam. he was trying to end the war because that was the most important thing. and of course if you are regular american we all know so little about what else is going on in the world. this is the new world. other than blacks and native swear all the people who left where they were from to come here so they could live free in mind their own business and have a good life and leave the troubles of the old world behind. why should we all have of mindset and focus on what's going on except for the fact that america is the preeminent power in eurasia. the middle part of north america dominates the old world militarily and they right now.

it's really your business. america's the world empire. we have that dominance for now although putin gave a speech the other day that puts that into question. even though we don't focus on it so much the libertarian domestic agenda is hard money, free-market, decentralization, legalize all essential relationships business personal and everything else and did i say hard money? hard money. we can't have that for the empire. we can't have a limited temporary constitutional empire. and it's been 16 years of this and look at what shambles our bill of rights is in. look what happened with the all-powerful commander-in-chief

and that huge swath of the fourth amendment. in the 1990s when they are posed no new customer regulations with the banks would have to start writing on the customers the entire american right was up in arms. it was up to "the wall street journal" to stop it. section 121b and we passed the patriot act since then and the president has written executive orders too. this was part of bin laden's strategy not because he hated that we were free but he knew we'd love that we were and he said i'm going to make you give yourselves a choking life. your government is going to clamp down their freedom so much nor too guarantee your security that finally you are going to tell your government that this is the problem. that was part of a strategy in

the first place. our government has taken us with them. they'd discredited little b democracy all over the world. they discredited free-market capitalism as the business of the military-industrial complex and all of the republicans and democrats. and they have taken our agenda of individual liberty for the future of all mankind and they have dragged through the muck in the name of the empire and now the homeland. i just want to mention real quick that harry brown knew better. he was the libertarian party president candidate in 1950 and i asked him on my radio show what would you at the? accorsi said i would have ended all the -- for israel and september 11 never would have happened my watch anyway but it if it had i would tell the

american people don't be afraid. we are going to get these guys and you are right we are trespassing. we were only trying to protect us from the soviets we swear but that was 10 years ago. we have bring our troops home and call this thing over by christmas and then he would have would have given the statue of liberty speech on tv every day for eight years. evangelical eyes and evangelize liberty to the whole world. your bill of rights isn't as good as us and your property rights aren't as good as ours. your population is way too big but he would have made sure that america was practicing what he was preaching instead of dragging the untruths through the mud. he would have made a great example and that was the opportunity that george bush had any absolutely blew it.

so let us the libertarian movement, can i have one more minute? the libertarian party the national party blew the war on terror completely in the george bush years. they could have been a great leaders of the peace movement and judge gray said it best we can't leave now. just like a republican and cory would have for his name was at the front office compromising on everything refusing to take a radical position. there have been great heroes and legendary movements but the national libertarian party has really fallen short on this. we should absolutely be there single -- we cannot have freedom and the world empire at the same time. that should be their message. we must do much better with that message. thank you. [applause]

[applause] >> good evening and welcome and thanks very much for coming. i am bradley graham that colin her of politics and prose and on behalf of everybody here at gw and axios as well we are very glad you a